His to Take (Wicked Lovers #9)(19)
Author: Shayla Black

“If you finish that sentence, you won’t have any teeth left.” Thorpe looked dead serious. “Callie has suffered long enough. Sean and I are doing our best to make her happy now. We will do whatever it takes to keep her as far away from this as possible.”

Time to step back. This tactic was simply pissing Thorpe off, and Joaquin needed the man’s cooperation. “Fine. Sorry. If you’ll let me, I’d like to talk to both Sean and Callie. I think they have information that could save Tatiana’s life.”

“I’ll ask Sean if he’ll talk to you. That’s up to him, and will depend, at least in part, on what the FBI wants to keep strictly in-house. Callie . . . Sean and I will have to decide that together. The TV interviews Callie gives are never in depth. They’re a matter of survival, since they keep her too public for anyone to kill. But a direct probe about who chased her and why might be too much for her. It’s barely been three months. And with the stress of the wedding . . .”

“You agreed yesterday.”

“Before you added kidnapping into this mess.”

Joaquin didn’t like Thorpe’s answer, but he understood it. “I know she went through years of hell. I wouldn’t ask her to tread this ground again unless I believed the information could help save lives. You and Sean can be beside her every moment.”

“I’ll consider it. I’d like to talk to Tatiana.” Thorpe phrased it like a request, but it wasn’t.

Joaquin hedged. “She’s probably showering now and she needs some food first.”

He didn’t understand the protective instinct that suddenly filled him. No, it wasn’t quite something protective that nagged at him. Instead, it was almost . . . possessive. That made even less sense. From everything he’d heard, Thorpe was devoted to Callie, so he wasn’t likely to proposition anyone else. Besides, Joaquin barely knew Aslanov’s daughter. She was just someone he had to keep alive, nothing more.

But he enjoyed the thought of covering her fragile body with his own and filling her with his cock. In fact, parts south stiffened and rose at the idea. He held in a curse.

Thorpe paused. “I’ll make sure she gets food. While she’s eating, she and I will chat. I’ll keep it friendly.”

Despite those assurances, Joaquin still wanted to say no. But Thorpe held him by the balls. If he wanted to keep Tatiana someplace secure and talk to the people who could tell him about the group responsible for these murders and their motive, then he had to play by the club owner’s rules. It fucking grated on him.

“She’s afraid.”

“I’m sure.” Thorpe looked at him like he was an idiot for stating the obvious.

Despite all the praise the Edgington brothers had heaped on Dominion’s owner, Joaquin wasn’t sure he liked Thorpe at all.

“You took her from her bed and brought her in here unconscious,” the club owner pointed out. “I don’t approve.”

I wasn’t asking for your opinion, Mr. Stick Up Your Ass. “I didn’t have better options.”

“Well, now you have forty-eight hours to make your . . . guest consent to being here or I’ll take matters into my own hands.”

Joaquin gritted his teeth and watched Thorpe walk away. He stalked down the hall in the opposite direction.

Now what the fuck was he supposed to do? He could study the evidence again, but he’d done that a thousand times. Without fresh eyes or clues, he was no closer to knowing exactly who had killed Nate or why. Small mercy they hadn’t tortured him terribly. And if he didn’t want to see the woman in Thorpe’s room reduced to a bleeding heap of flesh, he needed to bite his tongue. He also needed to figure out how the hell he was going to convince Tatiana to consent to being here in the next two days. He’d given her his evidence. He didn’t have a lot of other avenues left.

So he found the bar instead. With the club closed, he didn’t see anyone except a muscle-bound guy with a square face, a cleft chin, and a fuck-off attitude. The guy took up the space behind the bar on a step stool, looking at a security camera behind a plastic dome in the ceiling.

“You work here, man?”

The big guy didn’t look at him, just directed a screwdriver at the camera’s protective bubble. “Yep. I’m Axel, head of security. If I’d gotten a vote, I wouldn’t have let you come in here with an unconscious woman who hadn’t consented to be here with you.”

Get in line. “You’ll be happy to know that Thorpe doesn’t approve either.”

“I have zero tolerance for bullies and even less for rapists.”