Page 68 of Kings & Carnage

She opened for me, her tongue dancing with mine, and I immediately got hard because that was what always happened when Willa touched me, kissed me, so much as fucking looked at me.

I broke the kiss and smiled down at her. "That's going to get us into trouble.”

"I think I'm starting to like trouble," she said.

She meant it to be lighthearted but the words scared the fuck out of me. We'd been determined to remind Willa of who she was. Remind her that she wasn't meant to be some wallflower hiding in Emma's shadow.

We wanted her to remember that she was strong. Now she had and I couldn't help feeling like we'd lifted the lid on Pandora's box.

Maybe we should have sent her away a long time ago. Maybe it would've been better if she'd stayed afraid. Now she was determined to see the hunt for Emma's killer — we all knew she was dead, Willa included — through to the end.

That scared the fuck out of me too.

"Let's go you two," Neo barked, hanging his helmet on the handle of his snowmobile.

He was right. We had business to attend to.

Important business.

But even if that hadn't been true, I knew Neo would have been eager to put distance between me and Willa. He was willing to share but it was pretty common knowledge that in a perfect world, Willa would belong only to him.

I understood the sentiment and I was pretty sure Rock did too.

For fifteen years, Willa had belonged to us all, a communal muse who lived in our dreams.

Now that she was with us, a living breathing embodiment, it wasn't always easy to share. Deep down I knew it wouldn't be the same without my brothers, but fuck if I didn't sometimes want her to myself.

"I thought you said there were other locations for the games in winter," Willa said as we crunched our way over the snow to join the others gathered around the bonfire.

I lifted my camera and snapped a picture of her, then grinned as she rolled her eyes.

She looked hella cute in pink snow pants and a matching pink coat with fur trim on the hood, not to mention her furry boots, which conjured up all kinds of sexy images of her in them and nothing else.

"There are," Rock said.

"Then why are we here?" she asked, taking in the clearing and fire. "It looks like a lot of trouble.”

"This is where all the most important games have happened," Neo said. "And this is the most important game of all.”

Willa nodded her understanding. She knew as well as anyone how important the next step would be.

Neo greeted the other houses on the way to the other side of the bonfire. There was no music this time, as if the other houses, the ones who'd gotten here before us, knew something was up.

"See you on the flip side, kitten," Rock said, leaning down to give Willa a quick kiss on the lips.

I followed him and Neo and watched as Willa made her way to a group from the Queens’ house on the other side of the fire.

Another pack of snowmobiles roared to a stop next to the ones parked at the edge of the clearing. I knew even before their drivers pulled off their helmets that they were from the Knights’ house.

The Russians were all fucking huge.

Alexa climbed off the back of one of the snowmobiles and followed the men to the bonfire.

For the first time I had doubts about our strategy. I wanted to believe the other houses would care as much as we did about the missing girls, but what if they didn’t?

What if they saw Emma Russo — daughter of the Italian family, of a traitor no less — as not their problem? What if they saw the other Bellepoint girls as disposable?

It would be depressing as hell, but beyond that, we would have tipped off the wrong people to what we had discovered.

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