She glanced at me for a second and then reached for one perched on top of the others.
“This one works?” she turned to me with the bag in her hands.
I studied her face a second, seeing for the first time how pretty she was. Her dark brown skin was flawless and bare aside from a septum piercing in her nose.
The Venom mark sat on the left side on her neck, letting me know she was a full-fledged member opposed to Ace who wasn’t marked yet.
“It’s fine…thanks,” I added at the last minute, gently taking the bag from her. And I didn’t feel weird about it. I felt no hate for this woman.
The brand on her neck only made me aware of what faction she called her family just as mine did.
She flashed me a smile, “I’m, Trix. If we’re gonna be stuck together, you should know my name.”
“Addy,” I replied with a small smile of my own, taking a step backward, right into a solid wall of muscle.
Before I could correct my mistake his hands were on my hips. A slightly surprised breath slipped through parted lips. I turned my head and looked up into a pair of increasingly familiar ocean eyes.
Damn, those eyes.
I could practically hear all the souls they’d claimed screaming at me to run away from him. I almost felt sorry for all the women who’d been lured in and trapped by their seductive allure.
Almost.
They should have known better.
The cruelest demons had t
he most beautiful faces. That was unspoken law in the Badlands.
Staring up at Zane, I knew I was dealing with one terrifyingly sinister bastard. Something about that made my pulse kick up in excitement.
He was looking at me like he wanted to rip open my chest, tear out my soul, and either shred it apart or consume it. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t born with one. Secondly, I knew better than to fall for a man with a bad boy persona. In his case, there was a third strike because this gorgeous man was explicitly forbidden, off limits, and an asshole.
I thought it would be the same for him, but he would not keep his hands off me.
I pursed my lips and stepped away from his scalding embrace, purposely rubbing against his front as I did.
It was a bold move I admit. Not only was I toying with a man who was known to walk a tightrope between sanity and unstable. I felt as if I was calling fate out on her shit, testing if the magnetic pull between the two of us was real or fake.
Either way, we were going to be stuck in one another’s proximity for the time being, and I wasn’t going to let him keep fucking with me.
“You have a hard time keeping your hands to yourself.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with holding onto what belongs to me.”
Wow. “Belong?” I tittered, taking another step away from him. “I belong to myself, Z. You better get that through your head, I will never be yours.”
“Giiirl,” Trix intoned beneath her breath, poking out her lips and going back to digging in the rear of the XL.
I went to walk away that time; I took one step before he moved around and stopped right in front of me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Nyx demanded from behind him. I peeked past his shoulder to see Maliki stopping her from coming towards me.
Just like that the tension between our two groups leaned towards hostile and away from amicable. Cam looked as if he were about to swoop in and pull me away, but I knew that was a terrible idea, and gave a slight shake of my head just as Annie placed a hand on his shoulder.
I didn’t feel bad about my actions, but I regretted saying anything at all.
This was not what I wanted. We didn’t have time and couldn’t afford for our uneasy truce to fall to shambles.