Page 92 of Hunted

Oh well. I’m not exactly his preferred meal anyway, I thought, wiggling out of the gown Beck had the forethought to unzip for me.

Beck, on the other hand, looked like he could devour me in one bite.

Hell, given the stature of the man—and the gleam in his eye—he probably could.

I dressed as quickly as I could, my left hand immediately snatched back up by the—okay, not ogreish at all—Beckett, who barely spared the curious trio a look on our way out.

Stanley stood by the hallway with a handful of couture-labelled bags balanced on his outstretched index finger. His face was already firmly back to that no-nonsense, almost bored expression.

Beck grabbed the bags without a word, his eyes fully occupied elsewhere, stuck on whatever emotion my open-book face was allowing him to read.

“Thank you, Stanley,” I said pointedly.

“Yes. Thank you, Stanley,” Beck repeated, deigning to spare the man a look, after all. “When you send the gown upstairs, make sure to include those six-inch Louboutins I saw by the door.”

Stanley smirked. “Yes, Sir.”

Beck’s hand twitched in my grip, and I wondered if I’d just discovered which of the two possessed the kink Dek had alluded to earlier.

I decided to take the lead, dragging Beck down the hallway with a tossed wave over my shoulder to the others.

“See you next week, Agent Sinclair,” Pyotr drawled.

“We’ll be the ones with all the hardware!” Gina added with a giggle.

I refused to acknowledge what those particular words meant. I much preferred to live in my tiny bubble of denial, just for one night longer, because my bubble currently included a man I’d once detested. A man I’d now de-tasted. And a man I was starting to believe might be my undoing after all.

But he was a man who lived with two other men who had also wriggled their way beneath my skin.

Oh, what was a girl to do?

[ 33 ]

ADDIE

PARAMORE – TELL ME HOW

A girl at Blackwing couldn’t do much, apparently.

Knowing there were cameras in the elevator meant Beck and I were stuck teetering on the edge of bold admissions and bad decisions. He relinquished my hand in order to jab the number four button and couldn’t pick it back up again without someone being aware of it.

Instead, we were forced to be content with the backs of our hands brushing up against each other. With the subtle caress of a thumb or pinky finger.

It wasn’t enough.

It would never be enough.

And I found myself wondering if another jab of magic medicine would allow me to experience enough. Unfortunately, I didn’t think so. But it sure as hell wouldn’t stop me from trying.

The doors dinged open and I practically raced Beck to the end of the hall. My fingers tapped a rapid melody against my thigh as he struggled to find the right key and shove it into the lock. In fact, he struggled so badly that evidence of his hardship could be heard from within the apartment, and Dek wrenched the door open so aggressively it tousled his emo-boy-band fringe.

His lethal expression dropped in an instant, registering two familiar—if not a little embarrassed—faces stuck out in the hallway.

“Dude, what the fuck are you doing? I thought you were some punk recruit trying to break in on their last night at Blackwing.”

“Or worse,” Evander grumbled from just inside the door, dagger raised and ready to strike. He blinked twice, eyes widening when he realised who Beck had brought home—decidedly not the girl he’d left with. “Addie, holy shit. What have they done to you?”

I jerked as if he’d slapped me, then frowned when Dek punched him.