Page 24 of The Seer

A corner of his firm mouth kicked up. “We need to talk.”

“About?”

He withdrew Bloodstone’s necklace from his pocket. “This.”

CHAPTER8

“Dude! What the hell?” Taryn couldn’t believe Creed could touch it, to say nothing of swiping it from under their noses. “When… How… What?”

Amusement filled his hazel eyes, and she was struck by how handsome he was. Of average height, he wasn’t necessarily beefy or muscle-bound, but he was pretty damned fit, nonetheless. Taryn was sure if she got a glimpse of his abs, they’d be washboard, and his BF percentage was probably low single digits if it registered at all. His visage was an interesting mix of hardness and handsomeness that some would call chiseled. A hint of laugh lines bracketed his mouth and eyes, suggesting he’d once been happy but not anymore.

“Are you a jewel thief?” she asked, half-serious.

Since first meeting him, she’d played the guessing game with her sister Viv. No one knew much about Creed other than he preferred big cities and had never stayed in one place for long. If Damian knew about the man’s past, he wasn’t saying. He was annoyingly close-lipped.

Creed’s laughter was rich and robust, like a vintage wine, and she glimpsed how he might’ve looked when his troubles were few. Had she met him prior to Fintan, she could’ve easily fallen for him. Hell, nothing was stopping her now except any residual feelings he had for Narissa.

“You and Narissa, what happened there?” she found herself asking.

All humor left him. “She betrayed me.”

“Is she stupid?” she gasped.

In today’s day and age, not much shocked Taryn, certainly not betrayal, but who the hell cheated on someone who looked like Creed? He possessed a rough-and-ready hot-biker vibe, and she, for one, loved a bad boy with a heart of gold.

“Wait,” she said. “I’m assuming when you say ‘betrayed,’ it was an affair. Am I right?”

“No. Or not that I know of, anyway. In that regard, she was loyal.” Absently, he rubbed his chest as if pain still resided in his heart. “She abandoned me when shit went down with the Authority. Hell, she may have been the one who turned me in. Who knows?” He spoke like it was all matter-of-fact, but there was an underlying hurt he couldn’t hide, and Taryn was crushed for him. Granted, she didn’t know the details of his banishment, but if Damian had allowed him into his inner circle, Creed couldn’t be bad.

“But you suspect she did, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, touching his arm. “Maybe you should talk to her. Find out for sure.”

“It no longer matters. Narissa abandoned me when I needed her the most. I should thank her because it taught me a valuable life lesson.”

Taryn released a bitter laugh on his behalf—and perhaps her own, too. Having been a dupe, she knew exactly how badly that shit hurt. She was nowhere near over it.

“Not to trust another living soul?” she quipped.

“Close enough. It felt a helluva lot worse at the time. I feel mostly numb these days,” he confessed, in what she suspected was a rare bout of vulnerability for him.

“I wish I knew what to say to make it better.” She eyed the amulet in his hand. “I’d give you a comforting hug, but the last time I got close to that thing, it nearly killed me.”

He grinned. “I’ll throw it out the fucking window if it means you’ll rub that gorgeous body against mine.”

Heat spread across her cheeks, and for a reckless moment, she considered flirting with him.

“Sure, and I wouldn’t be doin’ that if I were you, Taryn-Taryn.” Fintan’s comment was a surprise and nothing short of surly. His expression was forbidding when she glanced his way.

He looked like hell. Gray-faced and lion’s mane hair a mess, he rested against the door jamb as if using it to prop himself up. And it seemed he needed it.

“Fintan!” When she would’ve rushed to his side, he shook his head.

“I’m grand, love. Don’t fuss.”

She did her damnedest to hold still when everything in her screamed to help him.

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