Page 64 of Pretty Ruthless Monsters: Complete Series

QUINN

The room goes completely silent as Killian finishes speaking, as if someone flipped a switch and turned the volume off.

My chest burns, and I realize I’ve stopped breathing.

I definitely didn’t expect him to lay it all out like that—although it’s so fucking like him to put it that way.

Short and to the point, leaving no room for misinterpretation.

Atlas and Nico seem stunned for several long moments, both of them gaping at Killian as they process this information. But Killian’s harshly handsome face never changes. He stands there, arms folded, unbothered.

“This was before the alliance?” Nico asks, even though he clearly already knows the answer. “You were stalking her and following her back when she was still considered our enemy?”

“Yes,” Killian says simply.

“How the fuck did this not come up before now?” Atlas demands.

“She didn’t know who I was,” Killian explains. “I wore a mask during our encounters at the club, and I followed her in secret. She never saw my face.”

I drag in a ragged breath, my heart racing as I watch this play out in front of me.

Nico and Atlas are still staring at Killian like they can’t fucking believe what they just heard, and there’s a noticeable change in the dynamic between the four of us.

I can feel a sort of tension gathering in the air, but I don’t know what it means.

Is Nico going to be mad that Killian fucked me before he did?

That he took it upon himself to stalk me and get involved with me without Nico’s input?

Is Atlas going to be jealous? After all, he held himself back from doing anything with me because I’m technically his best friend’s wife.

But Killian had already fucked me before that was ever an issue.

Nico’s gaze finally slides back to me. His mismatched eyes glitter like jewels, hard and bright, and I swallow, flipping my sketchbook closed and setting it aside.

“Is that true?” he asks. “You didn’t know it was him?”

Fuck it.

“Yes, it’s true.” I lift my chin, nodding once.

“I had no idea. I never saw his face at the club. He always wore a mask, just like I did, and the rooms he fucked me in were all dark. When you and I negotiated the alliance between our gangs and then got married, and even after you all moved into the house, he never talked to me. So until recently, I didn’t know anything. ”

Nico’s eyes narrow. “And you didn’t want to kill him for lying to you?”

“I did,” I admit. “I actually… stabbed him.”

A flash of surprise cuts across Nico’s face, and he shares a look with Atlas over my shoulder. The two of them are probably trying to do the math on when that happened, and I wonder if Nico remembers the way Killian winced as he opened the fridge the next day but played it off as a strained muscle.

I know I’m probably playing with fire, admitting that I pulled a knife on their best friend. Our alliance started off as tenuous and breakable as the thread of a spider’s web, and although things have shifted between all of us recently, I’m not sure how much forgiveness I’ll get for that.

Not that I’m sorry I did it. I may be coming closer to forgiving him after what he did to the Bullets, but I needed to let that anger out, and he goddamn well deserved it.

And honestly, I think he kind of liked it.

“It was the night Silas attacked both of our gangs and left his ‘trophies’ behind,” I say, my stomach twisting as I remember the cut up faces of my crew members.

“I had just learned that Killian had been stalking me, on top of everything else, and was really fucking pissed off about it. About him lying and hiding shit from me, refusing to talk near me so that I’d never put the pieces together. But now…”

I trail off, not even sure how to finish that sentence.

It wasn’t that long ago that I found out, but it feels like so much has changed in that time. Enough that I have no idea where things stand now.

Nico is still looking at me, his eyes simmering, his expression enigmatic.

I can’t tell if he’s angry or hurt or what, and I’m even less sure of what I want him to feel.

Do I want him to be possessive and furious?

Or do I want him to react the same way he did when he found out what happened between me and Atlas at Eros?

That thought makes my heart pound even faster, and I stay silent, my gaze locked with Nico’s.

“So,” he finally says, drawing out the word. “Every man in this room has fucked you, mia cara. Is that right?”

Somehow, that wasn’t what I was expecting to hear, and my pulse jumps as heat floods through me.

All three of them have their eyes on me now, and the tension that was rising before shifts into something else—something that makes the air feel thicker and has goosebumps crawling across my skin.

But Nico is right. As of the other night, all three of them have fucked me.

I lick my lips and nod.

His mismatched eyes are keen and perceptive as he watches me, and it feels almost like he can see right through me.

“You’re not the only one Killian kept that secret from,” he says, his voice low. “For him to keep it from me and Atlas for so long, it must have been important to him. It must’ve truly meant something to him.”

My breath catches as new emotions rise up in me from hearing that.

Nico knows Killian best, so I believe what he says about it, and the assertion that our hookups meant something deeper to Killian makes my heart squeeze in my chest. Because they meant something to me too.

For a while, it sometimes felt like the only person who truly understood me was Phantom.

When I glance at Killian, there’s no denial or confirmation on his face, but he stares at me intently in a way that proves nothing about it—about him, about us —was ever casual.

“You know, you were lying too,” Nico says, drawing my attention back to him.

“What?” I blink, startled. “Lying about what?”

“You didn’t tell me the truth about what had happened as soon as you found out.”

“That’s not a lie,” I insist, shaking my head as my heart thuds against my ribs. “I just didn’t bring it up. It’s not like you asked me and I lied to your face.”

“A lie by omission is still a lie.” He runs a hand over his jaw and smirks. “You’ll have to make it up to me.”

His voice shifts subtly as he says that last part, but it’s enough for me to realize that he’s not talking about business or the alliance right now. He means something else entirely.

I swallow again, my mouth suddenly dry. “What do you want me to do?”

His smirk grows sharper, hungry and predatory. “You can start by being a good little wife and getting on your hands and knees.”

My stomach flips over itself. Blood rushes in my ears, and I can feel the rapid thrum of my pulse in my throat, my heart beating so hard that I’m convinced all three of them can hear it. They’re all still watching me, the combined weight of their gazes so palpable that it’s like a physical thing.

I could tell Nico to go fuck himself. I don’t owe him anything for lying, and Killian’s lie was much bigger than mine was.

For some reason, though, I don’t.

Instead, following an impulse that’s almost more of an animal instinct, something primal and base, I slowly get up from the couch and then sink down onto my hands and knees.

I can feel the Princes track every movement with their eyes, and when I look up at Nico, he’s leaning back in the large chair, his head tipped languidly in a way that makes him look like a king on a throne.

I automatically start to move toward him, but he shakes his head, holding up a hand to stop me in my tracks.

“No. Don’t crawl to me,” he says, his voice low and even. “Crawl to him.”

He gestures to Killian, who’s still leaning against the wall off to one side.

The surge of heat inside me that follows that command is intense and all-encompassing. I can feel my pussy throb with it, my skin prickling as all of my nerve endings seem to wake up at once.

But still, I hesitate.

There’s a part of me that wants to hold on to my anger at Killian.

He lied to me, betrayed me, and it’s hard to get over that easily.

But at the same time, it’s becoming even harder to cling to the anger and ignore all of the other feelings he brings out in me.

Especially considering he hunted down those men just because of what they did to me.

And then there’s the fact that he’s Phantom, and the truth is, I miss him. But he’s standing right in front of me, unmasked and honest for the first time. He’s just a different person than I initially thought he was.

Killian watches me as I stay rooted in place for a long moment, and although his expression is as difficult to interpret as always, his eyes are easier to read than they’ve ever been.

And even if I didn’t realize it until recently, I know those eyes.

The pull that I’ve always felt toward Phantom—toward Killian—finally wins out, snapping me out of my stasis. I lick my lips and start to move, crawling over to him slowly.

Both Atlas and Nico have a good view of my ass as I move, and I can feel their eyes on me, taking in every sway of my hips. My pussy responds, getting wetter and wetter as I go.

Killian hasn’t looked away from me for a second. His dark green eyes sear into me as I move toward him, and he barely even seems to blink or breathe.

He’s still as a statue, but there’s a subtle shift in him.

As I reach him on my hands and knees, I swear I can see more of the man I know from the club in him.

In the dominant way he looks at me, the way he suddenly seems to command the room, even though he hasn’t moved or spoken for several minutes.

It sets my heart racing, and a familiar feeling settles over me. It’s the way I always felt when I would finally see Phantom at the club. Relief and anticipation mixed in with a bit of nerves, a heady cocktail of emotion.