Page 48 of Queen of Madness

He must be Antonio.

I drag my eyes back to Cat and grin. “So you remember who I am?”

She sucks in a heavy pull from her mouthpiece, holding it in until her lungs demand she breathe. “Oh, I’ve known who you were all along. It’syouwho doesn’t know.”

“I can’t wait for the day you tell me what the hell you mean.”

A stream of smoke puffs from her small mouth. “And I await the day you figure it out for yourself.”

* * *

Riding through the city at night seems almost foreign now. A mixture of blurred colors and shining lights peek through the dark tint in the limo and dance across Onyx’s skin.

It’s our first time being out since the farmers’ market, but this time, it’s for business. She’s dressed down in a black tailored suit, her hair slicked back in a high ponytail. A gold stem earring curls around the shell of her ear, the rose at the head wrapping around the top.

As always, her blinks are slow and bored, her eyes scanning the buildings outside as we pass them.

She likes to check up on her casinos from time to time, and tonight, she’s decided to accompany Shi to collect some of the money. She and Trigger are in the front, hidden by the rolled-up privacy glass.

“Tell me, Kane, have you come to visit any of my casinos.”

Her voice floats across the cabin, and though she’s not looking at me, I hear a slight difference in her tone. It’s lighter somehow.

“I haven’t. My one day off is spent cooking and cleaning before sleeping twelve hours and coming back here.”

“I imagine that must be nice.”

This forces a laugh from me. “Cooking and cleaning? I mean, I’m not complaining but also, it’s nice having those things done for me.”

Between Russ and the housekeepers at Embros, I’ve never had a fuller stomach and a floor so clean I could eat from it. A surprisingly pleasant change, considering…

“Sleeping,” Onyx clarifies, and when she lets her dark eyes flash to me, I nod.

The faint shadows under her eyes clued me in early on, she never gets much sleep. Pair that with the other things I’ve observed, I doubt she sleeps more than a few hours at a time. I think she wants to keep her mind busy. Stay in control of her thoughts.

Because once the veil falls and she slips into the abyss, she has no say of what her mind plays in her head.

Instead of breaching a subject where I have no right, I try to ease the soft tension that’s risen. The corner of my lips curl and I lean forward. “I’m up for the challenge if you need to be exercised into exhaustion.”

Instead of a smart remark, or ignoring me like I expect, she returns my smirk. “Is that so? You think you could tire me more than Trigger does in the gym? Or when I garden all afternoon, swim laps in the pool, or when I torture a man for hours?”

“I do,” I say simply.

Her brow arches, a genuine look of curiosity making her head tilt. “How so?”

“Because you use your darkest moments to fuel those activities. You feed off of it and use it as energy rather than expend your own. You’re giving so much power to it, it’s all you can think about, hence why you probably dream about it.”

I know I’ve touched a nerve when she adjusts her posture, straightening her spine. I see her and it makes her uncomfortable. But I like looking, because she has no fucking clue how, despite it, she’s so goddamn beautiful.

“With me, Boss, you wouldn’t be able to do that. Your mind wouldn’t be able to run from me, and how I make you feel.”

I lean closer, reaching for her chin. When she doesn’t back away and instead stares down her nose in a silent challenge, I close the space, gripping her delicate skin. Her citrus scent invades my airways, and it takes too much effort not to kiss her shimmering lips. “As a matter of fact, even now, I think your head is so cloudy all you can focus on is us, here and now. I wonder, though, does that intrigue you, or sca—”

“Careful, Kane.” A manicured hand removes mine from her face. “I’d hate for you to say something and force me to take your tongue.”

“You’d miss it too much.”

Onyx’s husky laugh travels through me and I don’t fight the chuckle it coerces out of my chest. “It is a rather talented muscle.”

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