by Elisa Paige
His face went rigid as he stood. “I have something to do this afternoon, but I’ll be back by sunset.” He spoke words I didn’t understand, their melodic sounds at odds with his hard tone. “Stay here until I return. Don’t try to leave this room.”
Infuriated, I turned my back on him—another warrior insult, since it signified my disdain for the threat he presented.
I spent the next few hours in unaccustomed stillness and the waiting made me crazy, since each lost moment delayed my revenge. I imagined how Jack was putting miles between us while I sat on my ass in a dusty, abandoned highrise where some human had whiled away his mortal life pushing papers, filing meaningless forms and drinking foul black water he inaccurately called coffee.
The more I thought about it, the madder it made me, which was okay since being pissed was so much easier to deal with than despair.
I was still tired from having pushed so hard the last few weeks and I welcomed the anger at this, too. If I’d been smarter, I wouldn’t have been exhausted, the frenzy wouldn’t have taken over, I wouldn’t have fought so badly and I wouldn’t be wearing Koda’s damned bindings.
I was working myself up into a proper tizzy when I smelled something burning.
In a matter of moments, the hall outside the office filled with an impenetrable layer of gray, billowing smoke and I lost sight of the ceiling as clouds roiled in. That’s when I realized the floor I was sitting on felt rather warmer than it should.
I shot to my feet before remembering why this was a bad idea—the air was clearer close to the floor. Returning to my hands and knees, I slung my backpack over my shoulders and scurried toward the open doorway. Even breathing shallowly, the smoke burned in my lungs and set me coughing.
Worrying that my beloved motorcycle was turning into melted slag on the floor below me, I’d made it within five feet of freedom when lassitude pulled at my limbs, dragging me down to my belly. Again and again, I commanded my body to move move move, but the best I could manage against Koda’s bindings was an inch-worm crawl as the smoke thickened around me. The roar of the flames was deafening and the smell of scorched carpet, burning electrical wiring and crackling drywall made me light-headed from chemical fumes.
The bindings didn’t recognize the fact that the building was going up in flames around me—only Koda’s command that I stay put until his return. That I’d be reduced to ashes didn’t factor in.
Raging in my head at the arrogant man who’d effectively chained me to a freaking inferno, I had to wonder if maybe he was the one who’d set the fire. Just as quickly, I dismissed the idea—if he’d really wanted me dead, he’d had ample opportunity to make me that way. Besides, the speed and ferocity of this fire, as well as the impossibly thick clouds of choking smoke, told me it had been set by fae—Fire Kith, to be precise, since they had the ability to manipulate flame the way the other kiths or castes manipulated water, earth and air.
Even thinking about the bastards made me breathless with caustic hatred. I had to pause and make myself focus or risk that the rising rage would sweep me into another frenzy. Considering the conflagration around me, I might as well just kill myself and have done with it.
To gain my revenge, however, I had to get out of here.
Battling for every foot won, I made it halfway through the office door and onto the hallway’s scuffed tile floor. I’d hoped it would be cooler, that I could get some respite from the heat, but the surface was hot enough to sting my bare palms. At least my black biker’s pants and jacket gave me some protection, although the butter-soft leather created more friction on the tile than cloth would have, making me work twice as hard to go half as far.
“Sephti!” a voice bellowed and I lifted my head to see cowboy boots and jeans-clad legs pounding toward me through the wall of smoke.
“You idiot,” I rasped, “get on the floor!”
Koda knelt, touching the bracelets and necklace to release me as his eyes scanned my body. “You are unhurt?”
“Just a little crispy around the edges. What are you doing here? You do realize the building is on fire?”
His dark gaze glittered. “Yeah, I noticed.”
Getting to my knees, I ran a trembling hand through my hair, willing my muscles to shake off the lingering lethargy from his bindings. Coughing, I wheezed, “Still trying to keep your word to James?”
Koda shook his head, scowling.
“Then why the freaking hell would you run into a burning—”
“I came for you.”
“What?” I gasped, incredulous.
He looked away. “You heard me.” Swinging his head back to glare at me, he growled, “Somebody had to have set this fire—”
“Ya think?” Forcing my still sluggish body to move and not waiting for his response, I scurried on hands and knees toward the closest stairwell.
“Not that way! The fire’s worse there. We have to go the long way round.”
I whirled and headed the other direction. Figuring he’d have scouted the building and seen my precious Ninja, I asked, “What about my bike?”
Koda shook his head again.
I ground my teeth with fury.
Together, we struggled through the long hallway. Even with the hems of our shirts over our lower faces, we were choking on the astringent smoke. I’d begun to think we’d missed the stairwell when Koda grabbed my shoulder.
Running his hand down my arm, he wrapped his fingers around my wrist and forcibly pressed my palm against an open doorway. He put his mouth near my ear and shouted, but the fire’s roar had grown exponentially and even my acute hearing couldn’t make out his words.
I grabbed his hand where it still gripped my arm and pulled, willing him toward the opening. His broader shoulders rammed into the door’s frame, slamming him into me, before we managed to right ourselves and get through. The air was better here since the stairwell served as a chimney to suck the worst of the smoke up and away from us. I caught a glimpse of Koda’s soot-covered face and wondered dimly how he could still look so damn good.
Shaking it off and pissed at myself, I slithered down the stairs as fast as I could without breaking my neck, sensing Koda right behind me. We made it to the ground floor’s emergency exit and I confirmed that it was safe to open by feeling the coolness of its steel—there was no fire on the other side.
Koda said something I couldn’t make out.
“What?” I shouted over the fire’s din, dipping my head closer.
He put his mouth by my ear. “Fae can’t touch steel or iron.”
I rocked back and looked at him, incredulous. “We’re about to get burned to cinders and you’re still hung up…” I shook my head in sudden fury. “Listen, buddy, this is the last time I’m going to say it. I am not fae!”
His eyes gleamed and I was astonished to see he was amused to have gotten a rise out of me. He leaned against the concrete doorframe and chuckled, his teeth white in his sooty face.
I scowled. “Now? With the freaking building burning down around us, now is when your sense of humor rears its pathetic head?”
He laughed harder and reached to open the door, freezing as I grabbed his hand before he could push it open.
“Wait a second,” I said. “The bastards left only one path for us to get out. What do you want to bet somebody’s waiting on the other side of this door?”
“Sonuvabitch fae,” he snarled, his amusement evaporating.
“Amen,” I muttered, extending my awareness to the spaces outside the building, checking for an ambush.
Practically twitching with impatience, Koda spoke by my ear. “Anything?”
I shook my head. “But that doesn’t mean no one’s there. Fae know better than anyone how bitterns work, so they’d know best how to screw with me.”
Koda lifted a brow. “Why are fae so familiar with your kind?”
Shooting him a sidelong look, I wiped the sweat from my eyes. “Do you have a car close by?”
His expression told me we�
�d revisit the question I’d evaded. “I parked my pickup on a busy lot near the West End.”
“Good, the place is always packed with tourists so we’ll be less noticeable.”
“Which would be why I chose to park there,” Koda said in a dry tone, his voice rough from the thick smoke.
Ignoring the comment, I rasped, “I can shade the both of us, but not for long. I’ll get us as far from this building as I can, but keep your eyes open and don’t make a sound—just because they can’t see us doesn’t mean they can’t hear us.”
“All right.” Koda watched me intently, his eyes watering.
I suppressed the urge to cough and rubbed at my own wet cheeks. What I was about to tell him went against all my instincts, since I didn’t like anyone to know the details of my existence. “They’ll expect me to shade us, but will have no idea when we leave the building.”
“We’re not using the door?”
“We are, but that doesn’t mean it has to open. When we’re shaded, our forms are like mist. As long as there are cracks around the door I can pass us through them. Even a keyhole or mail slot is sufficient.” Koda sat back on his heels, his face blanching. “They know this too and will have some kind of diversion set up to try to shake my concentration. Whatever it is, we have to ignore it or they’ll have us. So when we go through, go out low and fast. Whatever you do, don’t let go. If we’re not touching, the best I can do is blur your shape. I can’t hide you completely.”
He nodded and held out his hand. As I hesitated, suddenly reluctant to touch him, Koda’s gaze turned challenging. Feeling my cheeks heat, I stammered, “Doing this. Shading you. I’ve heard that it may feel, um, pretty intimate.”
His eyes went flat, but I wasn’t sure if it was revulsion or interest I saw in their depths. It blew my mind that I cared.
Muttering a curse, I grabbed his hand and concentrated, blushing again at his sharp inhalation when the shading’s energy tingled from my flesh into his.
“We’ll be able to see and touch each other, since our bodies will be in the same state,” I told him, my voice thready from the effort I was expending. “Prepare yourself. The first time you go through a crack is memorable.”
His face went even more pale beneath the soot and his hand tightened on mine. No doubt, he was wondering what would happen if we became separated halfway through the door. It was something he really didn’t need to know.
“Ready?” I asked, waiting for his nod.
Focusing, I collected Koda into my awareness, allowing my senses to slide up his muscular arm and across his broad shoulders. When my mental touch reached his neck, Koda tilted his head to the side like it felt good and I knew when his pulse accelerated. Extending up his square jaw and along the lush contours of his lips, I traced the planes of his beautiful face up into his scalp and down the lengths of his silken jet hair.
Koda reached for my free hand, his broad palm warm and strong. I met his intense gaze and was startled as erotic heat flared in my belly. My lips parted and the way his eyes focused on them set my heart thundering even faster than usual.
Sternly concentrating on the task and trying to ignore my astonishing reactions, I pressed my mental touch down his broad chest, delighting in the way his muscles quivered within my senses. Moving lower, I got as far as his flat belly when I froze, unable to go farther south.
Amusement warred with the sensual weight of his gaze as Koda bent his head even closer to mine. “I’d like to take all of me when we go and am particularly fond of the part you’ve not yet gotten to. Kindly finish what you’ve started.”
Blushing furiously, I swallowed hard. Hoping to speed things along, I stretched my awareness around his waist so that my mental touch covered him front and back as I went lower. Down his abdomen and his narrow waist, I eased closer to the masculine wealth of him and froze again—this time in pure feminine wonder.
Koda groaned, an all-male sound of hunger and need. “You’re killing me, woman. Get on with it.”
My mouth suddenly dry, I followed the ridged contours of his enormous arousal at the same time my awareness tingled over his hard, tight butt. He made a sound, deep in his throat, that set my pulse rocketing. As if against his will, Koda pulled on our joined hands, moving our bodies closer together. His face lowered to my throat and he inhaled, another erotic noise rumbling from him as if my scent did something to him.
I got to the tops of his thighs and encircled them with my awareness, moving down their muscular length to his knees, his strong calves, all the way down to his toes.
When I finished, the sensation of everything Koda filled my mind and my senses—his enticing heat and delicious masculine fragrance, his incredible strength, his powerful desire.
Something on a floor above us collapsed then in an explosion of grating iron and shrieking concrete, giving me a much-needed reminder that we were supposed to be fleeing for our lives. The trouble was, I couldn’t bring myself to care.
When I blinked my eyes open, Koda’s face was inches from mine, his seductive lips parted and his eyes focused intently on my mouth. We were both breathing heavily and it felt like my entire body was clenched with need.
For a moment, we stared at each other, the air between us filled with unexpected possibilities. Koda trailed a hand up my arm to the back of my neck, dropping his other hand to my waist and pulling ever so gently. As if on its own, my body moved against his as he lowered his head and brushed my lips with his own.
Chapter Four
I stiffened with shock and he pulled back, just enough to look me in the eyes. He smiled slightly and bent to kiss me again, this time fitting our mouths together with skill and ease. Koda angled his lips perfectly and then his tongue was in my mouth. I made a breathless sound of need and kissed him back as his strong hand moved downward to grip my rear end, pressing me close.
I commanded myself to put some space between us, but my body wasn’t taking orders. My hands rose into the silken wealth of his hair and I urged him closer. Even as I hated how he’d bound me against my will, even though I knew he despised everything about me, knew that he’d pull away any second now and knew how much that rejection would hurt, I couldn’t stop.
I’d never been kissed and touched with this combination of expertise and need and passion, and it seemed my bones would dissolve under the sensual onslaught.
All too soon, Koda stiffened against me. “Sephti. Stop, Sephti. We have to stop.” He set me back from himself with firm hands on my shoulders.
I realized I was shaking, torn equally between humiliation, aching need and feminine fury. Koda was watching me, his gaze steady and unfathomable, and it was that neutrality that somehow hurt the worst. That he already had himself back under control when my pulse was pounding so hard, my body shook with each percussive thud.
Working hard to disguise how much being pushed away stung, I groused, “Well, I guess there’s at least one thing you think fae creatures are good for.”
He flinched, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of my words or the huge crash directly over our heads. This time, the whole building shook, like maybe an entire floor had collapsed.
Koda moved his body as far from me as he could while still maintaining his grip on my hand. “I believe we were leaving?” he said in an arch tone.
“Ah, is that what we were doing,” I muttered, double-checking that my mental hold on his form remained intact. His eyes darkened at the reinforced contact, but he kept himself at a distance. I turned my head away from him so he couldn’t see my face and the stricken look I couldn’t erase. “You might want to close your eyes while we slip through the cracks. Like I said, the first time is a little freaky.”
Before he could respond, I tightened my grip on his hand enough to hurt and sifted us through the paper-width spaces around the door. I’d done this so often, I no longer even thought about it. But I could sense Koda’s horror as I thinned our forms to component parts as small as grains of sand. And like sand through an hou
rglass’s funnel, we passed through the tiniest of cracks out into the alley behind the highrise.
Not surprisingly, it burned twice the energy of moving just myself. I hadn’t anticipated the accompanying dizziness and nausea, though. My head spun as I clung grimly to the determination to keep us shaded as I coaxed our bodies back into the correct shapes—not as hard as it sounds since bodies naturally want to return to their form and help the process along the way magnets attract one another.
Sucking in much-needed air as quietly as I could, I stood for a long moment, waiting for the vertigo to pass. In my periphery, I saw Koda open his mouth as if to speak and I shook my head frantically, glaring at him and willing him to remember what I’d said about maintaining silence.
His dark eyes snapping at the rebuke, he nodded.
“Truck?” I mouthed soundlessly.
He tipped his chin toward the alley’s far end and we set off in that direction. We’d made it a few yards when the hair at my nape stood up. I looked over my shoulder and stumbled from horrified shock. I’d’ve fallen flat on my face if Koda hadn’t steadied me.
A small blonde child stood just outside the door we’d sifted through. The curtain of her long hair hid her face, but I recognized her anyway. The torn and bloody tunic she wore, its ragged hem just reaching her coltish knees. The bare feet, bruised and bleeding from her desperate flight through broken glass. Even the way her left arm hung useless at her side as fat red drops splashed from her fingertips onto the alley’s dirty concrete…
The past hammered into my brain, blinding me to our surroundings. The stench of urine where vagrants had relieved themselves, the distant sounds of traffic, Koda’s bruising grasp, even the triple-time thudding of my own heart, all of it faded under the memory of that last night, the final assignment when part of me had died.
The night I’d been ordered to slaughter the little girl now waiting outside the highrise’s door.
Unable to tear my eyes away, I prayed she would not turn toward us, certain that seeing those features again would kill me where I stood, my heart seizing up with unbearable grief and rage and a million emotions I couldn’t even begin to name.