“Good thing you got hold of your father.”

“Yes, he’s always helpful.”

“I’ll bet.”

“It’s just so … awful.” As she blinked, she saw that bed inside. “So very, very ugly. I wonder who did it?”

“Butch will find them.”

“I hope so. I truly do.”

“I got to go.”

“Oh … okay.” Wait, she’d already said that. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. You’d better go, too.”

For some reason, she had the strangest urge to tell him that she missed him—but that was absurd. He was standing two feet away from her. They were going to talk in a couple of hours. She was going to see him tomorrow night.

“Good day,” she said.

When he nodded, she closed her eyes … calmed herself … and spirited away.

For so many reasons, the awkward parting had not been how she’d seen the evening ending. Not even close.

Craeg didn’t wait long. As soon as Paradise got ahead of him, he dematerialized himself behind her, traveling on the wind, using his blood in her veins as a tracker.

When she stopped moving through the night air, he re-formed a good hundred yards away from her on the edge of a lawn that was …

The house before him at the top of the rise was the size of a college dorm, the kind of massive, grand structure that would be featured on television as being on some fancy university’s campus or God, maybe … maybe it was more like a royal residence with its peaked roofs and its diamond-pane windows and all the clipped and manicured everything on its lawn.

It was easily twice the size of the mansion where his and Axe’s fathers had been slaughtered, for example.

And as Paradise approached the front door, it was without apology—not as a staffer or a servant would. And a moment later, she was inside without ringing a doorbell or anything. In fact, as he moved to the left, he saw through leaded glass windows a uniformed butler taking her coat and bowing in deference to her.

Her father is First Adviser to the King.

Closing the distance with long strides, he watched from the cold outside as she went up the grand staircase and disappeared into what was undoubtedly an equally sumptuous second floor. Or maybe third. Or twelfth.

Even after he could no longer see her, he stayed where he was, staring through old-fashioned panes at the oil paintings, the fancy rugs, the silk on the walls—it must be silk, right?

What the fuck did he know.

Turning away, he looked out over the rolling lawn, and the bushes, and the beds of what were no doubt specimen flowers in the warm months. He wondered what the backyard was like. Probably had a pool. An enclosure for exotic fucking animals. A goddamn bird sanctuary.

She had lied.

And not in a small way.

This … this was a big fucking deal: He’d just taken the virginity of what certainly appeared to be one of a Founding Family’s daughters.

According to the Old Laws, as a commoner?

He could be put to death for that.

As anger swelled, it was less about Paradise and what she’d kept from him, and more because he had consistently overridden himself. All those internal stops he’d put up? All those resolutions he’d had? Before he’d fucked her in the bathroom at a human fucking club, for fuck’s sake? He’d blown right through each and every one of them. And to top that off, he’d lost his focus with the training. Gotten sidetracked from his purpose. Wasted days when he should have been sleeping, classes when he should have been thinking, workouts when he should have been training his body with total focus.

And all for a female who cared so little for him, who was so selfish and conceited, that she had been unwilling to share some very pertinent, relevant information about herself.

Information that she had to know would have been a game changer for him.

It was a perfect storm of manipulation, that had spun him a hundred and eighty degrees away from what he’d actually wanted: Between her being a liar and his libido being out of control, he hadn’t stood a chance.

Such a fool—he was such a goddamn fool.

And fools got what they deserved.

Didn’t they.

Chapter Forty-three

Sitting on the edge of her mated bed, Marissa ran a brush through her hair. She had changed out of the clothes she had gotten into after she’d stripped off her latex suit, and she was now wearing one of Butch’s black cashmere robes. From time to time, she brought the lapel up to her nose and smelled his scent on the fibers.

She needed the reminder of his presence. She truly did.

Dearest Virgin Scribe, there were too many things that kept going through her mind, images, sounds, smells. And as a result of the barrage, she kept wondering … how had Butch done that for so long? How had he investigated those crime scenes, gone to the houses of the victims’ families, broken that news over and over again? How had he looked into the tragic eyes of a father and a mahmen and commiserated with them—all the while knowing he had to get information out of them?

Information like the last time they saw their child. Last communication. Any known disagreements with people.

She had asked the questions carefully, at times holding the mother’s hand or nodding to the father. There had been no reason to write anything down—she was never going to forget anything about any of it.

And now she was back here, waiting for Butch to come home safely so she could download everything.