Page 129 of Pretty Little Things

But a fucking heads up would have been nice.

We don’t do certain things and trafficking is one. A hard no.

Oh, yeah. Fucking pillars of the community. We’ll kill you in your sleep, but we won’t traffic your girls.

At least with the kid trying to act like Jac was into it, he shot himself in the foot. Maximo wants the fucking kickass guns. He doesn’t want a part of trafficking. Stores with sex toys, links to high end escorts and sex parties, yeah.

Kidnapped and tattooed women for sale?

No. None of us want that.

Even if we were those kind of shitheads, the whole sex trade thing on that ugly level isn’t going anywhere good. Not even if you’re Quinate.

When I float the nay for blocking Kincaid, I’ll have majority. Not that I figure it’ll be an issue when this side comes up, but…

I sigh and prowl around my actual real home. The one in downtown, the kind of place no one expects me to live in. Not downtown, not fucking Hendrick Agnossio. I pour a drink, and stand at the window, looking at Delacroix as early evening descends. I have a shit ton of work, but all I can think about is Cat. Where she is. What she’s up to.

We won’t ever work, but fuck, I want her. I miss her.

In ten years, she’s the one that’s got to me. And maybe more than anyone because I’m older, more settled in who and what I am.

I take a breath that hurts something inside, and I follow it with a deep swallow of the Hibiki, needing the warmth.

I fucking miss Magdalena. Everything. It doesn’t matter if it’s smart or sensible or even makes a lick of actual sense. I miss her. All of her.

Talking and arguing. Being challenged by her, challenging her. The battle of wits. The quiet, contemplative conversations.

I miss her scent, that sweet spice and freshness. Orange blossom and ginger and bloom of jasmine.

I miss fucking her. Worse, I miss touching her.

It kills me knowing Jac’s touched her, too. Probably is right now. No one else is going to keep him from fucking turning up to a Quinate thing. If he was with another woman, he’d leave.

He’s a cold, sadistic bastard. Beyond sybaritic. But he lives to fuck with me, his anger burning hotter than his need to sink his cock in someone. He’d rather turn up and watch me suffer his presence than roll around in his hedonism.

Unless it’s a woman he marked because he lost control.

Because he wanted her that much.

Because he couldn’t fucking stand that I’d touched her, too.

Those fucking bruises. They hurt me, yes. And I know they made her ache. But I also know they made her ache in a way that scared her.

She liked them.

Just not the anger behind them because misplaced anger is misplaced. But that rough violence that lives in him is what she craves, and I don’t go that far. I’m not built that way. Rough yes. Sharing? If it’s the right woman, sure, but violent roughness that marks with abandon isn’t me.

It’s him.

And she told him herself she enjoyed it.

I saw her from her room, how she responded when he turned up, how her body buzzed.

For him.

Then me.

But she got wet for him.

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