I’d had enough. My only duty was to look out for myself.
“If the two of you don’t shut the hell up, I can make sure neither of you ever lay eyes on me again.” I didn’t have to yell. They heard me fine.
The next night I awoke feeling like I had been skull fucked by something with a monstrous three-pronged penis that leaked acid.
I felt awesome.
“Oh, fuck my life,” I groaned, smacking my alarm clock onto the ground so the neon numbers would stop burning my eyes.
“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Desmond asked from the bedroom door.
“No, but I’d tell her to go fuck herself with this mouth.” If that was his idea of testing me, he picked a poor barometer. My hatred for my mother was sort of a lifelong deal.
“How do you feel?”
I threw my pillow over my head. When I spoke next, my words were muffled. “I’m fine.”
The bed shifted, and he tentatively placed a hand on my hip. When I didn’t recoil, he lay down next to me and lifted the pillow off my face. “You’re you?”
“I was always me, I just had cheesecloth for a memory.”
“So you remember last night?”
“Unfortunately.”
“All of it?”
“I remember going to the morgue with Brigit and Nolan, I got sexually harassed by a British professor with a limp, then Lucas got to spend some quality time with my ex-boyfriend, and I capped it all off with King Rain telling you he didn’t give two shits about our feelings so long as we stayed in line with our duty. Did I miss anything?”
“We had a shower together.” He kissed the back of my neck.
“And you told me I stank.”
“Yup. Your memory is fine.”
I rolled over so we were nose to nose. I hated myself for being able to forget him. Whatever Mayhew had done to me in his office when he stole that kiss, he was clearly the responsible party. What’s more, I was now convinced he and Gabriel were in league together and both played a part in killing those coeds. Gabriel had been telling the truth when he told me he hadn’t killed them, but he was still culpable for their deaths, and I was going to figure out how.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?” His eyes were closed, and he was absently brushing kisses over my cheeks and nose.
“For forgetting you.”
Desmond opened his eyes, and his gaze locked with mine.
I continued, “And for Lucas. He doesn’t get to decide what you and I do.”
He grimaced. “He can keep us apart. That wasn’t a hollow threat.”
“Only I have the right to kick you out of our home.”
“I don’t mean the apartment, Secret. He can move me to another pack within his territory. Or, if he’s really serious, he can petition another king and have me sent somewhere else in the country.”
“He wouldn’t do that.” I wasn’t so sure, though.
Instead of shooting my faux hope down, he kissed the tip of my nose and pulled me against him, the warmth of his body lulling me into a false sense of security. “Let’s not give him a reason.”
“Is that your way of telling me I have to go to this little party of his tonight and smile pretty for the visiting pack?”