by Sylvia Day
“Not interested,” Raze had growled finally.
“I can fix that, sugar,” the blond shot back with a saucy wink.
Elijah had stepped in then, just to avoid bloodshed, redirecting Minolo’s attention to the reason they’d come. They’d learned it was an interview conducted by the local authorities that first roused Minolo’s suspicions. He’d waylaid the investigation into the disappearance of a former lover with a bit of vampire mind compulsion; then he’d started digging around on his own. Minolo was the gossip center of the area’s vampire community, and it hadn’t taken more than a couple of days to ascertain that several vampires he was familiar with were no longer being seen around town.
Elijah and Raze’s subsequent five-hour canvas of the city had turned up enough information to let them know there was definitely a problem in Shreveport. They’d worked their way outward from Minolo’s residence in an ever-widening circle, interviewing the neighbors of vamps gone missing.
Most of the minions they’d inquired after worked nights, so their neighbors had scant opportunity to observe their comings and goings. In those cases, he and Raze would appear to drive away, only to return shortly after to enter those residences on the sly. They checked out the interiors and found empty homes, which led to a grim conclusion—there were too many minions whose whereabouts were unaccounted for in the bright light of day.
But the subdivision they’d just driven into was by far the most concerning.
“We’ll need backup,” Elijah said. “At the very least, the two minions we’ve got coming in on the red-eye to take the nightshift, but ideally more than that. I’d say a team of a dozen or more.”
“Want to reconnoiter? We’ve got a bit of daylight now.”
“Won’t help. We had daylight in Vegas and three of us.”
Raze rubbed a hand over his shaved head. “I hate walking away. Makes me feel like a pussy.”
“I don’t like it either, but it’s best. Trust me.” Elijah got back into the car. “We’ll hit up the tech team to access the layout of this subdivision and we’ll get a plan in place for tomorrow.”
“Fuck.” Raze took another look around. “All right.”
Elijah didn’t discount how easily the vamp had ceded to the advice of a lycan. Whether that was because he was banging Raze’s commanding officer or because of his own merits, he couldn’t say, but he’d take it for now. Eventually they would all trust him. Because he’d earn it.
They headed back to the motel, changed into jeans and T-shirts, and decided to make dinner easy by hitting up the adjacent restaurant on foot. They’d chosen to stay in a rural area, far from the city. Pine forest surrounded the uninspired motel they were bedding down in, which Elijah found soothing, something his mood needed after hitting a road bump with Vash. Every minute that passed brought him closer to their inevitable confrontation. He was ready for it now, on edge because of a fruitless hunt and the aggravation of separation.
Settling into a booth, he ordered two of the house special and a beer. As the waitress walked away, he and Raze leaned back to size each other up, something they’d avoided doing earlier because the job came first.
Elijah took special care with his examination, having learned that Vashti rarely went anywhere without Raze or Salem—usually both—in tow. Both vampire captains were big for their kind; the Fallen were usually slender and elegantly built, their bodies having been made for flight. Salem was the bigger of the two, towering at a good six feet six inches and easily two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle. Raze was similar to Elijah’s size of six feet three inches and a solid two hundred and twenty pounds.
But Vashti was a powerful woman, tall and leanly muscular, a renowned expert with all weaponry. She didn’t need bodyguards. And from a resources standpoint, it didn’t seem wise for Syre to tie three of his best Fallen together.
“So what’s your story, Alpha?” Raze drawled. While Elijah wasn’t much of a judge when it came to male attractiveness, he’d noted the number of female glances that followed the vamp when he had stepped outside to take a call.
“I’ll tell you mine, if you tell me yours.”
Raze snorted. “I suppose you want me to focus on my story as it relates to Vash.”
He didn’t deny it. “She carries a lot of manpower in you and Salem, but she’s strong and smart. She can take care of herself.”
“She’s still a woman.”
Elijah took a long pull on his beer and absorbed that. He knew damn well Raze and Salem had a healthy respect for Vashti or they wouldn’t be taking orders from her. Which meant the mention of her sex wasn’t gender bias.
Women were vulnerable to attack in ways men rarely were.
Syre, Raze, and Salem were all fiercely protective. And the way she’d first had sex with him…restraining him…trying to maintain total control…
“Lycans?” Elijah asked tightly, fury simmering in his blood.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
So…Raze wouldn’t discuss Vash outright, he’d only allude. Elijah respected that, even as he hungered for more information.
Raze draped his arm along the window ledge. “You know what we were before—Watchers. After we fell, we had to figure out what to do with ourselves. We all had different areas of knowledge, and that’s where we focused our efforts. Vashti specialized in armaments—how to create them and use them. Even as a scholar, she was a warrior.”
The note of affection in Raze’s voice tightened Elijah’s grip on his bottle. “I can see that.”
“At the time, we thought maybe we just needed to earn our way back into the Creator’s good graces. Pay a penance of some sort. Make amends. Vash took to hunting demons, which came in handy later on when they started fucking with us. We were the throwaway angels, the ones they thought they’d have carte blanche to screw around with.” Raze exhaled audibly. “Syre wanted to take a more diplomatic approach, while Vash was more aggressive. Since she was the one in the field, her way prevailed. It’s a fuckin’ major understatement to say she wasn’t popular in the demon community.”
“Jesus…” Elijah fell heavily into the booth back. He’d seen the leavings of demon attacks. Just the thought of that sort of damage in any relation whatsoever to Vashti made his stomach knot.
“And demons like to kick you when you’re down. The death of a mate is one of those perfect times for them.”
Teeth grinding, he bit out, “She said Syre took care of it. Is that right?”
“Yeah. He took care of it. When he was done with them, he dumped their ashes into a trash can and sent them back to their liege.”
Elijah bitterly regretted that he wouldn’t be able to exact vengeance of his own. The feeling of impotence was so sharp it was painful. “What was your specialty?”
“Triage.”
Scrubbing a hand over his face, Elijah pulled everything together and created a picture that gnawed at his gut. “Jesus,” he said again, remembering how roughly he’d taken her in Vegas, how completely he’d dominated her.
Raze smiled at the waitress when she returned with Elijah’s food. She smiled back, her eyes bright with interest. She asked Raze twice if he was sure she couldn’t get him anything and he replied that he was just waiting for her to go on break, if she was of the mind to share it with him. Which she was, of course.
“Sex will limber you,” Raze said to Elijah once she’d walked away. “You might want to grab a piece of ass before tomorrow, especially considering how close you came to croaking yesterday. This might be your last chance to get laid.”
“I’m touched you care, but my sex life is none of your business.”
“You like redheads, right? There’s a honey of a redhead that just walked in. You might get lucky.” Raze whistled. “Damn, you didn’t even look. Vash must have you wrapped around her little finger.”
Elijah finished chewing his first bite of an excellent rare tri-tip. “Is that supposed to make me feel like a douche? I don’t s
ee any problem with knowing when you’ve got it good and sticking with it.”
“Just ’cuz it’s good, doesn’t mean you can’t get better.”
“Christ, man.” He popped a hush puppy into his mouth and decimated it in two bites. “You lost your wings over a woman. You can’t have forgotten what it feels like.”
A shadow passed over Raze’s features, erasing all levity. “It wasn’t like that for me. I wasn’t as noble as the others. I was banging everything that let me.”
Chewing his steak, Elijah wondered if that made Raze feel more culpable than the others or less.
The vamp shrugged off his sudden dark mood. “Anyway. There was one later on…not too long ago…”
Elijah set aside the now-empty bowl that once held collard greens and dropped a cleaned rib bone into it.
“Holy shit, Alpha,” Raze muttered, watching him mow through his second platter. “You can put it away.”
“What happened to the one?”
“She deserved someone without fangs.” Raze smiled at the waitress, but his eyes were flat. He slid out of the booth. “There’s my dinner bell. I’ll catch you later. Good luck with the redhead. Looks like she wants a piece of you.”
“Take her, too,” Elijah shot back, unfolding the wet nap next to his plate to clean his hands. “Make it a party.”
Raze laughed and headed out.
Picking up the check sitting on the edge of the table, Elijah noted the total and reached into his back pocket for his wallet.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
The sound of Vashti’s irate voice nearly made him smile, but he restrained himself. “Eating.”
“Don’t be coy.” She dropped into the seat Raze had just vacated. “What are you doing here in Louisiana?”
“Working.”
Her amber eyes were hot with fury, her cheeks flushed and lips red. With her long mane of crimson hair and her sleek black bodysuit, she was so damned delicious she made his mouth water. He wouldn’t change a thing about her, except the pain in her past and her evasive tendencies in the present.
“You’re deliberately trying to piss me off, lycan.”
He pushed to his feet. “Let’s take this next door.”
Tossing cash for the bill on the table, he gestured his bristling vampress toward the exit.
When they stepped outside, she rounded on him. “We had a deal.”
His brow arched. “That’s the way you wanna play this?”
“You know I want that information, and you owe it to me.”
“You’ll get it.” Elijah sidestepped around her and headed to his room.
“I’m talking to you!” she yelled at his back, followed by the rapid click of her heels along the cement walkway.
“No, you’re not. Your gums are flapping, but you’re not actually saying anything.”
“You’re an asshole.”
His temper began to heat. He opened the door to his room and stepped inside.
Her palm slapped against the closing door and pushed it open hard enough to bounce off the wall. “You deliberately switched around the assignments so it took me all damn day to find you!”
“Really? Since you put me with Raze, I would think a quick phone call to him would’ve cleared things up.”
“I thought about putting you with Raze. I was going to talk to you about it last night, but you wouldn’t let me. You just had to talk first and then the next thing I knew, I was fucking your brains out.”
“Right. Talk to me, not with me. You’d already made up your mind. I’m not your pet. I’m your partner. I have a say.”
“You didn’t give me a chance to bring it up,” she repeated obstinately.
Elijah reined in his temper with effort. “And this morning? When we were working on the composition of the teams? You could have talked about it then. I asked you.”
She glared, her face a mask of righteous fury. “We already had other plans by then.”
“Did we? We never talked about the first plans. I figured we’d be getting around to that after we got the teams dispatched.”
“Well, you figured wrong.”
“And before?” he countered tightly, having trouble deciding if he should throw her out or throw her on the bed and fuck her. “You want to toss our deal in my face, let’s talk about it. You agreed to stay with me. Then you made plans that reneged on our agreement.”
“I agreed to stay with you while we investigated lycans who might possibly be involved in Char’s death,” she shot back. “Last night, that wasn’t the immediate item on the agenda. The hunt was, and I made a strategic tactical decision.”
“And how were you planning on feeding?”
Her hands fisted. “You can’t feed anyone now. You’re still recovering.”
“Coward.”
“Fuck you.” She stalked closer.
“Is that why you’re here, Vashti? Wanna get laid? That’s all you want from me, right? And information.”
“Whatever. The reason I’m here is obvious.”
“Not to me. If you wanted to chew me a new one, you could’ve done it on the phone. If you wanted to deal with the business in Huntington, I could’ve met you there tomorrow.”
Her chin lifted and her arms crossed. “I like to deal with things directly.”
He barked out a dry laugh. “Well, you’ve accomplished that. Now you can go.”
“I’m not done.”
“Oh?” Deliberately baiting her, Elijah pulled out the chair tucked into the desk and sat down. “Then by all means, go ahead.”
She stared at him for a long moment, a muscle ticcing in her jaw. “Why didn’t you just ask me what was going on?”
“Why didn’t I ask you to talk about something you went out of your way not to talk about?”
She threw up her hands. “For god’s sake, the plans changed. It was a moot point.”
“Not to me it wasn’t. You want to put distance between us. This was a way to do it, until I came up with information that was more valuable than recovering your skewed peace of mind.”
“You’re making this personal when it’s not.”
“The hell it’s not.” He’d had enough. Irritated with himself as much as with her, he hit her with the truth. “You risked your life and a Sentinel war to save me. You flew fourteen hundred miles just to bitch at me. We’ve been fucking each other’s brains out—as you so eloquently put it—for the last few days. Don’t tell me it’s not personal when you decide we’re better off working on opposite sides of the country!”
Her chest heaved with angry breaths. “There are bigger things going on here than whether or not you got your feelings hurt over a reasonable decision. It doesn’t make sense to tie up both of us together. We’re too valuable. We need to spread some of that muscle around.”
“Fine. Done.” He stood. “Get the fuck out of my room.”
“You’re not throwing me out! What about our deal?”
Elijah caught her elbow and dragged her to the door. “I release you from the deal. I’ll get your damned information and you’ll have it as soon as I do.”
“I want to go with you.”
“Too bad. We’re too valuable to risk as a unit. We need to keep ourselves spread around.”
Yanking her arm free, Vashti spun and shoved at him. She cursed when he didn’t budge an inch. “You’re being an asshole.”
“So you said. Lucky for you, you’re not going to have to be around me anymore.”
Her eyes widened when he opened the door, as if she really couldn’t believe he was throwing her out on her ass. “What the hell do you want from me?”
“Respect. Honesty. Trust. A little consideration for the feelings you just spat on.” With an exaggerated sweep of his arm, he urged her to leave. “Out.”
“Fuckin’ A.” She held her ground stubbornly. “How are we going to work this out if you give up? I’m trying to have a conversation with you and you don’t want to deal with it.”
> “No, I don’t want to deal with bullshit.” He leaned into the edge of the door. “Did you rehearse what you were going to say? Were you thinking about it all day? Trying to come up with ways to justify and spin your way through this discussion so you’re on the high ground and I’m wrong in every way?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Look who’s talking. You’re crazy about me, Vashti. You don’t know why…It doesn’t make sense…But you can’t stop thinking about me. Can’t stop wanting me. Can’t stop wishing you were with me when you’re not. Right now, as pissed off as you are and as righteous as you’ve convinced yourself you have a right to be, you’re hot and wet and aching for me. The last thing you want to do is leave, because you’ve been busting your ass all day to get to me.”
“Oh my god.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Conceited much?”
“But, of course, you’re not going to admit it. You’re not going to really clear the air and confess that you were putting me with Raze because I’m getting too close to you and you think you need space. You think you want it. That it’ll be safer for you when you have it because then I won’t be able to get to you the way I do.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “I don’t have time for this. And I damn sure don’t have time to work with someone I can’t trust to be honest with herself, let alone be honest with me. So you can either walk out of here on your own two feet or I can pick you up and toss you out. How do you want it?”
Her throat worked on a hard swallow. The yearning in her eyes almost broke him, but he held his ground. He wasn’t going to be satisfied with her the way things were. Last night had shown him that he was moving beyond the sexual attraction phase into something deeper. He wasn’t going to wade into those waters alone. Too many people were depending on him. He couldn’t afford to get all twisted up over a woman who didn’t feel the same pull he did. Or at least wouldn’t admit to it. Accept it.
Vashti moved toward the door slowly, all the anger she’d hit him with seeming to have drained away. It no longer stiffened her spine or propelled her steps. She paused on the threshold and looked over her shoulder at him. “Elijah…don’t be like this. It was a tactical decision that was best for the mission. Let’s talk it through.”