Page 108 of A Trial By Blood

The good news was we had a lead. The bad news was that Oliver Kelley was a criminal. A dealer of artifacts and priceless goods, a lot of them stolen. He was a bad dude who’d done a lot of bad things, and we had spent most of the day chasing our tails, trying to track him down and coming up empty, until now.

He was well known in parts of Roxburgh, the darker, seedier parts. Places your average Joe didn’t often venture, until tonight.

I looked down at my outfit. It was like nothing I’d ever worn before. Nothing I’d ever had the chance to wear before. It was Mag’s, and I felt as if I were playing dress-up in the slinky black number. When she wore it, it clung to her ample curves, but she always wore it under a jacket, with tights and her combat-style books.

I was taller than my sister, so instead of brushing just above the knee, it barely covered my ass. I didn’t have her curves, so it hung lower in the front and back and gently skimmed my breasts and hips. And instead of tights and boots, I had on sheer stockings and sky-high black pumps that I’d found in Iris’s closet—the only one of my sisters with the same sized feet as me—among the things she’d left behind when she moved in with Draven.

My hair was down and wavy, and Mags had done my makeup. Though it was light, the liquid eyeliner across my lids that ended with a flick and the bright red lipstick meant it was far from understated.

I looked like a vixen, and when I crossed my legs and Ronan’s gaze slid down them and the muscle in his jaw jumped again, I felt like one too. “It’s going to be fine,” I said for the third time.

“The place will be full of monsters. Monsters and criminals.”

“Okay, yes, there will be some…ah people like that there. But it’s a bar. How bad can it be?” We’d checked the place out earlier and instantly felt the magic flowing from the building. It was heavily warded, or something like it, a type of magic that not even Ronan could get past, used to suppress magic users from turning on each other, and given the type of clientele, not surprising. But that meant we had to go in without the protection of Ronan’s power.

His fingers clenched the wheel. “It’s an exclusive club frequented by murderers and thieves.”

“No one will pay us any attention. We’ll slip in, watch, listen, maybe talk to a few people, then leave. I promise, it’ll be fine,” I said and tried to ignore the nerves going crazy inside me.

“You need to keep your coat on,” he said in his bossy tone.

“That’ll look weird.” I curled my fingers around his forearm. It was hard as stone. “You know why I’m dressed like this. I have to fit in. Males like that treat their females as accessories. If I went in there covered from the neck down, they’d instantly be suspicious.”

Ronan growled. “If anyone looks at you…touches you…” The steering wheel groaned. “I’ll tear their arms off.”

Well, crap. I should’ve guessed that was coming. “No one will be looking at me.”

He scoffed. It was the first time I’d heard him do that. “You look so goddamn fuckable right now, petal, I can barely think straight.”

“Fuckable?”

“It means looking at you makes me want to fuck you,” he said and glanced at me again before growling under his breath.

“I know what it means, but I didn’t think you did.”

“Until you, I’ve never had reason to use it, or think it.”

I grinned. “I think you spend too much time with Relic.”

“The hounds don’t like to use a lot of useless words when one will do the job adequately.”

He was so serious; I bit my lips to hold back my laugh. “This is true.”

He glanced my way. “Are you laughing at me?”

“Possibly.”

“Why?” he said, but I could tell he wasn’t offended by the way his eyes sparkled.

“Because before you regained your emotions, you were prim and proper. Now you randomly come out with things like fuckable and shock the hell out of me.”

“You don’t like it?” he asked.

I smirked at him. “Actually, I kind of love it when you randomly say something dirty.”

He glanced at me again. “You do?”

“I do.”