Merrick winced. “God, no.”
I cocked my head, enjoying his reaction. “Why not? How old is she? Twenty-one?”
“Twenty-two,” he snapped.
“So…why are you not fucking her?” I asked softly.
His grip tensed on the railing until his knuckles went white. “I am her guardian, her protector, and she’s been through enough already. She needs at least one man in her life who won’t abandon her or try to get in her pants. Her head’s fucked enough as it is.”
His brows were lowered and his back was tensed. I’d stirred something in him he didn’t like, but I was enjoying it. I needed him angry before I could go in and get the information I really wanted.
“Maybe you’re not doing her a favor,” I said casually, inhaling my cigarette. “She’s clearly got a void and if it’s not you choking her in bed, it’ll be some other man. Maybe she calls him daddy.”
Blue flame roared in his eyes and his jaw tightened.
I frowned. “She does have daddy issues or something, doesn’t she? Because you wouldn’t be talking about her like she’s a bird with a broken wing if she wasn’t already hurt. Perhaps you should have brought her and we could swap them for a night.”
I sounded like an asshole, but my words had the desired effect. There it was—his breaking point. He turned on me like a snake rearing, ready to strike. Then he saw my smirk and he paused. His head cocked and a slow smile slid over his face.
“Oh, you’re good,” he said, a dangerous edge to his voice.
“I am, thank you,” I said. “Now tell me why the fuck you want my wife. And don’t lie to me.”
“I have no ulterior motives, other than pure and simple desire. Everyone has their weaknesses and my Achilles’ heel is women is like your Rosalia. I would be honored to pleasure your wife,” he said softly. “But only if you do it with me. I admire you, Peregrine, and I don’t want to cause a rift.”
“That was the only condition I had,” I said. “The other was that I carry my gun into the room so that if you hurt her, I get to shoot you dead.”
Merrick’s eyes flashed and his head cocked. His thin mouth parted and I realized that I’d insulted him. Deeply. He stepped closer to me, a suffocating energy radiating from him.
“I don’t know how you treat men who hurt women around here, but there is nothing worse you could accuse me of in my world,” he said. “In our outfit we’re a lot more traditional. I’m regarded as a king. And one of my duties as king is to deal out justice in one hand and mercy with the other.”
I kept silent, unsure where he was going with this.
“When I came into power, one of my soldiers raped one of my women,” Merrick said, his voice catching. “So I dropped him in the woods of my estate and I hunted and killed him. It took days and he was fucking suffering by the end of it. That became the standard practice for men who abuse or rape women in our world. It is a serious thing to accuse me of because I am the hand of justice. The moral center.”
“She’s my wife, I meant no disrespect to you,” I said.
“Dare I say, if you put that practice into place in your outfit, you would clean house quickly.”
“Don’t comment on our outfit,” I said. “Lucien is cleaning it out well on his own.”
“Yes, I like Lucien, he reminds me of myself,” Merrick said. “My organization is a very traditional sort of secret society. We’ve been around for hundreds of years in different forms and I credit our longevity to not having heirs among our leaders. Lucien was no one’s heir, he fought his way up when he killed your boss and took his place last year. I admire that because I did that too.”
“Did you?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes, we fight to the death to pick our king,” Merrick said. “I killed twelve men at age nineteen to earn my place.”
That was interesting information that I hadn’t expected. For some reason, I’d assumed Merrick was the successor to his father, a trust fund child from old money. The news that he wasn’t actually set me at ease.
“I’ll sign the alliance without touching her,” he said. “But if you want me to, I’ll do that for your wife. It’s not exactly a chore. I admire you, Peregrine, and I won’t deny that given the chance, I would fuck your wife. But what you’re offering intrigues me more.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not sure what you’re trying to get out of it.”
“This is about Rosalia, not me.”
He stared at me for a long time and then he sighed. “Alright, if that’s what you want to go with.”