But her eyes narrow, and more color floods her cheeks. Rather than peg her issue, I’ve insulted her.
And she comes for me again, eyes blazing.
For a heartbeat, she transforms into someone else. Someone even smaller, scrawnier, her honey-colored hair in pigtails, her expression so feral she resembled a stray mutt more than a little girl.
I’m almost startled into saying her name out loud. Almost…
But she’s dead. I know because I hand-delivered her to her killer.
Fire slices through the meat of my cheek, drawing my attention to an outstretched pale hand lashing through the air. The little bitch is quick, reaching me before I have the chance to block. She lands a good punch to my chest, already maneuvering her knife to go again.
Grunting, I ram my shoulder into her side, knocking her off balance. Before she can recover, I fist my fingers through that mass of hair, noticing just how damn thick it is. Soft too. Perfect for gripping. Pulling.
To test that theory, I use a handful of it to shove her onto the bed face down and pin her in place, jabbing my knee against the small of her back. I’m not gentle—she should gasp at least. Cry out.
But she doesn’t make a sound. Strange. I’m used to the theatrics that tend to color these situations. The screaming. The monologues. The listing of grievances and shouting.
She isn’t the first person I’ve found in my room willing to kill me. Not by a longshot.
Even as she struggles, grappling at the bedsheets with nails drawn, she doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t make a sound. It’s strangely…hot.
A series of thoughts flit across my mind—sick, twisted shit belonging to the old Don. The fucker who would relish in slipping his hand beneath her dress, palming that sweet, ripe little ass and seeing how silent she’d be then.
My hand is already moving, fingering the hem as her limbs quiver just beyond my reach. Groaning, I form a fist and brace it against the mattress beside her instead. As if to mock me, I catch a handful of condoms. The cake, I discover, is already smashed on the floor, having been knocked off the bed.
So much for Vin’s present.
“Who do you work for?” I demand of the woman.
She attempts to lift her knife in lieu of giving me an answer. With a sigh, I snatch her wrist, bending it back just shy of painful. She has to go still or risk injuring it. Her eyes cut up to mine, burning so hot it’s like they’re on fucking fire.
“Tell me, and I’ll let you go.”
She bares her teeth, desperately trying to buck me off.
I rip the knife from her grasp, eyeing it from end to tip. It’s a custom blade, one of damn good quality. Too good to be wasted on a murder, where common sense would dictate it’d have to be tossed or destroyed afterward. No, this has to be personal.
I inspect the blade’s leather hilt while running my finger over it for any clue. All I find is a scribbled engraved message in what looks like a child’s handwriting.
“Mouse?” I say, reading the inscription out loud. “That some kind of nickname?” When she doesn’t answer, I trace the curve of her squirming hip up the length of her back and wind up looking straight into those fiery eyes. “No. You aren’t a mouse,” I tell her. “I think you’re more like a wicked little kitty. A tiger. Huh, tigre?”
She rears up as far as she can with her arm still in my grasp. I recognize how her cheeks hollow, but I don’t try to avoid the glob of spit she lobs my way. It lands on the corner of my fancy lapel, relegating this suit as yet another casualty of this night.
“If Vin sent you, after all, I wouldn’t blame him,” I tell the woman, scanning her face for any hint of recognition of the name. She gives me nothing but more perfectly white teeth. Those eyes blaze even hotter, and it doesn’t take much of an imagination to guess the insults flying around the inside of that pretty skull.
She can join the club of people I’ve disappointed.
“So maybe I did try to set him up with some spoiled little bitch. All I want is for the bastard to turn out better than me,” I say. “Is that so wrong?”
In so many ways, he already has. Over twenty without a felony to his name. No blood on his hands to speak of. Apart from a pistol for protection, I never even taught the bastard how to shoot a weapon. A real weapon.
And yet my first choice for his father-in-law would be one of the most infamous gun runners this side of hell.
“I want him to be protected,” I say in my defense, flicking the knife into the air and catching it by the handle. “Like I never was. I want the kind of security for him that can be provided only by a good name. A name people fear.”
And if a side benefit to that happened to be forming an alliance with a powerful family in the process, then so be it.
“I’d do anything for him,” I rasp to the silent form flailing beneath me. “I couldn’t love him more even if he were my biological son. He is my son. Besides, it’s not like I’m asking him to draw blood or enter the Stepanov business. Just—” I break off at the same exact moment the little tiger goes limp.
“Stepanov,” I repeat the name deliberately, scouring her body for a reaction. This time, I catch it in slow motion—her entire body tenses. Though she tries to turn away from me, I don’t miss how those eyes go wide as her teeth skewer her bottom lip between them. Hard.
“Did Mischa Stepanov send you?” Frankly, I’m asking the question hypothetically more than anything—not that she gives me an answer. Frowning, I wrack my brain, trying to remember if I really had done something to accidentally offend my deadliest rival. More than crashing his little party. More than with just my reputation.
Something egregious enough for him to send a woman after me, wielding a knife etched with the word Mouse.
It sounds insane enough in my head that I don’t bother entertaining it out loud. So I laugh instead. If Mischa wanted me dead, I know enough of his reputation to have full confidence that he’d do it himself.
She must know him somehow, I deduce as she turns away from me, clawing at the mattress.
“Is he your next target, little tigre?” I wonder. My lip quirks at the thought of it—her slender form tangling with a brute like Mischa. But the amusement dies when I picture her dead in the aftermath. Mutilated. In pieces.
Some men don’t need rumors to inspire terror in their wake. Not when they leave a body of evidence behind. Mischa Stepanov’s body of evidence is terrifying even to those in this business with a mountain of bodies piled in their closets.
To men like me. I wouldn’t wish his wrath on my worst enemy.
Not even this snarling, feisty little tigre.
She kicks out with her legs, forcing me to apply more pressure to my knee to keep her down. The motion brings me closer to her, and I fully take advantage of this new perspective. Every time she flexes her thighs, a warm sliver of bare skin becomes exposed, brushing the back of my extended leg.
Heat I haven’t felt in a long time flares, forcing me to grit my teeth against it. And as if sensing the reaction, she goes limp again, refusing to move a muscle in defiance.
“I can tell you one thing,” I say, releasing her arm in favor of stroking through that mane of hair. She tries swiping at my hand with both of hers, but from this angle, she can’t reach.
And I have the lion’s share of exploration. From her hair, down to her throat. From that slender column of flesh, down to the top of her spine and a defined, muscular little shoulder.