by Katee Robert
“I know.” She relaxed back into the chair and closed her eyes. “There is more than one guild, though. I can name three off the top of my head, and the only one that advertises their assassins is Manticore.”
He snorted. “Yeah, because everyone loves the seven deadly sins. It’s one hell of a promotion.”
“He wasn’t one of them.”
No shit. The Virtuous Sins were all women. Tristan was nearly one hundred percent sure that if one of them died, someone else stepped into the role, but for all that their “sins” were advertised, the women themselves weren’t exactly running around with neon signs over their heads. He’d met Wrath once, years ago, and he had no desire to repeat the experience. There weren’t many things that scared the shit out of him, but that tiny blond did. “That leaves two guilds.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She waved it away without opening her eyes. “The assassin is less important than who hired him. This was a hit.”
“Yes.” And there was only one person he could think of who would go through such efforts—and pay the hefty fee required to make a guild risk pissing off Nic and the rest of the Warren. Tristan couldn’t begin to imagine how high the price must have been. “It was Zhao.”
That got her attention. She twisted in the chair, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around them. “Did you know there was a second camp?”
He hadn’t thought much could shock him. He’d been wrong. Tristan sat up straight. “He closed that camp after you got out.”
“Yes, that one. There’s another one.” She gave a sad little laugh. “It’s only a couple hours north of Bueller. All this time, we’ve been wondering where they set up the new operations, and it was right there.”
Tristan started to push to his feet and paused. “Te…”
Now she sat up, too. She had to be as buzzed as he was, but her gaze was clear. “You left me. Worse, you left me for him. You have to know that I can’t forgive that.”
“I don’t expect you to.” He knew how this worked. A future with Amarante was out of the question, even if they could get past all the obstacles in their way. Even if she wanted to. He lifted his hands and let them fall. “Your siblings aren’t here to play support. Fuck, no one is here but me. Consider me a stand-in and take what comfort you can.”
She lifted a brow. “That is the most pathetic come-on I’ve ever heard.”
He laughed. “That’s because it’s not a come-on, asshole.”
“I stand on my own, Tristan. I have to.”
That might be the saddest thing he’d ever heard. “No one stands on their own. Not even me.” Surely she leaned on the other Horsemen when she needed them. But even as the thought crossed his mind, he knew it wasn’t the truth. Of course she didn’t. She hadn’t when she was a teenager, when they were living on the street and doing what it took to survive. Of course she wouldn’t as an adult when a whole lot more responsibility rested on her shoulders. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t believe they let you get away with that shit.”
“It’s not hard when it comes down to it. Even when I’m right next to them, I’m apart.”
Yeah, she was definitely kind of stoned or she never would have let that truth slip free. “Te.” He motioned with his hand. “Come here.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“You don’t have to. Just take what I’m offering.”
She stared at him for several beats. He had just decided that she would turn away again when she rose to her feet. No shakiness there, but he should have expected as much. He couldn’t even tell she was having a physical reaction until she settled in his lap. Little tremors worked their way through her limbs. Adrenaline letdown. Maybe even fear. With Amarante, he could never tell, and he knew better than to ask.
Instead, he carefully wrapped his arms around her and held her close. She felt smaller in his arms than she had been at twenty. Or he was bigger. Tristan wasn’t usually the sentimental type, but he couldn’t help thinking of the last time he held her like this. He’d just told her that he was leaving, and it was the only time he’d ever seen her break down. The weakness only lasted a few minutes, but as he held her while she cried, he knew it was the end for them and he’d felt like crying, too.
Not now.
Now he simply held her and let himself enjoy the feeling of her body against his. Yeah, it was sexual, but it was more than that. No matter how much she said she didn’t trust him, she obviously did on one level or she wouldn’t have let him this close.
The thought should have made him happy. He wanted Amarante. He never stopped wanting Amarante.
Instead, he wanted to shake her. His frustration took on verbal form, his normal brakes gone from the weed. He took a deep breath and expelled. “What the fuck were you thinking coming here this unprepared?”
She lurched to her feet. “I’m not unprepared.”
“The fuck you aren’t.” Tristan followed her to her feet, too close. “You’re alone, with no support team. Your family didn’t even know you were coming.”
“No, they didn’t.” She spun, forcing him to stop or crash into her. Amarante’s dark eyes weren’t anywhere near the calm she projected when she was outside this room. “And why’s that, Tristan? Could it be because they were chasing you all over New York City because you were there threatening a fucking college girl. Really classy.”
The barb struck true. He wasn’t proud of that shit. It was one thing to deal with people in their world who knew the risks when they essentially sold their souls for power. It was entirely another to terrorize a woman by using her little sister’s safety against her. And that was exactly what he’d done. “I was never going to hurt that kid.”
Amarante’s lips quirked the tiniest bit and her eyes went cold. “Lie to yourself if you must, but don’t lie to me. If Zhao gave the order, you would have done it.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but finally relented. “Yeah, okay. I would have done it if he gave the order, so I made sure he didn’t give the order. I took care of it.”
“That doesn’t make you one of the good guys, Tristan.”
A laugh burst out of him. “No shit, Te. I’ve never been one of the good guys.” He leaned down until his lips nearly brushed the upper curve of her ear. “You’re not one of the good guys, either.”
“I know.” She planted her hands on his chest, but didn’t shove him away. Her fingers curled, fisting the fabric and drawing him closer until they were pressed together. “I never got a chance to play on the side of angels. It’s the devil for me or nothing at all.”
It’s you for me or nothing at all.
He had no business reading into her sentence, but that wasn’t about to stop him. Tristan meant to have Amarante, to keep her this time. His purpose had begun solidifying from the first moment he saw her in the halls downstairs. He never thought he’d have another chance at Amarante, so he’d settled into a comfortable enough life. Now that she was here, now that she was drawing closer to him as if she couldn’t help herself… He’d burn the earth to ash for this woman and he’d do it without regrets. She was his in the same way he was hers.
All that remained was to convince her of it.
“Would you like to see my horns?”
“Shut up, Tristan.” She kissed him.
Chapter 11
Amarante didn’t know what she was doing. Kissing Tristan was a mistake in a long line of mistakes since she arrived at the Warren. More of them piled into these forty-eight hours than into the last ten years combined. That knowledge should be enough to send her into attack mode, to do something to feel the earth settle beneath her feet. For Amarante, that was always, always fighting.
Except as Tristan’s mouth moved against hers, the coldness she carried around in her chest melted and then went molten hot. He obliterated her defenses with a single kiss, spreading fire through her with each stroke of his tongue. With his very presence.
He moved from her mouth to her jaw and down her neck.
“Take me to bed, Te.”
She shouldn’t. Already, her priorities were clouding and shifting because of this man’s presence. Letting him closer still…
But that was the problem. Tristan already stood close enough to strike. He had since they were teenagers. He just happened to have physical proximity now instead of simply emotional. The truth was that he’d always been able to hurt her. She handed him the key herself at eighteen.
She stepped back but maintained her grip on his shirt. Without breaking contact, she backed up toward the bedroom. Plenty of time to regret this later. Another person might blame this on the adrenaline letdown, on the pot, on anything but herself. Amarante knew better. She was fully in control, and she wanted Tristan. No matter how foolish it was, she couldn’t stop herself.
She didn’t want to stop herself.
He kicked the door shut behind them and then they were alone in the room. Tristan moved to close the distance again, but paused. “He’s got cameras in every room.”
No need to ask who he meant. Amarante released his shirt. “I didn’t take you as someone who cared about such things.”
“I don’t. Except when it comes to you.” He gave her a quick grin that did something strange to her stomach. “Give me two minutes.”
Amarante wanted to tell him to forget the stupid cameras and keep kissing her before she could talk herself out of doing this. One look at his face told her it was a lost cause. She moved to perch on the edge of the mattress and resigned herself to facing her decision with eyes wide open. It was better this way. Neither of them could pretend like they didn’t want this with all the prep work going into it.
Tristan climbed onto the bed and walked to the center, directly under the light fixture. It was more chandelier than just a light, its three descending tiers each containing a delicate pattern of crystals. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around the chandelier. The room instantly dimmed and Amarante stood long enough to flip the light switch, leaving the only illumination from the bedside lamp. He examined his work and stepped off the bed. “That will do.”
“Nicholai won’t like it.”
“Nic will get the fuck over it.” He eyed her robe. “In fact, he and I are going to have a talk about boundaries.”
She almost laughed. It went without saying that the Warren was riddled with cameras and microphones. They’d already been warned of it, and she’d still let Tristan stick his hand down her pants in that empty boardroom. She appreciated his wanting to keep this private, though.
Tristan moved to stand in front of her and his expression shifted. It took her several long moments to divine it. Desire. He looked at her as if he wanted to devour her whole. She shivered. Something akin to nerves fluttered in her stomach. It had never been like this with Cora. It had never even been like this with Tristan. They’d both changed so much in the last decade. She was already over her head, and she didn’t have a plan for what happened next. “Tristan, I—” How to convey her truth without telling him everything? She didn’t know.
He was too close, too overwhelming, and too smart. If he realized how special he was to her, even after all this time, he would use it against her. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. A scorpion didn’t stop being a scorpion just because it liked a frog.
But Amarante was no frog.
She lifted her chin. “Go slow.”
Something flickered through his blue eyes, gone too fast for her to identify. “I’ll go however you want me to, Te.” He lifted his hands and sifted them through her hair. Even though he didn’t touch her anywhere else, little zings started beneath her skin. “I like your hair long like this. What made you decide to grow it out?”
“It’s mine.” Two little words that conveyed so much. When they’d escaped Bueller, she’d cut off all her hair, hacked it as close to her skull as she could. One less thing to worry about taking care of, yes, but it was a purging ceremony for her, a signifier of cutting off the darkness she’d left behind.
Now? Now it was simply hair. She liked it long, liked the ease of keeping it back from her face, liked the silky fall of it around her shoulders. She liked it even more now that Tristan was rhythmically running his fingers through it. Never quite touching skin, but seducing her all the same.
He nodded as if she’d admitted more than she had. Maybe he was right. Tristan had always been adept at reading between her lines. It was one of the things that drew her to him in the first place. It felt like he actually saw her in a way that no one else did. Not even her family.
Tristan eased to his knees in front of her. He was so tall, they were almost the same height with her sitting on the bed. This time, when he stroked his fingers through her hair, he kept going, tracing the thick edge of the robe to the middle of her chest. He paused. “I do something you don’t like, tell me.”
This man…
He had as much blood on his hands as she did. More, even. He gave his allegiance—what passed for it—to an evil man who did evil things. He wasn’t a good person.
But as he knelt there in front of her, barely touching her and waiting for her confirmation, he looked at her as if she was something priceless. A gift that would be taken away if he made one wrong move, which made him all the more determined to cherish it. She didn’t know how to quantify the look in his eyes, so she forced herself to stop trying.
She wanted this. He wanted to give it to her. That would have to be enough.
Amarante knew better. Of course she did. By the very act of wanting him, she’d crossed more lines than she cared to name. Giving into that desire endangered everything she’d sacrificed so much to accomplish. She couldn’t guarantee that she’d be able to think rationally after they crossed this line again… In fact, she could all but guarantee that she wouldn’t.
She didn’t care.
A nod. She could manage that. “I’ll tell you.”
Still, Tristan watched her without moving. It was a predator’s hunting method, to hold perfectly still and watch its prey so closely, but she didn’t feel anything like prey in this moment. No, she felt seen. Amarante licked her lips. “What?”
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Yes, there was. “There are a significant number of things I’m not telling you.”
He chuckled and his fingers flexed against her robe as if he couldn’t help himself. He considered her for a long moment. “I can live with that.” Tristan leaned forward and she found herself holding her breath. “I’m going to touch you now, Te.”
“Do it,” she breathed.
He dipped his hands beneath the robe and slowly, oh so slowly, eased it off her shoulders. Amarante unknotted the tie so he could draw the robe down her arms to pool around her hips. Tristan set about reacquainting himself with her body. Or that’s how it seemed. He paid equal attention to her arms as he did to her collarbones and finally, her breasts. His longer fingers danced over her skin, pausing at this scar and that. Some of them were old. Those he didn’t hesitate over. The new ones gave him pause, though. He touched one on her bicep. “Knife.”
“Yes.”
Another just above her collarbone. “Bullet.”
“Broke the bone, too.”
He nodded. “You’ve been busy, Te.”
He hadn’t even found the worst one yet. She tried for a smile and failed. “Our life isn’t boring.”
“That’s the fucking truth.” Tristan suddenly smiled. “Can’t be too pissed about it because you’re here now.”
But for how long?
It didn’t matter. Her future was anything but certain at this point. What did it matter if she took something in these last few days for the simple reason that she wanted to?
She pulled his shirt off and ran her hands over Tristan’s bare shoulders. He’d gained new scars in the last decade, too. Some of them had easy sources—blade, bullet, fire—but others stumped her. In the end, it didn’t matter. They were symbols of things that had tried to kill him. All had failed.
Touching Tristan felt as close to a spiritual experience as Amarante had ever had. They moved slowly as he divested her of the robe completely and she did the same with his pants. He would never be termed beautiful, but the power coiled in his body drew her. The man inside the body drew her. Dangerous, but so much more. Ten years could change a lot, but it didn’t change the core of a person. Nothing was capable of such a feat.
He kissed her again, sparking the heat between them to an inferno. Amarante clutched him close, but it was nowhere near enough. “More.”
“Anything for you, Te.”
Words that should give her pause. They weren’t the truth. If he’d truly give her anything, he wouldn’t have left.
She pushed the thought away. They had no place in the here and now. She could whip them both with it later if she really needed to. Right now, the next touch, the next sensation, was all she wanted to focus on.
Tristan bracketed her hips with his hands and dragged his whiskers along her shoulder. “I want my mouth on your pussy, Te. I need to taste you, to give us both what we want.”
“Do it.”
His chuckle vibrated through her, drawing her nipples to hard points and making her thighs clench around his waist. He moved down her body with purpose, barely pausing to press an open-mouth kiss to the sensitive skin below her belly button. Then he guided her legs wide and drew his tongue over her in a long, savoring lick. “Fuck,” he murmured against her. “Even better than I remember.”
She closed her eyes, but it only slammed her back into the past. To the special place only they knew about, where they’d meet up whenever they had a chance. Tristan felt like the best kind of secret in those days. Something that was hers and hers alone. Until it all blew up in her face.
Amarante opened her eyes. Better to stay anchored in the here and now. She laced her fingers through his hair and lifted her hips. “Again.”
He didn’t give her grief about her rough commands. He simply did exactly as she told him, dragging his tongue over her again. Perfection. From the tight way he gripped her hips to his whiskers against the sensitive skin at the top of her inner thighs. And his tongue. How had she forgotten this?