My foot tapped the floor impatiently while Austin explained to me again how his tattoo equipment worked.

“I get it, Aus.” I rolled my eyes and held up my wrist with the tiger lily tattoo. “Magical learning spell still active, remember?”

His lips pursed, and I was torn between wanting to flick him in the forehead again and wanting to kiss him. Damn, this new development was going to be confusing.

“Can you let me do it now?” I prompted, and he sighed heavily.

“Fine. I guess if you really fuck it up I can just erase it with magic.” His confidence in me was staggering. “All right, where is it going?”

I beamed. Silly, silly man. He had been so confident this far because he was already so covered in ink that one more little design would just get lost. But I had a better idea.

“Lie down,” I ordered, patting his bed, which we were sitting on the edge of. “On your front.”

Austin gave me a suspicious look but did as I asked, stretching out on the bed with his arms propped under his head, probably thinking I was putting it on his back.

Hopping up from where I had been sitting, I resituated myself to straddle the backs of his legs, then slipped my fingers under the waistband on his boxers to slide them down, exposing his totally uninked backside.

“Princess,” he growled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Shush,” I replied, leaning over to his bedside table to grab the tattoo gun we had already prepared with black ink. “You lost our bet fair and square. Now just lie there and take it like a man.”

Finally I began to feel a bit of concern from him, and I snickered as I began the design I’d already mapped out in my head. We’d already established that I was no van Gogh, so Austin had used a washable marker to ink a small talent spell into my right hand which would give me enough artistic ability to pull off a half-decent tattoo.

Not that this needed Rembrandt-level artistry.

“Hey, Austin. Have you seen”—Caleb cut off as he opened the door and saw me straddling his half-naked brother and brandishing a tattoo gun—“Kit. Huh, guess it’s payback time, is it?”

“It sure is.” I grinned at him and winked. This had been his idea after all.

A wicked smile curved his lips as he sat against the headboard to watch.

“That’s a nice T-shirt you’re wearing, Kitty Kat,” the observant bastard commented, and I looked down at the vintage Guns N’ Roses concert T-shirt I had stolen from Austin’s drawer. It was long enough that it wasn’t totally obvious I had nothing else on. Not even underwear.

When I said he had done something magical to get them off me, he really had. Or maybe we just hadn’t looked hard enough before disappearing up here.

“Thanks,” I smirked back. “I think it really brings out my eyes.” I batted my lashes at him, and he gave me a knowing wink.

“Cal,” Austin muttered, “tell me what she’s drawing on my ass.”

Caleb leaned forward to peer at my half-completed design and snorted. “Nice one.”

“I thought so,” I preened, but neither one of us responded to Austin.

“Guys...” he groaned, and I slapped his other bare cheek.

“Just shut up so I can finish. We should probably go and clean up the kitchen too,” I pondered aloud while I continued on the tattoo. That magical learning spell was seriously coming in handy because my first attempt at a tattoo was turning out pretty damn great.

“All right, done,” I announced, wiping it off with a cloth and replacing the gun onto the bedside table.

Austin craned his neck to see, then slapped me on the leg so he could get up and look in the mirror. Caleb and I exchanged grins as Austin stood in front of his ensuite bathroom mirror for a really long time.

“Babe?” I called out in a sickly sweet and very sarcastic voice. “Do you love it?”

There were a few moments more of silence before he stalked back out of the bathroom to glare at the two of us, his underwear still pulled down under his seriously tight butt cheek.

“You were in on this too, huh?” he asked his twin, and Caleb snorted a laugh.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re on your own, Kitty Kat,” he chuckled, racing out of the room again and slamming the door behind him.

Austin levelled a glare on me, but I could already sense he wasn’t anywhere near as annoyed as I had aimed to make him.

“Property of Princess Kit?” he asked me, repeating the words now tattooed onto his ass. “With a little fox wearing a crown?”

“You wrote Austin in between my butterflies and didn’t think I noticed,” I retorted, and his eyebrows shot up with surprise. “I’d say we’re even now. Besides”—I smirked, grabbing him by the elastic waistband and pulling him down to me on the bed—“you are property of Princess Kit.”

Austin braced himself against the bed, his hands either side of me as he leaned in close enough to kiss. “I am no one’s property, baby girl. You’ll learn.”

He kissed me then, but I laughed against his mouth. If anyone would be learning... it’d be him.

When we eventually surfaced out from Austin’s room, I found the kitchen already cleaned up and a plate of fresh cinnamon-coffee cookies sitting on the table in front of the guys.

“Kitten, there you are,” River commented, looking up from where he’d been leaning over Wesley’s laptop screen. “Sit, please. We have something to discuss.”

“Uh, that doesn’t sound so good,” I muttered under my breath, pulling up a chair and tucking my leg up underneath me. Before coming into the kitchen, I’d ducked upstairs and dressed in my own clothes again, seeing as all of mine from earlier were still MIA.

“It’s... well, you’ll see.” River rolled his neck like he’d been craning over Wesley’s shoulder for too long already. “Go ahead, Wes.”

Glancing around the table, none of the other guys seemed remotely curious, other than Austin who clearly had as little clue what was going on as I did. Which made sense, as we’d been occupying each other all afternoon.

“Okay, so River and I have been doing a lot of reading and research and stuff into Omega Group and your dad,” he started, pushing his glasses up as they slipped forward. I smiled seeing him wearing them again. As much as I knew contacts were easier when we were constantly on the run or getting blown up or, well, making out, his glasses reminded me of when we’d first met.

“Yup, I know this.” I nodded my understanding.

“Right, well, one of my keyword searches of government databases brought up something that concerns you.” Wesley spun the computer around and pushed it across to me to read. A light frown pulled at my brows as I took the laptop and scanned the document in front of me.

“Oh,” I said when I finished and officially felt like my stomach was lodged in my throat. “I knew that doctor was up to no good.”

I pushed the computer away from me and dropped my face into my hands with a groan. Anxiety pooled in my belly like cold blood, and I was pretty sure I was getting a migraine... if that was even possible for Ban Dia.

“So, what I gather from that is that the psychotic little worm who took my blood then left me for dead at Gray’s hands is now conducting experiments on people using a serum made from my blood.” I waved a hand at the document on Wesley’s screen. No one spoke, but Wesley nodded. “So this is Dupree and the Blood Moon labs all over again?”

“Except,” Caleb pointed out as he munched on a coffee cookie. “This guy sounds like he’s succeeding. At least temporarily.”

He was right. I groaned again and bashed my head—lightly—on the table a couple of times before Cole put his hand between my forehead and the wood.

“Okay. So... what do we do?” I looked hopefully around at my guys. Surely they already had a genius plan in mind?

“About him?” River shrugged, “Nothing. He only managed to make off with one small vial of your blood, right?” I nodded. “Well then, hopefully it simply runs out soon. It sounds like this serum he made only lasts a few days, so I think we just let it run its course.”

“There’s something else,” Wesley informed me, and I sighed.

“Of course there is,” I lamented. “Hit me with it.”

His hand ran through his blond hair nervously, and he chewed the corner of his lip. “Director Pierre made contact with us. He wants to meet.”

“Huh?” I blurted, and Austin snickered.

“Very eloquent, Princess,” he mocked me, and I flipped him off before turning back to Wes.

“How?” I asked, sucking a breath in and collecting my thoughts before trying again. “I mean, how did he contact you? I thought we were totally secure on our network?”

“We are,” Wes assured me. “But he knew we would be digging around, so he’d left a message in one of the files I hacked. He wants to sit down and explain things to you before you ‘wind up in over your head.’ His words, not mine.”

The sound of my fingers drumming on the wooden tabletop was the only sound in the room for a moment while I thought this over. Jonathan wanted to meet? Of course he did. Probably to try and finish the job and blow us all up again. My gut reaction was to tell him to fuck right off, but what if there was more to it?

Caleb placed my giant Kit’s Kup down in front of me, full of fresh coffee, and I stared into it like maybe it held the answers I was looking for.

Jonathan had always been good to me. He’d rescued me from Suzette and Gray, he’d taken me into his own home despite how much red tape he’d needed to circumvent, and he’d given me everything I ever wanted. But now I was questioning his motives. Acts I had assumed were driven by love for me, or at very least affection, now seemed nefarious.

The what-ifs could drive me insane, and there was really only one way to know for sure.

“Set it up,” I told them. “I want to hear what he has to say, what could possibly justify trying to kill us. Twice.”

“Are you sure, Kitten?” River checked, spearing me with his stern, golden gaze.

Was I sure? No, not really. But it seemed like the best course of action for my own sanity and peace of mind. I couldn’t live with the unknowns around my last six years as Jonathan’s “daughter.” If he really was the two-faced piece of shit he was looking like, then I’d rather know definitively.

“Yeah. Set it up, but for next week or something? I want to bond Cole and Vali first and get a handle on the dragon magic. We don’t even know if I will end up shifting or whatever, so better to get that sorted while we’re out here away from people, right?” I glanced over at the two dragons in question. Cole looked a bit stunned, and Vali just looked... happy. It struck a chord inside me that I was able to produce such an expression of contentment and relief on such a hard man.

“All right, we’ll get it done, love,” River accepted, still watching me with sharp eyes. “I take it you and Austin have finished magic training now?”

“Uh...” My eyes flew wide and darted to Austin. Was that what they thought we’d been doing all afternoon? Magic training?

“Not likely,” Austin snorted, not being struck by the same deer-in-headlights situation that I was experiencing. “Christina keeps fucking around. But we can be done by tomorrow, I think.”

I scowled at him, not missing the emphasis he’d placed on fucking. “I do not,” I growled, not wanting River to think I wasn’t taking this seriously. I was. But what had transpired between Austin and I had needed to happen, for both our sanity.

“Uh-huh, sure, Princess.” Austin rolled his eyes, just like he’d done a million times before, but the difference now was that he wasn’t hiding his amusement. And arousal. The long fingers of his hand slid across onto my thigh—under the table—and I squeaked.

“You okay, Vixen?” Cole asked, narrowing his granite eyes at me suspiciously.

Biting my lip to keep a moan inside when Austin’s fingers traced the seam of my pants right over my crotch, I nodded frantically.

“Yup, super,” I replied, swatting Austin’s hand away and pushing back from the table. “We should go, um, keep going. With magic, I mean.” From the burst of amusement Austin shocked me with, I expected him to be bent over crying with laughter, but when I speared him with a death glare, his face was as stony and scowling as usual. The only hint that I wasn’t getting my wires crossed was the gleam in his emerald-green eyes.

Fuck, he’s good.

“Austin?” I prompted, letting myself fall back into old habits of being snarky as fuck toward him. “You coming or are you going to keep fucking around out here?”

A smirk cracked through his serious expression, and I realized too damn late what I’d just said.

“Oh, I’m coming,” he teased, pushing back from the table himself and snagging a couple of coffee cookies before sauntering toward me.

“Oh, Kitten?” River called out just before I left the kitchen. Spinning to face him, I froze when I saw the fabric dangling from his fingers. “You left these on top of the stove.”

Totally at a loss for words, I rushed back over and snatched my green lace panties from his hand, but he held tight and met my eyes. My shoulders tensed, and I braced for... I don’t even know what. Judgement? Disappointment?

“Enjoy the rest of magic training.” Was all he said after a long, pregnant pause. “I have no doubt Cole and Vali are looking forward to becoming your new teachers.”

Embarrassment heated my face to the point I was positive I’d turned into a tomato, but I just nodded sharply in lieu of a response. A quick glance around the table told me that the rest of the guys were definitely in on the joke and all supremely amused.

Well shit. Amused was better than angry or jealous, right?

Not sure I wanted to discuss it any further, I hurried after Austin, back to his bedroom where I slammed the door behind me and leaned against it with a groan.

“It’s not funny!” I snapped, seeing the Ink Mage grinning broadly as he hunted in a drawer and pulled out some pens and paper. “Oh, we’re actually doing magic.”

“Princess,” he chuckled, dropping the materials onto his bed and advancing toward me with a predatory look in his eye. “It’s very funny. They were going to find out anyway. Cal and I are on extreme probation with Alpha, so I would have needed to fess up sooner or later. That is, if they hadn’t already heard us this afternoon.”

His muscular body pinned me to the door, his hand cupping my chin tightly and his hard length pressing against my belly. In his eyes I found raw hunger, desire, and passion. From our magical link I was flooded with love, and my body tightened with excitement.

“Besides, better they know now. I intend to make you scream tonight.” My whole body shook with a shiver as his lips claimed mine in a kiss so savage it could cause bruising.

I fucking loved it.