average human’s Reviews > Control My Night > Status Update

Her blood-spattered pearl dress undulated across the rungs. Pitched gasps cut the air.
The man’s white shirt strained around his shoulders as he nipped and kissed at her heaving chest, fingers splayed possessively on her hips. Lean build, brown hair, sharp, shadowed jaw—Steadman.
I’d been right.
Holy cow. I’d actually been right.
He tilted her. Lissandra released a throaty moan in response. A shiver tore through me.
I stepped backwards into the darkness, grazing the books beside me. Photographs, documents, a pair of reading glasses and half-drunk whiskey littered the desk between us, like they’d come straight here after the discussion in the sitting room. Had they snuck away from Arwood? Was he sleeping, unaware, or dealing with the aftermath of tonight?
The photographs were at-a-distance shots of men walking, like they’d been taken by a private investigator. One of them was the man I’d fought off in the casino.
I recognized the bronze, wavy hair, his frat-boy sneer. Two stood either side with broad foreheads, pronounced noses. One had neck tattoos. Next to these photos lay others of the Kohnstamms, Ferko, and Waldemar.
As Waldemar had said, no one actually knew what Johan looked like. Had he been the one to attack me? It seemed likely, looking at these photographs. He’d reeked of authority. His actions to silence me hinted he’d known what I was.
Material rustled, closer this time, bringing with it the unmistakable sound of bodies coming together, the deep grit of Steadman’s voice colliding against the smoothness of Lissandra’s.
I slunk against the bookcase, holding my breath. The urge to escape warred with the need to understand why Johan had tried to abduct me. Did he have Isobelle? Was he targeting supernaturals and selling them to the Sect? Maybe my abduction was another step in his plan to wipe out both Arwood and the Kohnstamms. It made me wonder if he worked alone, or with a third party as Lissandra suspected.
Heat surged under my skin as I glimpsed their reflection in the adjacent glass case, the sound of their hips colliding. Lissandra lay face-down on the desk, grasping the far edge.
The door opened. I double-checked my position. If the newcomer decided to peruse the stacks, I was so dead. What if it was Arwood? And, more importantly, why weren’t they stopping?
Indeed, the entry of the third person hadn’t affected Lissandra and Steadman’s, uh, exuberance at all. Steadman had pulled her upright against his chest, cupping the side of her jaw. His other arm angled toward the apex of her thighs. Lips and a flash of teeth brushed across her neck as he thrust up and into her with the kind of single-minded focus I’d witnessed on the Prague streets. Clearly, Steadman gave a consistent level of intensity to all things in his life, and from the sounds of it, Lissandra thoroughly enjoyed it.
My beast wanted to sit and watch, amplifying the morbid curiosity that had already caused me to stand there for too long. My pulse raced and my mouth turned dry. I crouched, chancing another look around the stacks and praying the darkness would continue to conceal me.
It was Arwood.
They were so busted.
I expected hasty movement, perhaps pleading protests from either of them for being caught red handed. His footsteps came to a stop as Lissandra cried out. Arwood gripped the edge of the desk, a sleeve of colored tattoos peeking out from underneath his rolled white shirt.
The professional and presentable Arwood had tattoos? I had no idea how to deal with this new information, let alone the next thing that came out of his mouth as he stared them down:
“Eyes on me as he fucks you.”
Oh.
My.
God.
He reached out, a thumb brushing Lissandra’s cheek. “I want to hear how he makes you feel. Let it out.” She gave an answering moan as he clutched her chin, leaning closer. “Again, angel.”
Another moan.
“She’s so close, aren’t you, gorgeous?” Steadman crooned in a tone that reminded me of liquid chocolate, which knocked me for six because associating chocolate with Steadman just … did not compute.
Lissandra’s chest strained against Steadman’s palm. His fingers flitted underneath her bra in time with her gasps. “Yes, yes—please, James—”
Steadman asked, “How do you want her?”
I realized that my mouth was hanging open. My lips clamped shut as Arwood tilted his head to the side, tugging at his undone tie. I had no idea what that action meant, but his right-hand man obviously did. Steadman pulled away, ignoring her cry of protest. They spun her until she sat flanked by both men on either side of the desk. Arwood’s reflection showed him pulling Lissandra back against him, capturing her lips in a kiss while Steadman tied her wrists together.
Goosebumps prickled the hot skin under my collar and jacket. I jammed my eyes closed. I’d never been so mindful of how much sound my clothing gave off as I walked or if a floorboard might creak under my boots.
Terrified to move; hating what it would mean if I stayed.
A giggle from Lissandra acted like a lasso. Despite myself, I peeked as Steadman laid the lower half of her body across the desk. Her back arched as her bound wrists—now looped around Arwood’s neck—pulled taut. Steadman peeled the rest of her dress down, revealing a dainty white G-string. The swirling black C insignia from the plaque on Waldemar’s front door inked the skin beside her spine. Of course. Camardo.
Whispered exchanges, murmurs of encouragement, of three people reveling in each other and enjoying being alive eroded my shock in favor of other emotions I had trouble identifying at first. A darkness ebbed at the corner of my thoughts, containing sharp spikes of anger and something else. Frustration? Confusion?
Mewling noises erupted from Lissandra, swallowed by Arwood’s lips, as Steadman thrust back inside her. His white dress shirt gaped open, the lamplight dancing across his sculpted torso. My eyes wandered downward—
I shook myself even as my beast purred at the sight.
This was too much. I couldn’t stay here. God, I couldn’t stay here. At some point—how long did this kind of thing last?!—they’d finish, and I’d be in even more danger of being discovered than I was now. The stack of photographs on the desk mocked me, my fingers itching to grab them. I held my breath, retreating a single step at a time. Lissandra’s cries reached fever pitch as I shut the door separating the office. My vision tilted and my insides felt molten, a tangled heat bundling in my stomach and accompanying a strange emptiness.
Images of Steadman and Arwood flashed behind my eyes. Of Silas working out, biceps bunching. My beast panted, urging me to go back, to seek out Silas, to do something. As soon as I imagined myself laid out on the table in front of Silas, or Steadman—or both—their hands kneading and parting my thighs, a warm tongue caressing mine while another trailed down my chest, I violently shook my head.
My beast was always unreasonable. That was normal. My thoughts weren’t, but at least I could finally pinpoint my biggest issue with all of this: like an absolute idiot, I’d blackmailed Steadman about Lissandra … and they were all together, investigating the very attacks I’d accused him of orchestrating.
Did everyone know? Was I too inexperienced, too sheltered, not to have realized this?
I tried to calm my breath, aware that in some corner of my brain I was close to hyperventilating. Steadman had been right. I didn’t understand my situation at all. I’d been way off base with him. Assumed Lissandra to be an unfaithful wife and a token extension of her father’s empire, instead of a powerful matriarch with her own agency. Not to mention that I’d made an enemy out of the Kohnstamms, willingly killed people, and shown Steadman I remained a flight risk in a single night.
I had nowhere to go but forward with Arwood. He’d funneled me to this outcome like a rat and for that, I’d been unforgivably naive. I had to get smarter.
At least I’d had the foresight to keep my near-abduction to myself. Johan was my trump card. While they were still trying to determine who he was, I knew his identity, knew he wanted me for some reason, and I wouldn’t give that information up for free.
I stumbled back to my room in the darkness, my beast rattling the bars of its cage and desperately craving a release I wasn’t even sure I understood.

54%

Either fate had a sense of humor, or it dealt bad karma for snooping, because the next evening Lissandra summoned me. I’d hoped to go a day, perhaps two, without seeing any of them. I hadn’t had nearly enough time to process and compartmentalize what I’d seen.
Steadman waited against a black Audi in the halo of light from the mansion’s windows, arms crossed over a black jacket that most definitely had a bullet-resistant vest beneath it. No Arwood. We were back to splitting up the trio.
The three of them on the desk flashed, unbidden, through my mind. My neck heated beneath my collar. I avoided eye contact with Steadman as we approached; of all the people to figure out what I now knew, it would be him.
Steadman closed the passenger door for Lissandra and slid into the driver’s seat. Surprised, I blurted, “Just the three of us?”
“Technically,” Steadman navigated the sedan out of the estate, heading for the city, “there are four of us, but I wouldn’t classify the man in our trunk as a willing guest.”
“There’s a man in the trunk,” I deadpanned, looking over my shoulder as if I’d somehow see a limb flailing. “Why is there a man in the trunk?”
Lissandra shifted in the passenger seat. Her blunt bangs framed eyes once again lined and shadowed to perfection. “Because it’s bad manners to attend a party without a gift.”
She and Steadman shared a coy smile, sending me mentally back into the library all over again—
Aaargh. Stop it, Keanna.
“Who is it? What if they suffocate? Are they hurt?”
Steadman’s eyes met mine in the rear-view mirror. “Don’t waste your energy being concerned for Ferko. He’s been nothing but a pain in our ass from the beginning.”
“How did you catch him?”
“Silas blocked off the exits and we dragged him from his club quite literally kicking and screaming,” Steadman said. “A little anticlimactic, actually.”
Of course he’d think that. “Who would appreciate Ferko in a trunk?”
“We’re hoping Gisele Kohnstamm,” Lissandra answered.
I’d had a bad feeling that was the case. “And if she doesn’t?”
“That’s why you’re here.”
Crap. Keanna Backhus, ready to detonate if required. “How do I tell you if anything changes, um, mood wise?”
“We’ll know.” Lissandra tapped to the guttural, guitar-heavy back catalog of Dire Straits. “Your face is an open book. It tells us everything.”
I froze, the beginnings of a frown starting to form. I hadn’t even felt it. She was right. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Steadman nodded. “Finally something we agree on, banshee.”
We drove past storefronts lining the streets, white plaques with the Kohnstamms’ caracal insignia or the Camardo’s C—or occasionally both—on clear display. I concentrated on spotting them to quell the awkwardness. Well, for me, at least. Steadman’s drumming on the steering wheel accompanied our navigation through the stop-start-stop evening traffic, and when ‘Africa’ by Toto came on Lissandra gripped his forearm, her teeth grazing her bottom lip.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
A smirk emerged, breaking the hard lines of Steadman’s face. “Morocco?”
Lissandra threw her head back, releasing a chuckle. “Thank goodness for sturdy balconies.”
“And loaded guns.”
Tension-filled—and probably illegal—memories flooded the car, like they’d forgotten little miss third-wheeling me was here at all.
In the trunk, barely discernible above the duet of Lissandra and Steadman’s “Aaaaafricaaaa,” Ferko’s body thumped. Was he even still alive?
What I’d said to Silas was true: these people were insane.
And I would never, ever listen to this song the same way again.