Chapter 223: Lethal Intent
Victor’s hand, still clasped in hers, was like a furnace. His aura was a simmering gold, thick with the territorial rage of a First Mate whose wife had been insulted. He looked ahead at Dimitri’s massive, leopard form. The beast’s tail was lashing, a rhythmic thwack against the road that sounded like a whip cracking.
"You can’t help him by being soft, Felicity," Victor said, his voice a low vibration that seemed to come from the earth itself.
"Dimitri is the second strongest here for a reason. He lives for your smile, and he thrives on your scent. To hear a man dismiss the lives you’ve chosen to protect... It’s like a knife to his core. He needs an outlet, and he needs to remind the group why he is the Silence."
Felicity looked at the cubs. Luna was currently trying to see if she could fit her entire head inside one of Dimitri’s ear tufts. Frost was lying flat on the leopard’s neck, his eyes half-closed, perfectly content. They had no idea they were sitting on a ticking nuclear device.
"Then give him a target," Felicity murmured, her eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp clarity. "But not Richard, not yet."
She got out of Damien’s arms and looked at her husbands.
Starting with Victor, Felicity reached for him first.
Her palm found his jaw, rough with stubble. It scratched her fingertips like fine-grain sandpaper. The tension carved into his face could have cracked stone. Every muscle in his body was wound so tight she half expected him to vibrate apart if she pressed too hard. She smoothed her thumb across his cheekbone instead, slow and deliberate. She watched the steel in his expression fracture just enough to show the raw, furious worry underneath.
"I’m alright," she murmured.
His nostrils flared. His hand came up and trapped hers against his face, pressing her palm flat to his skin like he needed the proof of her pulse against his jaw. The cedar and iron smell of him wrapped around her, thick and grounding, and she let him hold her there for a breath longer than necessary because the slight tremor in his fingers told her more than his mouth ever would.
She turned to Voss next, and found him already closer than expected. Of course he was. The man moved like smoke through a cracked door. His face was composed, that infuriating half smirk sitting in place like armour, but the muscle ticking at the hinge of his jaw gave him away completely.
Felicity cupped the side of his neck. Her fingers curled into the short hair at his nape. His skin was fever-hot. The smallest tilt of his head probably cost him more pride than he’d admit in three lifetimes.
"Still here," she said, quieter now, just for him.
"I can see that." His smirk didn’t waver, but his hand settled on her hip and stayed. His thumb found the strip of bare skin between her shirt and waistband and pressed there, a single point of contact that sent heat blooming up through her ribs. "You enjoy making my contingency plans irrelevant."
"Someone has to keep you humble."
The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but a better one.
She shifted toward Damien and found him already watching her with that fixed, predatory focus that should have been unsettling and instead made her stomach flip in a way she refused to examine too closely. He hadn’t moved or hadn’t spoken. He stood slightly apart from the others, coiled and still, every line of his body radiating a controlled intensity that pressed against her skin like heat from a banked fire.
Felicity stepped into his space without hesitation.
His breath caught. She heard it, a tiny fracture in his composure that she collected and kept.
She pressed both palms to his chest, feeling the hard slam of his heartbeat against her fingers through cotton and muscle. The dark, smoky amber smell of him flooded her senses, thick enough to taste. His hands hung at his sides, clenched. Trembling faintly.
"Damien." She said his name like she was unwrapping it, "Remember, breathe."
Something behind his expression broke open, just for a second, raw and desperate and aching, and then his forehead dropped to hers. The contact was so gentle it barely qualified as touch. His breath fanned across her lips, unsteady and warm, and she felt the shudder that rolled through his frame when her fingers curled into the front of his shirt and held.
She didn’t pull away.
Finally, Ivan was last, and he made her come to him.
Not on purpose, he simply stood where he’d planted himself the moment danger had appeared, a wall of scarred muscle and quiet, immovable loyalty, and watched her move through the others with a patience that bordered on geological. His arms were crossed his jaw was set. The sharp green smell of crushed pine needles and something metallic clung to his skin, and Felicity had to crane her neck to look up at him properly.
She reached up anyway, standing on her toes, and pressed her palm flat against his cheek.
The scar tissue under her fingers was raised and rough. He flinched not from pain. From the softness of her touch against something he’d clearly stopped expecting anyone to reach for.
"I’m fine, Ivan."
"You were not fine three minutes ago."
"And now I am." She dragged her thumb along the edge of his jaw, tracing the scar that disappeared below his collar. "So you can stop looking at me like you’re calculating how to kill him."
Then the barest twitch at the corner of his mouth. "I was calculating escape routes he could use if we let him go."
"How romantic."
"Step three was carrying you out over my shoulder."
"Even more romantic."
His massive hand came up and covered hers completely, swallowing her fingers against his face. The grip was careful. Absurdly gentle for hands that could bend steel, he didn’t say anything else, but the rough pad of his thumb swept once across her knuckles, and the look he gave her held enough unspoken ferocity to level a building.