Page 13 of Into the Blue (Shades of Vengeance #1)

“Blue?” Her voice is strained as she holds her robe tighter together at the neck. I did an okay job of cleaning up my face and changing my clothes, but there’s no hiding the way my anger vibrates in the air. “What are you doing here?” She looks at me skeptically, and that anger returns.

She likely thinks I’m here for some fucked up reason like the man I just deleted from existence moments before. She looks around behind me to see if anyone else is here with me.

They’re all in the truck we came in. Jimmy’s body in the back, prepared to sink to the bottom of the bayou after my gators have a turn.

When she really looks at me, she reels back. “What happened to you?”

I take that opportunity to walk in and close the door behind me.

She knows who I am and what I’m known for. For once, I wish she didn’t—that no one did.

I wish that I wasn’t coming into her spot for the first time wearing not one, but two, different men’s blood.

I wish that the reason I was coming over was a different one.

But wishes don’t have shit to do with why I’m here.

Jimmy was after her.

I need to know why.

“Had a talk with Dejuan,“ is what I grunt out. It’s not an answer to either question she’s asked me since I got here. Why am I talking to her like she’s the one who did something wrong? I need to calm the fuck down .

While I take a minute to attempt that, I look around her place.

There’s not a lot to it. She hasn’t been in Clayton Terrace long, but this apartment looks impersonal and bare.

No boxes anywhere, so I wonder where the rest of the decor is.

It’s the bare bones of a living space. She makes more than enough for this place to look at least a little more lived in.

Where are the photos, stupid little knickknacks or hell, a candle? This is just furniture and a TV.

She takes inventory of my person and I don’t help her fill in any gaps.

At this stage, I make my way to her kitchen.

Washing my hands in her sink is useless, but I do it anyway.

I didn’t wear my glove and now blood has started to sink into my skin.

The tattoos on my fingers look more menacing decorated in red this way.

Blood is one substance that even dark skin can’t hide.

She’s followed me into the kitchen, maintaining a distance from me that I don’t like but understand. Leaning against the door frame, she asks, “Was he the rat?” Huh?

Oh right. Dejuan.

I turn in the kitchen. Leaning against the sink opposite of her, I observe what state she’s in. She looks familiar in a way that I can’t place. Not just because I’ve been picturing her in my mind non-stop.

She has no makeup on, her hair is damp and in two braids I’d be happy to wrap around my tainted fists. Her legs are bare under that robe and so are her feet.

I like how she looks made up in her shiny outfits and all, but I like this natural version, too.

I could get used to seeing her like this.

Clearing my throat, I gruff, “The rat? Nah. A rat? Yea. And so I guess a thank you is what I owe you.”

Shock breaks out across her face and I wonder why that is. “Thank me? I just told you what I heard.”

“You helped me with somethin’. Maybe more than I know right now.”

“Well…” She bites her lip, making moves to exit the kitchen. I’m not letting her get away from me. Not when she’s so close. It’s not very large an d with the mood I’m in, my being here is likely suffocating for her. “If that’s it, I accept your gratitude. I’ll see you at work.”

My hand shoots out to the opposite side of the door jamb, preventing her from walking away. “Holdup. Where you goin’?”

She blinks and then crosses her arms over her chest. “I want to lay down. I’ve had an… unpleasant night. We can talk another time.”

I lean over her, my stature large enough to block the overhead lighting to cast her in shadow. “We’ll be done talkin’ when I say we’re done. Heard?”

Her eyes narrow the smallest bit but she doesn’t try to leave again. Good girl.

“Saw you leavin’ the club early tonight. Why?”

She looks in the direction of her front door. It’s visible over the breakfast bar on the other side of the counter we’re against.

It’s too much speculating. I fucking hate speculating almost as much as I hate gambling.

I wanted the facts and figures. If I can’t see it for myself, plain and simple, then I’d come to my own resolution about it.

Those resolutions were hardly preferable for the other person involved. Elimination was as simple as it came.

I barely know Diamond—aside from what Redd was able to uncover, which was a fuck ton. You could tell a lot about someone from what the government knows and paperwork. Hell, her social media is revealing, but not in the ways I want to know.

Ever since I paid for her in that private room, she’s been on my mind. I haven’t been able to get her off of it. Fighting it is dumb at this point. Once I can figure out why this woman has my attention, then I can let my fascination go and get back to the money.

“A guy started harassing me. I didn’t feel safe, so I came home but—” She abruptly stops, glancing toward the door again and then back at me.

She starts gathering her braids into a ponytail behind her head, swirling it around putting it into a bun or something.

The long column of her neck is exposed. With her hair up now, the line of cleavage that was hidden before is visible.

The swell of her tits are obvious in a way that makes my hand twitch to grab them and feel them again.

She notices me watching her slide a hand under the fabric to just above them.

It’s not to cover her nipples but rather points out that she isn’t wearing anything under the robe, when the fabric slides down her shoulder.

A shoulder I’d like to kiss and nip when she slides on my dick, saying my name—

She never finished her sentence and the rational part of my brain recognizes that.

It was clearly a diversion tactic.

Goddamn, this woman. I take my good girl back.

I grab her chin and force her eyes to mine. “But what?”

There’s an emotion I can’t read in her eyes when she spits out, “But he followed me home. He left just before you came over.”

I already knew this. I had my suspicions, but to know that he was here and she didn’t want him to be—makes my blood boil. A new fury takes over me as his painful death doesn’t feel painful enough. He had to go for touching what’s mine. But he upset her, made her feel unsafe in her own home.

Not my Diamond.

“What’d he do?” I grit out through my teeth.

Her gaze meets mine and I force myself to wait for her answer. There is an uncertainty there that I don’t like.

I’m not like that slimy fuck who just left this plane of existence. I’m not a good man. My morals are skewed heavily toward the money and keeping my people good. But I don’t want her to be afraid of me.

I can’t have that.

I release her face and take a step back. She breathes more easily as my rage tempers to something far less cloying in the small space. I take several steps back until I’m sitting on the back of her couch. Taking my jacket off, I lay it on the couch next to me.

Finally, her posture returns to something that resembles the same confidence she shows at Off Topz.

“The man, Jimmy, he’s a Faye. I think word might have gotten out about me—”

“Why didn’t you call me? ”

Her delicate brows tip downward as she looks me up and down. “Is that something I was supposed to do?”

“Yea! She has me on the phone already,” a voice says into the room, but I don’t know where.

She blinks and then looks down at her phone. “Shit. Sorry, Lee, I’m gonna call you back.”

“But it’s getting good! I still—” Diamond ends the call and looks back up at me.

“My friend back home was on the phone while he was here. She was ready to call the police if necessary.”

“You think pigs could’ve saved you?”

“Who else would?” She asks with a raised brow and her hands on her hips.

I don’t know what possesses me to say these next words. I can’t take them back even though what they imply is a pale comparison to how I feel. “I’m here, ain’t I?”

Maybe I expected relief or some gratitude from her, instead she crosses her arms, pushing her tits up and exposing more of her neck. “So what? I don’t even have your number or ever see you outside of the club. Why would I rely on you?”

Standing from the couch, each step takes me closer and closer to the woman who has infiltrated my thoughts and caused me to take two lives today.

I keep walking her backward until her back is pressed firmly against the wall.

Her hands are on my chest, trying feebly to keep any space at all between us.

“Cause you belong to me. And if anyone other than me threatens you, makes you feel fear, and causes you to leave your place of work, then I have every right to ensure that it’s the last thing they’ll ever do.”

Diamond’s neck is craned back in order to keep eye contact with me. Her dark eyes do nothing to hide how wide her pupils are. She doesn’t speak for a moment. I hate that she isn’t confirming.

“Tell me you know it.” I hold her by the neck, her pulse racing under my palm, her breaths shallow only faintly brushing along my cheeks. “You are mine, baby. It’s too late for you to escape that now. ”

Her hands slide from my chest to my waist, no longer maintaining distance between us. “Not baby. Racquelle,” she murmurs low into the sliver of air that separates us.

My Diamond.

My Racquelle.

Something snaps.

Restraint blown.

I take her lips with mine, claiming her in this moment and for every moment after.

This is my woman .

Her smell.

Her touch.

The way the heat between her legs beckons me closer, deeper.

I’m helpless to resist.

She has her legs wrapped around me as I hold her up against this wall. Her tongue swirls in my mouth and I’m losing all sanity.

Why did I come here?

I don’t remember.