Addict (Hunter #2)(45)

“My uncle would have asked,” I shot back. The coat I was wearing came open as I railed at Trent, and his blue eyes got wide.

“Yo, Owens, what the hell happened to your pants?” Donovan asked in that tone he used for the dumbasses in his life. I didn’t take it too personally. He used it on Quinn and the boys, too.

I rebuttoned the coat and tried not to feel like I was explaining a compromising situation to my father. The man I’d grown up with wouldn’t have given a shit. I’d been told my real dad would have cared very much. Though Donovan appeared to be twenty-one or so, it was hard to forget he was actually pushing forty with a wife, a whatever Quinn was, three kids, and an entire kingdom dependent on him. He was kind of the ultimate authority figure in my world, and usually that made me pissy with him. Tonight, it felt different. It made me realize how much I’d missed not having a dad to yell at me for sneaking out and showing back up at four-thirty in the morning with no pants on. He didn’t even know about the body in back yet.

Gray was right. I have daddy issues.

I sorta stared at my feet and tried to come up with something he could understand. I was betting that in the entire time he was the Nex Apparatus, Donovan never found himself in a thong. “I was undercover.”

“On a street corner?” Donovan asked in a low voice. His arms were crossed over that big chest of his as he studied me carefully. “Did Marcus know you were planning on running around the city in a bra and panties?” The king sniffed the air. He sighed and frowned down at me. The dude really had a disappointed dad stare going. “Damn it, Owens. Is that Sloane I smell on you? Tell me you didn’t.”

I felt Marcus walk into the alley. How to describe it? It was like a wave of calm suddenly washed over me, and I knew he was coming my way. When I turned, he was coming out of the building, still dressed in his suit and tie and still looking gorgeously masculine. Henri and Hugo were with him as well.

“You’ve already broken rule number one, Kelsey,” Hugo pointed out. Rule number one was to not get caught.

It had been a hell of a night, and Marcus was safety and comfort all wrapped up in a really attractive man package. I ran and threw myself in his arms. He caught me. I heard him chuckle.

“I knew perfectly well she was meeting with the lieutenant, Your Highness. I would, however, like a report on how she came to lose her respectable clothes.” Marcus took a peek under Sloane’s coat. His dark eyebrows rose at the sight.

Henri slapped Marcus on the back. “Don’t think too much on it, old friend. Remember Vivienne? Hugo’s poor Hunter couldn’t keep her pants on, either.”

Hugo smiled broadly with the memory. I got the feeling the academics were looking forward to my antics. “Such a lovely girl. Terribly brutal, but lovely all the same.”

“I couldn’t get into the club dressed like I was,” I explained.

“What kind of club was this, bella?”

“It was a sex club,” I mumbled.

I could mumble all I liked. Almost everyone had superhearing. Trent huffed. Marcus frowned, and Donovan groaned.

“Jesus, Kelsey, don’t mention it to Dev,” Donovan practically pleaded. “I’ll never hear the end of it. He’s been bugging me to open a sex club since that Sanctum place turned him down. I’d never get him out.”

“Only the top level is a sex club,” Jamie explained. “The rest is a bar. It’s seedier than Ether, but along the same lines. It’s an outlier place. It opened up a month back. There were rumors about drug running, so Sloane went in undercover.”

Donovan nodded, accepting the explanation. “And I suppose it’s run by demons. I can smell them everywhere.”

Marcus kept his hands on my shoulders as I turned back to the king. “It’s run by some bigwig demon. Sloane is trying to nail him for running drugs.”

“So the shifter was on something,” the king concluded. “It has to be strong because I was having trouble holding him. Did you get some?”

I shook my head. “Sloane is trying to set himself up as a distributor. I’m going to this guy’s house for dinner on Sunday as Sloane’s date. He’s hoping this Winter guy will give him the go-ahead, and he can get some real insight into the operation. He wants to meet with Marcus tomorrow.”

“Yes, I would like a word with him,” Marcus remarked calmly.

“You’ll liaise with the lieutenant?” Donovan seemed eager to get a yes out of Marcus. When Marcus had been on the Council, one of his jobs had been to deal with Gray. He was Gray’s contact. His relationship with me might make things uncomfortable, but Marcus didn’t seem to mind.

“We will handle it,” Hugo assured the king. “We have protocols in place for dealing with local law enforcement. We’ve not used them in many years. We haven’t had a Hunter to train since…”

“April 30, 1945,” Henri said sadly. “Stupid Soviet Army. Our girl had done her job. She had infiltrated the bunker in Berlin and taken the bastard out. It was all covered up. I believe they said the man committed suicide.”

“Yes, yes,” Hugo agreed. “Ridiculous, of course. She got shot in the back by the Soviets. Marcus couldn’t get to her fast enough.”

Marcus’s arms tightened around me. “Which is why we take our charge’s safety seriously. We won’t be working with the government any time soon. We need to keep her existence secret. If the US Army finds out, they’ll try to ship her off to assassinate whoever is the latest enemy of the state.”