“Because he has with you, princess?” Len said in a low, deadly tone. All that sweetness bled away as he grinned, flashing those alpha fangs at me, but then he straightened up and stared Tris down. “You fuck her little arse? Made her cry out, not from pain, but from pleasure.”
“There’s no part of Kit I haven’t touched and vice versa. She’s mine, all of her, just as I’m hers.”
But for how long? This was one of the many lies we told ourselves.
“And both of you want more.” There was something a little smug about Len’s smile as he leaned back against the booth, arms spread out across the back. It was like he was making us aware of the space there, space we could so easily slot into, kissing each other’s lips across that broad chest. “I think I know where to take things. You wanted Apothecary, but there are other places.” He got to his feet, then held out a hand, helping me out, then Tristan, and walking with one of us on each arm.
“Jacks, you got your manager coming in tonight?” he asked his friend as we walked back to the bar.
“Yeah, he’s due in any second.”
“Wanna make it like old times?” Len looked down at us. “I reckon they need their horizons broadened a little, see what life’s like outside the confines of the season.”
“Yeah?” Jackson’s hazel eyes danced at the prospect of that. “So what’re you thinking, Hellfire?”
“Abaddon.”
Well, that name sent a shiver up my spine.
“So we’re going hard.” Jackson nodded, then smiled. He tossed his tea towel on the bar and then turned to the barmaid. “I’m heading out. Anything major, get Freddy to call me, but it better be bad.”
“Got it, boss,” she replied. “It’s been ages since you’ve taken a night off. Have a good one.”
And with that, he jumped over the bar, landing beside us with an infectious grin.
“So what the hell is Abaddon?” Tristan asked. “I’m not taking Kit anywhere she might get hurt.”
“Hurt?” Jackson cocked his head, his expression of mischief infectious. “Only if you want it to. Anything goes in Abaddon, but only if you give explicit consent. Not like your fancy arse clubs like Apothecary. No one gives a fuck who you are or what your last name is. You’re just a fellow traveller on the path to pleasure.”
“Why there?” Tristan asked, but of Len, not Jackson. “Why is that the place for us tonight?”
“You two grew up in the lap of luxury, one seeing it, one being it, but there’s a whole other world out there. You think you’re something special, a bloke who wants to transcend his designation,” Len said with a challenging smile. “There’s a lot more than what you think. If you’re worried, I’ll take you home, or…?”
He left the remainder of the sentence unsaid, hitting the ball over into our court, and what was I going to return? No one love
d to play a game like I did, and one that might end up with Tristan happy? I’d known that there were other clubs, ones on the fringes, wilder, more feral ones than those that we’d frequented, but we’d never been brave enough to venture out, kept trapped in our little socially acceptable world.
“Or we can take a walk on the wild side?” I asked.
“No well-bred alphas and offers of marriage over Cosmopolitans,” Jackson warned. “Abaddon is real. As real as they get.”
“Then take us to hell,” Tristan said defiantly, grabbing my hand and tugging me back towards the carpark exit.
They followed hot on our heels. Of course they did. Alphas might think they have all the power, but we omegas? We could make them dance to our tune, and as we all piled into the car, Jackson shooting us a speculative look over his shoulder, I knew how I needed Len to dance. James too. A plan, hastily thought up and probably easily derailed, formed in my mind and made me smile as we pulled out of the carpark and onto the road beyond.
Chapter 14
“Where are you?”
Cress’ voice was sharp on the other end of the phone line. As we parked out the front of a looming building, I peered out the windshield at the forbidding façade.
“Out with Tris.”
“Out with Tris and whom, little sister?” she bit off in hushed tones. She was obviously somewhere where she didn’t want to expose what I was up to.
“An alpha we met at Apothecary. He’s interested in Tris.” More lies, always lies. “I need a background check done on him.” Len and Jackson turned around to look at me but I put a finger to my lips. “Len Rafferty.”
“The alcohol importer? Dad buys a lot of his Scotch directly from him. Well, he’s not old money, but that might work out better for Tris. I’ll run the check and forward you the results. But, Kit, the two of you can’t waltz around in the company of a strange alpha, particularly one we know very little about.”