Dead Drop (The Guild #2)(89)

More insane.

To my intense relief, his intel turned out to be bad. Or not completely false, he had actually found a property belonging to Blanchet, but after a few calls and several hours of data collection, we could confirm that no one had stepped foot on the property since Blanchet purchased it seven years ago.

Honestly, it made me smug as fuck that Kai’s tip went nowhere. Sure, it would have been useful if he really had found Blanchet, but I wanted to be the one to deliver his head on a platter to my woman. I wanted the praise and glory of saving the one woman who never needed to be saved.

Eventually, as the sun was rising and Danny was half-asleep where she sat—not to mention half a bottle of vodka down—we agreed to call it a night.

She refused to let either one of us sleep with her in the master suite, so Kai and I reluctantly chose alternate bedrooms in the other wing of the house.

I was too worked up to sleep, though. Not that I ever really slept much on the best of days, but after spending so many nights away from my woman, the need to sleep with her in my arms was physically painful. In an attempt to distract myself, I took a shower and pulled on clean clothes thanks to the foresight of bringing my suitcase in from the car earlier.

Then I paced the floor of my chosen bedroom for a while before my control snapped.

I stepped out into the hallway and glanced over at the room Kai had picked. The door was shut, but I could hear the low rumble of his voice as he spoke on the phone to someone. Smirking to myself, I returned to my room to grab a micro-point screwdriver and some putty.

Silently, I crouched in front of his door and used one of my lock picks to stuff the keyhole full of quick-drying putty. Then I quickly removed the tiny screws holding the door handle together, sliding the handle out of the door completely and tossing it onto the carpet outside the bedroom.

Now, when he tried to open the door on his side, the handle would just fall out. And if he knew how to pick locks, he wouldn’t get far with all the putty gumming it up.

“Sucker,” I chuckled under my breath, then sauntered back toward the master suite with a bounce in my step. Maybe I couldn’t kill him, but I could mess with him. He’d already proven his temper was like that of a volcano, and I’d bet if I pushed him hard enough, he’d seriously fuck things up with Danny.

Then, once she was done with him, I could kill him. Slowly. Painfully. Making him regret all his life choices.

Those thoughts swirled through my head as I approached Danny’s bedroom, and I stopped briefly in the hall, frowning. I’d been planning on killing Malachi Arden for a while now. Certainly a lot longer than he’d known Danny… but I’d admit his involvement with her was a motivating factor now.

Yet the heat in my vengeance plot was lacking now. When I thought about slitting that bastard’s throat, it was no longer to satisfy a years-old score between us. It was because he’d touched my woman. I warned her what I’d do if anyone tried to take what was mine… the only thing holding me back was her.

Damn it. I was just too fucking addicted to that look. The soft, loving one she gave me whenever I cooperated when I clearly didn’t want to. The one that said she knew she was asking me to go against my nature, and that she recognized what my compliance meant… how much she meant to me.

Her door was locked, which made me smile, and I picked it without any effort at all.

Inside her room, the curtains were all drawn, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the low light. The sun had already begun to rise outside, which meant small slivers of light gave her an ethereal quality as she slept.

The bed was huge, and she was so small she barely took up any space at all, so I carefully slid under the covers beside her. She stirred briefly and I froze, but she quickly fell back to sleep without noticing I was there. Good. It meant I could just lie there and stare at her.

There was something quietly obsessive with the way I liked to watch her sleep. Something a little perverted about the way she didn’t know I was there. It reminded me of our first night together, when I’d been so captivated by her sleeping form I’d started my Danny-nudes collection. Damn, I wished I’d grabbed my phone before leaving my room… As deeply as she was sleeping, I bet I could have tugged the blankets off for a few new snaps.

Nothing could have made me move from her bed now that I was there, though. Nothing. So I just settled in and committed her to memory instead. Every inch of her skin, her silken hair, the way her chest rose and fell with each breath. My favorite part was how her lips moved ever so slightly on each exhale.

At some stage, she rolled over and her body bumped into mine. She didn’t wake up, though, instead just wrapping her arms around me and snuggling into my chest, inhaling deeply.

I froze for a moment, wondering who she thought she was sleeping with. Me? Or him?

She sighed as my hand stroked over her hair, and her whole body relaxed. “Bunny,” she mumbled, giving a happy hum before her breathing returned to the deep, steady pace of slumber.

My chest swelled, warmth flooding through me at the proof she was thinking of me. Me! Thank fuck for that; I hardly needed more reasons to kill that muscle-bound prick. Grinning like an idiot, I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face in her silken hair.

I fell asleep like that, with her skin against mine and her breath fanning my chest. It was the deepest I’d slept since… well, since she fucked me into exhaustion and I didn’t even notice that she’d bled me to write a message on the mirror. Something about sleeping with her let my brain fully rest unlike ever before.