by Eileen Wilks
Lily’s lips twitched at the idea that FBI agents arrested a better class of criminal. She could have told him that she’d taken her only line-of-duty bullet after being recruited by the FBI, not before. She didn’t. He’d tell his mother, who’d tell Lily’s mother, who had jumped to the same conclusion—that Lily was in a safer job now.
No point in rocking that particular boat. She looked at the plate in her hand, which he’d piled with enough food for three people. “I hope this is for you. I’m allergic to shellfish.”
“Oh.” He glanced at the plate. “Forgot. Well, I can take it and get you another one.”
“Never mind.”
He didn’t listen, of course. He just started filling another plate. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
“Don’t go there.”
He paused to frown at her. “I guess you think of yourself as taken right now. By, uh, that Turner fellow. The, uh…”
Pig eyes, she thought. Freddie had greedy little pig eyes. “Lupus. It’s okay to come out and say it, you know. It isn’t a bad word.”
“I was trying to be tactful. Tell me, is it true that they—”
“Yes. Absolutely.” She glanced around. Who could she use as an excuse to escape?
“You didn’t let me finish!”
“Didn’t I?” All, Beth was talking to one of Susan’s doctor friends. Lily managed to catch her little sister’s eye, but Beth just grinned, crossed her eyes, and then turned her back.
The rotten little rat fink. Beth always had been spoiled.
“I want you to know that I won’t hold your liaison with Turner against you,” Freddie announced. “I’m a fair man. What’s sauce for the goose and all that. And, uh, I’m aware that his kind… well, they exert a certain sexual compulsion. Though I was surprised to hear that you… but it’s not your fault.”
Her gaze jerked back to him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Your affair with Turner. Really, Lily, I shouldn’t have to repeat myself. It’s only polite to listen.”
“Oh, I’m listening. I just didn’t think I’d heard right, since my personal life is none of your business.”
“We’re cousins. And one day, when you’ve finished your youthful experimentation—”
“I’m twenty-eight, not eighteen.” She shook her head, exasperated. Once Freddie got an idea into his head, it took a sharp scalpel to get it out. “Read my lips. We are not going to get married. Not ever.”
His smile was patient. Tolerant. “Your mother wants it. So does mine.”
“My mother wants me to get married, period. You’re the right gender; you’re Chinese; you have a good business. That works for her, but she’s already married. Give it up, Freddie. You don’t want to marry me. You don’t even like me.”
“Of course I do. I’m very fond of you. You’re my cousin.”
He meant it, too. Or believed it, which was almost the same. She sighed. “I agree with your mother—you do need to get married. Soon. Just not to me.” She handed him her plate, patted his arm, and made her getaway while his hands were full.
Relatives could be the very devil sometimes.
She’d dance some more, she decided, heading for the other room. That wouldn’t eliminate the possibility of nosy questions, not when so many people here felt entitled— obliged, even—to ask about her shoulder, her new lover, or her career change. But it limited their opportunities.
The DJ was playing “I Want You to Want Me,” and the room was crowded. Lily stood at the edge of the dance floor tapping her foot, more in irritation than to keep time.
Freddie was not exactly the soul of insight, which made it all the more irritating that he’d put his finger on the truth. She was taken, all right. Taken over, it sometimes seemed.
Her gaze drifted across the crowded room, past cousins and strangers, acquaintances, family friends, and those newly related by marriage. It snagged on Aunt Mequi, who was dancing with Lily’s father.
Mequi Leung was her mother’s sister. They ran tall on that side of Lily’s family, and Mequi was thin all over— thin body, thin face, and a thin smile that looked like a bandage slapped over something painful. Lily’s own lips twitched. Aunt Mequi hated to look ridiculous, and Edward Yu’s head barely topped his sister-in-law’s shoulder.
He wouldn’t be troubled by that, she knew. Her father possessed a marvelous capacity for ignoring things he considered unimportant. He was probably talking about option strike, vertical spread, and other esoterica of the broker’s world.
Probably… but Lily couldn’t know for sure. They were fifteen feet away. She couldn’t hear them over the babble of other voices.
Three weeks ago, she would have been able to.
Relief mixed with a wisp of disappointment. For a while, the mate bond had made her hearing as acute as Rule’s, but the effect had faded. She didn’t know why it had happened in the first place, or why it had gone away. Inhumanly good hearing might have come in handy at times, but so much had changed in her life in such a short time. On the whole, she was glad one thing had reverted to normal.
Of course, it might come back.
Lily touched the small charm dangling from a gold chain around her throat. The toltoi was the outward emblem of all those changes, the token she’d been given when she formally accepted membership in Rule’s clan. Her foot began tapping faster, losing the beat of the music altogether.
Rule thought the bond had responded to danger by blurring the lines between their separate abilities. Maybe he was right. At the time, he’d been able to draw on some of her own immunity to magic, and they had definitely been in danger. A nutty telepath had been trying to sacrifice them to her goddess.
But Rule’s theory made the mate bond seem almost sentient, like some sort of psychic snake—now tightening its coils around the two of them, now loosening them. Most of all, it irritated Lily that she didn’t know. There were entirely too many mysteries about this bond.
Maybe she’d find out soon. She had an appointment in three days to talk to the Nokolai Rhej—Rhej being a position or title. Rule said the woman was sort of a combination of priestess, historian, and bard. Now that Lily was clan, she was supposed to get filled in on some of the history.
She hoped this Rhej person had some answers. She had a lot of questions.
As if the shifting sea of couples hid some arcane lode-stone, her gaze was drawn to one spot, near the curving wall of windows.
Rule was there.
She couldn’t see him. Lily had inherited her father’s lack of inches, and there were too many people between them. But she didn’t have to see him to know precisely where he was. She always did, if he was close enough… within one hundred twenty-nine feet, to be exact. The effect became imprecise after that. Last week she’d made him test it.
That’s how it was now, anyway. Three weeks ago she’d been unable to be that far away—literally unable. She’d nearly passed out when she put too much distance between them. Rule claimed that was normal for a newly mated pair.
He had some weird ideas of normal. But the bond had relaxed, just as he’d said it would. She wasn’t sure how far their tether would stretch now, but she meant to find out. Soon.
The music ended, and some of the couples started to leave the floor. In the gap that opened up, Lily saw the man who’d recently moved into the center of her life. Or, according to Rule, had been shoved there by his Lady.
He’d been dancing with someone Lily didn’t know. A member of the groom’s family, probably, as the woman looked Chinese. She was about Lily’s age, with very short hair and a sleek blue dress that set off her figure admirably.
Not a puke-green bridesmaid’s dress. Lily grimaced. The mate bond made it impossible for Rule to stray, but his thoughts could still wander, couldn’t they?
The woman’s hand rested on Rule’s arm. She was smiling in a way that was becoming all too familiar. Lily wondered if she looked like that, too, when Rule’s head be
nt toward her the way he inclined it now, listening to his dance partner.
It was an elegant head. Its dark hair was too long for fashion, but it suited him. His face was narrow, the skin taut over cheeks that might have been sculpted by the wind. The angle of those cheekbones was mirrored by the dark slashes of his eyebrows.
He wore black, of course. He always wore black. The expensive suit covered a body that never failed to fascinate her. It seemed somehow more focused than other bodies. Watching him now, she had the fanciful thought that he attended to the world with all of him—listening with thighs and biceps as well as ears, observing with scalp and eyes and nape, with the soles of his feet and the backs of his knees.
The backs of his knees… she knew how his skin tasted there.
His head turned, and their eyes met.
Oh. She put a hand on her stomach. That didn’t usually happen, not since the first time. But every once in a while she got this little jolt when their eyes met. Like being stroked by a feather, she thought. Startling because she felt it in a place she had no name for. A place she hadn’t known could be touched.
Why did it hit sometimes and not others? She grimaced. Mate bond mystery number three hundred seventy-six.
As if he’d read her mind, the corner of his mouth kicked up. Those rakish eyebrows lifted, asking a question. She made herself smile back and shook her head: No, I don’t need you right now. I’m fine.
“Not like that, dummy,” a voice said at her elbow. “Like this.”
Lily turned. Beth was making kissy faces at Rule.
Rule grinned and blew Lily’s little sister a kiss.
“See?” Beth turned to her. “You have a hunk like that hanging around, you don’t scowl him away.”
“That was a smile, not a scowl. This is a scowl.”
Beth studied her. “By golly, you’re right. The difference isn’t as obvious as it ought to be, though. What’s wrong?”
“It’s such a pleasure to be asked that by someone I can tell to mind her own business.”
“The rellies been giving you a hard time? Rhetorical question,” she added, hooking an arm through Lily’s. “Of course they are. You’ve confounded everyone’s expectations again. C’mon. Let’s see if there’s anywhere to hide on the patio.”
It was either go with Beth or be tugged wholly off balance. Lily went. “Grandmother’s holding court out there.”
“Right. The buffet, then,” she said, shifting course. “I’m pretty sure I could cram in more chocolate.”
“You think it’s a good idea for the two of us to stand next to the food? Some people have weak stomachs.”
Beth glanced down at her bridesmaid’s dress, a match for Lily’s. “And to think I always believed Susan liked me. It’s not as if she needed help to outshine me. She’s done that all my life.”
“Maybe she’s turned color-blind.” Lily’s shoulder had progressed from stiff to aching. She could use it as an excuse to leave, she supposed, but her mother and the aunts might start bringing her food again. And stay to tell her all the things she should be doing differently… again.
“That doesn’t explain Mother,” Beth said darkly.
“There is no explanation for Mother. I thought you knew that.” Lily reminded herself that she didn’t really need to have her arm free. She wouldn’t need to draw on anyone at her big sister’s wedding. Odds were slim for even a fist fight.
But it was a relief when they reached the buffet and Beth let go to zero in on the sweets. “No chocolate cookies left,” she said sadly and reached for a cookie shaped like a pair of wedding bells. “How long did it take Freddie to pop the question this time?”
“He’s stopped proposing. He just talks about our marriage as if I’ve already agreed. You could have rescued me.”
“I hate to interrupt a tender moment. Speaking of which, why are you avoiding Rule?”
“You can be intensely annoying, you know that?”
Beth nodded and downed the other half of the cookie. “You don’t want to talk about your relationship with Tall, Dark, and Occasionally Furry. I get that. And I understand why you haven’t said much about him to Mother. Who would? But you’ve clammed up with me, too.”
Lily heard the hurt beneath the banter and gave up. “We had an argument, all right? Nothing major. I’m just not all that pleased with him at the moment.”
Beth gave her a worried glance.
“Not about other women,” Lily said impatiently. “If that was the problem, I wouldn’t call it a minor argument, would I? And I wouldn’t be making smiley faces at him.”
“Right.” Beth was relieved. “Of course you wouldn’t. Though I don’t understand why you—all right, all right, don’t get huffy. Hey, there’s some chocolate sauce left! Pass me one of those strawberries.”
Lily knew what Beth was thinking, and why. And maybe she ought to give her sister a better explanation than she had so far… but not now.
“So, you going to tell me what you two argued about?”
“No. Are you still dating the octopus?”
“If you mean Bill, he’s so last week. At least tell me if Rule is as incredible in bed as he looks like he would be.”
A grin stole out. “Better.”
Beth dipped her strawberry in chocolate while she thought that over, then shook her head. “Not possible, but trying to imagine it is exciting. Did you get those dark circles beneath your eyes because you keep skipping sleep in favor of hot monkey sex, then? Or is your shoulder keeping you awake? Or is something else going on?”
Lily jerked her good shoulder in a shrug. “Bad dreams. They’ll pass. Are you going to eat that or make love to it?”
Beth licked more of the chocolate off the strawberry. “The two are not mutually exclusive. Considering what happened to you, bad dreams aren’t surprising. Not that I know exactly what happened. I don’t suppose you want to talk about it?”
“I’m not much for talky-talky.”
“No kidding.” At last Beth popped the strawberry in her mouth.
With Beth’s mouth temporarily occupied, Lily’s attention slipped back to the argument she and Rule had tripped over last night. He wanted her to move in with him. He’d been patient, by his lights, but she wasn’t . ready. She needed time to adjust to all the changes in her life. And she needed to spend some of that time alone.
He didn’t get that. Nettie had told her that individual lupi, like individual humans, fell in different places along the introvert-extrovert scale. But on the whole, they needed more touch, more contact, more sheer time spent with others than the average human. The wolf was a pack animal, after all.
Strawberry disposed of, Beth asked, “Since you won’t do the talky-talky thing, have you been digging?”
“Waging war on weeds. I can’t use a shovel with one arm.” Rule had offered to dig a bed for her at Clanhome, but that would have changed everything. She did her gardening at Grandmother’s because she didn’t have any land of her own, but that didn’t mean…
“Hey!” Beth’s hand passed in front of Lily’s face. “Where’d you go? You’re pale as a ghost.”
“That’s appropriate,” Lily muttered.
“What?‘
She shook her head. “Never mind. I saw… I thought I saw someone I used to know.” Someone who couldn’t be here.
The woman Lily knew only as Helen didn’t know
Lily’s family, for one thing. For another, she was dead.
“I’m guessing it wasn’t someone you liked.”
“No.” Lily stared in the direction the woman had gone, vanished now behind a cluster of chattering teens. She’d looked exactly like Helen: tiny build, long blond hair, baby face, eyes as cold and empty as a doll’s.
There she was again, heading for the exit that led to the restrooms. Lily’s heart began throwing itself against the wall of her chest as if desperately seeking escape.
It was crazy to think that she’d seen Helen. Crazy. And yet… “I’m going to fre
shen up,” she told her sister, moving to follow a woman who couldn’t exist.
Three weeks ago, Lily had killed her.
Nancy Chen obviously enjoyed dancing, and she was good at it. She was tall enough that her steps matched Rule’s well, too. She smelled of tobacco, which he didn’t care for, and baby powder, which he liked. She had a lively sense of humor.
All in all, Rule would have been enjoying their dance if only she’d stop trying to grope him. “Uh-uh.” he said, moving her hand back to his waist. Again.
She grinned. “Can’t blame me for trying. It’s not as if that pretty thing you’re dating would object.”
“I think you don’t know Lily.”
“She can’t be such a fool she doesn’t know about your kind. More power to her, I say, for having the guts to take you on anyway. I hear you can give a lady quite a ride.” She slid him a coquettish glance… and slid her hand down again.
Torn between exasperation and amusement, he reclaimed the wandering hand. This time he kept a grip on it. “I suspect you’ve given quite a ride in your day, too,” he said dryly.
Nancy Chen was eighty-two years old, the great-aunt of the groom.
She laughed. “My day isn’t over. It just doesn’t come as often as it used to. Get it? Doesn’t come.” She laughed again, enjoying herself.
Rule enjoyed her, too, for the remainder of the dance, because he kept her hands pinned. Nancy didn’t expect him to take her propositions seriously—though he suspected that, given an ounce of encouragement, she’d have happily hunted up a closet for them to duck into. Mostly, though, she was getting a kick out of being outrageous.
Some women reacted that way. They went a little giddy over the chance to step outside the normal bonds of society with someone who lived outside them. He was used to that, as he was used to the whiff of fear-scent most people gave off when they met him. But both could be wearying.
He wanted Lily. And she was avoiding him.
Rule made his way around the edges of the banquet room, exerting all his tact to avoid dancing with yet another woman who wasn’t Lily. The air was ripe with scent—food, flowers, candles, humanity, and a faint note of ocean. But he didn’t pick up Lily’s scent, or the tug that would tell him where she was.