Page 11 of Altered By Lead (Undercover Sinners 2)
And I want Mace to touch me. I want it so desperately that it makes me hurt in ways I never expected these boys could make me hurt—on the inside.
Then again, Arsen isn't looking at me like a sane man looks at a woman.
He stares at me like that cougar I ran into last week, when I snuck outside for a cigarette, my hands shaking as I tried to tell myself that joining some mercenary group to kill my father wasn't the weirdest direction my life could've ever taken. The damn cat crept down from the hill behind the house, crouching in the foliage, and only the reflection of the porch light being flicked on reflected back in its eyes.
If Hawke hadn't turned that light on and come barreling out with guns a’blazing ... But the only response or show of concern I'd gotten from him once he'd scared the cat away was to scowl at me and tell me to watch my back. "If you can't keep yourself safe from a goddamn cat, how do you expect to survive this job at all?"
Arsen licks his lower lip, his white-blond hair cut short and streaked with red, the color of blood. He tilts his head to one side to study me, and I swear, his eyes reflect back the light.
"Well, well, if it isn't my favorite little Russian princess. How are we today, Miss Petrova?" He uses my last name like an insult, slicking it against his tongue like a knife.
"No greeting for me, dickhead?" Colt inserts as Weston's eyes flick between me and Arsen. Whatever it is that he sees, he doesn't like. Maybe it's the way Arsen studies me from head to toe with this dark gleam in his eye, this predatory hunt that will inevitably lead to my own destruction.
"He doesn't give a crap about you or anyone else," Weston says, his voice darkening. I'm pretty sure his words are meant for me as well as Colt, but maybe what he's not getting is that I don't entirely care. Something about Arsen calls to something dark in me, something that I can't explain. Maybe he was born with his, or maybe it was beaten into him the way my black, aching spirit was beaten into me? Through years of pain, neglect, through sights that can never be forgotten, or anguish that bleeds straight from the heart and poisons the blood?
"You're right," Arsen says, wearing jeans and a black wifebeater that shows off the copious amount of tattoos covering his muscular arms. "I don't give a fuck about anyone at all, not even myself. When has that ever mattered?"
He gives me another look and moves ahead, pounding up the stairs and then glancing back in a very clear invitation.
"We have a debrief in fifteen minutes," Weston calls after him, gritting his teeth and looking at me like he really, really doesn't want me to go up there. I stare right back at him, and I know he's right, that I probably shouldn't ... but also, that I'm going to do it anyway.
"Ten now!" Hawke calls out from the direction of the living room, and I take off, listening to both Colt and Weston curse from the bottom of the stairs. But I can't help it. I've always been a glutton for punishment.
Arsen isn't hard to find, standing in the room farthest from the staircase, one boot up on the peeling paint of the windowsill, the other scanning the darkness for ... something. Well, if he's looking for people out there to taunt, he's going to be sorely disappointed. There are no people within miles of this place. Miles, and miles, and miles ...
I swallow hard and enter the room, one hand resting on the fading wallpaper, the other unconsciously clenched into a fist by my side.
"What have you been up to the past six weeks?" I ask, dreading the answer, unsure of why I even asked.
"Fucking, snorting coke, and drinking myself into a stupor. You?" he asks, turning over one shoulder to look at me. "Actually, wait, don't answer that, I don't care." Arsen turns back around, and with two long strides, he's up close and personal with my face, shoving my shoulder back into the wall with a firm hand.
Some strange part of me twists into a knot of frustration.
Did he just say fucking? I wonder, realizing with a sudden start that the feeling I'm so confused about is actually ... jealousy. I mean, it's ridiculous, isn't it, considering the circumstances. Here I am, not only a virtual stranger, but also the daughter of Arsen's worst enemy, screwing not only him and his colleagues, but ...
He's a fucking sociopath.
He doesn't care about me. Of course he'd go out and screw whatever girls he could get a hold of.
