Page 79 of Tyler's Rule
I wasn’t sad, but he’d deserved worse than dying slowly in pain, and I’d cost Dixie a choice. Tapping out a single-word text to Damien, I asked her question. “I’ll find out.”
Damien sent back a broken heart emoji.
I pulled a face. “That means a heart attack. Sometimes it happens. I broke pieces of him. I’m sorry it happened that way. I wish you’d had your chance to do whatever ye needed to him.”
She thought then sighed. “Honestly? I don’t care. He wasn’t the worst of my demons by a long way, and for weeks, I carried this fear of him being out there. I felt safer when you caught him. Now he isn’t alive, I like that even more. He earned a painful death, and I didn’t want to see him again. Plus I had this horrible nagging doubt that we should set him free so he could vote. Now that’s off the table, it’s like a weight has been lifted.”
Relief flowed along my veins.
I’d fucked up, but it wasn’t the worst.
Dixie kissed my cheek. “If you want to capture the others I named, do it. But maybe with fewer injuries so they don’t just die on us, too?”
Thank Christ. I needed blood on my hands.
If I couldn’t drive my fists into those who’d hurt her, I had no right to call myself skeleton crew.
“Thank ye.”
She laughed. “Only you could take that as a favour. In the meantime, I’ve got some ideas to discuss with the skeleton girls. I’m pretty sure I remember Debrock, the other trusted company owner, being shady. I bet we can dig something up on him. If he’s the last trusted company member available to vote, leverage could be useful.”
“Love the way ye think.”
I opened another text. Shade had replied to my earlier message. I finished dressing and gave her a grin. “Be right back.”
Outside the door of our apartment, a small box waited. I carried it to Dixie.
She peeked inside. Lifted the small gun-like device. “What is it?”
“For ye to track me.”
I loaded it for her and demonstrated how to use it, then turned so she could set it to my skin on the back of my arm. She pulled the trigger. A sharp scratch tore my flesh. On her phone, I added the tracking software. A pulsing dot showed me as being in the warehouse.
“Now you’ll always know where I am.”
She trailed a finger over the site then pressed a kiss to my shoulder. “Want to do the same to me?”
A surge of heat washed over me, a demand to knock her back and devour her. “Like ye wouldn’t believe.”
Dixie rolled over and tugged up the underwear she’d put on beneath my hoodie. She tapped her perfectly round cheek. “Right there.”
It was beyond fucked up how turned on I got pulling the trigger.
I brought her in for another kiss, making sure to pause to check if she wanted me. I lost myself in her lips, crazy over how good kissing her felt, then said, “I’ll be a couple of hours. I have to talk to my men. If ye need me?—”
“I’ll be fine. I’m going to take a nap anyway. All the talk and crygasms have tired me out.”
“Cry what?”
“Crymax, then?”
I shook my head and tore myself away before I begged to give her another.
Chapter 27
Shade
A message hit my phone, as demanding as its sender.
