Primal Pursuit - Page 148

I don’t fucking know. This isn’t a path I ever tread on. “Let’s just say I prefer you alive.”

She makes a sound, and it curls around my heart. It’s both scoffing and vulnerable, a fuck you that’s sweet. It’s pure, peak rabbit.

Poppy.

I much prefer calling her Rabbit. It started as an act of humiliation, but it’s twisted to something else, a name for her, for how she fits. Hunter and prey.

Oh, holy fuck. What’s next? Me fucking saying she’s a piece of me?

I laugh.

“Is something funny?” she asks.

“No. Poppy, Rabbit. We just need to discuss some things.”

“Like the hit.”

“Not the hit. You can’t take them on. I fucking told you that?—”

There’s another knock on the door.

“Hold on.” I say this like she has options, like she isn’t essentially my prisoner, like I didn’t carve my fucking initials into her. Like she isn’t mine.

I get up and go to the door.

Gabriel.

Again.

I step out, closing the door behind me. “More news?”

“Our man came back with the goods.”

He’s got her jewelry box. He holds it out to me.

“The fucking aunt and uncle?”

Gabriel shrugs, rubs a ringed hand over his beard. “The information you want, we’re working on. Won’t take that long, I don’t think. You want this fucking thing or not?”

I take it and remove the necklace. “This it? One of the things that’s wanted?”

“Oh, yeah. Alexius will be interested.” He looks at it. “How did she get it, anyway?”

Gabriel goes to take it from me, but I snap my hand shut. “I want to ask her more about it.”

“There’s a line, man. And the Del Rossas are on their way with questions. Tobias?—”

“What? We need last rites from a dirty priest?” I know why they’re heading this way, to the conference room, as I call it. The others will be coming, too.

Gabriel cocks a brow. “You just fucked her, didn’t you?”

“And?”

He sighs. “Alexius isn’t too happy with all your little games with her.”

“He’s not my mother.”

“It’s dangerous.”