Page 41 of Rogue

My breath catches in my throat and won’t dislodge.

“I mean, I’m not complaining,” he says, adding the sauce to the pasta. “I just gotta know so I can do it again.”

“Well, if you gotta know,” I say as I sit down and pick up my fork. “I couldn’t get you out of my mind all day. Especially that kiss. And then when you stood me up?—”

“Hey, I’d never stand you up,” he interrupts, smiling wide, his deep green eyes sparkling like emeralds as the sun hits them.

Out of all the men I ever met, he’s got the most life inside him, the most sunshine. Maybe that’s because he’s not a killer like the rest of them were. Either way, I love it.

“Well, after the misunderstanding about you standing me up, then,” I correct myself. “I figured I better claim you to make sure it never happens again.”

It’s not a lie. It’s just not the whole truth. I came here because I was lonely. Because I wanted to get him out of my system. Only I see now that there’s no easy way of doing that. The fall when he finds out all about my past will be the worst one yet for me. I know it. I feel its cold fingers reaching for my throat already. But there’s nothing I can do to prevent it. I’m already falling and I can’t stop. So, I won’t even try.

He glances at the scratches I left on his biceps. “Well, you sure claimed me good. And marked me too.”

“Ditto,” I say and dig into my pasta.

Mostly so I have an excuse to look away from his glowing, beautiful, sunshine-filled eyes. They’re like the forest floor as drops of sunlight hit it now. And I never want them to be any different.

Me claiming him is not a question. Not a problem. As for him claiming me… that’s never gonna happen after he finds out whoI was. And he will find out. Because I’ll tell him. Eventually. Just not tonight.

Tonight’s too perfect for spilling my dark little secrets.

17

Rogue

Melody left at dawn, waking me up just long enough to tell me she had to leave. Wouldn’t let me convince her to call in sick or something. Wouldn’t agree to come stay at the clubhouse until she finds a place to stay that’s not a cold, impersonal downtown hotel. Or until she decides to stay forever. Whichever comes first.

I’m gonna work on making it that second thing.

I slept better than I have in years just having her lie next to me. I can still taste her on my lips and her moans of pleasure still echo in my mind when I focus on them.

But that’s not what I should be focusing on.

We’ve been sitting on a dark hill, hidden behind a thorny bush that’s somehow not as dried-up as everything else around here, staking out one of Clive’s properties for the past three hours. Skye is as sure as she can be that the trafficked women we didn’t manage to save are being held here.

It’s a three-story house at the end of a residential street in a bad part of town that didn’t used to be such. The houses are spaced far apart and they all look abandoned some with caved inroofs, others with hanging porches and boarded up windows. All except the one we’re staking out are also dark.

This one has a peaked roof and used to be grand, but all that’s left of that is the peeling turquoise paint on its wooden walls and the lace curtains covering the few windows that aren’t boarded up. No one’s moving inside it and the light in one of the downstairs rooms is probably from a candle with the way it’s flickering. Maybe someone just forgot to blow it out. Maybe we came here for nothing.

“Those stairs are gonna creak real bad when we try to go in,” Blade says, peering through the night vision binoculars at the house. “And there’s no way to get closer to the house without being seen.”

He doesn’t sound like he’s trying to persuade me to call it off. But what he’s saying are stone cold facts too. Nothing’s growing near the house. Not so much as a rosebush to hide behind.

“That’s why it’s best we go in all at once, from all sides,” Alice says.

I’m glad to hear the fire to get this task done in her voice, and not more caution and warnings about how we’ll never get it done.

I brought ten members with me. Now I’m thinking I should’ve brought everyone.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” I say. “I’ll go up to the house and knock on the door. Alone. The sound of my hog should mask the sound the rest of you make as you approach. And draw the focus of whoever is in there.”

“What if they shoot first and ask questions later,” Creed says in his pondering voice. “They’ve been known to do that.”

Then Melody will patch me up again.

The thought makes me smile.

---