Page 47 of Of Heathens & Havoc

“What’s this about your room being gone through?” he asks, sitting down at one of the weight machines, watching her while he starts his reps.

“Someone trashed my room,” Mercy says. “I know it was one of y’all. If not this heathen, then it must have been you.”

“Not Angel?” he asks.

She glances at Angel and away quickly. “No.”

“You don’t think I’ve got as much reason for revenge as these two?” Angel asks, his serpentine eyes going hooded. Maybe she saw the tattered, threadbare strings the dumbass still wears around his wrist, the remnants of the friendship bracelets we all made one summer at church camp while we sat outside our cabins swatting mosquitos and talking over the drone of insects buzzing in the woods around us. She probably thinks it’s for her, not my sister. The thought turns my mood sour in an instant.

“It… There was a picture,” she mumbles.

“A picture?” I growl. “What kind of picture?”

“Of us,” she mumbles, staring at the floor between Angel’s feet.

“A picture of you,” Saint says flatly. “And Angel.”

“Were you fucking in the pic?” I ask, gripping the ends of my towel and rubbing it back and forth on the back of my neck hard enough to burn the skin.

“From this morning,” she says to the floor.

“What happened this morning?” I ask. “Besides us kicking the Sinners’ asses for you.”

“We… He… Kissed me,” Mercy stammers.

The weights slam back onto the stack as Saint wheels around toward Angel. “You kissed her?”

“Her mouth.” Angel’s gaze travels down Mercy’s body, hidden under that ridiculous costume she wears to hide her curves. “I just gave her a little preview.”

Her eyes widen, and she crosses her arms over her chest, but not before I see her nipples harden into points under her flimsy shirt. I can’t blame the girl. The way Angel eats pussy puts wine tasters to shame.

“We didn’t trash your room,” Saint says flatly, going back to the weights.

“Then who did?” she demands.

“I can think of one person who might want to scare you,” I say. “Or seven, to be exact.”

“You think the Sinners trashed my dorm room?”

I shrug. “We did kick their asses this morning.”

“Great,” she says, throwing up her hands. “Now you got the Hellhoundsandthe Sinners after me?”

“We didn’t send the Sinners after you,” Saint says. “You got on their radar the first fucking day of classes with no help from us.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” she demands.

“You could leave,” Saint says. “Go back into hiding at the Sisters of Mercy or whatever the fuck the convent was called where you were the past four years.”

She stares at him a second. “I wasn’t in a convent.”

“Really?” I ask, cocking my head. “Then why do you dress like that?”

“So, my choices are to drop out of school the first semester, or have twenty guys on campus trying to rape me?”

“We said we’d protect you,” Angel points out.

“Somehow I don’t think that’s what you said.”

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