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Matching affection washed through me. I held out my hand to him. “Come here. And please tell me you have a good supply of condoms.”
A laugh burst out of him. He climbed onto the bed next to me and pulled me into a scorching embrace, but he didn’t make any move to strip his own clothes off.
“I think we’ll leave it there for now,” he said. “Because I’m not like the asshole you were married to, and I don’t want you to ever think otherwise. I can give without taking anything.”
I swallowed thickly and peered at him through my eyelashes. What was I even doing? How could this go anywhere when I still had my mission here to see through?
They had to understand. They had to see that defending my family mattered just as much to me as defending theirs did to them, and that someone in the Hell Kickers had done us wrong.
“Even though I’m a treacherous Noble,” I said lightly but only partly joking.
Darius scoffed. “You’re not part of your brother’s plans. The Hell Kickers’ blood that was spilled is on his hands, not yours.”
I was a much bigger part of those plans than he knew, but not in the way he’d have thought. I couldn’t help pointing out, just to prod the subject a little farther along: “There was blood spilled on the Nobles side too, you know.”
“Of course. Once someone starts shooting, we’re going to shoot back. Are you going to hold that against us?”
He blew teasingly into my hair, but my eyes had popped open wider as the full implications of his words hit me.
He was right. Oncesomeonestarted shooting, the people being shot back would retaliate.
But what if the first shooter hadn’t been on either side but somewhere else altogether?