Page 38 of Root

“Show her around, since she’s our guest until she’s well.”

“I feel fine.”

His dark head bends and he goes back to his computer. Dismissing me.

“Am I a prisoner?” I ask.

“Guest,” Nikolai says, tapping something on the keyboard, not bothering to look up, “until you heal.”

Sounds like a prisoner to me.

I want to argue but the subject and conversation are over. The door’s shut and the only option I have is to follow Rush out of the room.

CHAPTER NINE

Rush

“So you survived my cousin.”

My words are low, deliberately casual. She thinks she’s got me pegged.

Then I remember her threat. Not that kind of pegged. Pigeon-holed. Wait…is there some weird sex thing called pigeon-holed? And do I want to know?

She thinks she’s got my number. And I let her. I’m a lothario, a sexy motherfucker who likes to play around. Well, she thinks I like to play around, anyway. But I wouldn’t doubt she thinks I’m toothless in the big matters and I’ve learned people thinking I’m a weak, self-absorbed fuck boy works.

Sometimes I’m even surprised by the things they say around me.

Right up to the moment when they learn I’m anything but.

I don’t need to be Nikolai to be my own kind of dangerous.

And Jess—Well. Maybe she does have my actual number. Because she gives me a long, appraising look.

It’s a look that has a lot to say.

“He wasn’t going to kill me, Rush.”

“Are you sure? He’s a little…murdery.” I pause. “A lot.”

She sniffs, tossing her hair. “No thanks to you.”

I want to bury my face into that curved part of her neck, right at the shoulder, and breathe her in. She has a scent, soft, barely there, beneath the subtle clean of whatever shit Rose has in the guest showers.

Soft, but complex like her. Just her clean skin, almost like whiskey soaked into leather with a dose of some something else. Something utterly feminine, like those flowers, freesias. Like she’s the mass of contradictions she is.

“Oh, trust me, he would have if he wanted to. If I wasn’t there. I kept him from killing you. Maybe I’ll send you back in. Let him finish the job.”

Jess is the picture of a tough as nails chick. It’s hot, but I don’t miss the slight shake to her fingers.

Nikolai unfettered is a lot.

I’ve seen strong men almost wet themselves when faced with the pure form Nikolai. So, though I’m not telling her this, I’m impressed.

“Putting up with you or death…it’s a close call.”

“You don’t want to die yet,” I say, slinging an arm around her stiff shoulders and loving how she melts in, just a little. “You haven’t eaten. Or experienced all of me.”

“Lead me to the wall. I choose the firing squad.”

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