I grip Lark by the throat and break the cadence of her marching steps. Air whooshes from her lungs when I push her back against the brick wall, her eyes locked with mine, shocked and fierce.
“What the fuck?” Lark grips my arm and tries to pull my hand away, but I don’t budge. “Let me go.”
“I don’t think so, duchess.”
“Stop with the fucking duchess already.”
“Stop with the chasing down random women to kill them and slice their faces off.”
“Random my ass,” she snarks. Lark’s nose scrunches, her pulse a fierce thrum beneath my palm. “And she could live without a face.”
My head tilts as I take in the details of Lark’s expression, from the outrage in her narrowed eyes to the blush of her full lips to the scar at her hairline, a memento of our first meeting that carves a slice of regret into my memories whenever I look at it too closely. “I find it interesting that your first objection is about the randomness and not the face-slicing.”
“I was arguing sequentially.”
“Sure you were. And what was your plan, exactly? Because something makes me think you weren’t about to invite Claire over for popcorn and a Keanu movie marathon.”
The glare Lark drills into my eyes is nothing short of lethal. “Do. Not. Say her name. In the same sentence. As Keanu Reeves. Ever.”
“You seem to be glossing over the main point of what I said.”
“You have a point? I just thought you were being a bossy asshole.”
I manage to repress a frustrated growl, but only barely, and Lark can tell. I’m convinced there’s little more that gives Lark Montague true delight than slithering her way beneath my self-control and snapping my restraints free. “What the hell was your plan, Lark?”
“I don’t know,” she says with a dismissive flap of her hand. “Maybe follow her home. Break into her house—”
“Christ—”
“Rig up a few cans of spray adhesive and put a glitter bomb in her closet I guess.” The devious glint in Lark’s eyes becomes downright maniacal. “Can you imagine that woman with a tricked-out, sparkly wardrobe? I think that would be her personal hell.”
“Actually, I can, since my brother said that you did something similar to his car recently. Seems like you have a bit of a glitter psycho streak going, duchess.”
Lark glares at me.
“Okay, so I get why you would do that to Rowan. It was probably deserved, given it’s my dumbass brother. But why would you give a shit about Claire?”
Lark blinks, her throat working beneath my hand as she swallows. I’m not sure if she was purely running on instinct and is now struggling to connect the dots, or if she doesn’t want to tell me why she was about to hunt down a woman she’s met only once.
“Spit it out, duchess.” I lean in closer and try not to make it obvious when I take a deep breath of her sweet scent. My gaze drifts across her features and her breath hitches, her eyes locked to mine. “What’s your issue? Just talk to me.”
“Kind of hard to do with your hand around my throat.”
I loosen my grip, but I’m unwilling to let go when I catch the way her eyes dart toward the end of the alley, as though she’s ready to resume her hunt. “Give it a try. Somehow, I think you can manage—”
“She’s the reason, right?” Lark’s lash line glistens with furious tears that she blinks into submission. “That night. Halloween. You didn’t want to leave a party and you had no choice because of me.”
My grip on her throat relaxes as I remember that night with perfect clarity. Fionn was a feckin’ mess, as much as he pretended not to be. I’d nearly convinced him to move home the month before and Claire was ruining everything. And then that call came in from Leander. I ignored his first attempt. The second too. But I picked up on his third try and he sent me to the Scituate Reservoir with my scuba gear to clean up some woman’s careless accident.
Or so I thought.
“I ruined your chance,” Lark whispers. “I’m the reason you left the party. And Claire is the reason you wanted to stay.”
“No, duchess. Fionn is the reason I wanted to stay.”
Lark’s mouth opens on a sharp breath that’s intended for words that never come. I wait in silence as she weighs her options before she lands on a single one. “What …?”
It takes cobbling together every scrap of self-control to not smile at her confusion, but it fades when I lean a little closer and the heat of her body shreds other layers of my restraint. “Claire broke Fionn’s heart. He was a mess at that party, it was the first time he’d seen her since they split.”
“She was with Fionn …?”
I nod, and Lark’s cheeks flush pink. “They’d been together for a few years. They met when he was in medical school and she was doing her law degree. He’d nearly finished his residency and was ready to propose. He carried that feckin’ ring around for weeks, just waiting for the right moment. When he finally got down on one knee, Claire cut him loose. It shattered my brother. It’s why he moved to Nebraska, to get as far away from her as he could. I’d almost convinced him to come back, until that party ruined it all.”
“But … the way she said—”
“Yeah. I’m sure she wanted to hook up. Of course I would never indulge Claire, but she doesn’t take the rejection well. Not really her personality type.”
“So … it wasn’t because I ruined your shot with Claire …?”
“No, Lark.”
It takes more effort than it should not to let my thoughts run away with the meaning behind her words. I don’t know why she would care about Claire. And I don’t know why it suddenly matters so much to know the history there.
Lark’s gaze drops to my lips and narrows as she seems to work through her thoughts. “You hate me because you think I busted your chance to bring Fionn home. You had to come for me, and you couldn’t look after him.”
Something uncomfortable twists in my chest, a little snake that grips my heart and squeezes. “I don’t hate you. But I sure would like to talk about your plan to cut off Claire’s face.”
Lark rolls her eyes and smacks my arm, my grip on her throat releasing. “Right. I have to go.”
In a flash of motion, she slides free between me and the wall. The space left behind is cold and lifeless. Her scent lingers, a temptation that beckons me, sweet and dark. I blink to try to clear Lark from my senses, but it’s futile.
“We need to talk,” I call after her as she nears the mouth of the alley.
“Hard pass,” she yells back, and flips me the bird before she disappears.
I stand in the narrow passage for a long moment, watching her absence as though she’ll return and fill it with revelations as I replay everything Rowan and Sloane said in the restaurant.
And then I turn in the opposite direction and head to my car to drive straight home and get my shit together. To do what I should have done months ago.
To hunt Lark Montague.
OceanofPDF.com
TROPHIES
Lachlan
When I enter the living space of our apartment, I stand for a long moment in the center of the room, trying to see it through a different set of eyes. Bentley watches from the couch in stark judgment of what I’m about to do.
“I don’t like it either,” I say to him, though he doesn’t seem convinced. “But she’s going to get herself into the kind of trouble I can’t bail her out of if I don’t find what she’s hiding.”
I don’t even take off my jacket before I start looking. For what, I’m not sure. I just feel as though if I’ve been missing pieces of this woman for so long, maybe there are treasures she doesn’t want anyone to find.
I open cupboards. I pull out drawers and run my fingers over their underbellies. I hunt in places I’ve purposely avoided the last two days out of respect for Lark’s privacy. Her en suite. Her bedroom. If she believes I despise her, maybe she thinks I’d never want to see her lingerie drawer? I could easily prove her otherwise as I shift through lace and silk and thin dangling straps. My cock feckin’ aches with every piece of material I touch as I picture Lark in each one. I get a little derailed by a certain deep blue corset that ignites all the fantasies of Duchess Lark that I’ve been trying and failing to suppress. I stare at that fabric in my hands for longer than I probably should, imagining how it might skim Lark’s curves, how her skin might look covered with lace.
