“Food,” I retorted waspishly. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Squinting at me, he folded his arms across his chest. “What are we eating today?”
“Pasta puttanesca,” I mumbled.
When he tapped the floury Kitchen Aid mixer that stood in a place of pride on the counter, he asked, “This what you burst into our council meeting yesterday for?”
I nodded. “It makes it easier to cook.” I’d only bought one in the end, but it was bigger than the one my mom previously had in her kitchen.
“In future, ask me directly. Don’t be bothering the council with that shit.”
“Since when would the Enforcer need to get involved with this stuff?” I retorted.
“Since when does snatch interrupt a council meeting?”
My cheeks burned even as I heard a kernel of truth in his statement. “I wanted an expensive piece of kit. I wanted to go straight to the council to plead my case for it.” With that justified, I glared at him. “Don’t you dare call me that again. I’m not—”
“You’re not what?” he challenged with a smirk that made me want to throat punch him.
“Don’t you dare tar me with the same label you give the other sluts around here.” I sniffed at him as I tossed pasta into the water, then got to work with his sauce. Unlike with Steel and Link, I didn’t bother conversing with the prick. He’d gotten my back up. So why the fuck did I feel hot under the collar? Because I knew he was watching me? Because I could feel his eyes burning into me wherever they touched?
Jesus.
My flush had nothing to do with the heat from the stove.
But I hated that I was so weak. Weak in the face of his insults. How could my body respond to him when my mind rejected everything that he was? Was I just a walking pussy? That fucking weak that I—
I wasn’t like Mom.
I refused to be like her. Attracted to the danger, to the wildness in a brother. Enough that I left sense behind and threw caution to the wind.
When I almost threw the dish at him a couple of minutes later, I twisted instantly around so I was no longer facing him, and asked myself why my eyes were stinging with tears.
God, how stupid was I?
I heard his boots thumping against the floor, and relief filled me that he’d gone.
“Nyx is Cammie’s,” a voice sneered at me. “You need to back the fuck off.”
“She’s welcome to his disease-ridden dick,” I snarled back, twisting to look at the skank I knew was called Peach—the weirdo had dyed her hair that color. “What the fuck do you want anyway?”
“Food. What else, bitch?”
I glared at her. “You can make your own.” My top lip twisted into a snarl. “Unless you want me to spit in yours, that is.” I wouldn’t. I wasn’t that gross, but she didn’t need to know that, and the sweetbutts all knew to act warily around me by now.
She narrowed her eyes on me. “You’ll regret talking to me like this. I’m Rex’s favorite.”
Snorting out a laugh, I scoffed, “I regret nothing, and I regret everything.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means I don’t give a shit if you’re his favorite or not. Fuck off.”
And with that, I returned to cooking because I still had a lot of men to feed, but I’d admit, I felt better after sniping at Peach. Nyx’s words had, for some stupid reason, cut deep and that, along with this crazy need to know more about him, was something I had to cauterize now.
Before the damage was too late.
Before I turned into my mom, and was left with a world of regrets.
Four
Nyx
AS I SLAMMED my fist into the punching bag, I tried to imagine it was the weird hold Lizzie’s girl had on me. It needed more than a throttling, that was for fucking sure.
“What do you want?”
I could still hear her disinterested query ringing in my ears, which still stung two fucking hours later. I wasn’t used to being dismissed, and she kept on goddamn doing it. It was not only pissing me off, it was doing something else. Making my faint interest in her morph into something else.
Ever since she’d arrived a few days ago, I’d had this strange awareness of her. I was always on edge anyway, but something about her made me worse. It was like I knew when she walked into a fucking room or something.
Sure, the bitch was hot. And yeah, I’d wanted to fuck her mom when I was a teen who thought only with his prick, and maybe Giulia made her mom look fugly, that was how goddamn gorgeous she was, but I didn’t think with my cock all the time anymore.
Only half the fucking time, and this wasn’t an option. Obsessing on a bitch like this… that wasn’t how I rolled.
Slamming my fist into the heavy piece of leather-covered sand, I let the adrenaline rush through me, as well as the aggression and irritation.
I’d have preferred to be fighting some fucker but no one, save Giulia, had pissed me off today.
“If you missed breakfast, that’s on you. Not me.” Nine words.
Nine. Fucking. Words. And they couldn’t have stunned me more if she’d tried.
No one said ‘no’ to me. No one. Except for her. And she kept on goddamn saying it.
With a couple of jabs that I followed up with an uppercut or two, I pounded on the punching bag some more, trying to figure out what it was about her that got me so riled up. I could feel my sweat flick and bead onto the mat beneath me. All around, the air began to thicken with humidity at the perspiration I was letting fly, and as good as it felt, it wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t that I wanted to rain my irritation down on her. It was the fact that she pissed me off, and I still kept on heading into the kitchen for more of her insults. From never going into the damn room to visiting at least twice a day whether or not the clubwhores were starting shit. Things were getting weird.
Even for me.
“What’s got your goat?”
I ignored Rex, who was handling some free weights like they were one of the clubwhore’s tits.
How the fucker’s biceps were that big when he was a pussy around dumbbells was a piece of magic, and he wasn’t willing to share the spell with anyone.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” I muttered, punctuating each word with a jab that made the thwacking noise reverberate around the custom-built gym that ran along the full length of the basement.
“You’re not normally this antsy after a kill.” He cocked a brow at me through the mirror on the back wall as he tightened his stance and began to pull a bicep curl. “Not for a good month or so.”
I scowled at the bag. “I’m not antsy.”
I’d have throat punched him if he wasn’t the Prez.
Antsy?
Six-year-old girls were antsy before a piano recital.
Fifteen-year-old boys were antsy before the homecoming dance they thought their date would put out on.
I did not get antsy.
“Fucking antsy,” I muttered, more pissed about that than Giulia, who was fucking with my head without even uttering more than ten words to me at a time.
What the fuck was that about?
All the bitches wanted my time. They were all vying with Cammie for a place in my bed. But Giulia? Nope. She just ignored me.