Gypsy Freak (All The Pretty Monsters #2)(64)
“How dangerous is your bra right now?” he asks between kissing me and undoing my jeans.
“Extremely,” I answer, hearing him groan as he keeps his weight off my front.
The door flops open, and we both freeze. His eyes hold mine before I jerk my head away, hating how intensely confused I stay in his presence. Then I really tense when I see Shera giving me a terribly angry look, while her red hair rests in disarray on her head. She’s pale, has some dark circles under her eyes, and I think her lip is split.
“You look like shit,” Arion tells her like he’s confused, making no move to step away from me.
“Your girlfriend found you, I see. Just checking to make sure she didn’t get lost, since I got detained and couldn’t come warn you,” she says while glaring at me. After a few seconds of seething silence, she returns her attention to him. “Glad the happy couple is on track.”
She slams the door when she walks back out, and Arion gives me a questioning look as he pushes off me, eyes lingering on my chest as he smirks.
“Feel free to stop by any time, Violet,” he tells me as I quickly pull my shirt shut.
I take the jacket he offers me, shrugging into it, while I idly wonder why I don’t feel dirty. He should make me feel dirty. I was just with Damien, you know, before he turned into an icicle the way Vance did.
All I can think about is the fact Arion’s stopping this instead of me, and it lacks the wrongness this moment should have.
I hop off the desk, and he calls to my back, “You punch me and kiss me, and you’ve yet to tell me what brought all this on. I need to know you truly don’t believe I’m using you to raise Idun.”
I pause in front of the door and turn to look behind me. “Am I under your protection?” I ask.
“Of course you are. Your house is outside of vampire territory; however, it is in town limits and vampires abide by my rule no matter where they are. You’re also under Van Helsing protection. Morrigan protection as well. I’m sure if anyone remembered, they’d also know it’s under Morpheous protection, but Damien doesn’t regularly entertain to give his name enough memory.”
“And that means something? It’s not something to be taken lightly?” I ask, staying on topic.
His expression turns serious. “It’s not something that will ever be taken lightly. Protection is rare. You have it in spades.”
“I just needed to know the omegas are safe,” I say as I exit, slamming the door behind me as I try to cope with the headache Arion always induces with his confusing, complex existence.
Or maybe it’s my confusing, complex existence that causes the headaches. At this point, I’d rather blame sex, since it’s the easy out.
The throbbing in my hand reminds me why punching a vampire in the future might be a horrible idea, and I focus on that instead.
Chapter 23
ARION
I lock the door behind Violet, and I cut my eyes across the room as Damien drops his illusion.
He doesn’t really give anything away with his expressionless face. I go over the conversation in my head, but Violet unknowingly held to her word in the presence of another, and said nothing too detailed to give away my secret.
Damien and I both swing our gazes to the beta I have penciled to the wall now that he’s released the illusion. And by penciled to the wall, I mean I’ve stabbed two-hundred-and-forty-three slightly long pencils into key places on his body to pin him there. He’s on his tiptoes, and if he steps down, they’ll all snap and we’ll have to start all over again.
“They still need a few more inches of length for this process to be less tedious. It wouldn’t hurt them to be a little stronger, too. Still superior craftsman ship, though,” I say as I lift up the pencils that haven’t spilled off the desk.
I almost lost my mind when I got my hands on the maddening little gypsy.
Damien goes to take a seat, eyes distant like he’s lost in thought, as he runs a hand over his jaw. I focus my attention on Anthony, who has sweated quite a bit. I’m glad Violet has no true sense of smell—she couldn’t have missed his stench.
“Anthony, I’m sorry you had to see all that,” I go on.
“S-s….okay,” he whimpers, trying to remain perfectly still because it hurts less than moving around on those pencils.
He held himself up so well while I went to pay Emit a quick visit and collected Damien for his…abilities with the fairer sex when getting one to talk.
“Not really, no. It’s not,” Damien chimes in, never glancing at us as he remains lost in thought, but also effectively here with us as well.
Eh. I was going to kill him anyhow. I’ve seen quite a lot no one knows I’ve seen, after all. It’s fun to make them paranoid now that I start cleaning house with information no one knows how I’ve acquired.
“I wish I could say I’m sorry about this part,” I tell him with a cruel smile.
His eyes widen seconds after I’ve jammed the stack of pencils deep inside his chest.
“I’m giving Shera a raise if she finds me longer pencils of the same quality,” I decide when Anthony’s wheezes exhaust at last and he tenses as he tries to remain upright until his last breath.
Going limp, he collapses to the ground, sending a wave of snapping pencil sounds into the room.