by Nina Bangs
“What do you want?” Fin sounded politely interested.
Ty was used to hearing only Fin’s voice in his head, so the unfamiliar new one startled him.
“It is an honor to meet two Gods of the Night.” The cat’s gaze slid to Kelly and Neva. “As well as their minions.”
Both Kelly and Neva looked startled, so Ty knew Balan was including them in the conversation, too.
“Gods of the Night?” Ty smiled. “Sounds like a fancy name for the Eleven.”
“Those I serve name you such.” His attention moved to Fin. “You lead them. My masters wish you not to interfere with what they have ordained will come to pass.” Balan circled Steve’s body, his nostrils flaring at the scent of death. “If you persist in defying my masters, they will destroy all who follow you.”
Fin smiled, that icy smile Ty was beginning to recognize as belonging to the real Fin. No warmth lived in that smile. “I and my…minions—” his smile widened a little as he glanced at Kelly, who looked like she wanted to kick the word “minions” around a little and then cover it with dirt—“appreciate your masters passing along their warning. We’ll definitely take it under consideration. By the way, do they have names? I’ve been calling them numbers. The one here in Houston is Nine.” Fin was in full sarcastic mode.
The jaguar’s tail whipped back and forth. “My masters do not tolerate mockery. They prefer to be called Lords of Time.”
“Good grief. Gods of the Night, Lords of Time? It sounds like we’re living a freaking video game. Can we say pretentious?” Kelly’s muttered sarcasm caught the big cat’s attention.
Balan glared his annoyance at Kelly before dismissing her. “Individual names have power. My masters choose not to reveal them.” The jaguar crouched near Neva, studying her with unblinking intensity from those eerie golden eyes. Neva lowered her head and growled at him. “This is the one changed by my masters’ allies.” Balan swung his gaze to Ty. “The ones you killed this night. You are a predator like no other I’ve seen. I would find you a worthy hunting partner.”
Ty had to make a real effort not to take pride in the jaguar’s compliment. This was his enemy.
“I am no one’s enemy. I am merely the messenger of your enemy. I take no sides in battles. I simply observe.”
“And report.” Ty felt a sense of invasion knowing the big cat was in his head. It wasn’t the same as when Fin was there.
“And report.”
“It’s nice to have a neutral party acting as a messenger. But I wonder exactly how neutral you are, Balan? Why have you chosen to carry messages and observe for them”
Fin sounded as if he couldn’t care less about the jaguar’s answer, but Ty was familiar with every nuance of Fin’s voice. There was tense excitement thrumming through it now.
“How do you know my name?” Balan rose from his crouch to move closer to the trees, where he became one more shadow out of many.
Fin shrugged. “I tuned in to all the mental chatter going on in Memorial Park tonight.” He looked faintly bored. “Interesting that balan means jaguar in the Mayan language. You’re black. I think I read somewhere that the Mayans believed the black of your species was the Jaguar God of the Underworld. Not surprising since you’re a creature of the night. Didn’t they also believe you were a helper to Bolon Yokte, a Mayan creation lord?” Without warning, Fin’s gaze sharpened. “Maybe you’re a little bit more than a lowly messenger.”
“How do you know all these things?” Balan’s voice was an angry hiss.
“I read a lot?” Fin had returned to bored indifference.
“Perhaps we have much to learn about each other.” And with something sounding close to a dry chuckle, Balan was gone.
The silence dragged on longer than it should have.
Kelly sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “I don’t even want to guess what that was about. I’m mentally and emotionally done for the night.”
She looked down at Steve, her expression going soft in a way that tugged at a yearning Ty didn’t understand.
“We have to take care of Steve. He didn’t deserve this.” Kelly’s eyes hardened. “I never thought of myself as much of a hater, but I’m beginning to think it’s because I never had true evil set up shop next door to me. I’m building a mile-high mountain of hate for these guys.” She glanced at Neva. “How about you?”
Neva lowered her head, peeled her lips back from a formidable set of teeth, and growled her hatred.
“I’ll take care of Steve.” Fin sounded matter-of-fact about it.
And why not? Fin had taken care of everything as long as Ty could remember. None of them ever questioned that.
Perhaps we have much to learn about each other. Balan knew as much about Fin as Ty did. Which was a big freaking nothing. That was wrong. Why didn’t he know more about his leader? Why hadn’t he ever asked questions? Why hadn’t any of them asked questions?
Ty raised a troubled gaze to Fin. Fin met his gaze, and something dark and threatening moved in his eyes.
“Don’t go there, Ty.”
With that parting thought, Fin lifted Steve easily into his arms and strode into the darkness.
Chapter Nine
“What’re you thinking?” Ty didn’t look at her as they stood outside the door to their room.
“Nothing.” A colossal lie. Kelly absently swung Neva’s broken leash.
“Right.” He seemed disappointed in her answer. Opening the double doors, he waited for Neva and her to enter the room.
Suddenly exhausted, Kelly collapsed onto the couch. She noticed someone had lit the fireplace while they were gone. Dully, she watched Neva wander around the room. The werewolf ignored the food waiting for her by the wet bar.
Under other circumstances, the huge bank of windows with sliding glass doors leading to a private balcony, the separate sitting area, and the marble fireplace would have wowed Kelly. But all she could think about was what Fin was doing with Steve’s body. Would he put it somewhere for the police to find? Kelly hadn’t known Steve well, but the thought of his body being dumped in the weeds somewhere upset her. And how long before the police started to wonder about bodies turning up with puncture wounds and no blood?
Kelly noticed Ty staring at Neva, who’d finally settled next to the windows, head on paws, gazing into the darkness.
“The night calls to me too, Neva. It’ll always call to the animal in us. But that’s not a bad thing. Your enhanced senses will allow you to experience the world of darkness in ways you never imagined.” Something in his eyes spoke of his own longing for the night.
Kelly felt alone, even with Ty and Neva in the room.
Ty walked over and sat beside Kelly. “Still thinking nothing?” He picked up a sandwich from a tray someone had left on the coffee table.
If only. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the couch. “These last three nights have redefined my life.”
“Bad.”
“Bad,” she agreed. “Before you popped onto the scene I was an ordinary student, working part-time at an ordinary zoo, with an ordinary family I loved. I put the ‘o’ in ordinary.”
“Now?”
“Now I don’t know. I’m living a you’ve-gotta-be-kidding life. It’s so far out there even my sister Jenna’s tabloid wouldn’t touch it. And it’s dead serious. End-of-humanity kind of stuff.”
“I’m sorry I screwed up your life.”
There was emotion in his voice. Regret? The depth of it startled her.
“If what Fin says is true, it would’ve gotten screwed up soon anyway.” Kelly wanted her old life back.
Didn’t she? Kelly glanced up at Ty’s face. He hadn’t turned on the lights when he entered the room, but the moonlight shining through the windows bathed everything in a cold glow. It cast his face in shades of light and dark.
Shades of light and dark. Like him. “I don’t get you. You’re one of the good guys, but you love violence. Out there with the werewolves tonight, you w
ere having a blast.”
“Understand me, Kelly. I went to sleep one day and woke up sixty-five million years later. So I’m only about a week removed from being the biggest badass of them all. I lived to hunt, loved the excitement, killed to survive. What do you expect of me? I don’t belong to your world, will probably never belong, no matter how much Fin wants that to happen.”
“I think you will.” Fin and she finally had something in common. She wanted it to happen too. But not completely. It was the wild and dangerous that drew her. Probably that’s why she liked working around the large carnivores at the zoo. She smiled. Correction—she liked wild and dangerous as long as it didn’t include snakes.
He didn’t answer, only stared into the flames.
“I’m going to take a quick shower. I noticed someone left a nightshirt on the bed for me.” Only one. Pink. Small. So it was hers. He was on his own. Without waiting for him to respond, she rose, grabbed the nightshirt, and headed for the bathroom.
Once in the shower, she blocked out all thoughts of the room’s only bed. Kelly convinced herself she didn’t need to think about it. The darn thing was as big as a football field. If they both stayed on their own side, they wouldn’t even be within shouting distance of each other, let alone touching. Besides, she wasn’t about to make love in the same room with a werewolf. A woman had to have some standards.
Climbing from the shower, she ignored the splendor of the room as she pulled on the shirt, then used the blow-dryer on her hair. No use bringing her bloody clothes back out with her, so she left them hanging from a hook on the back of the door. Then, taking a deep breath, she returned to the bedroom.
Neva had eaten and moved to a darkened corner of the room. Looked like she was already asleep. Ty was waiting for his shot at the shower. His gaze trailed over Kelly, lingering where the nightshirt ended at midthigh. His smile was filled with heat and promise.
Without saying a word, he went into the bathroom and shut the door behind him.
She grabbed a sandwich and climbed into bed to eat it. Bad habit, but she loved eating this way. Usually she was watching TV or reading while she ate, though. Now she nibbled at the sandwich while she wondered what he’d wear to bed. Probably have to sleep in his shorts. Her lips curled up in a can’t-wait grin at the thought.
Two sandwiches later, the bottomless pit lovingly referred to as her stomach was filled. Hey, she’d missed dinner. Imminent death worked up an appetite.
Now her eyelids drooped as she waited for Ty to come out of the bathroom. But no way was she falling asleep before getting a chance to see more of him than she’d ever seen before. She needed to end this totally crappy night with something positive.
Just when she’d started to think he’d crawled out the bathroom window, the door opened.
Kelly’s eyes popped open. Whoa. No more droopy eyelids. Naked demigod at twelve o’clock. The reasoning part of her brain sputtered with an overload of logical concerns: Where’re your shorts? Do you really want Neva to see you this way? Do you really want me to see you this way? Aren’t you embarrassed, because I sure am?
A more primitive corner of her brain thought this had to be the highlight of her whole employment by Eleven Inc.
Without even glancing her way, Ty walked over to the wall of windows and stood gazing out.
“Umm, aren’t you afraid someone might see you?” His back was a smooth flow of golden skin from his broad muscular shoulders down to taut, round butt cheeks. She completed her buff-bod scan by admiring his strong thighs and legs.
He glanced over his shoulder. “We’re thirty-plus stories up. pilots of low-flying planes might do a double take, but that’s about it.”
“Oh.” She slid her tongue over suddenly dry lips. “Uh, I thought you’d wear your shorts to bed.” Prude. Queen Victoria and her.
“Why?” He turned to face her.
“Because…” Omigod. She’d seen his perfect pecs before, with his nipples just begging for the touch of her tongue. She’d seen his hard flat stomach with the shadowed indentation of his navel. But in the darkened room lit only by moonlight, it was like seeing him for the first time. “You don’t know me. In this world, men wear their shorts to bed if they’re with a woman who’s not their wife or lover.” True, but she should look at things from his perspective. Clothes weren’t high on a dinosaur’s priority list. Maybe so, but this was all about her, and his exposed body was weakening the few pathetic defenses she had against all his über maleness.
Ty shook his head. “I don’t get it. Why should I hide certain parts of my body?” He looked sincerely puzzled.
Kelly’s gaze slid lower. Because seeing those heavy sacs resting between your thighs and watching your erection grow hard is turning the dial up on my lust-o-meter. “Exposing your sexual organs is an invitation to have sex.”
He raised one expressive brow. “Do you want me to wear shorts?”
There it was, the direct challenge. Her brain shouted yes, but her senses rose up as one and proclaimed, “No.”
His smile was hard and predatory, his lips soft and mobile. She was really conflicted about that smile. Hard or soft? She’d have to touch, taste before making a decision.
“And you’re wrong, Kelly. I do know you.” He moved away from the windows, his movements smooth and fluid. “I know what’s in your eyes. Hunger.” Ty stopped as he reached the side of the bed. “Recognizing things like that is one of the perks of having a primitive soul hot-wired for sex.”
“You really want me to believe in that primitive stuff, don’t you?” She gripped her lower lip between her teeth, tension thrumming through her along with the hunger she wished she could deny. And if he didn’t move out of grabbing range fast, she’d give in to temptation and slide her fingers the length of his cock. Her Victorian image would shatter into a million shining sexual shards.
When she released her lip, he fixed his gaze on it, his eyes blazing with a need that went way past mere desire. “Never doubt it. Primitive doesn’t hide behind pretty words. I want you. I want to touch every inch of your bare body, bury myself deep inside you.”
Denial was the coward’s way. Her body knew the truth, and her brain, except a tiny cluster of whiny common sense cells, thought it was a hell of a good idea. “Fine, so I want you too. But we’re not alone.”
His gaze slipped to Neva. “She’s out of it. She wouldn’t know what we were doing.”
“I would.”
He nodded. “I’m going out on the balcony.”
His eyes burned with his invitation, but he didn’t say anything as he strode to the glass doors. The glimpse she got of the foil package clenched in his hand said he expected her to join him.
As he stepped onto the balcony, she silently chanted the rules of the civilized: Thou shalt not make love on a balcony even if it’s thirty-something stories up because someone might see you. Thou shalt not make love with a dinosaur no matter how sexy he is. Thou shalt not make love on a balcony when a werewolf is in the room, even if said werewolf is asleep. And last but not least, thou shalt not make love outside when it’s cold because goose bumps are never attractive.
But the chant was slowly and inexorably drowned out by a voice that wasn’t civilized at all, a voice hoarse with need, a voice that urged her to pull off her shirt and expose her body to the night wind, to bare her teeth and rake her nails over his perfect body, and to hell with goose bumps.
Almost in a trance, she climbed from the bed and walked to the glass doors. His back was to her, the wind blowing his hair away from his face. She imagined running her fingers through that hair, reveling in the silky slide of each strand. Placing her hand on the door, she paused to glance at the privacy sheers.
Taking a deep breath, she made her decision. She closed the sheers, pushed the door open, and stepped out onto the balcony.
Ty turned to stare at her, his eyes asking a silent question. He must have seen the answer in her eyes, because he lifted those sensual lips in a smile that was
all starving predator. “Decided to cross over to the wild side?”
“It seems so.” Kelly lifted her face to the breeze. Even though the balcony was protected on three sides, she’d expected to feel cold. She didn’t. Nerves along with anticipation kept her toasty warm.
He took the two strides necessary to enter her personal space. No, make that dominate her personal space. Only as he stood inches from her with the wind blowing at his back did she appreciate his size, his power. It was more than a physical presence. She shivered.
Ty reached out to run his fingers along her tightly clenched jaw. “Don’t. The part of me you see in battle has no place in what we’ll share.”
Kelly nodded. “I know that. The shiver wasn’t a fear thing.” She grinned. “It was just appreciation for the sheer everything about you. And anticipation. Lots of anticipation.”
His soft laughter was filled with savage joy. He glanced at a nearby chaise. “We won’t be able to get too enthusiastic on that.”
“Forget the chaise. Standing up. Definitely standing up.” There was something deliciously urgent about that. “And soon. Very soon.”
Ty’s eyes darkened. “Good.”
He took that final step and swallowed her world. She absorbed his scent, an exotic mix of the unknown and heated male arousal. And when he grasped the hem of her shirt, she was ready. Lifting her arms, she allowed him to slide it over her head.
The night breeze played across her body, touching and teasing. Something broke free inside her. Probably her inhibitions making a run for it.
Dropping her shirt, he stared. In his eyes blazed the same naked emotion that she’d seen as he leaped into battle. And everywhere his gaze skimmed—breasts, stomach, and finally the spot that made her want to spread her legs and invite him in—fire touched her.
“You’re a beautiful woman.” He touched one nipple with the tip of his finger and watched it pebble. Then he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. Bending his head, he whispered to her, his breath teasing the sensitive skin beneath her ear. “It’s been too long, and I want too much.” He closed his teeth lightly over her earlobe and tugged.