“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.
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.
Though I have the urge to steal it to fuel my fantasies in the privacy of my room across the hall, I set the corset back down and press my eyes closed as I shut the drawer.
With a deep breath, I turn and head back to the living room.
“Feckin’ hell,” I say to the dog, who heaves a disinterested sigh. “What does she see?”
She sees the city from her round chair as she counts the hours between dusk and dawn. She sees photos of friends and family and places she’s traveled. She sees the gold table she made and a macrame wall hanging of tiny stars. She sees huge movie posters printed on canvas. The Life Aquatic. Beetlejuice. Sharknado. Constantine.
Constantine.
I inhale a sharp breath and march over to the poster, lifting it gently from the wall. Behind it, I finally find what I was looking for. A thin sheet over a ragged hole in the drywall.
By the time Lark returns to the apartment an hour later, I’ve cleared out the hole and replaced the poster on the wall. But now I’m left with a small cardboard box containing far more questions than I started with. I want answers. And the only woman who can give them to me walks in with a cutting glare, suspicion a heavy note in the tense beat of quiet between us.
“Hey,” I say when the silence in the room grows to the size of a black hole.
Balancing a covered tray with one hand, Lark glances up and places her bag down with the other. She says nothing, just casts me a brief, exhausted look as though she knows something is coming but is too weak to avoid the collision.
“We need to talk, Lark. Really.”
She sighs and rubs her forehead with her free hand. “Lachlan, honestly, I don’t want to talk about Claire right now or any of that shit. I just want to exist in a place of caffeine and butter and sugar.” Lark sets a tray of muffins onto the counter and lifts the plastic lid. The scent of apple and cinnamon drifts toward me. “I volunteered to teach music lessons this afternoon and this kid Hugo literally tries to gnaw on the cello every single time. He is so fucking weird.”
“This is important.”
“Is it about the mystery murderer?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then it’s not more important than the caffeine I need to survive Hugo’s mouth-splinter fixation.”
“It’s about you.”
Lark glances at me, wariness filtering into her eyes. “Since that is your least favorite topic and I’ve made it a personal life goal to cause you the most misery humanly possible,” she says as she takes a little bow and gracefully sweeps her hand before her, “please, do continue.”
Normally, I would reply with a diabolical grin. Maybe a jab or two to rile her up. But this time, my stomach flips uncomfortably as I reach into the cardboard box tucked beneath my arm to pull out the first item in question.
“What’s this?” I ask as I hold up a flat disc of fabric.
The flash of shock in her expression snuffs out as quickly as it appears. She clears her throat. “It appears to be a coaster.”
“Not quite,” I reply as I take a step closer. “It’s a coaster made from an extra-thick, aftermarket, corded boot lace. One with a suspicious stain on the fibers.”
Lark huffs a dismissive laugh, but there’s a spark of trepidation in her gaze when it flicks from the string in my hand to my face. “An aftermarket boot lace? Did it come with a spoiler and muffler package?” She rolls her eyes and pads away toward the kitchen as I trail behind her like a joyless specter. “It’s a wine stain on a coaster, Lachlan. You could have gotten it anywhere.”
“I could have, but I didn’t. I got it from right here in the apartment.”
She scoffs but doesn’t look at me.
Next, I take two sticks with brightly painted bulbous ends from the box. “And what are these?”
Her focus darts to the items in my hand. She avoids my eyes. “Maracas, clearly.”
I clear my throat for dramatic effect. “Maracas …” Lark nods. “And what would they be made of, exactly?”
Lark turns to the fridge for butter. “How am I supposed to know?”
I rattle them, the objects inside hitting the lacquered walls of what looks suspiciously like skin. “You know I’m a leatherworker, Lark. Want to try again?”
She refuses to acknowledge me.
“What do you think would happen if I …” My words evaporate as I crush one of the bulbs in a fist. Human teeth fall into my waiting palm, several falling to the floor as Bentley rushes over to investigate the possibility of wayward food. “Somehow, that’s what I expected, and yet I’m still surprised. What a feckin’ conundrum.”
Lark pretends to focus on the muffin she pops into the microwave.
“Okay …” I tilt my hand and let the teeth fall into the box. “We’ll come back to that one. In the meantime,” I say as I hold up my final prize, “what is this …?”
Lark’s eyes flick from the item on the table and back to the microwave as it dings. She shrugs. “A ring …?”
I let the weight of my gaze hammer into the side of her head, and even though she fidgets, she resists the urge to turn around. “A ring,” I repeat.