Page 32

“You going to tell me which one that was?” I asked.
“No.”
“Rude.”
We passed another building—this one low-slung and glass-walled. Inside, a woman with blonde hair did pull-ups on a steel rig. She dropped down and met my gaze through the glass.
I smiled.
Elias exhaled through his nose like he was already exhausted. “Do you have to antagonize everyone?”
“Only the ones who look like they could kill me,” I chirped. “It’s a kink.”
We rounded a hedge and stopped short at the edge of a shallow courtyard.
And there it was.
The pool.
Lit from beneath like the glow of some hidden galaxy, it stretched long and narrow between two wings of the main house, framed by tile and low, smoldering fire features that flickered in the breeze. The surface was so smooth it looked solid—like if you stepped onto it, it might hold you.
I took a step forward anyway, barefoot and bold.
“Is this where you waterboard your enemies?” I asked, half-teasing, half-mesmerized.
Elias didn’t answer. But I felt the shift in him—his body tense at my side, his eyes fixed on me instead of the pool.
I dipped a toe into the water, then stepped back and gave him a look. “No blood? No bodies? Disappointing.”
He let out a low breath. “It’s just a pool, Vivi.”
I grinned slowly. “Then you won’t mind if I take a swim.”
He moved like he might object—might order me inside like I was some wayward charge who needed corralling—but then another voice cut through the evening air.
“You’ll want to be careful,” someone drawled from the far side of the pool. “She likes to watch.”
I turned toward the sound, spotting a muscular man lounging on a stone bench with a half-empty bottle of something dark in one hand and a smirk on his face. His eyes glittered with mischief. “The snake, I mean.”
I lit up. “Really?”
“That’s right,” he said. “Obsidian. She’s got a glass enclosure in the main living area. But she could get out.”
I looked at Elias.
He was glaring at the guy.
“You’re not funny,” Elias muttered.
“I’m hilarious,” the guy said, unbothered, then raised the bottle to me. “Welcome to Dominion Hall.”
I tilted my head, stepping forward just enough to accept the unspoken toast. “And you are?”
“Noah,” he said, flashing a grin that had probably gotten him out of a hundred bad situations. “The charming one. Occasionally the shirtless one, but that’s mostly after tequila.”
“I like you already,” I said, smiling. “Do all the Dane brothers come with warning labels, or just this one?”
Noah laughed, full and low. “If Elias had a label, it’d beDo Not Engage Without Supervision.”