“He did?”
“His apartment cleared out. He didn’t leave a forwarding.”
“How did you guys find him?”
I continued my exploration, skimming the bumps on her throat, brushing her pebbled nipple poking beneath the thin fabric. Why shouldn’t I? She was mine to touch and caress as I saw fit.
“It takes specialized equipment to broadcast his show. We figured he was smart enough not to walk into a Bedlam shop. Jacques set up a few fake seller accounts, and we got lucky. Someone with a Hunter’s Crest PO Box contacted him for a windscreen and shock mount. We kept an eye on the place and ended up following some brown-haired guy in his twenties out of the post office and right back to an address in Bedlam.”
“Smart,” she said with a smile. “Very smart.”
“We do have a genius in our crew.”
“Did you ever find out why he was chosen, or how a new Dante is picked? If I tracked him down, do you think he could tell me who claimed his place?”
“Possibly.” I slid her strap off her shoulder. “It’s a family business. Passed down from grandfather to father to son and so on. Clark doesn’t have kids or cousins, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have someone picked out. Although, if you’re going where I believe you’re going with this, you’d have to consider the torch wasn’t passed on, it was taken.”
Rainey nodded, solemnity stealing the brief smile. “It was a quick sound at the end of a broadcast, but I know what I heard. It was a kookaburra, Arsenio, and I’ve been through too much to dismiss it as a coincidence.”
“You shouldn’t.” A little tug and her nipple was free. Free from its cover. Free to receive my attention. “But what is it we’re saying here, de Souza? This man helped Cavendish kidnap Jennifer Wilson, killed your friend, and then took over a radio show? What’s the endgame?”
“Ugh, I have no idea,” she cried, fisting her hair. “New Dante said he’s going after the Crows, marking the tallies in both columns for people to decide who they’re going to follow. That’s something a real Dante would do. If this is the same psychopath that’s been torturing me, why would he take over the show to do something like this? Why would he care?”
“Questions I cannot answer for you.” I lightly nipped her, catching a gasp between her lips.
“Everything I think I’m finding out about him just confuses me further. Is he some leather-jacketed smoker hanging out in the quad? Is he some hapless guy who got hooked up with the wrong mentor? Is he Bedlam’s new radio shock jock? Or is the Letter Man none of the above?”
“You may or may not find this comforting, but I have a feeling you’ll discover who this guy is soon enough.”
She frowned. “You do? Why?”
“The letters, Rainey. All these clues, hints, and games. You don’t play hide-and-seek if you don’t want to be found.”
She was quiet for a while. Long enough for me to tease her other nub undisturbed. Her dress slid down her body and snagged on my erect cock.
Rainey smelled of fruit teas and vanilla. She shifted, and her soft strands brushed my forehead. She gave every appearance of a delicate, fragile creature of porcelain skin and breasts like two marshmallow pillows. Until you spotted the thick, corded muscles in those archer/farmer arms, or imagined her balancing her scales and delivering justice. That both women should exist in one enigma got my heart doing something I never knew it could.
Race.
Rainey slipped her hand under my tank, tracing the ridges of my overworked muscles. I let her. Touching me without permission would’ve gotten Quinn in trouble. But she was Legend’s pick, not mine. I never quite took to her.
I told de Souza as much.
“Legend’s pick?” She wiggled her ass out of her thong obediently. “What does that mean?”
“We trade off picking our next girlfriend.” I kissed a trail from hip bone to hip bone, tasting her shiver on my tongue.
“Why do it like that? Why share?”
“Legend and Roan bring people in their bed all the time. A few of them assumed the rest of us were up for their sex games, and they weren’t shy about coming on to us. The same was happening with our girlfriends. They kept floating threesomes, foursomes, orgies at us.” I winked at her. “Someone who likes to be punished, loves to be owned.”
“So, eventually you figured, if your girlfriends all wanted to be shared, why fight a good idea? What does that make me? Cairo’s pick?”
I grinned. “And it wasn’t even his turn.”
Rainey brushed my hair from my eyes and sunk her fingers within my strands, breaking a rule even worse than the first. No one pets me like a fucking dog, cooing about how adorable the little biracial boy is while their dirty ass, forgot-to-wash-after-using-the-bathroom hands roller coaster through my curls.