It only took leaving the mansion and being alone with Synek in the dark confines of the R8 to turn her night around.

He was quiet, had been ever since he’d slid behind the wheel, but his silence drew her to him even more. It was the way his hand had slipped lower on her waist as they left—how she could feel his entire energy change once they drove off.

Work was done for the night; that much she could guess in the relaxed lines of his body as he drove with one hand on the wheel and the other loosely wrapped around the gearshift.

He’d abandoned his suit jacket closer to the end of the night and rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. His dark hair was messy again, the strands as unruly as the man who wore them, and she could just see the cigarette newly tucked behind his ear.

Maybe she was impressed by how easily he had controlled the room when they were at the fundraiser, or maybe it was because he made a right sexy sight as he lazily drove them back to the brownstone, but whatever reason, her complete focus was on him.

Iris toed her heels off as she unsnapped her seat belt and turned in her seat. She could have smiled with how quickly his attention diverted to her, though he hadn’t taken his eyes off the road. She could see it in the way his hand tightened around the steering wheel and the slight shift that had him turning in her direction.

But it wasn’t until she was stretching her leg across their seats that he finally reacted—as if he’d been waiting out some internal battle until he couldn’t help himself anymore.

He lifted one hand to circle his fingers around her ankle and continued up, pushing the skirt of her dress back until her lower half was nearly exposed.

It was ridiculous how easily he made her heart trip over itself when the only thing he’d done was shift his fingers from her knee to her inner thigh, lightly tracing a circle over her flesh.

She was no longer thinking about the governor or the night they’d spent sizing up their opponent. The only thing Iris was thinking about was Synek and everything she wanted to do with him.

“Do you have to go in?” she asked, wondering if he would have to report back to the Kingmaker or someone about what had happened tonight.

She knew this job with the governor was time sensitive.

“Even if I did,” he said, gaze drifting to her as he stopped at a red light, “nothing would make me walk away from you right now.”

Synek just had a way with words.

And now that she could see his eyes, she could see the way his pupils dilated, leaving nothing but darkness. A darkness that called to her own and made her crave bad things with him.

He tapped the inside of her thigh, urging her to spread her legs wider for him, allowing him an unobstructed view of the juncture of her thighs and everything her dress hid. His fingers drifted higher again until his fingers swept over the lace she wore, the sound he made a mixture of pleasure and annoyance.

“These are in my way,” he whispered.

A statement as much as an unspoken demand for her to take the panties off.

Iris only hesitated a moment before lifting her hips and dragging the lace down her legs. When they got too low for her to reach, he tugged them off the rest of the way and tucked them away in his pocket.

Iris waited for that inevitable moment when he would touch her—when he would find her wet and aching for him—but he didn’t. Instead, a lazy smile curled his lips as he sped down the street.

“Touch yourself,” he said, his tone brokering no argument.

Iris had never considered herself shy, and she shouldn’t now, considering they were already in the darkened interior of his car where no one could see them.

Yet even as she started to do what she was told, her cheeks flushed red and her heart rate skyrocketed.

He was able to watch as she slid her hand down the flat, toned expanse of her abdomen before she went lower.

What he asked her to do wasn’t foreign to her, but she had never had an audience before, and Synek wasn’t one to shy away. He wasn’t shy about staring, nor did he make it a secret what he wanted to do with her as soon as he got the chance.

And that thought was as thrilling as it was terrifying.

Tentatively, she reached down, drawing in a breath before she rubbed a slow, tight circle over her clit.

She felt them roll to a stop and figured they were at another red light, but just as she was sure his gaze was on her, tracking over every exposed inch of her, she didn’t open her eyes.

She wanted to stay grounded in this, this endless moment that stretched between them.

The high—she’d begun to crave it. Crave him.

She didn’t know who was more of the slave to what she was doing—her because she was feeling it, experiencing it, or him because he looked as if her masturbating right beside him was a special kind of torture he couldn’t get enough of.

The way his fingers tightened around the steering wheel until his knuckles blanched, or how he shifted restlessly in the driver’s seat, and she could make out every thick, hard inch of his cock through his trousers.

“Stop,” he said, and her fingers obeyed before her brain could even process what he had said.

The crest that had been right there dissipated, the ache lingering. Her need still great, but she knew as soon as she opened her eyes and looked at him why he hadn’t let her come.

The first one was always his.

The sound of the tires skidding to a quick stop alerted her to the fact they were finally home.

“Inside,” he said and snapped off his seat belt, seeming unable to formulate more than a one-word response.

Iris walked, heels in hand, up the stairs and got the door open before Synek even made it around the car.

She could feel his eyes tracking her across the room before she ever turned to face him, but the visual was far better than her imagination. He yanked at the knot in his tie until the fabric loosened.

Maybe it was the champagne she’d downed at the fundraiser, or what had happened in the car after, or both, but whatever it was made her heart feel as if it was seconds from beating right out of her chest, and the ache he’d sparked earlier was flaring hotter.

It was one thing to see Synek in a suit—all dark vibes and tattoos—but it was something else entirely to watch him come out of one.

He took his time, watching her watch him, removing his weapons next, and then finally his shirt.

When he got to that last knife strapped to his forearm—his favorite knife, he’d said—he didn’t drop it with the others.

Instead, he walked toward her, holding it loosely in one hand.

Any rational person would have been rightfully afraid if Synek was approaching them with a knife in his hand, but too much excitement filled Iris for her to feel anything else.

She didn’t realize she had been backing away until her back hit the cool panes of the glass doors, and Synek was suddenly there. So close that she could smell the intoxicating scent of him surrounding her.

He turned the blade around in his hand, ever careful, never nicking himself even once, and she knew how sharp that knife was. But he knew how to handle them with expert precision, and he wanted her to know that.

His smile was a little dark, lips hiked up on one side as his gaze drifted over her face. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

No hesitation tonight.

No further thought.

She trusted him more than she had ever trusted another person in her life.

Her answer seemed to please him, but he didn’t respond right away. His intentions were unclear for as long as it took for him to reach out and touch her, her head falling back against the glass as he traced the pad of his thumb down the hollow of her throat and lower still, tracing a line ...

It only took her a moment longer to realize why he still held his knife and why he’d asked if she trusted him.

And as he saw the moment she realized his intentions, he smiled wider. “Breathe,” he said before he rested the gleaming tip of his knife against the ties on the front of her dress.

It didn’t matter that she knew he was good with a knife or that she had just watched him use it. She still couldn’t help the sharp intake of breath, but to keep her nerves, she whispered, “You bought it.”

He smirked.

Faster than she could process, he slipped the blade between the ties and jerked his arm back, the knife cutting seamlessly through the fabric and splitting it down the middle.

He tossed the knife away without another thought before his mouth was on hers, kissing the breath out of her. She could feel his need in every stroke of his tongue, the way his fingers dug into her hair before making a fist—the way she could feel his hard length through his trousers.

It all sparked a blissful agony in the pit of her stomach, spiraling outward until the only thing she wanted—the only thing she could even think about—was undressing him.

She wanted to feel the smoothness of his skin. Trace the scars that made him distinct from anyone she had ever been with.

One of his arms skimmed down to hook around her waist, lifting her with ridiculous ease until her legs wrapped around his waist. Her back hit the glass with enough force to tell her he was losing control, but she liked it all the more for it.

She liked that little bite of aggression he got when his patience ran out and the only thing on his mind was getting inside her.

He growled guttural words against her lips, the meaning lost on her, but she could guess what he was saying by the way he ground himself against her a moment before yanking at his trousers until he got them unbuttoned and unzipped.

His fingers dug into the flesh of her hips as his other fisted his cock. The first brush of the head against her damp, swollen folds making a cry spill out of her. This wasn’t their first time, the second, or even the fifteenth, but it all still felt so brand new that every feeling was acute and consuming.

Now was when that confident little smirk would appear on his face right as he made her beg and plead for his cock until she was mindless to everything else but the sensations he invoked.

But tonight, Synek looked as desperate as she felt.

He wasn’t interested in waiting and dragging this moment out.

He wanted to fuck.

With one punch of his hips, he was inside her, so deep so quickly that her nails dug into his back. And the groan that left him made her pelvic muscles flutter and tighten, her need ratcheting up by the second.

“Tell me how it feels,” he said against her lips, that dark smile playing at the edges of his mouth. “Tell me how good it feels, and I’ll fuck you the way you want.”

Gradually, he pulled out of her, making her moan, but it was only when he shoved back in a little too fast and a little too harsh that she gave him what he wanted.

The words exploded out of her. “It’s so good.”

“Tell me again,” he repeated, this time in her ear, another powerful thrust making her dig her nails in deeper.

The more she spoke, the faster he thrust. The filthier his words became, the more he gave her just that.

When she told him how much she loved his cock, he fisted her hair and dragged her head back until he could sink his teeth into her throat, sucking there until she was trembling and whispering incoherently.

When she begged for more, her name fell like a curse out of his mouth as he pounded into her.

And when she screamed that she was coming, his eyes closed in blissful surrender before he came too.

* * *

Waking up four hours later, Iris reached across the bed to where Synek should be lying but found cool sheets.

She turned again to glance at the clock, blinking to clear her blurry vision until the illuminated red numbers came into focus.

3:58 a.m.

She didn’t remember what time they’d gotten in the night before, or how long they’d spent together before finally passing out, but she knew it was much too early for Synek to be awake.

And if she had to guess, he was probably working.

Lately, that was all he did. Not that she blamed him much.

She had spent many nights in her old apartment working until she passed out, only to wake up and not remember where she was. And twenty minutes later, she’d be right back to working again.

Sitting up, Iris slipped out of bed and pulled on the shirt Synek had left on the floor, buttoning it up the front.

She walked barefoot out of the bedroom, following the trail of lights that led to the living room where she found Synek in the middle of the floor surrounded by chaos.

Over the weeks they had been living together, she had grown used to his late hours and his restless nature—it was all a part of who he was—but even when he was going after the Wraiths and making it his mission to end Rosalie, she didn’t think she had seen him as obsessive as he was now.

Something about this job was different for him.

Now, it felt like he had more to lose.

Which only made her wonder if he was working so hard because of her or the man he was still looking for. The last thing she wanted was to compound his stress.

Synek sat shirtless on the floor, his back to her, though she could just see the bite mark she’d left on the side of his neck—twin to the ones he’d left on her thighs. She took a moment to appreciate the sight of him like that, unable to help herself, before she crossed the floor to better see what held his attention.

From what she could see, boxes upon boxes of files were arranged in an order that made little sense to her, though Synek seemed to be organized just fine.

Synek didn’t react to her presence until she was nearly beside him and had picked up a file he’d tossed onto the couch he was sitting back against.

Flipping it around, she read the label, finding a name she didn’t recognize scrawled across the top.

“Who’s Zachariah?”

Synek exhaled in frustration, scrubbing both hands down his face before he looked over at her. “We called him Z. He was one of the handlers for the Den. Some of us, like Red, for example, reported to him directly.”

“What happened to him?” she asked, not missing his use of past tense when he referred to the man.

“Dead, as far as I know,” he responded, though something about his tone made her wonder about how the man had ended up that way.

“Dead, dead? Or is he missing the way Grimm is?”

He scratched the spot just above his brow. “As far as I know, he’s in the ground. At least that’s what the Kingmaker told us.”

Iris sunk onto the couch cushions beside him, her knee brushing his shoulder. “Okay, so what are you looking for?”

Especially this late at night. Whatever it was had to be important, and if it was important to him, the least she could do was try to help him find it. And from the looks of things, he hadn’t been particularly successful in his hunt for information.

The box closest to his right was the only one that was open. Its contents spilled out all around him, including a mixture of documents, black and white photographs, and what looked like kill diagrams.

“There’s nothing here,” Synek said with another sigh, his gaze dropping to the pages in his lap, though from the expression on his face, it too wasn’t providing any answers. “At this point, I’d take anything.”

He was frustrated. Iris knew the feeling well, but she also knew that he would only be half as productive if he let himself get defeated.

“This has something to do with Grimm, right? You think something in these files will help you find him?”

“I don’t know, but at this point, this is the only thing we have to go on.”

For now, he didn’t say.

“Okay, maybe I can help you find something,” she suggested, plucking the folder from his lap to place with the other she was already holding. “What have you gotten so far?”

“Fuck all. Z might have kept meticulous notes, but he hardly kept anything for that last job he sent Grimm on.”

Just from what she read on the top sheet of handwritten notes, there were names and dates, as well as a summary of where this particular mercenary had gone to complete the job. If this was everything he had just on this one particular assignment, she could only imagine what all there was, considering the years the Den had been in operation.

“So you need info on his last job?”

She expected him to agree and give her instruction on what she needed to be looking for, but instead, he sighed and leaned his head back. “It’s late, dove. You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“And leave you up alone? Not a chance. Just tell me what I need to look for.”

“Probably best if I don’t tell you what to look for. Go in blind and all. See what pops out.”

That way, she wouldn’t have any preconceived notions about what she might find. There would be less for her to ignore if she didn’t rule anything out.

Looking back at the contents in her lap, she started reading.

Z’s notes were meticulous.

Every detail perfectly written out, so it wasn’t hard for her to follow the case file even though she didn’t know any of the names involved. She tried to imagine how long this would have taken him, not just from the mercenary recounting the job, but the time and effort the man had put in to researching the mark.

That would only make her job easier.

Not sure how much time had passed while engrossed in the file, Iris glanced over at Synek, surprised to find him fast asleep. A soft smile crossed her face before she stood and walked over to grab one of the throw blankets bundled in the basket next to the couch.

Stretching it out over him, she then carefully put one of the throw pillows behind his head before grabbing the folders he’d already searched through and carrying them back into the bedroom.

On the tapes her father had recorded in the days leading to his incarceration, he said the answers she sought would be found in the details.

At fourteen, she hadn’t known what that meant, nor did she have the first idea where to look to find any such “details.”

At sixteen, the details included a low-level drug dealer’s obsession with a prostitute named Amanda Smith, a woman who also liked to spend time with a then up-and-coming politician named Michael Spader.

At eighteen, she learned Amanda Smith had mysteriously disappeared.

With one little connection, Iris had inevitably put together pieces that hadn’t made sense until she had them all laid out—or rather put up—on her wall with red yarn to connect one to the next.

She could do the same with this.

A few minutes passed as she cleared the bed off, stacking the pillows neatly on the floor and folding the comforter into an oversized square next to them. Once the bed was nothing more than a blank canvas of white, she started.

The thing about this kind of research was that it was easy to form an idea of who a person was, or at least who they had been, by the information left in the documents.

Spader had been a man of wealth and means who used his advantages to destroy the lives of others with little care as to how it affected anyone else, but as Iris went through each file, she wasn’t just learning about the inner musings of Z, whose detailed notes also provided a look at the man himself, but she learned about Grimm as well.

Special ops, his file—the first one ever recorded on him—said. Calm and collected. Efficient and quiet.

The perfect soldier, Z had written in pen alongside typed notes, though if Iris remembered some of her father’s musings, a Marine was a Marine and didn’t like to be called a soldier.

She set that file to one side of the bed, if only because it was the start of it all. Then she hunted through the rest of the files until she found the one dated most recently.

Everything in the middle was what would matter.

She just had to find the details.

* * *

Sleep was coming more readily to Synek, and though he had the occasional nightmare—that woke him on a silent scream with reflexes ready to defend himself—he now could go a few hours without being startled awake by his own conscience.

He blinked his eyes open, briefly bewildered by where he was before sitting up, the blanket covering him sliding down to pool in his lap.

When in the hell had he grabbed that?

Iris.

The answer came immediately as his sluggish brain caught up with the rest of him. He glanced to his left, then his right, expecting to find her nearby, whether working or finally back asleep, but if she was either, he didn’t know because she was no longer in the room. Nor were the files he’d been sorting through for hours after he’d woken up earlier.

Scrubbing a hand down his face, he stood and stretched his tight muscles to ease some of the tension. Too many late nights and not enough sleep were catching up with him, but he didn’t have time to let himself crash for too long.

Their unspoken deadline loomed over him, lingering in the back of his mind even when he tried not to think about it.

After a quick trip to the bathroom to clean himself up, he headed to the kitchen and put a kettle on before going to look for Iris. Yawning behind his fist, he entered the bedroom on this floor and then promptly stopped in the middle of the floor.

The first thing he saw was Iris fast asleep on the floor, one arm tucked beneath her head as a pillow. It was obvious she had crashed while working, considering the number of open folders around her and the sheer chaos that was the bed.

He wasn’t sure how long she had been working while he’d slept, but from the looks of it, she’d been going for hours.

The mercenary in him wanted to see what she had found and try to understand the puzzle she’d left behind from the way the files and documents were arranged on the bed, but instead, he merely spared it a single glance before making his way across the floor to her.

Careful not to jostle her too much, he lifted her and carried her out of the room, almost smiling when she wrapped her arms around his neck, though she had yet to waken.

He laid her on the sofa, covering her with the same blanket she’d covered him.

Soon, he thought as he straightened and headed back over to the gently whistling kettle. Soon there wouldn’t be anything to keep them up at odd hours and only sleeping when they were too exhausted to do anything else.

It was the unspoken promise he’d made to her.

He doubted his demons would ever truly go away—that he would ever lead a completely normal life—but Iris quieted his mind. She helped him think clearly, breathe easier, and feel like he wasn’t losing a battle with his own mind.

He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything, even his own sanity. And if he had to take on a fucking army to make sure she stayed by his side, he would.

Once he had her settled, Synek fixed his tea and walked back into the bedroom to survey her progress.

Now that he was significantly more awake and alert than he had been before, he got back to work.

For a man who spent a great deal of time transcribing their lives, Z had fuck all on Grimm’s latest job. Considering there had even been a report card in one of Synek’s earlier jobs with three little words written on the first page—cruel, lonely, and vicious—he expected to find more on Grimm, who had been there longer.

Z could be a judgmental little prick when he wanted to be, and while he hadn’t disapproved of Synek entirely, he always worried that Synek was too unstable to do the job that the Kingmaker needed the mercenaries for.

He wasn’t entirely wrong. Synek could be bad for business if left to his own devices for too long. Even he didn’t remember much of those early days beyond the brief flashes of memories that came and went.

One would think that everything would be okay now that he wasn’t having to deal with mind games from the homicidal bitch who liked to sleep with him, or a mother who thought beating him would purge him of his “sins,” but it took far more than a new job to do that.

He’d been in a dark place for years and was only just finally getting out of it.

Focusing on the task at hand, Synek tried to make sense of what she had laid out on the bed, following the circle of facts in the way Iris saw them rather than what he thought to be true.

If she hadn’t arranged it in the order she did, he would have never put it together this way. There was no chronological order between the cases, rather a number from the past year he had seen, and the rest scattered across at least five years

And it seemed, just as they were looking for Grimm, the other man had been hunting something of his own as well.

But what?

The sound of footsteps had him looking up, spying Iris stumbling toward him even as she rubbed her eyes. He could tell she was exhausted, especially after he had already kept her up well into the night before waking her again, yet she refused to stay in bed.

An unbidden smile turned his lips as he reached for her without thought, catching her before she could stumble into anything else and pulling her down onto his lap.

“You should be sleeping,” he said, tossing the papers he’d been reading to the side to better turn her in his arms.

“So should you,” she said after a yawn, “but here we are.”

Iris finally managed to pry her eyes open and take in the organized chaos she had left behind the night before. As quickly as she had seemed fatigued, she was wide-awake now as she launched into the meaning behind every choice she had made, connecting the dots for him until he understood what she had found that he had never thought to see.

Even after she had trailed off and he still stared down at everything she had put together, he didn’t realize she was watching him until he looked at her. She had a habit of doing this when she was thinking something important, but lately, she hadn’t been sharing her thoughts with him. Even when he could tell with a glance at her face that she wasn’t telling him the truth.

But he didn’t pry. He had plenty of time to figure out her secrets.

“What was he like?” she asked suddenly, drawing him from his own thoughts until he focused on her. “Grimm, I mean. It’s obvious you care about him a lot, but you’ve never really talked about him.”

That was because it didn’t even make sense to him, at least not completely.

Grimm had been the one to train him when no one else wanted to even step near him. And Synek remembered all too clearly what he had been like during those early days in the Den when he’d wrought a path of destruction that could hardly be contained. But the other man had had a death wish.

Clearly.

Why fucking else would he bother?

It was for both those reasons that Synek was determined to find him. He owed the man a debt for helping him when he hadn’t any idea how to help himself and he wanted to know Grimm’s motives behind it.

He was most curious about that.

“He was a pretentious bastard,” Synek answered after a while, conjuring an image of the man in his mind. “Ex-special forces from what I understand.”

Though no one had been able to tell him whether he was American or British. Synek thought he could spot a fake a mile away, but Grimm’s accent was flawless on both sides. And depending on who was asking determined which nationality he gave.

“He didn’t like to talk about himself, or even the reason he ended up with the Den.”

“Did he know about you?” she asked, her expression falling. “Did he know about how you came to the Den?”

It wasn’t something he had talked to many about, though they had all drawn their own conclusions with the secretive way he had entered the fold. But Synek knew all about him, and that was even before he’d voluntarily told the man the information.

“He was there the day the Kingmaker came to recruit me and the day I walked into the Den.”

Grimm was there during some of the lowest moments in his life. It wasn’t so much a mystery about why he felt as if he owed him when he thought back to how much the man had helped him over the years.

For whatever reason, the other man had taken pity on him and had not ostracized him as so many others had.

Synek brushed a hand through his hair. “He found the family I sent Winter to live with.”

It would have been impossible, in the midst of his training and work, to effectively raise an eleven-year-old girl, especially in his condition. He’d barely been able to keep himself together, and if left with him, he might have fucked her up more than he’d intended.

But Synek hadn’t trusted anyone with Winter, not when she had been the lone light in his life at the time.

“He’s saved my life more than once,” Synek went on. More times than he probably deserved. “I owe him a debt.”

“We’ll find him,” she said, offering him a smile when he brushed the pad of his thumb across her lips. “I’m good at finding people, you know.”

Yeah, he knew that all too well.