Page 4 of Devil's Work: Dark

“Hey, sweetheart,” I mumble back against the side of her head.

“Vlad’s in the war room waiting on you. Don’t keep him long, yeah? I’m going to be waiting at the house completely naked and with a tub of Cool Whip.”

My mouth drops open.

“What?” she asks. “You saying you don’t utilize the glory that is Cool Whip?”

“I don’t need Cool Whip.”

“Vlad doesn’tneedit, either. But it tastes good, I get all sticky, and then we get to fuck hard in the shower.”

“You’ve sold me on the benefits of Cool Whip, darlin’.”

“Go,” she laughs, swatting at me. “Send my man home ASAP.” I don’t go. My feet are superglued to the spot watching that fine ass saunter away.

It’s not until I hear, “You wanna quit staring at my woman’s ass?” that I finally jolt and tear my eyes away. Vlad’s filling the doorway waiting on me. This is who Slip Knot is trying to be. Huge, cut and dangerous. We’ve got that in common. I’m glad to have him with me because it’d deadly to have him against me. He’s one tough son of a bitch.

I shrug. “She’s fine. Just because I can’t touch doesn’t mean I’m not gonna look. Don’t like the brothers lookin’, those nuns’ habits are pretty shapeless.”

He smiles, shaking his head. “She does have a fine ass,” he mumbles. “Damn,I ama lucky bastard.”

“And she told me she’s gonna be waiting for you at home naked and with Cool Whip.”

His eyes go wide for just a second. “Then get your ass in here so I can eat Cool Whip off my woman and fuck her in the shower. She plays hard when she breaks out the Cool Whip.”

I bet she does. Vlad and I walk behind the bar to the room between his office and the kitchen. The war room. Sarge, our vice president, Reaper, Cutter, and Roughneck already sit in their places around the table. I pull my chair, dropping down into the seat, and wait.

“Won’t take long,” Vlad starts. “One of the men from Sarge’s old unit is a journalist.” He holds his hand out for Sarge to take over.

“Jack Dunham works forGeographic Worldmagazine. He’s a photojournalist, too, and has won numerous awards for his stories and photographs.”

“Yeah, I recognize his name,” Reaper, or as we mostly call him,Reapsays. “He took the photo of that bloody little boy running out of a plume of smoke carrying a baby after his home was attacked by the government in one of those stan countries, right?” The man is so tall we have to look up to see his face when he talks and we’re all sitting. He’s streamlined, coiled muscle like a snake and when he strikes, you die. We don’t call him Reaper for nothing. He used to be a bounty hunter before he joined The Horde and let’s just say some of his capture techniques were questionable.

“Stan countries?” Sarge asks, snickering. “How literate of you. Yeah, he won the Pulitzer for that one.” Now Sarge was a Raider in the Marines and he keeps to his military workout as well as his haircut. I understood why he joined a club after he left the military, but I never understood why he joinedour club. Sarge is the best of us. That man eats, breathes and shits honor.

“Impressive,” Roughneck says, nodding.

I cut in, rolling my hand in the air to get him moving. “This won’t get Vlad fucking in the shower any sooner.”

It might’ve worked if not for Cutter who cocks his head looking utterly confused. “What’s a stan country?” he asks.

I sigh as Sarge says, “You know, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. There’s a fair few of ’em.”

“Huh,” Cutter replies. “Learn something new every day.”

Sarge finally continues. “Anyway, Jack keeps in contact with some of the old unit, too. They’ve been talking about us. Apparently, our mission to rescue Greer impressed them, but it’s what they heard about our involvement helping Nic that’s really captured their attention. Essentially, Jack wants to do a story on us, about us changing our image.”

“Do we want people to know?” Cutter asks. Cut’s on the taller end of average and can slip in and out of places without drawing too much attention to himself. But he’s got a protective streak a mile long and a short temper when someone he cares about is being jerked around. His knife skills are legendary. Really, that motherfucker sliced our old president’s face from brow to jaw when he was still a prospect. Rage wore that scar until his dying breath. And Cutter cares about these women we’re protecting. The scowl dropped on his face tells us all how unhappy he is with the suggestion.

“Not about the women we help,” replies Reaper.

“No. Not about that,” Sarge agrees. “But it wouldn’t hurt for the community to not be so scared of us.”

“We’ve got shit going on that he can’t report on,” Vlad puts in. “So that’s why we’re here. To decide if we want this guy shadowing us.”

I say my piece. “If we allow it, he can’t know about our income ventures or the safehouse.” Most of our cash comes from the huge pot grow house and distribution business we run, and the gun running when necessary. “He knows about Nic, nothing we can do about that. But if he finds out about the safehouse, that puts all those women at risk.”

“What do you think?” Vlad asks Sarge. “Can we keep him out of the parts of our business we don’t want him in?”

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