Page 53 of Lucky or Knot
Gods, if I could only kiss him, let him feel what he meant to me. But I wouldn’t, not until he agreed to my plan. He had to say yes. If he didn’t, I’d be as bad as Cunningham.
And there’d be time for kissing and comforting and everything else. All the time in the world, if I could only get Raven out of here, safely away where no one could ever hurt him again.
“I’m not, I promise,” I said. Begged. The air between us quivered, pulsed, with the force of my need to breach it. “I thought of a way out. A way to break your bargain with him.”
He went rigid. “You?”
Christ, I probably deserved that. But it hurt.
“Yes, me! And I have a plan to get us out of here. Okay, it’s not the very best, but it’s all I could come up with on short notice. It’ll work.”
“You,” he said again, even more unflatteringly. “You havea plan to get me out of this. Tony—”
That repetition of my name, in that soft tone he couldn’t seem to help even when he was annoyed with me for being an idiot, nearly broke my resolve. I needed one taste of that pretty mouth, one nibble of those lips…my head spun, in a way it usually took a couple of bottles of strong liquor to achieve.
His eyelashes fluttered, as if he felt the same way. The plan had to work. It had to.
“Me.” This time the word had more confidence behind it. “You have the coin with you?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts, just yes. Raven, do you trust me? Even a little bit? I get that this seems really half-assed, what with pretending to be a performing tiger—”
“Pretending to be?” he muttered, and I filed that away next to “dumb beast” in the “get my revenge later on when there’s time” folder.
“—and not being able to save you from—Raven, sweetness, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I can see the bruise on your face, and I know there’s more I can’t see, and I swear to you, if I’d been able to—”
He was the one to lunge at me, winding his arms around my neck, and he tugged me violently down into the kiss that’d been on the tip of my very being, his tongue darting into my mouth, his lips clinging to mine with feverish strength. When he let go and tore his mouth away, leaving me reeling, he tried to slide down my body, as if he meant to go to his knees in front of me.
I caught him under the arms and hauled him back up. “What are you doing? Raven, gods, you said not to do that. Is that a yes? Please tell me that was a yes, because you can’t go back to him like this. Look we’re here together, you have the coin, I have a car waiting.” Hopefully. “I’ll explain on the way,but the short version is, you can buy me from a loan shark to break the spell on you.”
Raven’s mouth fell open, and then he snapped it shut again, chin jutting, eyes wild. “Buy you from a—see, I knew your plan would be something absurd like that. That won’t work. So I’m going to get on my knees and suck your magnificent cock, because we only have a few minutes left and I’ll never have another chance, and that’ll make you happy, and you can finish capering through hoops and then go home. And I’ll deal with the consequences of seeing you one last time.”
Seeing you one last time. Suck your magnificent cock.
Dirty pool, fuck. Under literally any other circumstances, in any other place, I’d have been willing and eager to forget my own name, not to mention sign away my own soul, if he offered to “suck my magnificent cock.”
I leaned in, nose to nose, glaring at him so ferociously I didn’t need the alpha glow. “It’s not absurd, for one thing. And for another, I was capering through those hoopsfor you, because I’d do literally anything for you as it fucking happens, and if you think you on your knees is what would make me happy? We’ve been over this. You not being a fucking prisoner of a sadist makes me fucking happy! Or will, once you get with the program!”
I gave him a shake, not enough to hurt him, but enough that his mouth formed a startled O and a chopstick came loose, a tumble of glossy hair falling over one ear.
“We’re going. Now. Are we fucking clear?”
He swallowed, throat working, eyes so big and wide and shiny I nearly fell into them and drowned.
“If it doesn’t work, I’ll die,” he whispered after a moment. “Should I trust you enough to die if you’re wrong?”
Well, when he put it that way. Fuck.
“No,” I said, reluctantly but honestly. “But you shouldtrust me enough to come with me and try. If it doesn’t work, I’ll…damn it. I’ll carry you down the hall and out. If it doesn’t work, you can come back,” I lied through my teeth. “It’ll look like an insane, naked alpha kidnapped you, and then you escaped.”
“Escaped,” he said, on a bitter, high little laugh. “From you. Right. Why not? Half shift,” he added. “It’ll make you less recognizable and give you a chance to get away later, as long as you leave Vegas and lie low for a while.”
Yes, gods, yes, he’d said yes! Adrenaline jolted through me, setting every nerve alight with triumph and relief.
And ignoring that nonsense about leaving Vegas and lying low seemed safest, because he might change his mind if he realized my plan B wasn’t running away with my cowardly tail between my legs and leaving him with Cunningham, but stashing Raven somewhere safe whether he liked it or not, and then coming back and killing Cunningham until the motherfucker wasdead. No matter what happened to me after that.
Half shifting wouldn’t do much good, either, because one shifter running away plus one missing tiger equaled one weretiger. We weren’t exactly common, and species went on official government records. If Declan could bribe or hack the DMV, so could Cunningham.
