Page 64 of Kings & Corruption

I reached for the door handle to get out, but he beat me to it, opening my door from the outside.

“Thanks,” I said, getting out of the car.

He didn’t say anything, but he grabbed my arm hard enough to pinch.

Hard enough to make me wet.

He glared down at me. And honestly? I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone watching would have seen flames leaping from his eyes.

And not just flames of hatred either. He was as attracted to me as I was to him, and he obviously hated it just as much.

“Stay with Rock and Drago,” he said coldly. “No matter what.”

I wrenched my arm away. “Okay.”

He stared me down. “I mean it, Jezebel. You shouldn’t be here.”

“So you’ve said.” I tried to flounce away, then realized I had no idea where I was or what we were doing here.

Luckily, Rock came to my rescue by taking my arm and guiding me toward the glass doors. He laughed. “You should just fuck him already and get it over with.”

I looked up at him in surprise. “You wouldn’t care?”

I wondered if it was my imagination that his jaw tightened a little. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d like to get there first — or even at the same time — but that’s your call.”

At the same time…

The words caused all kinds of dirty, filthy,hotimages to fill my mind. I shoved them down as we pushed through the glass doors of the old movie theater, because this was clearly not the time for erotic fantasies about fucking the three Kings.

“Well, you don’t have to worry, because I hate Neo Alinari with the fire of a thousand suns. Not only would I not fuck him first, I wouldn’t fuck him if he was the last man on earth.”

Rock’s laughter was a low sexy rumble. “If you say so, Kitten.”

By the time we stepped into the theater, Oscar and Neo were on our heels, and I have to say, I was glad even though I wouldn’t have admitted it.

Colored lights swept the lobby, music thumping from somewhere beyond it. It would have been cool if not for the people staring at me with a combination of hatred and hunger.

Correction: the men staring at me with a mixture of hatred and hunger.

There were a few women in the mix, but it was mostly men, and these men did not look like college boys, not even like college boys from Aventine, who admittedly weren’t like most college boys.

Most of the men inside the theater were older, their clothing a mix of jeans and leather jackets and combat boots that looked like they’d already stomped more than a few heads.

They had the weather-worn faces of men who’d seen a lot of bad things — who’d done a lot of bad things — and most of them were bearded on a scale from obvious scruff to biker Santa Claus.

Rock nodded at a few people as we weaved our way through the crowd, and it wasn’t lost on me that Neo and Oscar stayed close at our backs.

We were past the old concession stand and on our way down a long hall that led to the old theaters when a leviathan of a man stepped in front of us to block our way.

“Is there a problem, Bear?” Rock asked good-naturedly.

“Do I need to frisk you?” the other man asked. His dark beard was thick and full, his face creased with lines that might have been from the sun or age or both. I had no idea if he was a weathered thirty-five or an edgy, well-preserved sixty.

“Fuck no,” Rock said, shouting a little to be heard over the music. “We know the rules.”

The man named Bear crossed his giant arms over a chest that was at least twice as wide as my body. “Did you know the rules when you sent Tex to the hospital last time?”

“That wasn’t our fault,” Rock said. “He threw the first punch. I just happened to have a bottle in my hand. It wasn’t meant to be a weapon.”

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