Page 6

I return to the Academy in the evening and sit quietly through dinner with Mellie.

Our nightly routine is enduring—she chatters, I chew.

When we walk back to our room, I notice, with mild amusement, my morning gown is no longer on the floor.

Much like her mindless yammering, Mellie’s predictability knows no bounds.

We’re preparing for bed—me quiet, Mellie loud—when a familiar tapping begins at the window. One glance at my roommate reveals she heard it too. She has ears like a bat, this farmgirl.

“Nuh-uh, no way.” Mellie gives me a cross look, then strides to the window as a second shower of pebbles hits the glass. She yanks the frame up and leans out to hiss, “She’s not here. Go away!”

I rush across the room and stick my head out the window. Paul’s grinning face looks up at me. I shove Mellie aside, hoping she didn’t see him clearly. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re not going to come over.” He’s matter-of-fact.

“No. I’m not.”

“I knew you weren’t. So I came to you. Come outside.”

Mellie snorts. I turn to her and bite my lip.

“Oh no.” She shakes her head. “Don’t even think about it.”

“I won’t be long,” I whisper, hitching a leg over the sill.

“Katarina, no.” She grabs my arm and tries to pull me back.

“Mellie, let go. ”

“You’re going to get us both in frightful trouble, Kat. You can’t keep doing this. I’m going to tell. I mean it this time.”

“You’ve not said a word for three years,” I tell her, stone-faced. “You’re certainly not going to say anything now.”

She drops my arm. “You’re so stupid, Kat. So, so, so stupid.”

“Leave the sash open. I’ll be back soon.” I swing my other leg over the edge and find my usual toe holds in the weathered brick wall.

“And if I don’t?” Mellie whispers. “Leave it open?”

If you don’t, I’ll still be able to get in, but I’ll be out for your blood.

“Just leave it open, Mellie.”

After scampering down the wall, I follow Paul away from the Academy, rounding a corner and crossing the street to the deserted, moonlit Forsyth Park. We seek shelter within a thick grove of moss-draped oak trees before I turn on him.

“What are you doing here?”

“I told you.” He sticks his hands in his pockets. “I miss you.”

“We were together last night.” I fold my arms. “All of us.”

He frowns and says, “That’s not what I mean, Kat.”

I point to the Academy. “Mellie might have seen you.”

“So what?” He shrugs. “She has no clue who I am.”

“We agreed. If you need me, you send Abe. Always Abe.”

“I couldn’t send Abe to do this.” He reaches for me and brushes a lock of hair off my face. His fingers move over my cheeks, ghosting down to tickle my collarbone. Then he reaches behind my neck, slides his hands down my back and over my butt, pulling me in. He’s already hard.

“You’re thinking with your lower half,” I tell him, slightly annoyed, slightly thrilled.

I can’t help my body’s response to him. It’s been this way between us for years. No matter what my mouth says, my brain swirls with secret pleasure in knowing he came here, took this risk, purely for me .

“Maybe,” he admits, grinning. “I know you’re worn slap out, but let’s spend an hour together. Please. I really have missed you, Kat.”

It’s the earnest look on his face that undoes me. Paul never begs; this is as close as it gets.

“One hour,” I finally agree. “I trust you’ll make it worth my while?”

“Don’t I always?”

Paul’s hands work the buttons on the collar of my dress as his lips meet mine. His kisses are strong, hungry. The center of my gut clenches as my gaze sweeps the park for voyeurs.

“Paul,” I whisper his name, a familiar rush rising. The bottomlessly heady will-we-get-caught. The thrill from publicly doing something forbidden and reckless.

With him .

He inches up my dress and teases his fingers across my thigh before placing them right where I want them.

“Oh.” I press against him.

He stays there for a few minutes, then pulls hard, ripping through my step-in chemise.

My hands move feverishly to unclip his suspenders.

I’ve never been a very patient person, and neither is Paul.

Not where this is concerned. We are two bodies with one mind.

Moving through the steps of a choreographed dance, a quickstep every time.

He lifts me onto his hips and presses my back into the nearest tree. Low-hanging Spanish moss surrounds us on four sides. I dip my fingers under his shirt, over his tattoo, tracing the swiping paw of the wolf tracking forward over his shoulder onto his right pectoral. Paul shivers.

Remotely, I hear the telltale tear of a paper condom wrapper.

“Kat.” He sinks into me.

I return my fingers to the ink of the massive wolf coating his back, holding on.

There is so much hunger between us.

I tug his bottom lip with my teeth. He growls, increasing the pace. I press my lips to the paw on his shoulder. My panting breath heats the tattooed marks on his chest. We move together, murmured cries floating into the canopy of greenery overhead…

“Only twenty minutes gone, Kitty-Kat. Forty still to go.”

Laughing, I give Paul a playful shove. He flops to the grass beneath the starry sky and reaches for me. I rest my chin on his chest, looking at his face as he closes his eyes.

“Wake me in forty minutes,” he mumbles.

“How romantic.” I sniff but snuggle into him.

His fingers brush through my long black hair.

“Did you have a good day, doll?” he murmurs, his chest rumbling beneath my ear.

“It was okay. There was an open house this morning.”

“I know.”

Of course you do. “I met someone interesting.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t you already know?”

“No.” He laughs. “Who?”

“His name is Matthew. Matthew DaMolin.”

“Matthew DaMolin ?” Paul shifts beneath me.

“Yeah.” My gaze flicks to his face. “You know him?”

“I know of him,” Paul clarifies, settling back down. “And his family. Publishing titans, generational wealth. He’s the younger son, works at the hospital, lives alone downtown…physician.”

“Uh-huh.” Paul’s endless stream of knowledge never ceases to amaze me. I decide to bait him. “He’s handsome. ”

“Is he now?” Paul angles my head in the crook of his arm so he can see me better. “Do I need to worry?”

There’s no concern in his gaze. His dark irises laugh at me, knowing.

“Smug bastard.” I roll my eyes.

“Wily wench.”

After a few more laughs, we settle again. When Paul’s breathing evens out and my eyes grow heavy, I force myself to stir.

“I should get back.”

As I rise, I feel a lump weighing my skirt pocket. “Oh, I have something for you.” I pull out Ray’s payment. “I nearly forgot.”

The envelope smacks him in the chest as he sits up. He opens it and quickly counts.

“What did you sell, Paul?”

He doesn’t answer right away. When he’s satisfied with the tally, he rolls over and rises.

“Paul?” I try again. “We haven’t worked a job for weeks. What did you ask Ray to move?”

“You know I don’t yank you outta here for every job we pull, Kitty-Kat.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I didn’t realize I have to answer to you.” He flicks his hair before stretching to brush stray grass out of mine.

“Hmm.” I reach up to snag his hand. I pull it down, straighten out his fingers, and trace the small king of diamonds symbol tattooed on his right ring finger. It’s done in black ink, just like his wolf.

“I forgot. You’re the king, right?” I raise my eyes to his.

He frowns, and I lift my own hand, sliding the thick, silver ring he gave me off my right ring finger. I’ve worn it every day since my sixteenth birthday. I flick my red queen of diamonds tattoo toward him.

“Maybe you forgot who you’re talking to. ”

He smiles and kisses the mark on my finger. “I didn’t forget, Kat. Is it really that important to you?”

“Your behavior, like you’re hiding something, makes me think perchance it is.”

“I’m not. It wasn’t anything important, doll. Just some tribute I took from the Condor and Magpie gangs ages ago. Oil, gunpowder. The usual. Plus a few watches Tony lifted last week. You know he likes to have his fun.”

I slide the ring back on my finger. “Okay.”

“Okay?” He’s incredulous. “That’s it?”

“Yeah. You told me. That’s all I wanted.”

“Next time cut the theatrics, Kat.” He looks disgruntled.

“It got your attention.”

“It did, but I’d never forget.” He slides his ring up slightly and reaches for my hand, placing our paired tattoos side by side.

Everyone in the Wolfpack is marked. Paul has the wolf across his back and shoulder. Abe and Tony each have pawprints and swipes tracking up their sides. The three boys had them done when I was fifteen, then they badgered me for a year about getting inked too. I refused.

But on my sixteenth birthday, after bringing in a particularly successful haul of stolen diamonds, Paul brought me to the tattoo parlor himself.

He went in first, and I watched him get the king of diamonds tattoo.

Then he handed me his silver signet ring, the one I’d seen on his finger since before I could remember.

It’s thick and old with an engraved crest weaving its way across the band.

His only memento from the family who dropped him on the orphanage steps as an infant.

“I’m the king and you’re the queen,” he told me as he handed the ring over. “This is yours now. It’ll cover your finger. No one has to know but us.”

This was a very different ask than before, and I knew it. I carefully took the ring and sat down in the chair .

“Queen of diamonds, please,” I whispered, handing over my finger.

That night I realized, ink or not, Paul marked me years ago. I was his, his queen of diamonds.

The boys put out a rumor of the Cat Burglar’s mark a few weeks later, said I had a tiny silhouette of wolf ears on my wrist. Dainty. Feminine. The papers ran with it.

“Misdirection, Kitty-Kat,” Paul told me. “It’s the oldest trick in the book.”

Snapping back to the present, I slowly follow Paul out of the arboretum.

“We’ll do another night at Astor Manor tomorrow,” he says, “and the boys want to go out on Saturday. Think you can get away?”

“Reckon I can. Where?”

“Tony wants to hit Carousel.”

“Sounds dilly. Carousel is the cat’s meow.”

“Until tomorrow, doll. I love you.” He kisses my hand farewell, then steals into the shadows of the park.

I take off in the opposite direction, back to the Academy.

Son of a bitch, Melinda.

Our room is dark, the window closed.

Resigned, I latch my fingers and toes into grooves between bricks and begin to climb, tapping into a skillset I’ve had since I was young. When I reach the window, I apply pressure with my hands to slide it up.

It doesn’t budge; she must have locked it. What a killjoy.

I’m reaching to slide a dagger-like hairpin from my dark locks when a remorseful Melinda opens the window. I thrust my leg inside before she can change her mind.

“Sorry, Kat,” she whispers. “I was mad.”

“It’s fine. ”

And it is.

Mellie and I aren’t friends, not really, so she doesn’t owe me anything. We tolerate each other, and we live well enough together. At this point, I’ve been sneaking out for so long, if the news came out, we’d both go down hard. She’s complicit, and she knows it.

I land inside on silent feet and head to the bathroom for a quick wash.

She follows me, her brow furrowed. “Why are you covered in moss and grass?”

That’s a gross exaggeration. “I’m not covered in grass.”

“Who was that tonight?” she tries again.

“Hmm?” I play dumb.

“The fella who picked you up.”

“Goodnight, Mellie.” I make to close the bathroom door, but she sticks out her slippered foot.

“I saw him, Kat. It wasn’t the dark-skinned guy. Are you stepping out on your beau?”

Mellie has no idea where I go or what I do when I sneak out.

She only knows I do. Frequently. And she knows Abe from his occasional visits.

In her simple mind, Abe is my taboo paramour from back home, the reason I’m not interested in any of the men who visit the Academy.

I gladly let her think it; it’s fairly harmless and only half-wrong.

Misdirection.

“Of course not,” I tell her, narrowing my eyes. “I love him. You know that.”

“Then who—”

“He was just a friend, Mellie. Geez. I left a lot of people behind when I came here. It’s not easy, staying connected to both worlds.”

She looks at her slippers, momentarily abashed.

“I’m not stepping out on my fella,” I say firmly .

“I know you aren’t,” she whispers. “But I’m not sure you should be trying so hard to stay connected, Kat. You left the Catacombs behind for a reason. Same as me with the farm. Maybe it’s time to move on.”

And with that, she pulls her foot back and softly closes the door.