Page 19 of Grim’s Delight (The New Protectorate Syndicate #1)

TEN

He expected her to hop off the counter and get to work, but that was wishful thinking. Dahlia had never listened to him in the past. It didn’t seem likely she’d start now.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said, like it should’ve been obvious.

Felix gave her the look a statement like that deserved. “You are.”

“I just saw you kill a man, Felix. You’ve lost your mind if you think I’d go anywhere with you!”

“I’m confused about the part where you thought you had a choice.

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough.” He leaned in close.

Speaking slowly so she couldn’t miss a word, he explained, “As of today, you’ve officially become the most wanted vampire in the entire syndicate.

I’m gonna tell you why that is, but not here and not right now.

Because if we don’t leave soon, you’re going to see me kill a lot more than that blond idiot. ”

She paled a little, but her chin hadn’t lost its stubborn angle. “How do I know you aren’t lying to get me to do what you want?”

That rubbed him the wrong way. Felix was a lot of things, but a liar wasn’t one of them. He was an upfront sort of monster. That didn’t mean he was trustworthy, but it did mean she ought to believe him when he told her what was what.

Taking a step back from her, he demanded, “When have I ever lied to you, Dahlia?”

She said nothing, but her gaze shifted to the side. It was strange to know someone as well as he knew her and yet not have a clear read on her physical tells. Her expression was tight, but he couldn’t decide if it was one of resignation or preparation to fight some more.

He looked forward to unraveling all those subtle intricacies. Just not tonight.

“Time’s up, pet.”

She let out a squawk of alarm as he hoisted her off the sink. Giving her lovely ass a swift pat, he pushed her toward the door. “Bag. Clothes. Woman shit. Now.”

Dahlia jolted toward the door, only to stop with her hand on the knob. Her shoulders tensed. Without turning to look at him, she whispered, “I… don’t want to go out there.”

He arched a brow. “Why?”

She let out a sigh. He’d heard that exact same one from Milo thousands of times. It was the “Felix, please be normal for five minutes” sound.

“The body,” she stressed.

“Ah.” He’d already forgotten about the smoking ruin he’d left on her floor. Devon had been an obstacle. Now that he was gone, Felix had moved on to more important things.

Guiding her back a step, he said, “Please hold.”

With her standing behind him, he cracked the door open and poked his head out.

A quick inspection revealed that his men had already done their job.

There wasn’t a trace of the body on her floor, and the scent of singed flesh and plasma had been cleared out by the breeze drifting through her open windows.

Stepping out, he held the door open for her. He shot her a sharp smile. “Funny. I don’t see a body. You must’ve been mistaken.”

Dahlia peered around the door jamb like she expected Devon to pop up and grab her. Surprise warred with relief when there was nothing and no one to see. He could practically hear the questions dancing on the tip of her little pink tongue. A smile cramped his cheeks when she stubbornly held them in.

Smart girl. Only a fool asked questions about where bodies disappeared to, and his girl wasn’t one of those.

Clapping his hands again, he cajoled, “Get to it, pet. We should’ve been out of here ten minutes ago.”

She gave him another one of those withering looks. He wondered if she’d keep it up if he told her how much it turned him on.

Probably not, he decided as he watched her scurrying around.

Felix loved her spine. He loved that she knew the risks of pissing off a man like him and still stood up for herself.

In his world, the currency was prestige and protection. It paid to suck up to the biggest prick in the room. Alliances and matings were all built on the idea of giving and receiving protection in some sense — financial, physical, or political.

That meant that for most of his life, the people he met were either trying to get something from him or trying to kill him. Even his own family.

Especially his family.

But Dahlia was different. She’d never asked him for anything. She had nothing to gain from his downfall. She stood stubbornly outside of the bloody world he intended to rule, and because of that, she treated him with absolutely zero respect.

He loved it.

“Where are we going?” She didn’t sound enthused, but she didn’t stop shoving silky bits of fluff into her overnight bag, so he counted it as a win.

“Home.” Felix peered into her closet. It took some effort to resist the urge to press his face into the clothes. He wanted to roll around in her scent like a blissed out cat.

Something hard thumped his back and clattered to the floor. Felix glanced down. A lone black leather heel lay on its side by his feet.

After scooping up the sexy projectile, he turned to find Dahlia glaring at him. “Where’s home?”

“Somewhere safe.” Her apartment was so small, it only took him a handful of steps to hand the heel back to her. Spying the other one in the bag, he pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth in a vain attempt to ease the ache.

Why she thought four inch tall black leather stilettos were essential, he had no idea. He was simply grateful.

Dahlia snatched the heel from his hand. Pointing it at him like a weapon, she demanded, “Where, Felix?”

He rolled his eyes. “To the Amauri estate. There’s a witch waiting in the back alley with an m-gate at the ready. It’ll take us directly to my house in United Washington. Happy?”

She scoffed. “What does my happiness have to do with any of this?”

A little of his good humor bled away. He didn’t like that, but he also knew better than to make promises to her about what their future would be like. Even if she believed him — unlikely — there was no guaranteeing anything in their world. Most especially happiness.

“Time’s running out,” he prompted her. “Do you have everything?”

Dahlia did another quick sweep of the apartment. After snatching her makeup case off the bathroom counter, she zipped up her bag and turned toward her closet. “I just need to change and we can?—”

“Don’t. I like the short-shorts.” Felix snagged her bag and strode to the front door. Tossing it out to Nash, a rough-looking behemoth and one of the trusted cousins he’d left standing in the hall, he said, “We’re leaving. Is Genevieve ready?”

Nash nodded. “Yes, sir. But we should hurry. There’s movement two streets up.”

Felix nodded. Turning back around, he found Dahlia in the middle of ignoring what he’d told her. She was rummaging around in a small chest of drawers, her fingers curled around what looked suspiciously like a pair of pants, when he swooped down on her.

She sputtered indignantly when he pressed his shoulder into her middle and lifted her feet off the ground. Her smooth legs flailed uselessly in front of him as he adjusted his grip.

Her movement stopped abruptly when his fingers settled in the crease between her ass and her thigh, putting his fingertips right where they belonged: in the hot cleft of her silk-covered cunt.

“Careful, pet,” he warned, rubbing his index finger along the gusset of her sleep shorts. “Don’t squirm too much. You don’t want to ruin these pretty pajamas, do you?”

Speaking through her teeth, she informed him, “I can walk!”

He clicked his tongue against the back of his fangs. “Not without shoes. No girl of mine is walking barefoot on that nasty-ass hallway carpet.”

A fist bounced harmlessly off his side. “I have shoes!”

“Yeah, but I like this better.” Her thighs clenched around his hand as the scent of her arousal perfumed the air — unmistakable and raw. A deep purr erupted from his chest as he stroked her again, more firmly this time, and teased, “I think you do, too. I bet I could get you off just like this.”

She made a choked sound of outrage, but she didn’t try to deny it. They both knew what he felt between her thighs, and it wasn’t just warm silk.

Felix’s cock throbbed behind his fly. He couldn’t wait to get home and show her just how right he was.

Carrying her to the door, he told her, “You know what? I’ve changed my mind about ruining these shorts. I’ll just buy you a new pair.”

There wasn’t time for her to come up with a response. In a moment they were out her front door. Speaking to the guards flanking them, he ordered, “Have all her things packed and shipped back to the house.”

“Wait, wait—” Whatever she was about to say was cut off by his shoulder jamming into her stomach as he jogged lightly down the stairs.

He did his best to not jostle her, but there wasn’t anything for it.

Taking an elevator was a rookie move, since it was the easiest thing in the world to trap a person in, and they didn’t have time to go slow.

Nearing the ground floor, he said, “We’ll need to double security on the house. I want two men on every post twenty-four hours a day. Tell Milo that I don’t care who you have to pull. Once Bowan finds out we’ve got her, he’s going to throw one massive fucking hissy-fit and we need to be ready.”

Several firm grunts of assent bounced off the emergency stairwell’s walls. Nash asked, “How long do you think it’ll take, boss?”

There was no impatience in his tone. It was a question of preparation from a man who’d only just finished fighting in one war and was now being asked to fight another.

They both knew that honor demanded Alastair fight until the last man to get his daughter back. The key to avoiding war was to act fast. There was only one way to end things without one side annihilating that other, and that was to make it impossible for Dahlia to be separated from Felix.

She needed to cleave to him — mind, body, and soul. When she became his bride in all ways, there would be nothing for Alastair to do but accept it.

So it wasn’t unreasonable for Felix’s men to wonder how quickly he could move the process along. They were all exhausted. No one wanted to fight another war so soon, and no one wanted to die when there was a pleasurable alternative to be had.

The problem was that he couldn’t force Dahlia to do anything. Not really. Not when it’d ruin the only truly good thing in his life.

Feeling the beginnings of a tension headache in his temples, Felix answered, “As long as it needs to.”

No one said another word, but he could feel their collective frustration simmering in the air as he pushed open the metal emergency door.

The alleyway behind Dahlia’s apartment building was damp and ripe with the scents emanating from the dumpsters on either side of the door.

Orange light from the streetlamps shimmered in murky puddles, contrasted by the depth of the navy blue shadows that stretched along the filthy asphalt.

Genevieve and her guards stood a little ways away, their backs against the opposite wall.

The witch was his single most expensive employee. Not only did he have to pay her exorbitantly for her services, but she had to be guarded at all times. Taking a shot at her was like slashing the tires of the getaway car, so protecting her was costly but absolutely necessary.

All of five feet tall, olive-skinned, tattooed, and with the sharp, fox-like features all witches somehow seemed to possess, Genevieve looked out of place standing between two hulking vampire guards.

It wasn’t helped by the fact that her dark hair was pulled up in a jaunty ponytail and she wore her customary uniform of over-sized sneakers, cardigan, and short pleated skirt.

And when Nash, her dedicated bodyguard, resumed his normal place at her side, she managed to appear even more ridiculous.

She looked like a damn co-ed rather than the risky investment that had paid off again and again in the year since he’d found her.

He nodded at her. “Fire it up, pipsqueak.”

Completely unfazed by the now loudly protesting woman strung over his shoulder, Genevieve finished up whatever game she’d been playing on her phone and tucked it into her sweater pocket.

“Where are we landing?”

Normally he avoided tearing a hole in space inside his house, as it tended to wreak havoc on antiques and minor things like structural integrity, but instinct was instinct.

He was practically coming out of his skin having Dahlia exposed.

The urge to get her somewhere safe and private was impossible to fight.

“The foyer,” he answered, giving Dahlia a reassuring pat on the ass.

One of the things he liked about Genevieve was that it was impossible to tell by looking at her that she was a force of nature. With her small stature, preppy clothes, and sunny attitude, it was all too easy to underestimate her.

But all it took to correct that was seeing her in action one time.

All of his men except Nash took several quick steps back as the witch pressed her hands together.

In an instant, the air in the alley grew heavy and full of static.

He could feel the magic racing over his skin in little invisible arcs of electricity as the scent of garbage was overpowered by the metallic, blood-like stench of power.

Dahlia clutched his coat in tight fists, her body stiff with apprehension over his shoulder. He skated his free hand down her leg in a comforting caress as Genevieve threw her hands apart.

An explosion of light and magic filled the alley, burning away the shadows. A gate had been opened as easily as one might part a curtain.

He stepped forward just as Dahlia’s tremulous voice reached him. “Felix, I’ve never been through an m-gate before.”

“Shh. I’ve got you. Just try not to throw up on my back, okay?” He did a little hop, hoping to startle a laugh out of her as she bounced. “I like this coat.”

His girl didn’t laugh, though. She did something better.

Dahlia gripped his coat tighter and pressed her face into his back. Her voice was small when she said, “Please don’t let go of me.”

Felix pressed a fierce kiss to her side. “Never,” he promised, stepping into the gate.