by Sonya Clark
She tried to bluff with a semblance of her usual attitude. “Oh, you know how it is on a Saturday night.”
“Yeah, I do. The police band told me some of it. Why don’t you tell me the rest?”
She closed up like water filling a hole. He set the glass to the side and lightly rested the fingers of one hand on her knee. Just a hint of a touch, no pressure. “You came to me for help. Let me help you, Calla.”
“It was a mistake for me to come.”
“No, no, it wasn’t. But I need to know what’s going on if I’m going to be able to help you.”
“That’s the thing of it. I don’t even know.”
“Just tell me what happened.”
She was silent for a moment, the internal debate clear on her features. “I think I saw something I shouldn’t have. There was a guy maybe a few years younger than me. I saw him use magic, off zone. He wanted to talk but I didn’t recognize him so I tried to leave, and then this other guy shot at me.”
Nate bit down on a surge of anger. “That how you got hurt?”
“Yeah.” She glanced at her arm, turning it to see better. “I ran but him and a couple of other guys came after me. They caught me and were going to put me in a car.”
Gut clenching, Nate spread his hand across her knee. “Then what?”
She bit her lip. “I did what I had to do to get away.”
“The police band went crazy. If there’s another incident tonight I’ll have to go in. Was that you?”
“If they’d put me in that car I’d be dead now! I don’t know what I saw that I wasn’t supposed to see but those guys were killers.”
Nate moved to the sofa and pulled her close. “Okay, okay. You did what you had to do. What did you do?”
“If I tell you you’ll have to arrest me.”
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“I don’t know if I can trust you that much.”
Nelson Santo’s face rose in his mind—a scared kid now on his way to life in prison if he was lucky, but most likely the death penalty. Nate leaned into Calla’s hair, his voice low. “If I was going to arrest you, I would have already. I could take you in for questioning on suspicion alone. You know that. But I’m not going to.”
Tension poured from her in waves. He smoothed her hair back, tracing a finger down her jawline. “You used magic to get away from them.”
She swallowed, the skin around her eyes tight.
“I’m glad you did it, Calla. Okay? I’m glad you got away from them.”
Someone pounded on the door. “Security sweep. Please open the door and have ID ready.”
Nate pulled Calla to her feet. “Go in the bedroom.”
“They’ll search the apartment.”
“I’ll try to get out of it with my badge.” He gave her a gentle push and pointed to the back of the apartment. “Go!”
She swept out of the room.
Nate made his way to the door, not at all sure he could bluff his way out of a search.
Chapter Fifteen
Two uniforms with heavy armor and weapons were on the other side of the door. Nate held up his badge immediately. “Nathan Perez, Robbery Homicide. Can I help you officers?”
The ranking officer—her nametag read Goldblum—said, “Did you get the alert, sir? There was an incidence of violent magic downtown.”
“Yeah, I heard that. Everything settled down?”
“There’s a search on for the suspect. We’re sweeping the city, door to door. I’ll need to check for anyone else here.”
Sweeping the city? Holy fuck, what the hell did Calla stumble across?
A giggle sounded behind him. “Which tie do you want to use this time, baby? I like the red one.”
Nate turned to see Calla entering the living room, his eyes widening. She wore only a tank top and panties, blond hair tousled—blond!—and his red tie twisted haphazardly around her wrists. The wounds on her cheek and arm were gone, glamoured probably.
“Oh! Hey, there’s people here.” Abashed and teasing at the same time, her eyes glittered and she bit her lip.
Goldblum said, “I’ll need to see your ID, miss.” She sounded unfazed at the sight.
Nate wished he could say the same. He took a deep breath to steady himself, trying to get a rein on his libido. “It’s no big deal. They just need to check IDs.”
Calla nodded, padding back into the bedroom. She returned quickly with her ID and handed it to Goldblum. The tie still hung from one wrist. Nate tried not to stare at it, but he could do nothing about the images it brought to mind.
The cop ran Calla’s ID in her tablet. She looked up with a startled expression. “You’re Magic Born.”
“Yes.” Calla met her hostility with just enough attitude to hearten Nate.
He stepped between them. “Is that a problem?”
“It’s a surprise.” Goldblum struggled to be tactful. “We are searching for a Magic Born suspect.”
“Calla’s been here with me for a while. I think I’d have noticed if she got violent in that time.” He tried to keep his tone light while his insides warred between fear and lust.
Calla leaned forward and said in a mock whisper, “The spanking is completely consensual, I swear.”
The cop in the doorway coughed. Goldblum blushed beneath her headgear. Nate said, “I don’t think they need to know about all that.”
“Oops!” Calla grinned as she twined herself around Nate. “Sorry! Hey, you guys aren’t going to tell are you? Down at the police station?” She nuzzled his chest. “He’s still shy about this kind of stuff. You know how it is.”
Nate held her close, not sure how much of this performance was glamour and bluff. It hadn’t been long since she’d collapsed. If it gave him an excuse to reach under the back of her tank top to stroke the skin there, well, he could apologize later. “Is there anything else, officer?”
“Uh, no sir.” She returned Calla’s ID. “Good night, Detective.”
Calla answered with a cheerful “Good night!”
As soon as they were gone, Nate reached with his free hand to lock the door. “How’re you doing?”
“Uf.” She buried her head in his chest and went limp. He picked her up, watching as the glamour that covered her wounds disappeared. Glancing at the sofa, he decided against it and carried her to the bedroom. She could sleep in his bed whether she wanted him in it or not.
“I just need some rest,” she said as he slid her body between the sheets. “An hour, maybe two, then I’ll feel better. I can leave then.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I think after that performance you should stay all night. If people are going to gossip about my sex life I’d like to give them something really good to talk about.”
She offered a weak smile. “Yeah, about that. I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of another reason that would make sense for me to be here this time of night. Or at all.”
“It worked.” Tugging at a lock of her hair, he grinned. “Blond?”
“Blond,” she confirmed.
“Did I earn this or was it too much to keep those cuts covered and color your hair at the same time?”
“You earned it.” She skimmed her hand over his. “Now get out of here. I need some sleep.”
The red streamer of his tie snaked across the bed, leading under the covers. He reached for her wrist to untangle the material, gripping it tight as he stood. “I’m just gonna go lay on the couch. Think about you being in my bed.”
“Have fun with that.” She snuggled deeper into the bed, wearing a smile that made even his eyeballs sweat.
* * *
Calla slept for almost three hours, according to the digital clock on the nightstand. Stretching, body still sore from being used as a person-sized energy con
duit, she took her time climbing out of bed. A light shone in the hall, bright enough for her to see the pile of clothes she’d left on the floor. She should definitely get dressed. Probably.
Hell, he’d already seen her in her underwear, what did it matter? Food and water were more important now.
First a bathroom. She found a small one opposite the bedroom, as clean and impersonal as the rest of the place. Nate had only lived there three months—maybe that wasn’t enough time for him to really make the place his own. Recalling the divorce in his personnel file, she considered that maybe he didn’t have a lot of his own to begin with.
He’d done a good job on her cuts. By the time she had to be back in the zone, she’d have no trouble maintaining the simple glamour needed to hide them. She ducked her head under the faucet to tame the bed head, finger-combing it into something fairly presentable. For a moment she thought about returning it to its usual purple. He’d already seen her blond now, what did it matter?
For some reason it did matter. All of it mattered. What he’d done for her tonight could land him in prison, blow a hole in his life so big he would never fully recover. But he’d done it without asking for anything, and she knew he wasn’t going to. It wasn’t unheard of for cops and DMS agents both to trade sexual favors for looking the other way, though never with anything this big. Nate wouldn’t do that. The possibility wasn’t even on the radar. He’d helped her because he wanted to, because he cared about her. She was certain of that.
In the long run though, it meant nothing. There was no point to him caring about her. Because there was no point to it, Calla could admit to herself that she liked him. His kisses lit a fire in her she hadn’t even known was there, and she’d never shied away from passion. In some other lifetime or maybe some alternate universe, they would have been lovers. In this life, there was just no point to even thinking about it.
She went back into the bedroom for her pants before heading for the living room.
A low light over the bar was the only illumination. Nate lay draped on the couch, which was really too small for him to sleep on. He was shirtless, with one arm resting on his abdomen and the other falling to the floor. Calla stood motionless, drinking in the sight of him. His peaks and valleys of hard muscle appeared carved from stone, marred by a network of scars radiating from an old injury on the right side of his chest. A tattoo of some kind of canine with mottled coloring adorned his left biceps. The sleep pants he wore couldn’t hide the heavy muscles of his thighs and calves on his long legs. It seemed a ridiculous thought, but even his bare feet looked powerful, as if there was so much strength packed into his body that it manifested in every part of his form. The temptation to explore the truth of that thought was almost too great.
Forcing herself to turn away, Calla tried to focus on food. Eating would help her recover from the heavy magic of earlier. Spotting a doorway that looked likely to lead to a kitchen, she crossed the room quickly. Nate’s small fridge didn’t have much—sandwich makings, breakfast stuff, milk and bottled water, a bunch of red grapes in the crisper. Grabbing the grapes and a water, she shut the door and took a seat at the little breakfast nook in the corner. Several dress shirts still in the dry cleaner wrapping were stacked on the table. She pushed them aside to make room, revealing his tablet underneath. A yellow light indicated he’d left it in sleep mode rather than turning it off.
That was too much temptation for Calla to fight. Despite needing the food, she pushed the plate aside in favor of the tablet, letting its circuits whisper to her. There was no guarantee of how much time she’d have, and she wanted to take advantage of the chance to get into the tablet. She thumbed the power button, instantly feeling the electric surge. The wireless card responded to her gentle push and an internet page popped up. It looked different from what she was used to—blander, less colorful. She had no idea how to navigate the internet the normal way, so she set the device on the table and began the slide into a trance state.
The world fell into darkness, then the familiar blue-white lines coalesced around her. Code worked itself into English through the translation spell she always used. Nate had plenty of useful links bookmarked. She followed the pathway to the police band. It took a moment for the babble to start making sense, or at least as much sense as she could make of it without knowing all the police code numbers and lingo. She knew the codes for magic-related crimes though. Uniforms were still sweeping the city, looking for a Magic Born whose face wasn’t in the database. The zone was being searched too—Sinsuality and other businesses had been shut down for the night. No arrests had been made yet. Good, that meant people were staying calm. Crackdowns weren’t an everyday occurrence, but at least once a year everyone and everything in FreakTown got tossed upside down in random raids for no reason. People kept their hiding places and their cool and usually no one got hurt. Calla hoped it would stay that way that night, knowing it would be her fault if anyone got arrested or injured.
Hers, and the other Magic Born whose glamoured face most likely wasn’t in any database either.
Searching backwards, she looked for where the order for a citywide sweep had come from. It seemed like an excessive thing to do in comparison to what she’d done. Only minor injuries were reported from the scene, though it had created a bit of a panic. Even so, she thought the search had less to do with what she’d done and more to do with what she’d seen. Someone with serious juice wanted that guy hidden, and they were willing to kill to do it.
There it was—the order had come from DMS. But not Lewis’s office, the regional headquarters. What the hell?
“What the hell?”
The words punched through the veil between cyberspace and the real world, tinny and far away. A hand fell on her shoulder, jerking her out of the trance state.
Nate loomed over her. “What are you doing?”
Chapter Sixteen
Calla shrugged, smiling. “I was hungry.” She plucked a grape from the bunch and popped it in her mouth.
“You were glowing.” Nate picked up the tablet. “So was this. What were you doing with it?”
“Nothing. It was just there. I didn’t mess with it.” Lying to him felt wrong, but the truth was too much to share.
He slid into the opposite seat. “Calla, you don’t have to lie to me. I would think tonight proved that.”
She busied herself with the water bottle, trying to think of a response. “What you did for me tonight was...it was amazing. You probably saved my life. You definitely saved me from prison. I don’t know how to repay you for that.”
“I don’t want you to repay me. That’s not why I did it.”
“Why did you do it?” Trading one dangerous ground for another.
Looking away, he rubbed his jaw. “I’m no good at this part.”
“What part?”
He looked back at her, eyes fathomless in the low light. “Flirting and dancing I can do, I’m good at.” He swung out of the opposite side of the breakfast nook and slid in beside her. “I’m a damn good lover too.”
Grinning, she said, “No problems with being too modest, I see.”
“You know I’d like nothing better than to prove it to you.” His lips caught hers, gentle but insistent, his tongue teasing but not penetrating. “It’s the best way I know to tell you what I feel. I’m no good with words, Calla. Not words like that.”
She laid her hand on his cheek, exploring the angles of his face. Liquid heat filled her body, sending her thoughts in a treacherous direction. She’d managed to distract him from catching her with the tablet, but now he was distracting her. If she slept with him tonight, it might seem to him in the morning that she was repaying him for his help, that she’d done it to keep him from asking too many questions, or maybe even both. But Goddess, she didn’t care. Not right then when the warmth of his body beckoned, when her hands itched to explore the landscap
e of his bare chest, when the hard line of his mouth had melted into a sexy curve and his eyes held such a promise of pleasure. Calla wanted him. Right then that was enough.
Closing the distance between them, she tasted his lips in tiny sips. He brought his hand up to curl his fingers into her hair, his mouth seeking more. She dodged, trailing a line from his cheek to his jaw line and back up to his ear. Taking the lobe between her teeth, she gave it just enough pressure to elicit a moan from him. She splayed her hands over the warm flesh of his chest, stroking up and down as she dipped her head to mark a line with her lips across his collarbone. Sucking on his Adam’s apple brought a growl from deep in his throat. A feeling of power flared inside her, not magic but a feminine, sexual kind of power she’d rarely felt. Feeling comfortable in her own skin was one thing, but this was different. He radiated need, not just for sex but for her.
She kissed a hurried line up his throat, eager for his lips. He met her with an equal urgency, his tongue sliding against hers in a wet heat that set her on fire. Dissolving into the kiss, she clung to him.
With a shocking suddenness he pulled away, returning to the opposite seat and covering his face with his hands. Sharp fear pierced her stomach. “What’s wrong?”
Lowering his hands, he gazed at her with a pained expression. She said, “I thought you wanted this.”
“I do. Believe me, I do.”
Calla left the breakfast nook and crossed the floor to lean her hip against the countertop, arms crossed. “Then what’s the problem?” Why she bothered to ask, she didn’t know. Maybe to cap the feeling of rejection with a nice fat cherry of humiliation.
“The problem is I don’t want casual sex with you, but that’s all it would be until we trust each other. You didn’t want to tell me the truth earlier. I don’t know what you want from me. We need to figure this stuff out because I don’t want to be in another relationship that’s nothing but secrets and suspicion and rules about what we can’t talk about.”