AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The next text was a link that led to Gazelle’s social media feed, which featured the pictures of our outing and thousands of people foaming all over the picture of our nails and us playing with shoes.
Winter [Mint] >> Tell me I didn’t bungle it with the shoes. I like the shoes.
[Mint] >> The shoes are excellent.
Winter [Mint] >> Gazelle picked them out.
[Mint] >> Love it. We still need to work on your accessories. You should have had on a scarf with that coat today, and maybe a bracelet, but we’ll get there.
Get where? Hell’s Own Closet?
The flat smelled of gingerbread and candle wax. Someone had put some candles on the mantle and lit them. In the dim almost-winter dusk, it was downright cozy.
I stepped out of my shoes. My feet cried with relief while my entire foot felt like it smooshed outward as a jelly blob.
Sterling appeared out of the back, dripping in sweat. The veins of his arms and shoulders stood out against his skin. His abdomen moved with his breathing.
“Mission accomplished.” I dangled the shoes from my fingers.
He half-smiled. I stepped out of range of his moist grip.
“You can’t just stop working out in the middle of a drop set!” Jun hollered from the back.
Sterling glanced over his shoulder, then back at me. “I’ll see you at dinner, unless you don’t actually intend to skip leg day.”
“I’ve been in these shoes all day. I did leg day.” Jun’s workouts were gloriously brutal, but my feet were killing me in a less glorious way.
“Jun talked to his old employer,” Sterling added. “He’s agreed to meet with you tomorrow mid-morning. The cover story is I’m looking to do some urban rehab. And, Winter, it’s seedy.”
I raised a brow. “Seedy as in seedy, or seedy as legitimately unsafe?”
“The wanderers won’t follow you there, and if they do, they won’t bother you. Nothing you can’t handle, but I wouldn’t linger.”
“Just where the hell am I going?” I asked. “And how the hell did you find out about it?”
Sterling’s wolfish smile didn’t ease, but it became more grim. “I don’t like sending you there, but if I go, it’ll be an issue. It’s the shithole I had to pull Burian out of. It’s how I met Jun, and where we found Cye. It’s where the line between wanderer and lone wolf gets very blurry. Generally, they stay on the lone wolf side of things.”
“Generally.”
“Generally. Jun assures me with my reputation and three human bodyguards in the middle of the morning brunch rush, you’ll be fine. I’m confident Jun’s risk tolerance for your safety is even lower than mine. The wanderers won’t be a problem. They won’t want to risk pissing off those wolves.”
“So why aren’t you going?”
“I made a deal that involved me never going down there again.”
“Because of Burian?”
“Burian’s bad taste in nightlife led me to Jun, and Jun led me to Cye, which led to me making a deal that involved me never being seen in those parts again because I’m bad for business. At the time, I never thought I’d ever need to care about that particular promise. My taste in nightlife is otherwise as excellent as my taste in women.”
I rolled my eyes and tried not to smile. “A story of your misspent youth? Do share.”
“We’re gonna have to start all over! Your heart rate’s probably down in the sixties! You better not be eating those carbs I smell!”
Sterling glanced back. “It’ll have to wait, my lovely throne.”
“Mmm-mm. Just don’t call me angel. Or you’ll watch me feed these shoes to Jun as a chew toy.”
He chuckled and headed back into Jun’s dungeon of muscle horrors.
