Page 46 of EverGreene
If Malachi wasn’t going to kill me before, he was now.
I owed her something, but if I were being honest, the something I was giving her was a selfish something. A something that would test the waters. This something would tell me more about Ever than I’d learned so far.
“We don’t just beat people up inside a ring. We do it on the outside, too.”
Ever sucked in a breath. Fuck, this was it. This was when she kicked me out of her car on the side of the highway. “What do you mean?”
“Sometimes, as you know, the justice system may fail to do its job. People who have no business walking the streets are set free to do just that, leaving their victims living in fear. When asked, we take care of that, or at least we try to.”
“You kill people?”
I looked over at Ever, expecting her face to be contorted in horror, but found not even a hint of shock or an ounce of disgust.Interesting.
“No, we don’t kill them. We put the fear of God into them, so they may think twice about touching the women they’ve hurt again, or any woman or person again, for that matter. Except, the last time I went out, I lost control of myself. The guy I throttled is still in the hospital. He’s going to recover, but he’s also going to be feeling the long-lasting impacts.”
I waited for her response, receiving nothing but silence. Itwas a lot to process, hearing the man who’s been stalking you for over a year is also a hired hitman sans the hit part.
“Ever?” I searched her face in the light of the dashboard, unable to decipher what was going through her head. “I bet you regret wanting to get to know me better now.”
“Oh my God.”
And there it was. The disgust I was waiting for. It was all over now.
“You really are a superhero, aren’t you?” she whispered softly.
I beg your finest fucking pardon?
My head whipped back to see a tear falling from the corner of her eye. Instinctively, I reached out to wipe it away from her cheek with the tip of my exposed thumb from the fingerless gloves I wore during matches.
“We’re not superheroes. We’re just a group of guys who deliver vigilante justice that people otherwise wouldn’t have received.”
“Name a superhero who isn’t a vigilante.” She unfastened her seatbelt, pushing it aside.
“What—what are you doing?”
Ever climbed over the center console, positioning herself so that she straddled my lap, placing one of her knees next to each of my thighs. Her hand reached down between the bottom of the seat and the door, finding the buttons that repositioned the seat, moving it to a reclining position, roughly a forty-five-degree angle. Seat positioned where she wanted it, she unbuckled my seatbelt.
“I don’t know whether to be turned on or terrified,” I said, sucking in a breath when her hand grazed my erection over my shorts.
“I think you know exactly which one you are.”
“Pretty sure I can be both.”
“Afraid of a little girl, are you?”
“You’re far from being a little girl, Ever Moore. Have you forgotten that I’ve been watching you? I know you could kick my ass if you really wanted to, but you don’t want to, do you? Hell, I’m sure you have a knife under your seat you could be holding to my throat to make me tell you everything you’ve ever wanted to know about me.”
“You’re wrong. My car knife is in the center console within arm’s reach of me right now, if I choose to reach for it.”
“Car knife?”
“Yeah, you know, a car knife. Some girls have a car chapstick, a purse chapstick, a desk chapstick. I happen to have a car knife, a purse knife, a bed knife, and, well, I won’t bore you with the locations of the other ones.”
“Why don’t you reach for it, then? End this game between us?”
“Because maybe I like the idea of the hunter becoming the hunted.”
“You’re not afraid of me anymore?”
