Still, she was pretty, in a hard-edged, angry kind of way.
Kori glanced up and caught me staring, and I held her gaze. “What do you do now?” I asked, trying to pick up the thread of a conversation that already seemed destined to unravel.
“Now I babysit you,” she snapped, and I blinked in the face of such candor. Then almost laughed out loud. I’d expected Tower’s people to be overaccommodating and ingratiatingly polite. Perhaps even sycophantic. Unvarnished honesty was a surprise.
“I meant, what do you do for Tower? What’s your role in his organization?” When my question produced only a blank, half-puzzled look, like she wasn’t sure she even knew the answer, I tried again from another angle. “Would it be impolite of me to ask about your Skill, considering you already know mine?”
“Hell yes.” She flinched and rubbed her temple with one hand. Then she rolled her eyes at nothing. “I’m a Traveler.”
A shadow-walker, just like Aaron.
“I assume you’re good with a gun, since you used to be a bodyguard. Any other special skills?” But I could tell with one look at her closed-off expression that I’d picked the wrong approach.
Kori Daniels didn’t want to talk about herself. She didn’t want to talk to me. And she certainly didn’t want to relax. She looked a little like she wanted to rip my head off and spit down my throat. “A special skill?”
I nodded, and too late I realized she’d found innuendo where I hadn’t intended it.
I shook my head and tried to rephrase the question, but then she stepped closer, until she was in my personal space, not quite touching me, but so close air couldn’t have flowed between us. She went up on her toes, like she might nibble on my ear, or share some dirty little secret. Then she whispered, so softly no one else could have heard.
“I do have a special skill,” she murmured, her breath warm on my neck, her voice soft and low-pitched, with that hot, gravelly quality some women get when they’re really turned on, and my pulse raced a little in spite of my very clear objective. “I’m pretty good with knives. I’m so good, in fact, that I could sever your testicles with one hand and slice open your throat with the other, and you’d go into shock so fast you’d die without ever knowing you’d spilled a fucking drop of blood.”
Korinne settled back onto her heels and smiled up at me like she’d just promised to fulfill my dirtiest, most secret desire, and I felt the blood drain from my face.
This was not the woman I’d ordered.
Three
Kori
I sipped from my glass and enjoyed Holt’s shocked expression so much that I’d taken two more sips before I remembered I hate champagne. And for the first time since I’d woken up in the basement eight weeks before, I felt a little better. A little more like myself. Until I saw Jake watching me from across the room, fury dancing in his eyes. He couldn’t have heard me, but he could see that I’d scared his guest of honor—disturbed him, at the very least—and he was pissed. Jake tossed his head toward an alcove mostly hidden by the curve in the staircase, and I had no choice but to obey the silent summons.
“Be right back …” I mumbled to Holt, and cursed myself silently all the way across the room. I’d known better. I’d fucking known better, and I gave in to temptation anyway. I couldn’t afford to scare off Holt or piss off Tower—Kenley couldn’t afford my mistakes—yet I’d managed to do both after less than five minutes alone with the man whose Skill Tower valued more than he valued my life.
“What the hell did you just do?” Jake growled, hauling me into the alcove by one arm. I tripped over the stupid stilettos Kenley had insisted I wear and would have gone down on my face if Tower wasn’t holding me up.
“He asked if I have any ‘special skills.’ He said it just like that.” Like special meant depraved or perverted.
“Was I not clear before?” Jake’s eyes flashed with anger. “I only pulled you out of the basement two weeks ago for this job. For him. I don’t care what he says, or what he does, or what he wants,” he growled into my ear, squeezing my arm hard enough to bruise, though I’d die before I complained. “You will answer him with a smile, and the answer is always yes. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I snapped, and it felt good to throw the word back in his face, even if it tasted bitter on my tongue.
He let go of my arm, but didn’t back down. “I’m not going to bother listing all the things you are not allowed to say or do, because I recognize that while unsophisticated and often crass, your mannerisms have a certain crude charm, and for all I know, Holt might actually want to play ‘tame the beast.’ That’s up to you to determine. But however this plays out, I swear on every beat of my wife’s heart that if you don’t have Ian Holt eating out of your hand in forty-eight hours, you will pay for it with your life. And your sister will pay for it with the balance of hers. Do you understand what I’m saying, Korinne?” he demanded, and I nodded, but that evidently wasn’t enough, because he repeated the question.
“Yes. I fucking understand,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Good.” He stepped back and eyed me from head to toe without a hint of desire. Tower, for all his faults, worshipped his wife like she shit gold and bled wine, and I’d never once seen him even glance at another woman with any real interest. “You look like a lady for once. Now go pretend to be one,” he said. “And try to remember that though a sledgehammer may be the most prominent weapon in your verbal arsenal, it is seldom the most appropriate.”
“Jake, please,” I whispered, swallowing the lump of bitter pride in my throat. “I’m not the best woman for this job. If you really want him, you need a recruiter.” Someone who was used to wining, and dining, and kissing arrogant ass. Someone who was good at it. “Don’t you think Monica would be better suited to this? Or Erica?”
Tower’s gaze went hard, and I knew I’d overstepped. Again. “Without a doubt. But he doesn’t want Monica or Erica. The only other person in my employ who fits Holt’s description of his ideal physical type is your sister, and even if you were willing to let her wander all over town alone with a man she just met, I am not. I need her here, doing her job, where I know no one else can get to her.”
I wanted to protect my sister from the realities of life in the syndicate. He wanted to protect a very valuable asset from being poached or exterminated. Still, in the end, our goals were the same, so I couldn’t argue.
“Now take the man a fresh drink and apologize like you mean it. And do not give me a reason to have to repeat this conversation. That’s an order.” With that, Tower stepped out of the alcove and back into his party, smiling at acquaintances like he’d never had a sour thought in his life.
I started to make my way back to Holt so I could publicly choke on the crow Jake had shoved down my throat, but when I scanned the crowd, checking on Kenley out of habit, I found her with Jonah Tower, who smirked at me silently while he rubbed her bare back with one hand, until she shrugged out from under his touch.
And suddenly I wanted to vomit.
I backed into the alcove again and stayed there for another minute, fighting the flashes of memory that played behind my eyelids—a montage of pain and humiliation, overlaid with the terrifying certainty that if I failed, it would all happen again, this time to my little sister.
I swallowed compulsively to keep my dinner down, breathing deeply, like Kenley had showed me. So far, when the basement resurfaced in my head, the only thing able to beat it back when I couldn’t take out my rage on the nearest boxing dummy was steady, measured breathing. Balancing each inhalation