Romance with a Bite

by Tamsin Baker

  He turned his body towards her, letting her see the shame and anger, the pride and hope warring in his eyes. His passion and desire for her—all of it. He let her see all of him, and she did not flinch from it, just gazed at him with those beautiful golden eyes with understanding. With acceptance. She saw him for who he really was, saw everything that he had been and done, everything he yearned to be, for her, and still she gazed at him like he was the most beautiful creature on earth.

  He lifted a finger to gently trace the line of her cheekbones, the arch of her ear.

  She froze for a moment, then threw her hands to her face, pushing against her upper lips.

  “I…I stayed in my Fae form?”

  “You are beautiful whichever face you wear, Hana. It matters not to me.”

  “But you said that this was my true face…”

  “I suppose that is up to you to decide.”

  She cleared her throat, her gaze going back to the shrouded body.

  “I have decided what we will do for Quan, when this is over. His ashes will fly free over Phoenix Quarter.”

  She held out her hands and Logan wondered what she was doing until…flames flickered there.

  He watched warily.

  “Are you sure…?”

  “Will you anchor me, Dragon?”

  “Anchor you how?”

  “It was not from within myself that I eased the burning after the fight,” she whispered. “The cool water helped, yes, but where you touched me, where you held me—the phoenix can feel you, your dragon being a creature of water, and she drew on you…I’m sorry I couldn’t control it…”

  Heat suffused her cheeks. It was clearly a night for confessions.

  The dragon stretched luxuriously within him. To be wanted, needed, essential to another. He had waited centuries for this female. He drew her into the circle of his arms again, nipping along her jaw. “The dragon wants you to take all that you need and more. He wants you to devour him.”

  Hana’s shiver rippled across Logan’s skin and an answering tightness in his body echoed it.

  Later, he told the impatient lizard. Later.

  So, when she rose, fire flickering at her fingertips, he stood with his hand grazing her elbow, and her tears fell and instantly evaporated as she gave her friend a final farewell as she turned him into ash that would again fly free.

  Hana allowed Logan to curl up beside her in the secret room where he’d convalesced, below Quan’s den. She slept long, and still, and he marvelled at the powerful female who’d opened herself up to him, just as his heart ached at the impossibility of him getting to keep her.

  Of either them, any of them, being able to survive the Tiger onslaught that was no doubt coming.

  Chapter 44

  Hana bolted upright in bed with such force that the next thing she knew, Logan had tumbled off the mattress, landing in a powerful fighting crouch, eyes scanning the room for danger, instantly in Fae warrior mode.

  His hair was rumpled, straight black spikes of it spearing up from his forehead, as though he’d run his hands through it in the night. He probably had, she reflected. She would have been distracted by the smooth, tan, mostly bare body, the deliciously muscled legs as they held that crouch, if her calf and her new marking, weren’t on fire.

  She clutched at it, hissing with the pain.

  “What is it?”

  He came to sit by her, his eyes softening in concern.

  “The new marking…Quan…”

  “Here. Let me.”

  He strode into the kitchen, opened what sounded like the fridge and returned with a pack of ice. He held it to her calf, his fingers stroking the underside of her leg. She didn’t know which was more attention-grabbing—more searing—the mark burning her, or the slow strokes of the Dragon’s fingers.

  Imagining those fingers stroking gently over other, sensitive places in her body.

  “I think…I think it’s okay now,” she grit out, striding to the armoire where she’d discarded her jeans and t-shirt last night. As she rose, it did indeed feel better, although a dull throb remained.

  His eyes were heated sapphire as he watched her dress, but he didn’t smirk or comment on the direction her thoughts had taken, though there was no mistaking the hint in her scent.

  “Perhaps the old bastard just wanted to wake me up.”

  “We do have decisions to make.”

  They met on the rooftop where Jyll and Alessio had just finished sparring. Logan had dropped by the kitchen in the club to collect some sandwiches and coffees that he now dished out between them on an orange milk crate they stood around.

  Alessio kept glancing Hana’s way. Jyll’s look was more straightforward.

  “I’m sorry about your man,” Jyll said.

  Hana nodded her thanks.

  “I never thanked you, you know,” the young Tiger cub said.

  “For what?”

  “For convincing this cranky old bastard to take me on.”

  Hana smiled at Logan, who brushed a hand over the small of her back. She pinched his fingers.

  Territorial Fae bastard.

  “Anything you know, about Stryker, about the Tigers, we could use that information now,” she said to Alessio.

  Especially now that she’d been forced to leave behind the pieces of the flask that she’d hoped would answer their questions about the mysterious symbol and how it linked to the deaths and disappearances. Rex could still be alive, still be out there, waiting for them. But there was no going back to the cemetery now, no way to retrieve it. They needed a new plan.

  “I’ve told Logan what I know. Stryker is a loose cannon, not favoured by the Tiger hierarchy. But if he thinks he can cut a deal, he’ll hand us over in a heartbeat.”

  “So, that dark beast thing, the thing that…Quan…” she tried to master her quavering voice. “That wasn’t Stryker’s?”

  Alessio shook his head.

  “Stryker is a prick, but he doesn’t wield that kind of power.”

  “That’s one thing working in our favour,” Logan said. “Until he decides to sell us out.”

  “Rex could still be out there,” Hana said, heart wrenching. “I need to check on the Justice Precinct system for any…incidents.”

  Clean-up crew callouts that might have gone to other detectives. Nausea waved across her.

  “You can’t go back in there, Hana. The Tigers have marked you.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “What about the symbol?” Jyll asked Alessio.

  “I was one of Stryker’s grunts, and I don’t think even Stryker knew what they did. Special task force. Top secret.”

  Hana’s new marking flared again, and she brushed a hand over the phoenix, wincing.

  Quan.

  They all watched her. The phoenix on her collarbones flared to life as she felt Quan’s truth fed directly through the marking, to her fingertips. She looked to the porcelain jug she had pilfered from the kitchen to collect the ashes she promised her old friend would one day fly free. Like several other urns that lay in hiding under her bed in Mama Singh’s loft.

  Her sister, Lylah, was symbolic only, as there’d been nothing left for them to retrieve. Her grandmother, Kamala, Quan’s long and lost love in another urn that was made of ancient stone, decorated in the Clan pictures.

  All the Clans, even the Phoenix. Like the flask that had smashed to pieces in her forbidden visits to the cemetery. Logan came to crouch by her.

  “What do you see?”

  She felt the whisper of flame, the brush of Quan’s beautiful phoenix’s feathers.

  “There is another artefact that can unlock the power of that symbol. In my loft.”

  Logan scowled, thunder on his face.

  “No way. Not a chance in all the realms of the Clans.”

  “We need it, Logan,” she pleaded. “I feel it.”

  Chimes from her hand-held, and his, buzzed simultaneously.

  She fished hers from her jacket pocket.


  Clean-up crew, not one hundred metres from where the first girl’s body had been found on the Indigo River.

  Male. Deceased.

  Terror ran through Hana like a slash of lightning.

  Rex.

  A second wave of it and she saw Logan’s face.

  “What is it?”

  He scrubbed at his face with both hands, and when he met her gaze finally, she saw only flat gun-metal grey. Despair. Fear such as she’d never seen.

  “A vid-message from my son. He says he knows what I’ve done. He asks me to hand myself in. And look at this.”

  Wordlessly, Logan handed her the phone.

  The boy with the silver hair and Logan’s eyes stared at out them, disgust contorting his face. His hair looked almost white in the reflection of his uniform. Snowy white with a black circle slashed through with two lines branded on his chest.

  Shit. Shit.

  “I thought he was holed up in the penthouse?” She looked to Jyll and Alessio.

  “He was. He swore he’d stay put. We left the others with him, I swear.”

  Logan braced a hand on Jyll’s shoulder.

  “This is not your fault.”

  But then the door to the rooftop flung open and Hana gaped as her contact, the Snake, Silver, strode across the courtyard. Logan made to step in front of her, but she grabbed at his arm.

  Silver’s beard was a flat black colour, the likes of which she’d never seen on him, his eyes wide as if he, too, had suffered an awful shock.

  “I’m sorry,” was all he said before the darkness swept from his beard, and with it, the stench of rotting carcasses and Hana saw no more.

  Chapter 45

  Hana woke in darkness, to whimpering. Someone moaned and cried beside her. She could have summoned flame to light the darkness, but no…no, that wasn’t a good choice.

  She had a mission, and she would complete it. She felt for the thing in her chest that had long guided her but came up empty. It wasn’t important. She had all the guidance she needed. She waited patiently for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Saw that a young boy cried and whimpered beside her. Dirt, or perhaps freckles, dusted his face and in even light she thought his hair would be flaming red.

  No, bright red. That was a better way to describe it.

  Rex. The boy’s name was Rex, some part of her recalled. It didn’t matter. He could help her and that was all that mattered.

  “I don’t want to do it…” he was whimpering. “Don’t make me do it again…please.”

  The boy was scratching at something on his hip, clawing with his own fingernails until dark patches of blood appeared on his clothing.

  “Stop that,” she snapped, tearing his fingers away to reveal a marking underneath. The symbol that guided them, that would bring great glory on her Mistress.

  A symbol was carved in the boy’s hip as though someone who’d been quite angry had cut into his flesh with a knife and tipped black ink into it. A circle, slashed through with two lines.

  Beauty such as she’d never witnessed before.

  “Stop your snivelling and prepare yourself,” she commanded.

  The boy looked at her with wide, pleading eyes.

  “Hana. You remember me, right? From the gym? We have to get out of here, we have to—”

  Hana pressed her fingers into his hip, over the symbol and the boy screamed and screamed. When she was done, he looked at her with glazed eyes.

  “I’m ready,” he said in a flat voice.

  A voice chuckled from outside their barred cave.

  “Oh, very good, my little troublemaker, very good.”

  The voice of the white-haired man made her press a hand to her own hip, the mark he had graced her with still burning and searing comfortingly on her skin.

  “Stryker,” she snarled. “When is it time to go?”

  “This is delicious,” he purred, unlocking the gate and letting her and the boy into the room beyond. She stood, unfazed as he walked around her, a master inspecting his lieutenant.

  He would find no fault with the white, snowy uniform.

  “You’ve worked out so well, my dear, haven’t you? To think I’d written you off as some flighty courtesan, only to find out the true power you wield. The true value you would bring.”

  He paused behind her and gave her neck a long, long lick, hissing a little as his tongue was impeded by what felt like two small bumps.

  “Stryker,” a voice admonished from behind them.

  A lady with an ancient, Fae face, Tiger stripes rippling over her cheekbones, came to peer at her as well.

  “So, this is the last Phoenix Queen finally in our grasp. How adorable that you didn’t even know who you were.”

  Something rippled over Hana’s body, but when she glanced down at the skin bared at the top of her shirt, her arms, she saw they were as snowy white as her uniform. Unmarked. Unblemished.

  “Thank goodness we can bring this tiresome search to an end. Do you know how dull it has been, tracking down every last one of you with Phoenix blood? Discarding of all the remnants and artefacts of your people?”

  The woman picked at a fingernail, as if bored.

  “I’ll be due for a long, long vacation after we’ve dealt with our last little problem.”

  Hana nodded respectfully.

  “Those Seers of mine could not seem to narrow the field after they made that pesky little prophecy. Can you imagine? The Phoenix rising on the back of a Dragon, to snatch power from the Clan that has assured our safety all these years?”

  Hana bowed her head, knowing her task here was to listen only, to get her final instructions before she carried out this important task.

  “We know how that ends, don’t we? An unstable, suicidal Phoenix Clan member who falls in love with a Dragon? It won’t happen on my watch, I’ll tell you that, Hana Poncoyo.”

  Hana’s head snapped up. She listened attentively.

  “I won’t have all I’ve worked for destabilised. You will help me rid this town of the Phoenix. When there are none left, there will be no opportunity for this prophecy to come to fruition. The Phoenix sympathisers will have to go too.

  “Come first light, you start with that dark-haired Dragon you seem so fond of. Give him my love, along with yours,” she commanded, and the dark circle at Hana’s hip burned.

  Glory. Glory could be hers.

  Hana couldn’t sleep, she was so eager to get started.

  Plus, something like fire raged over her skin, no doubt a trick of the traitorous Phoenix. Her necked throbbed where those little bumps were along her neck and her calf especially burned as though a hot poker shoved into it.

  The boy whimpered and tossed and turned all night.

  None of it mattered. Hana knew her purpose.

  Chapter 46

  The Dragon was in his lair with his lieutenants, being held especially for Hana and the boy. As the sun rose, Hana alighted from the elevator amid his extravagantly over-the-top carved passageway. She left the boy to guard the door.

  She clasped the dagger in her hand, the one gilt with the special symbol of her mistress.

  He sat, along with the one they called Jyll, and the disgraced Tiger cub. She bared her teeth at him, this most lethal enemy of her mistress. His most spiteful betrayal had just wiped away years of loyal service. He would die for it.

  Here.

  Now.

  A feral snarl ripped from her throat, but he didn’t move. Didn’t rise, as though he weren’t afraid of her. He nodded to the two watching him.

  “Leave us.”

  “But, boss—”

  “I said leave, Jyll, now. Take Alessio out to the balcony.”

  The two men strode for the floor-to-ceiling glass doors, not looking even a little impressed by it.

  “So, Spitfire, it’s just you and me.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she snarled, hurling the dagger at his heart.

  He did move this time, rolling out of the low couch to dodge the blade and unco
il to his feet.

  She hissed.

  “Why don’t we take this little rendezvous to the skies, Detective?”

  Detective…what…he was trying to mess with her head. She glanced to where the knife had fallen, several feet beyond him into some cushions, trying to keep her mind on here, what she was tasked to do.

  “Pit the might of the Phoenix against the Dragon once and for all?”

  He watched her, and she seethed. She’d take him down with her bare hands if she had to.

  “Or have the Spitfire’s wings been clipped?”

  “You know nothing,” she spat.

  “Don’t you feel it, the fire against your skin? I can feel the heat of you from all the way over here. If you’re not careful, you’ll turn yourself into a little fireball, and pretty as you are, I’m not sure even your features could withstand that.”

  She answered with a jumping roundhouse kick that landed with a satisfying crack against his jaw. He caught the foot, trying to bring her to ground, but she twisted, kicking out again at his face. He smirked, as though he were enjoying this. She scrambled up. He blocked her fierce uppercut, but she landed several jabs to the solid muscles of his stomach.

  “Fight me, damn you!” she shouted.

  But he stood still now, as she rained blow after blow into the taut planes of his trans-abdominals, his ribs, that pretty, strong jaw. She screamed and ranted at him, trying to take that smirk off his face.

  “Fight back!” She didn’t know why it was so important to her, but something whispered inside her, the voices and commands of her mistress muddling and becoming fuzzy with other voices and thoughts and she clutched her head between her hands, moaning.

  She felt light-headed with a rage from which she couldn’t begin to comprehend the origin. The rage blazed white-hot as the Dragon got on his knees before her, eyes of silver backlit with turquoise staring up at her. Daring her to finish this.

  Making a supreme effort to still her hands beside her, to calm her raging torrent of thoughts, she strode to the cushions behind him then grabbed up the knife. She pressed the sharp edge to his neck, and was startled to see two raised lines there, right where his shoulder met his neck. Two little pinpricks, like the ones in an identical place on her own neck that had ached and burned, bothering her in the night.