27
Mercy
One of theother features that’d made the derelict auto shop an ideal location for Wylder’s plan was the also long-abandoned restaurant next door. After Gideon set up all his gear, he and Rowan headed off to take care of work elsewhere, leaving me, Wylder, and Kaige at the old restaurant to keep an eye on things.
There wasn’t much to keep an eye on, though. It was a pretty boring stretch of town, which meant it’d make sense as a place to keep a secret stash of drugs. But I wanted to see some action now, and there was too much left to prepare for us to set the plan in motion until tomorrow night.
We spent a couple of hours sitting on the rooftop terrace in chairs we’d dragged up from the mess of discarded furniture below. The breeze kept the muggy evening much more bearable than in the sweltering rooms below. The laptop Gideon had left behind played footage from four different cameras inside the auto shop—footage of the vacant space with its scraps of trash and nothing else. We were keeping well back from the brick wall that surrounded the terrace, not wanting any of the neighbors to spot us, which meant I couldn’t see anything below.
As the evening crept on toward night, I got so restless I couldn’t sit still. Leaving Wylder and Kaige discussing the ideal time to lure the Steel Knights here, I wandered back down into the vacant restaurant. My hand slipped into my pocket to brush my fingers over my childhood bracelet, but it didn’t offer much comfort.
My exploring was pretty dull until I opened a cabinet near the overturned hostess podium and discovered a bottle of whiskey had been forgotten there. I grabbed it and decided it was time to head back up to the terrace.
Wylder and Kaige had gone from strategy discussion to debating the ideal spot to hit someone if you wanted to break his jaw. They fell silent when I walked over waggling the whiskey bottle.
“Hello, boys,” I said. “Look what I found.”
Wylder eyed me. “Are you drunk?”
“Nope. I haven’t even started yet. I should probably get on that.”
Kaige made an uncertain sound as I twisted off the lid. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to get drunk on the job?”
I took a small swig. The alcohol burned going down, sending a woozy rush through my veins. Oh, that was strong. But it was good. It smoothed the edges off the tension that’d been itching at me.
“Who says we’re getting drunk?” I said, and allowed myself another gulp. “We’re twenty-four hours or so away from shattering the Steel Knights. I think we can celebrate—in moderation, of course.”
Wylder snorted, but he snatched the bottle from me and tipped it to his lips with a bob of his throat I couldn’t help ogling. He glanced at the label before handing it to Kaige. “It’s pretty old. Nice stuff.”
Kaige took a swig and shook himself. “No kidding. That’s strong shit.”
“You know what they say, the older the whiskey the better,” I said in a singsong voice, pulling my chair around so we were sitting in a sort-of circle. I made a grabby gesture with my hand. “Don’t be greedy with it.”
Kaige frowned, holding onto the bottle. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing,” I said. Everything. Maybe we were going to shatter the Steel Knights tomorrow. Maybe it wouldn’t actually be this easy. After all the anguish I’d been through since Colt had slaughtered my family, it was hard to believe I could be almost at the end.
Was it just like Rowan said, that I’d wanted to look Colt in the eyes while I sliced him open from throat to gut? Wouldn’t it be enough to see him realize how he’d been outwitted and overcome by us?
What kind of person was I if I’d rather blow off an easy plan that didn’t require much violence just for the chance to splatter his blood across a room?
I didn’t want to look at any of those questions too closely. There wasn’t anything else we could really do tonight anyway, so why did we have to think about it at all? Part of me did want to get drunk, to let the buzz wash everything else away.
But Kaige kept the bottle close, raising it to his lips again. A wicked impulse gripped me. There were other ways to get a buzz, ones that wouldn’t give me a hangover tomorrow.
When he lowered his hand, I pushed myself out of my chair and leaned over him. “Fine, I’ll just get a taste this way.”
I grasped his jaw and kissed him. Kaige froze for just a second, no doubt as aware as I was of Wylder stiffening in the other chair, but then he set down the bottle with a thump and pulled me closer to him. His mouth opened, and the silk fire of the whiskey’s flavor swept from him to me with the heat of the kiss. Delicious in every possible way.
Even more delicious because of my sense of Wylder watching us. I eased right down onto Kaige’s lap. When I tipped my head back, Kaige couldn’t resist moving his lips to my neck. I hummed encouragingly before glancing sideways, straight at Wylder.
His brows had come together, and his hands were fisted at his sides. But there was something other than anger in his expression. His eyes had darkened to the color of a sea caught in a storm, and I could see the lust written there clear as day. The sight turned me on even more.
I turned back to Kaige and kissed him even harder, giving in to the urge to grind my hips into him. His dick pressed rigid and wanting against me.
With a growl, Kaige grabbed one of my tits through my shirt and squeezed. He brought his teeth to the sensitive column of my throat, shifting under me. Even though we still had layers of clothes separating us, I could feel his pulsing cock at my core as he rubbed up and down my pussy. I hissed in pleasure.
Wylder’s gaze was transfixed on us, but he was looking only at me. I opened my eyes just a fraction before I slid down over Kaige’s dick again. Then I tore at his T-shirt. Kaige’s muscles tensed for a second as if he objected to me taking the lead. He yanked the shirt the rest of the way off and gripped the sides of my face in a gesture of control, but then he looked at Wylder.