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“And you’re a clatty prick. Now clean the floor there, will ye? Your ugly focking head is leaking all over it.”

Bursting with laughter, Link pulled his shirt over his head and wiped his face with it. The swollen, broken bridge of his nose was painful to look at, but he didn’t show a hint of discomfort. He climbed to his feet, his musculature playing and bunching beneath darkly-tanned skin as he dropped the shirt and used his boot to wipe the fabric over the blood.

Flicking the finished cigarette onto the shirt, he kicked it to one of his guys and strode toward Jesse. “So you’re the quiet one.”

Jesse perused all six-foot-and-imposing-inches of Link’s frame with a disinterested expression. A thin patch of dark hair dusted Link’s chest and abs, and a few faint scars drew lines over his ribs. He looked like a younger, meaner, broken-nosed version of Vin Diesel.

“I’ve met guys like you.” Link cocked his bald head, his nostrils ringed with crimson. “You’re the kind that slices throats in dark alleys and slips away into the night before the first drop of blood hits the pavement.”

Jesse stared back, the bored look on his face giving nothing away. When we’d shared our stories, we hadn’t touched on our lives before the plague. Link didn’t know about Jesse’s CIA background, yet his assessment was uncannily accurate.

“What about you?” I raised my chin. “What’s your kind?”

He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “I headed the security detail on the Mississippi Queen.”

“Why would a steamboat need security?” I arched a brow. “Saw a lot of action, did you?”

“Liliana”—he nodded at the ceiling, indicating the nymph upstairs—“is my boss. She is the Mississippi Queen. Or was. She was a celebrity in our parts. Had a voice on her that hardened every cock on that cruise ship, and a body that men would sell their souls just to touch. You get me?”

Loud and clear. “You were a bodyguard, a bouncer…”

“All of it, and not just for her. The nymphs upstairs were singers, dancers, entertainers on the boat. Not those kinds of entertainers. Get your minds out of the gutter.” He grinned and licked the cut on his lip. “They were stunning women. Men wanted them. Creepy, obsessive men. So I protected them, and some of these guys…” He glanced around the room. “They worked for me then in the same capacity they do now.”

A team of bodyguards? We’d landed the fucking lottery. That was, if they kept their hands and their cocks to themselves.

The men loitering in the room were still sneaking glances at me when they thought I wasn’t looking. I could handle a heated look, liked it even, but I didn’t know them. Didn’t know what they were capable of.

I tried to keep my face blank, but my efforts felt debilitated by the pound of my heart. “Were there only twelve nymphs all along? Or did you lose some?”

The rugged planes of his face softened. “Thirty women in the beginning. We lost more than half in those first days and months. And just as many crew members. Took us awhile to figure out how to contain them without getting bit.”

“What about before? Did you and your security guys have sex with your stunning women?”

“Yes. Some of us had relations.” Link crouched before me. “I’m aware of your concerns. We’re a risk to keep around. Twenty-one hard risks, right?” He pointed a look at his groin. “But I can offer you something in exchange for that risk.”

The couch groaned as Roark sat beside me and rested a hand on my lap, his knuckles scratched and glowing red but cleaned of blood.

Link glanced at Roark’s hand and returned to my eyes. “I need your special aphid-controlling skills to keep the bugs away and your experience with the nymph transformations to help me through it. You mentioned the memory gaps and healing process. I don’t have the emotional know-how or energy to deal with that hormonal shit. I fuck, and I fight.”

He was a straight-shooter, a trait I greatly appreciated. And frankly, he didn’t have to offer me shit. We were outnumbered. If he wanted my help, he could take it by force. The thing was, I intended to see the women through their recovery. That was always the plan.

If there was a catch, it was hidden in the details.

I chewed the inside of my cheek. “You want us to help them heal, then you’ll take it from there?” To do the fucking and the fighting.

He nodded. “I just want my girls whole and healthy again. We’ve got a species to save, am I right?”

I envisioned a lot of baby Link’s in the future.

He sniffed, a wet bloody sound. “In return, you’ll have my protection and services.”

Services? Was he seriously offering to fuck me right here in front of the man who just broke his nose?