Deadly Is the Kiss

by Rhyannon Byrd

“If the Sabins are in danger, why didn’t you bring anyone with you?” he asked, his tone heavy with skepticism.

  “I wanted to, but I was warned that if I tried to bring anyone else, an alarm would be raised.” She took a deep breath, choking back a groan at the way it pushed her breasts tighter against his chest. He didn’t say anything, but his jaw looked harder, as if he was gritting his teeth, and he pulled back a few inches, putting more space between them while still keeping his grip on her wrists.

  Feeling her face warm with a ridiculous blush, Juliana continued with her explanation. “When I made it past the boundaries of the Wasteland, I found the pack you just tossed on the ground waiting for me. It had money and clothes inside, as well as several travel documents with my picture and false names on them. It also contained a note telling me that our lives were in danger, and that you could help me. It said to look for you in London.”

  “Why would someone go to all that trouble to help you?”

  Without his incredible heat pressed against her, she shivered even more from the cold, her teeth chattering as she answered his question. “Maybe because whoever it is knows that my family and I were imprisoned without just cause?”

  “Were you?”

  She lifted her chin again. “Yes. My family is innocent.”

  Very softly, he said, “Of what?”

  She wet her lips, not wanting to lie to him. “Our supposed crime isn’t important. What’s important is the fact that my family’s in danger.”

  Finally releasing his hold on her wrists, he took a step back, his hands shoved in his front pockets. It wasn’t a casual stance, his muscles bulging, shoulders looking broader than ever. She’d never really understood how big he was until now, standing alone with him in this deserted lane, with no one else around.

  “You want my help, you talk, Juliana. Otherwise I’ll use my phone to place a call, and you’ll have an escort back to prison before you can blink.”

  “Fine,” she breathed out, knowing she would have to choose her words with care. He was too bloody smart for his own good, and she’d never been talented at deception. The best plan would be to stick as close to the truth as she could, without giving too much away.

  His voice got harder. “Your seconds are ticking down, Juliana.”

  “All right.” She closed her eyes, took another deep breath, then opened them as she said, “My parents were convicted of conspiring to bring down the Deschanel Council. Only it was a lie. But the one who made the claim convinced the Council otherwise, saying that our entire family was in on the plot.”

  “They had evidence?”

  “No, nothing substantial,” she told him, crossing her arms over her chest in an attempt to cover her breasts, sharply aware of the way his gaze kept sweeping over them. “Just this person’s word against ours. The Council was divided about how to act, so they banished us instead of a formal execution.”

  He studied her through piercing eyes, his expression impossible to read. “It would take a powerful enemy to convince the Council to act without solid proof.”

  “Yes, it would.”

  When it became apparent she wasn’t going to say anything more, he jerked his chin. “We’ll get back to that. For now, I want to know what the hell you think I can do to help you.”

  “In addition to the information about you, the pack that was left for me also contained another letter. It said that if I brought proof of the assassination orders that have been taken out against my family before the Council, they’ll be forced to overrule our sentence and free us, since the orders would be evidence of the original conspiracy against us.”

  His laugh was ragged. “That’s a long shot if I ever heard one. And assassination orders are going to be damn hard to prove.” Ashe knew, because he’d had experience with them before. The Assassin’s League hadn’t remained a powerful underground entity for centuries because they were careless or stupid. And their system was nearly flawless.

  If you wanted someone taken out, an anonymous payment was deposited into one of the highly secure accounts administered by the League. The size of the sum deposited determined how many League assassins would vie for the job, and payment was based on a first-kill basis.

  If enough money had been paid in on the Sabins’ blood, they would soon have all the forces of hell coming after them. And the League was the perfect venue, making it nearly impossible to trace where the order had come from.

  In order to prove her claim, Juliana would have to take something substantial to the Council. A solid piece of evidence, some kind of proof of monetary exchange with the Assassin’s League, and it wouldn’t be easy to get.

  “Considering how flimsy the claims against us were,” she said, “the Council would be grossly negligent not to take action.”

  Ashe responded with a masculine snort. “It wouldn’t be the first time those ol’ bastards were negligent, and it probably won’t be the last.”

  “I realize that. But this is the only choice I’ve got, and I’m taking it.”

  “The only choice you’ve got,” he murmured under his breath, as if he were merely voicing his thoughts out loud. She could practically see the wheels turning in his head as he crunched the details together, the raw intensity of his dark stare making her feel as if he could read her mind. “You know, I’ve always found it strange—the way you’re so determined to take responsibility for your family.”

  Going on the defensive, she arched one of her brows. “Are you a sexist, Ashe? Do you find it odd that a woman can take a position of authority?”

  “I have no trouble with the concept of a powerful woman,” he replied, failing to rise to her taunting. “But that kind of responsibility usually comes with age.” A slight frown settled between his brows. “Exactly how old are you, anyway?”

  Feeling oddly as if she were walking into some kind of trap, but unable to find it, Juliana answered him truthfully. “I’ll be twenty-eight this year.”

  It was impossible to miss his surprise, those beautiful eyes going wide with shock. “Twenty-eight? Jesus, for a Deschanel, you’re practically a babe!”

  Juliana resisted the impulse to roll her eyes. “I’m hardly a child, Ashe.”

  His low grunt said he didn’t particularly agree. Then he surprised her with another odd question. “How is it that your family is so well-off at the compound?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  His gaze became sharper, his focus so intense she felt like a criminal undergoing interrogation. “I’m not blind, Juliana. You have guards in the Wasteland…a small contingent of servants. Yes, it’s like living in medieval times, but you have a certain degree of protection, when you should have nothing at all. Who’s responsible for that?”

  “I… We don’t know,” she said with all honesty.

  Sarcasm edged his words. “Just gifts from a benevolent benefactor?”

  “I don’t know,” she said more forcefully, her own misgivings about their situation bleeding into her words. “I’ve always assumed it was arranged by someone on my mother’s side of the family who felt sorry for us. But they aren’t the ones helping me now. They’re very reclusive. They would never be able to orchestrate something like my escape. I doubt they even know what assassination orders are!”

  Flicking a look toward the pack that was lying by her feet, he asked, “Can I see these letters?”

  Her shoulders fell. “I’m afraid not. There were instructions to destroy them, so I did.”

  He gave a dry laugh as those pure gray eyes reconnected with hers. “Tell me, Jules. If your secret champion told you to find me in London, why didn’t he or she tell you where I was staying?”

  Her head was starting to pound with the mother of all headaches. “I don’t know the answer to that, either. Maybe they didn’t know.”

  He lifted one hand from his pocket, rubbing his palm along the edge of his hard, stubble-covered jaw. “Or maybe he or she wanted to be the one to decide how we ran into each other. We were
more than likely being watched. Hell, they could still be watching us now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was told to come to that restaurant to find you.”

  Chills spread over the surface of her skin, her already frayed nerves unraveling even more. She couldn’t shake the horrible suspicion that she was just a pawn in a game being played out on a political chessboard, her family’s well-being simply some casualty of a power play. “Who was it?” she asked, wishing she wasn’t so afraid. And wishing she were better at hiding it. The slight flare of his nostrils as he pulled in a deep breath told her that Ashe had caught the embarrassing emotion on her scent. Fear was bad enough—but she hoped to hell he couldn’t detect the desire she was trying so hard to tamp down and ignore, fully aware this was neither the time nor the place…nor for that matter, the right man. Not unless she wanted to be made a fool of for the second time in her life.

  “I don’t know who it was,” he finally said in response to her frantic question. “They sent some drugged-out vamp to relay the information to me.”

  Pushing her hair back from her face, she exhaled a trembling breath. “Someone is setting this up to help me, but I swear I don’t know who. Or why? And why you? I mean, there are other Förmyndares with your connections. How did they connect us?”

  He tried to conceal the flicker in his eyes by lowering his lashes, but she caught it. “What?” she demanded, fisting her hands at her sides. “Just tell me. What have you done?”

  He ground his jaw so hard it looked painful. “I haven’t done anything other than ask questions about your family’s banishment.”

  Frustration flared through her system, potent and hot. “Damn it! You just can’t leave well enough alone, can you?”

  “I wanted answers!” he growled, his broad shoulders bunching with tension as he glared down at her.

  “Even if they put you in danger?”

  Her words seemed to throw him a little, as if he hadn’t expected her to care one way or another about his safety. Narrowing his eyes, he said, “I can handle whatever gets thrown at me, little girl. What I can’t handle are lies.”

  She shoved that statement to the side, not wanting to think about it. “Well, it’s obvious why they picked you to help me. God, Ashe, your stupid questions about my family could be what set this whole thing off!”

  Derision darkened his expression. “That’s a pretty big leap.”

  “Ha! You’re stirring it up, making people question what happened nine years ago, and now they’ve decided to silence us!”

  “And who exactly would ‘they’ be?”

  “I can explain later.” She cast an uneasy look at the darkening sky. “Right now, we need to get someplace safe. I don’t like wandering the streets once the sun goes down. I was warned to be careful. If the assassins have any reason to suspect I’m no longer in the Wasteland, they’ll be coming for me.”

  He turned his head to the side, lost in thought and pissed with her answer…or her lack of one. Anger radiated from his big body in powerful waves, a muscle pulsing in the hard line of his jaw as he stared into the thickening shadows.

  “Ashe, please.” She took a step toward him, touching the steely strength of his arm, his biceps impossibly hard beneath the soft leather of his jacket. “We need to get moving.”

  “You’re assuming I believe what you’ve told me,” he bit out, the expression in his hooded eyes impossible to read as he slowly brought his gaze back to hers. “But I don’t. There are too many damn holes in your story. I don’t believe in mysterious benefactors, and I don’t buy that you’re just caught up in some conspiracy about your family. You’re too involved in this, Juliana. There’s something about you that stands out. It’s why you carry so much guilt on your shoulders. Why you practically run that damn compound, working yourself to the bone to make sure that your family is as safe and as well cared for as they can be.”

  She blinked up at him, too unnerved by his insight to argue his words. Instead, she latched onto one of the only bits of truth she could give him. “Ashe, no matter how this came about, the truth is that I do need your help,” she said, rubbing her hands over her arms to ward off the growing chill of the evening. “And, I hate to admit it, but I probably would have come to you anyway. Even without the letter I found in the pack.”

  “Why? It’s no secret that we don’t get along.”

  She couldn’t disagree with the statement, since it was true. She’d always been wary of the sexy vamp because of how badly she wanted him, while at the same time despising the way he lived his life, moving indiscriminately from one woman to another. It reminded her too much of another man she’d once known, and in this case, the adage of “once burned, twice shy” was a perfect fit.

  And as for Ashe…well, she wasn’t exactly sure why he disliked her so intensely, aside from the fact that she was a convicted criminal. That definitely seemed to have put her on his shit list, whether she was innocent or not.

  “That’s true,” she finally murmured. “But I’m not looking for someone to hang out with and be my pal. What I need is someone who can help me.”

  Frustration coated his words. “I want to know what you’re up against. You’d better at least give me a name.”

  “Fine.” Her breath shuddered past her lips. “If you must know, it was the Delacourts.”

  Shock registered in his wide eyes with a look of instant recognition. “Raphe Delacourt?”

  She wasn’t surprised he knew the name. Raphe Delacourt was a legendary crime lord who ruled the Deschanel underworld with a crafty intellect and bone-chilling ruthlessness…aided by lofty connections within the vampire hierarchy that protected him from the vampire Council’s laws.

  “Yes,” she rasped, an unmistakable catch in her voice that she hoped he’d put down to fear. “Raphe…and his mother.” Lenora Delacourt was a longstanding member of the Deschanel Council. One who, with her son’s help, had managed to retain her position of power every time some crusading idealist tried to get rid of her. “Nine years ago, Raphe had her under his thumb, forcing her to follow his orders. As far as I know, he still does.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any proof?”

  She shook her head again. “The letter warned me that assassination orders had been purchased against my family by the Delacourts, but it was only a piece of paper. As for actual evidence, no, I don’t have any.”

  “Of course not,” he mocked. A sarcastic smile twisted across his firm, masculine lips.

  Bristling, she said, “Look, my family is living on borrowed time. Either agree to help me or don’t. But don’t waste my time.”

  He moved a bit closer, his voice dropping to little more than a whisper. “And what will you do if I refuse?”

  Hoping he couldn’t tell how badly his words affected her, Juliana scrounged up every ounce of bravado she could find. “Then I’ll find someone who can help me. You’re not the only Förmyndare I know.”

  “But I am the one you came to first,” he murmured, arching one dark brow. “Which was either incredibly smart…or incredibly stupid.”

  Her spine stacked up with indignation. “I’m not an idiot. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Like hell. You don’t have a clue what you’re doing,” he snarled, all traces of his lazy arrogance vanishing beneath a rise of hard, biting fury. “Do you have any idea how foolish it was for you to sit out on that restaurant patio? You drew the eye of every damn male who walked by!”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she scoffed.

  “It’s the bloody truth, you blind little fool. I’d be willing to bet there are Förmyndares already out searching for you.”