“Of course I did,” he said.
How did he manage to come up with that? She threw one of the shopping bags at him. He must have been watching her with his eyelids slit. In a movement that looked lazy yet was very fast, he caught the bag with one hand. “I bet you counted the money too!” she snapped.
“Of course I did,” he said again. He grinned, a white slash of a smile. “Women really do take a lot longer in the bathroom. I also looked in the refrigerator, used your cell phone to call New York and pocketed your car keys. There can’t be a scrap of predator Wyr in you because you aren’t just a vegetarian, you’re a vegan. No wonder you’re so scrawny.”
“Scrawny!” Only he could think of calling a five foot ten, 140-pound woman scrawny. She threw the other shopping bag at him. He caught that too but couldn’t stop the bottles of shampoo, conditioner and lotion spilling over him. “I am not! And anyway, I’m not quite a vegan either. I’ll eat honey if it’s harvested in a responsible manner. But forget about all that—you give me back my car keys!”
“Not happening,” he told her.
She launched at him and smacked him in the chest. “You bastard! You did not have any right to go through my things or—or steal my car!”
He started laughing, a deep, full-out belly laugh. Then in a move that mimicked the one in the dream, he grabbed her arms, rolled her over his body and slammed her into the mattress. She squeaked. He rose over her, eclipsing the light. Those golden raptor’s eyes were alight. “There is not another entity in the world who would dare to act that way with me.”
She froze and the blood drained from her face.
His expression changed. He held a stiffened finger under her nose and said, “No! I did not mean that as a threat.”
Her lips trembled. “What did you mean then?”
He laid a hand on her cheek. It was so long it almost covered the length of her head. “You’re mine,” he said. “You can deny it, argue, throw fits, try to run away. But. You’re. Still. Mine.”
“That’s insane,” she whispered. “I have no idea what that means. I don’t belong to you or anyone else.”
“Yes, you do,” he told her. His thumb stroked her lips. “You are mine and I will keep you. I will not hurt you and I will protect you. And you’re beginning to trust me. All of that is a good thing.”
“I am not a piece of property, damn it!”
“But you are in my possession.”
She enunciated, “I think you are a lunatic.”
“Since you are too, that works well enough.” His mouth curled into a smile. He lowered his head slowly, watching her. When she tensed, he whispered, “You’re safe. I just want to taste you. No more.”
He waited inches above her lips.
This was so wrong on so many levels. She looked from his patient eyes to his mouth. The tension melted from her traitorous body.
He felt her resistance go. His mouth covered hers. Her eyes fluttered closed. His lips, warm and firm, moved featherlight against hers, discovering their shape and texture. It was nothing like the dream when they were both hard and rough with each other. This kiss was slow, confident, unhurried and sensuous.
Pleasure spiraled down through her body and grew liquid. She murmured and touched his jaw.
He licked and nibbled at her lips, his breathing deepening. As her fingers traveled up from his jaw and threaded through his hair, he opened his mouth and drove into her with his tongue. The pleasure spiked higher, sharper.
He angled her head so he had better access and could dig deeper into her mouth, his body hardening. He drove his thigh between her legs and pushed up against the area that had grown wet in response to him. She made another muffled noise as she kissed him back with escalating excitement. He growled and pushed harder with his thigh, deeper with his tongue.
He hit just the right spot. She gasped and arched her pelvis. Both her arms were now wound around his neck. He cupped her ass and pulled her up more tightly against him. He wound his other arm underneath her neck, holding her pressed along the length of his body. He found a wicked rhythm with mouth and thigh that stole all thought from her until she was so torched, she was eating at him with the same lack of control as she had in the dream.
He devoured her with starved greed. She ran her hands over his bare shoulders. His nude torso was all over her, his thick hard erection pressing against her hip. She wanted his clothes off. She wanted him inside of her, holding her down as he pounded into her.
Oh my God, she wanted to pull way the hell back now. She yanked her mouth away and said, gasping, “Stop. It’s too much.”
He reared back his head and hissed. He crushed her to him and didn’t move, his body strung tight.
His gaze had turned to lava again, golden eyes burning. She turned and buried her face against his hard, bunched biceps. She whispered, “I’m just not ready.”
“The boyfriend,” he snarled.
“Ex-boyfriend. And I’m so over him.”
She peeked at him. He was looking down at her, the planes and angles of his dark face cut sharp. “You said you were still hurt.”
She laid her fingers against that taut mouth and traced it, obsessed with the shape and texture of him. “I am hurt because I chose to trust someone and was betrayed. I am no longer hurt by him, nor would I want anything to do with him if he were still alive. The most I would be tempted to do is beat the crap out of him again.”
The tension in his body started to ease. She felt his mouth pull into a smile under her fingers. “You beat the crap out of him?”
She smiled back, eyes crinkling at him. “Well, no,” she admitted. “But I did get a lot of satisfaction out of pushing him until I smacked him into a wall.”
He studied her. The ivory of her skin was flushed a delicate pink, lips swollen and dusky red from being kissed. Those night-dark violet eyes sparkled at him. However she claimed she felt, her body was lax and trusting as it curved to fit his. The scent of her intense arousal was delectable. All her jeweled tones had been polished bright.
“You are utterly gorgeous,” he said. He pressed his lips against her forehead.
Her eyes widened in shock. Then she looked away, her flush deepening. She couldn’t think of anything to say. On impulse she hugged him tight. It seemed to surprise him because he held still and then hugged her back, crushing her to him before letting go.
He rolled away from her and onto his feet in one smooth, lithe motion. “Now we really must go.”
She wobbled to her feet, not as graceful as he had been. He helped her pick up the things that had spilled from the shopping bags and insisted on carrying them and her backpack. Feeling she had lost vital control of her life somehow, she trailed after him.
Before they left she went to the kitchen to collect her cell phone and to grab what she could eat on the run. She ignored the salad ingredients and dressing. She threw into another shopping bag a package of almonds, soy yogurt and a spoon she swiped from the utensil drawer, along with the bottled water she had bought.
The dryer was running in the small utility room off the kitchen. Dragos stopped it and pulled out his torn Armani shirt. He had rinsed out the blood as best he could, but the pristine white was gone. He shrugged it on but didn’t bother to fasten what few buttons were left. She found herself grateful for even that indifferent coverage. Although it didn’t help much. He was still distracting and sexy, with glimpses of that long brown torso showing at the open shirt. The sight of his bare chest had stolen every digit of her IQ.
They stepped outside. As Dragos closed the front door, she made a mental note to call Quentin to warn him they hadn’t left the house in quite as good a shape as she would have liked.
Dragos escorted her to the passenger’s side of the car as he looked around. The stone-cold killer was back. He opened the door for her and closed it after she was seated, then put the packages in the back and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Are you expecting trouble?” she asked, looki
ng around at the tranquil night scene. Altogether with her nap and everything else, they had used about six of Dragos’s twelve-hour time limit, and it was around 3:00 A.M. Someone several beach houses down was having a party with all lights blazing, but they kept it quiet.
“Not if the Elves keep to their word,” he said. He located the lever and pushed the seat back as far as it could go.
“Why wouldn’t they?” she asked, her eyes wide. “I’ve never heard anything bad about their integrity.”
“You’re quite a bit younger than I am too,” he reminded her. “Every race has had its less than stellar moments now and then. Oh, for fuck’s sake. This car is going to kill me.”
“What? Why?”
“Still waiting for it to pick up speed,” he told her. “Any day now. What is it, a POS?”
“What’s a POS?”
“Piece-of-shit car.”
She started to laugh. “It’s a Honda Civic, and it’s a fine car. Very fuel efficient.”
“Well, we know why, don’t we?” Despite his words, he kept to a modest speed until they had left the beach area and came to a main highway. When he accelerated, he held the car’s speed steady at the speed limit.
“What kind of car do you have?” She opened her yogurt. She was starving.
“My favorite is the Bugatti.”
She might have known he would have a car worth over a million dollars. No doubt it did something extravagant like hit the sound barrier in sixty seconds. She started to eat. “How many other cars do you have?”
“Maybe thirty in the whole fleet. I don’t keep track of them all. The ones I drive are the Bugatti or the Hummer. Sometimes the Rolls. My people drive the others.”
“Of course they do,” she said. His people. She shook her head. Such extravagant wealth was unimaginable.
He glanced at her sideways, his lip curled. “What the hell are you eating?”
She wiped the corner of her mouth with a thumb. “Soy yogurt.”
“Is that food? I tried what you bought the other day, the Twizzlers and the cherry Coke Slurpee. I couldn’t get either one out of my mouth fast enough.”
She burst out laughing. “Come on, it couldn’t have been that bad.”
“It was,” he told her in a serious voice. “It was very much that bad.”
“How did you know . . .” Realization dawned. “Oh, the note I left you. I wrote it on the back of a receipt.” She smacked her forehead. “That’s how you tracked me.”
“We got the security footage from the date of the receipt. Between that and your human name you told me in the dream, we had you.”
She sighed, finished her yogurt and opened the package of almonds. “So much for my life of crime.” She offered him the opened package and he shook his head. Headlights came up behind them and stayed a steady distance away. She noticed him looking in the rearview mirror and twisted in her seat. “What is it?”
“We have an escort to the Elven border.” His profile looked hard in the dim reflected light. “How polite of them. What do you want to bet they would offer roadside assistance if we got a flat?”
“Well, you can hardly blame them,” she pointed out. “You did trespass.”
“Yes, and you stole from me,” he said. “And look at how well we’re getting along.”
She was taken aback. She thought back on the overloaded day. They were getting along extraordinarily well. She suspected she ought to be freaked-out by it. Come to think of it, some part of her was.
“Now that you mention it,” she murmured, “you do seem to be running against type a bit. Aren’t you?”
“Of course,” he told her in a silken voice. “Do you think I go from possibly rending to kissing in a day with just anyone who’s stolen from me?”
“I . . . I haven’t had much time to think about it.” She hadn’t had time to think of much of anything.
He held up a finger. “First, you’re the only one who’s ever successfully stolen from me.” He held up another finger. “Second, I am not a forgiving creature. In fact, you’re the only one I’ve ever forgiven before.” He put up a third finger. “And third, I like vengeance. I’m looking forward to ripping apart the person who gave you that charm and who ended up with my penny.”
“Put like that, I should still be running away screaming,” she said. She swallowed and looked out her window at the dark night scenes passing by. “Why is this so different?”
“Remember when I said I wasn’t bored?”
She nodded as she folded the corner of her long-sleeved shirt between her fingers.
“Looking back, I think I’ve been bored for centuries now. That’s a pretty big rut. People rush to give me anything I could want. And if for some reason that doesn’t happen, I can always buy what I want.”
“I can’t imagine,” she murmured.
“Well, I live that way every day. But you’re different. You have been a series of surprises from the first,” said Dragos. “I have never been so angry. Then your note made me laugh out loud. The dream? Big surprise. The ridiculous things you say, the way you smell, the color of your hair in the sunlight, in the moonlight.” He shot her a sidelong glance with that blade-sharp smile of his. “I am very much not bored. I find that’s worth a lot to me, including figuring out how to do new things.”
She turned to look out her window again. Oh great, so she could relax as long as he was entertained? What happened when he got bored with her? Would he forget how he “forgave” her? She bit her lip.
Good thing there were still three caches in New York, with three new identities and more money. Guess she was going back to the city with him after all. She would just have to play along until she found some way to get away.
His hand landed on her knee. She jumped and turned her attention back to him. “Pia,” he said. The smile was gone from his voice. “I want you to listen to me. I’m serious. Do not try to run away when we get back to the city.”
Her eyes went wide. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh come on, it’s not a big leap,” he retorted. His hand tightened, as hard on her as an iron manacle. “Remember I said I called New York? I talked to my First sentinel, a gryphon named Rune. We think we know who might have been responsible for orchestrating what happened, manipulating and killing Keith and his bookie, making sure the charm got to you and who ended up with the penny.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice very small. “I have a feeling I don’t want to hear this.” The almond she had just swallowed seemed to stick in her throat. She folded the package, put the remaining nuts in the shopping bag at her feet and drank part of a bottle of water before capping it and throwing it back in the bag.
“I have a feeling you’re right. But you have to hear it. If Keith said anything about you, anything at all, you’re not safe. Can you guarantee he didn’t before you made him take the binding oath?”
She squirmed, leaden with the return of fear. “He said he had mentioned me but hadn’t said much. It makes sense if he hadn’t. He would have wanted to try to control how things went down.”
“But try this thought out,” said Dragos. “He also would have had to be pretty damn convincing to someone in order to get that charm. Do you know how many people could make something like that, something with the strength to hold against my strongest spells?”
“I’m guessing by how this conversation is going, not very many,” she muttered.
“Again, you’d be right. Offhand, I can think of three.” The manacle on her leg loosened. He rubbed her thigh. “See what I’m getting at?”
Following instinct, she grasped his hand between hers. He allowed her to hold it in her lap. “Who are they?”
“A very old witch in Russia. The Vampyre Queen in San Francisco is a sorceress. And the Dark Fae King.”
“Shit.” Shit, shit, shit.
“I have people doing research right now to see if there might be someone else who could pull off a charm strong enough to find my hoard. Right now, i
t looks like there isn’t. The witch is pretty indifferent to things that happen outside of her neighborhood. I don’t see her as likely. And the Vampyre Queen is a friend of sorts, or at least an ally, but the Dark Fae King?” Dragos shook his head with a grim smile. “Urien hates me beyond anything else. It just so happens that for the last two hundred years I’ve had something he desperately wants, and I’m not letting him get his hands on it. He wouldn’t hesitate to level the continent if he thought it would take me down too. You’d be nothing but a small bump in his road.”
From what little she knew of the Fae, there were two Courts, one Dark and one Light, and more often than not they were fighting each other over something. The Light Fae were ruled by a queen. Urien ruled the Dark Fae. He could be the nasty Power that had manipulated Keith behind the scenes.
She focused on the hand she held in her lap. It was such a big, strong hand. His arm was a tree trunk. She realized she was petting him, stroking his long fingers with her own.
“My people are very good. I don’t think you would be able to get far anyway, but you’ve proved to be surprisingly resourceful,” he said. He could be many things—seductive, coaxing, quiet—but this capacity for gentleness surprised her. “And on the off chance you did manage to get away, I would find you again. But you would be in danger until I did, so how about that promise?”
“Okay,” she said.
“Good girl.” His hand tightened on hers and then he pulled away.
They fell into silence. Sometime later, when the sky had lightened to predawn, the headlights behind them flashed, and the car that had been following pulled away. She supposed that meant they had crossed out of the Elven demesne.
After a while her eyelids drooped again. She didn’t think she could fall sleep, but two two-hour stretches and an afternoon nap wasn’t enough rest, since she hadn’t slept a full night through for a while.
She rubbed her temples and said, “One of these days, I’m going to get a real meal and a real night’s sleep.”
Dragos said, “I told Rune to find someone who could cook the kind of food you eat.”
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