Page 84 of Reaper Unhinged
“Give me a minute,” he bit out as he continued to punch.
I locked the training room door, tugged off my shirt, and unbuttoned my pants. He faltered and slapped a hand onto the punch bag to halt its swing.
I kicked off my boots and shimmied out of my jeans.
“Fee…” His voice was thick.
I strode toward him, trailing my hand from my breasts down my abdomen to my pubic bone. “If you want to hit something, then I’d rather you hit this.”
He bridged the distance between us with a growl, and for a little while, there was only the two of us.
* * *
Graysonand I emerged from the training room to find Cora and Uri flanking Bobby at the island while he studied his laptop screen.
“I found something,” Bobby said to us. “The symbol you drew…I did a search for recent sightings of it on any buildings or any locations, and I got a hit. Look.”
He turned the laptop to show us a grainy photograph of a signposted track where he’d blown up the sign. There were regular town names on the sign and if you weren’t looking for it, you’d totally have missed the tiny circular symbol on the bottom left-hand corner of the sign.
“It’s a lead,” Grayson said. “And it’s not too far from here, either.”
A lead to finding Hunter. “Let me change clothes and grab my weapons belt, and we can go.”
“Wait,” Uri said. “We have no idea what we’re walking into. We need to scope out the area first.”
He didn’t look at me, his attention focused on the laptop screen. “Can you pull up a map?”
Bobby tapped buttons, and Uri nodded. “Yes, I know where that is.”
“We’ll check it out,” Cora said. “We can jump to the location and jump back out once done. We won’t be long. If Vi turns up, do the thing and get it over with.”
But a thought occurred to me, something we’d neglected to consider. “If Vi stops my heart and for some reason we can’t restart—”
“Don’t say that,” Cora cut in. “We will bring you back.”
I locked gazes with her. “But if something goes wrong and you can’t, then Hunter will die. Even if you bring him back, he’ll die because I won’t have completed the Tribus mating.”
“Fuck,” Grayson said.
“I can’t go through with it until we have him back, and I’ve…You know.”
The thought of mating with Hunter evoked a cocktail of contradictory emotions. I didn’t have a soul connection to him like I did with my guys. Our connection was purely primal, purely physical. But it was all we had for now. It would have to do.
Grayson laced his fingers through mine as if to say,it’ll be okay.
“In that case, we better work fast,” Cora said.
She winked out, but Uri hesitated a moment, his gaze on me. I strode over and wrapped my arms around his waist in a tight hug.
He sighed and hugged me back. “I’ll see you soon.”
He released me, and then he was gone.
I leaned back against the counter, suddenly deflated. Fuck, why did life feel like I was on a fucking hamster wheel right now?
“I’ll make us some food,” Grayson said.
“I’ll do it,” Bobby insisted. “You guys rest.”
