“Right back at you, you corporate fuck!” I pounded on the horn and turned onto Daphne’s road, stopping short of the curb that led to her apartment. The lights were off on her side of the building, meaning Kandy with a K must not be home. Good. She made me want to stab things with an S in the worst sort of way.
Not only was she a club fucker, but she liked to play with Daphne’s head. Spouting sonnets about how bad we are for her while her pussy got wet on my men’s dicks. Not that she waswrong, but the hypocrisy painted her in a color that stank of sabotage.
I did not mind that we were a kink, because fucking hell, we were, but she did not get to dick down the bad guys and then be a superhero. That was like spitting after begging your man to come in your mouth.
Oh, babe, swallow or get the fuck out.
“Where the hell are you?” I mumbled in the dark, half expecting him to be outside her building, driving his fist into the wall.
I swallowed, sweeping the perimeter, knowing it wouldn’t be that simple. Flashing the logical reminder that he saved Daphne by sending her to Maine would not be enough to tow him back. Because it did not matter. Putting her on that plane fulfilled his purpose in their fucked-up bond, but that she actually flew away violated every fundamental truth he physically had no way of working around.
By making her leave, he saved her.
But by leaving, Daphne did not save him in return.
It made little sense, and yet here I was about to break into her apartment in the middle of the goddamn night after a hit job gone wrong to string this into some logic that could hold him for just a little bit longer.
Welcome to my nightmare.
My eyes shifted to her window, and I knew he was inside. Knew that he had shimmied himself up the damn fire escape instead of kicking in the door like any sane monster would. Why? Because those two had a thing about windows. Hell, it’s why he chose the smallest room at the clubhouse, even though it was below his rank. There had to be a way she could get to him, always, and who was I to argue with muscle memory or Daphne logic?
The street was quiet as I padded toward the rusted escape that scraped into the night. I watched it sway, contemplated the front door, then hauled myself onto the unpredictable scaffolding that bent under my weight.
“This is fucking great,” I sighed under my breath, holding on for dear life.
That was the difference between Threx and me. When I wanted Daphne, I just went through the goddamn door. And the only reason I wasn’t now was that I didn’t feel like dealing with the semantics of neighbors or fixing more broken shit this night had already carried, hinges and all.
I gulped at the air, careful of the loose hardware, when the wind delivered a hard swipe at my neck.
“Holy shit!” I wobbled, gripping the window to stay the fuck alive.
Wolfe to Jessie: Tomorrow, send the recruits to fix Daphne’s fire escape. I drummed it out in a pissy text because heaven forbid my princess die in a metal collapse because there were zero checks and balances on slumlords in this hellscape of a city.
“Are you in here?” I growled, sticking my head through the half-open window, already knowing the answer.
Daphne’s room was dark, but there was no mistaking the silent lump frozen in the middle of her mattress, drowning in what looked like every bit of clothing she had left behind.
Damn. This was worse than I thought.
“Threx?” I crawled through, tripping on a couple of her t-shirts that had fallen on the floor. As I tumbled, I had half a mind to shoot the fucking thing, along with the window, because I had about as much of this night as I could take. I turned to give it a scowl when the silence broke.
“Go. The. Fuck. Away!” A low-bellied warning shivered in the dark.
The room smelled like her hairspray, and whatever cheap detergent she bought for the month, all mixed up in her usual scent of amber. I tried to work around her absence, despite feeling it knot in my stomach.
“I don’t want you here,” he shouted. “Do you hear me? Go the fuck away!”
A bear-shaped trinket broke against my kneecap.
“Are you seriously throwing shit at me now?” I stomped through the glass toward the mattress, swallowing down the image of a monster with his knees pulled to his chest. “Because we are twelve now?”
“It’s better than shooting you in the goddamn face,” his fist swiped at her nightstand for more ammunition, but this time, I caught it: a photograph of us on her last birthday.
“Debatable,” I rolled my eyes, tossing the memory on the dresser to save its life before climbing over him on the bed.
“If you came here to fuck me, I am not into it,” he landed a punch to my sides before kicking me off his body into a pile of shirts and unpaired socks.
“No?” I flashed a smile. “Because something tells me a video of your hand around my throat in the middle of Daphne’s clothes would get our favorite midwife sopping wet.”