Page 48 of Rule the Night (Blackwell Butchers #1)

MAEVE

There was so much confusion it took me a minute to realize what was happening: Remy was there, in the city, dragging me out of the crowd in front of Ethan Todd’s hotel.

What the actual fuck?

Kicking and screaming, fighting him, was a reflex. He was so much bigger than me, I was powerless to halt my backwards progress through the crowd of protesting women.

A couple of them turned in alarm, tugging on Remy’s arms when they saw that I was being forcibly extricated from the crowd, but there was too much confusion and Remy was too big for them to actually stop him.

I didn’t know how long it took him to pull me clear, but all at once, we were free of the throng, standing on the sidewalk a few yards away from the mob, Ethan Todd’s SUV speeding away thanks to the cops who’d cleared a path for them.

Remy set me down.

I turned on him. “What are you doing?”

“What are you doing, Maeve?”

I’d never seen him mad, but he was mad now, his eyes flashing amber, his mouth drawn down in a frown.

I shoved him, my blood boiling, then stalked away.

He was on me in seconds, taking hold of my arm, guiding me away from the stragglers hanging around the protest.

Well, guiding wasn’t exactly right. More like shoving me along the sidewalk, strong-arming me until I had no choice but to trot to keep up with his long-legged stride.

We were two blocks from the protest when he finally let go of my arm. I slowed down enough to fall back, then hurried to catch up because I had some things to say.

“How did you even know I was here?”

“That’s not really the point, is it?”

His calm demeanor pissed me off as much as the fact that he’d forced me out of the protest. That and the fact that even now, I couldn’t deny my attraction to him.

He was wearing black jeans and a black tank top, the thorny vines of his ink winding down his biceps like snakes.

His body was like a finely tuned machine, like the orange Spider he drove, all sleek sinew and speed.

“It’s totally the point.” My mind spun, trying to come up with an answer to my own question. When I did, I stopped cold. “You’re tracking me.”

“We’re keeping track of you.” He kept walking. “And it’s a good fucking thing too.”

My mouth hung open and I hurried to catch up to him. “Did you put something on my phone?”

“It’s for your own good.” He stopped at a red crosswalk light, looked both ways, and started across the street anyway. “Clearly.”

“How dare you?” I gasped. “You have no right.”

“You’re doing a lot of yelling for someone who almost got themselves into a world of trouble back there.”

His words shut me up. There was knowledge in them, like he knew what I’d considered doing.

Like he knew what I’d already tried to do.

“I wasn’t going to do anything,” I muttered. “And where are we going anyway?”

“Home.” He turned onto a side street and I saw his car, crouching like an orange dragon halfway down the street.

“That’s impossible,” I said. “If I were going home you’d be taking me back to my apartment.”

“Is that what you want?” he asked, approaching the car. “To go back to your old life?”

“Obviously.” But I didn’t sound convincing even to myself.

Was that what I wanted?

“I think you’re full of shit.”

“Well, lucky for me, I don’t care what you think,” I shot back, coming to a stop next to the Spider.

“I think you do.”

“You’re wrong.”

He spun on me fast, grabbing the front of my leather jacket and pushing me up against the Spider.

Adrenaline surged through my body, my pulse quickening not with fear but desire.

His body was pressed against mine, his face inches away. His eyes flashed amber in the afternoon light, his strong jaw clenched with tension. His hands were balled against my tits, his dick hard against my stomach, proving that he was as turned on as I was.

What. The. Fuck.

“Am I?” His gaze was still locked on mine.

“Yes.” It came out quieter and a lot less convincing than I’d hoped.

“You’re a fucking liar.”

I opened my mouth to object, to ask him how dare he call me a liar.

But I didn’t get that far because a split second later, his mouth crashed onto mine.

My arms hung limp at my sides, my body pliant as I opened my mouth for him, meeting the sweeps of his tongue with my own.

All the anger I’d felt a moment before seeped out of my body.

There was no room for it — for anything — when Remy was lighting me on fire with a kiss so searing it obliterated everything else.

He let go of my jacket and slipped his hands under my shirt. He grabbed my tits as he licked the seam of my mouth, then bit my lower lip and kissed his way down my neck, his hands sliding over my waist and ass.

He gripped my hips and pulled me tight against him, and I gasped as his dick pressed harder against my stomach. An ache of need had opened up in my cunt, my desperation to feel him inside me sudden and all-consuming.

“Still want to go home, killer?”

The words, murmured against my neck, cleared the lust-fueled haze that had paralyzed my body.

I shoved him away. Hard. “I’m not the killer.”

I hadn’t been a good enough shot to be a killer.

“Thanks to me,” he said.

“Not just that.”

“What then?”

It had occurred to me at the protest that I’d been foolish to try outside Ethan Todd’s hotel last time, not with the crowds full of people, the cops everywhere, the noise and chaos.

That hadn’t been the way.

But I’d been deep in the throes of grief, sick over what had happened to June, over the fact that I hadn’t stopped it. Getting rid of Ethan Todd — making him pay for what he’d done by radicalizing Chris — had seemed like the only way to eliminate my own pain.

I still believed that, but I wasn’t equipped to handle a situation as charged as the scene outside the Warwick.

I’d spent hours upon hours at the firing range, perfecting my aim.

Rose had become an extension of my arm, the weight and feel of the gun as familiar as that of my favorite butcher’s knife, but none of that meant I could be trusted to make a shot in a crowd full of moving people while Ethan Todd was surrounded by security.

Standing at the front of the protest before Remy had hauled me away, I’d said a silent prayer of thanks that the bullet I’d aimed at Ethan Todd six months earlier had lodged somewhere unseen, that my attempt on his life had become nothing but another rumor in the bowels of the internet.

“I’m not good enough,” I finally said.

He shook his head and raked his hands through his long blond hair. “And thank fuck for that. Now get in the fucking car, Maeve.”