I stared at him, getting caught in his starry-eyed words, when the lights softened and thousands of lasers lifted into the sky. Thay grinned, peering up into the colors popping to the sounds of nature.
“How the fuck did you pull this off?” He asked, pulling me closer.
“I told you, I blew the doorman.” I smiled, and he laughed, his body rolling as if he weren’t a weapon lingering in the darkness. “Actually, I’ve been covering shifts at the diner for his sister over the last two months, and he was grateful.”
“I do,” Thay breathed, watching a thunderstorm conjure strikes of red into a falling burst of orange.
“What?” I said in a whisper, glancing at Merrick, Silas, and Chris, who sat there in awe. Being children of the Underworld meant learning to fire a gun before ever eating cotton candy, and for them, this was Disneyland.
“Think about you naked,” he whispered, and I met his eyes, watching them fill with strange colors and wondering how totouch them. “Every moment. Every second… of every fucking day.”
My cheeks heated, spinning with a fiery tingle that I felt in my throat.
“But I didn’t pull you from one room to lock you in another, Daphne. And the worst thing I could ever do is keep you.”
And then that fire turned into something else. Something broken… Something sinking and… violent.
Keep me?
He already had me.
All he had to do was turn on the damn light.
ten
Daphne: Handcage
“Holy shit.” Thay’s hand swept over my shoulder to the phone hanging off the side table. “It’s nearly four.”
I arched into his chest, tightening my arms around his neck, trying to anchor him with my body alone. I hadn’t slept this deeply in months, and for the first time, my muscles didn’t brace for impact. I was warm, heavy, held… and in my favorite place in the world.
“Daph,” he spoke, smiling between my breasts as my thighs drew instinctively tighter around his hips.
“One more hour?” I mumbled, refusing to open my eyes, realizing I was always trying to hold on to him just a little longer.
“I have rounds at six.”
“Tell Nathem to do it,” I said, tracing lazy, absent circles at the nape of his neck with a sleepy smile.
“Nah,” he yawned, settling his weight more deliberately against me. “We’ve got him tailing a different target. And I need to check in on Rinley.”
Oh yes. I’d almost forgotten that asshole wanted me dead.
“Daph.” Thay peered up from my chest, the pressure of his body pinning me down in all the right ways. “Why is their luggage in my room?”
My heart skipped, and he felt it.
I shrank when he pushed himself up on all fours, boxing me in with a sidewall of muscle and tension that locked on both sides of my head.
“What the hell is going on, Daph?”
“Nothing,” I soothed, rubbing the valleys of his biceps, but he wasn’t buying it. “It is just work stuff.”
“Daphne?” he hovered, and I couldn’t help but lean into the way his chest brushed over my nipples, or how his breath tasted in my mouth.
“I found out this morning that I was selected to attend a two-month internship in Maine,” I mumbled, holding his gaze. The last thing I wanted was to send him spiraling into a hole I’d dug with one sentence.
“Two months.” His eyes went blank as they searched my face. “In Maine?”