“We’ll be landing soon,” he said, and she found herself counting.
Four. Four words. She was overcome by the sudden, incongruous urge to laugh.
In two weeks, if she hadn’t completed her impossible task of finding the never-before-located headquarters of an elusive, cunning enemy in a six-hundred-square-mile city of almost three million people, she was going to be killed by a beautiful idiot. She leaned her head back against the seat and sighed. Her mother must be rolling over in her grave.
“You probably shouldn’t touch me.” She stared up at the curved ceiling and its rows of softly glowing recessed lights. “Or didn’t they tell you that?”
“Suggestion doesn’t work on me.”
Morgan turned to look at him. He really was stupid. Or maybe just stupidly cocky. She resisted the urge to reach out, touch the side of his stupidly beautiful face, and whisper, Quack like a duck.
“It works on everyone,” she said drily, emphasizing the last word. “No matter their intelligence level.”
One of his eyebrows lifted, but that was all. He seemed to be waiting for her to continue.
“I can make you do anything I want,” she said, enunciating every word, trying to be clear so this blunt instrument sitting next to her would understand. “It’s my Gift. All I have to do is touch you, Suggest something I want you to do, and you’ll do it.”
His lips curved into a smile that was both wicked and challenging. And not stupid at all.
“Then by all means,” he drawled. He held out his hand in invitation. “Touch me.”
Her heart screeched to a stop inside her chest. Then her mind took off, wild and careening, shooting a million miles out into space in the expanse of one second to the next.
She could make him forget.
She could make him forget and make him unconscious and then do the same for the pilot—well, maybe after they landed—and escape into the never-ending maze of Rome’s storied, sun-washed streets and never be seen again. It was only the three of them, it would be so easy, Leander hadn’t even sent any other guards. She could travel to Paris and Prague and even Iceland if she wanted, she could find her own way in the world and leave Sommerley and the Law and the Ikati all behind, forever.
She could be free.
Before he could change his mind, she seized his outstretched hand.
Warmth and a charge of electricity, a tingle up her arm. “Forget me,” she whispered, vehement, staring into the depths of his kohl-rimmed amber eyes. “Forget me and sleep.”
Then, quite inconveniently, nothing happened.
Never, never, never, it’s never happened before. Since infancy I’ve had this Gift, and no one is impervious, no one can resist. I trained for years to be careful not to touch, not to hug, not to think any random thoughts that would hurt one of the tribe—
“Meu caro,” the assassin murmured. He gazed into her eyes, still with that sly, wicked smile, his hand grasped in hers. “My dear. How could one ever forget a woman like you?”
It hit her like a wrecking ball, swift and solid and just as devastating: immune. He was immune. And toying with her.
“Son of a bitch!” she hissed and snatched her hand away.
That earned her a laugh, dark and dangerous. “Son of an Alpha,” he corrected, reaching behind him to grasp something clipped to his belt. He pulled it out in a move so fast all she registered was the glint of shining silver, the musical chink of metal sliding against metal, solid and sleek.
Then his hands were around her throat.
She screamed and pushed back, but she was held in place by the lap belt, her feet struggling to find purchase against the slick, low-nap rug. He was suddenly on top of her, muscle and heat and a low, growled curse, his leg over hers, his arms around her shoulders, his fingers tightening on her neck, cutting off her air. She swung out blindly and connected with his jaw, found a handful of his shining jet hair and yanked as hard as she could. Another curse and then he was off her, standing a few feet away, breathing hard and staring at her with glittering, wary eyes.
She tore off the lap belt and leapt to her feet, lissome and lightning fast, and stood facing him in the middle of the aisle, her feet spread apart, legs flexed, hands balled to fists. Shaking and furious, she realized with a shock that her neck was throbbing and sore where he’d wrapped his hands around it.
He’d hurt her.
The urge to Shift came over her in a blinding white spark, violent and primal. Reason and caution and calm were stripped away, replaced by the instinctual and overpowering urge to claw her way out of her human skin and fly roaring through the air to land on top of him and slash out his eyes, tear off his arms, eat out his heart.
“You are going to die,” she snarled and stepped forward.
The heated charge came, then the flare that sparked and caught like gunpowder, then the scent of smoke and honey, the swift and terrible flash of pain as her muscles and tendons and bones began to transfigure into her other self, her real self. She inhaled, savoring the pain, savoring the thought of his blood on her tongue.
And then...nothing.
She faltered. The pain in her throat increased, pressure and an odd, electric hum that sent agony flaring down her spine and held her just at the brink of the turn. She lifted her hands to the pain, searching for the source, for the circle of fire that ringed her neck.
Her fingers touched cool metal. There was something around her throat.
“No,” she whispered. Her heart became a sudden, frozen weight inside her chest.
“I’m afraid so,” the assassin answered without regret. He took a step back down the aisle, watching her carefully, his face blank, barren of all emotion. “Your Gift of Suggestion can’t harm me, but I’m afraid fangs and claws are another situation entirely.”
She was horrified. Horrified. She might as well be dead. “You collared me!”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to; the evidence was right there, cold and tight against the throbbing pulse in her throat. He just kept backing away toward the front of the plane, toward the closed door that led out of the main cabin into the dining room and media room beyond.
“I can’t live like this! I can’t go two weeks without Shifting!” she shouted, digging her fingers into the skin around the collar, searching for a way to get it off. But even as she did it, she knew there wasn’t a way. The locks, once fitted together, fused closed. It could only be removed by a welder’s torch in a dicey process that often left hideous scars. It was the Ikati’s most effective means of punishing minor offenders, and one of their most feared. Living with the collar meant never being able to Shift. It meant staying in human form, for as long as was deemed necessary to foster a more cooperative attitude.
“Find the Expurgari sooner, and it won’t be two weeks,” the assassin suggested, cold as ice. He reached the door and opened it, paused for a moment to gaze at her. She stared back at him in impotent, white-faced fury, her mouth open in horror. “Or perhaps in the meantime,” he said with an evil glint in his eye, “I’ll forget why I put it on in the first place.” He turned and disappeared through the door, closing it with a definitive thud behind him.
Morgan sank to her knees in the middle of the aisle, her fingers still clutched around the cold links encircling her throat. “Son of a bitch!” she shrieked.
From behind the closed door, there might have been laughter.
Rome. Spectacular city of living history, of emperors and poets and lovers, of red-tiled roofs hugging a kink in the dark river that winds serpentine through it, of saints and artists and ancient monuments erected in exaltation of long-dead gods.
From the air it looked like a magical fairy-tale city, Morgan thought, gazing out the airplane window to the sprawling maze below. Painted in warm washes of terra cotta and cinnamon and ochre, surrounded by verdant, hilly countryside dotted with crumbling ruins, it glittered rare and beautiful like a topaz against a backdrop of emeralds. The streets were snarled and writhing and interlocked like a drawer f
ull of snakes, forested with bell towers and palazzos and cathedral domes that gleamed gold in the afternoon sun. She felt a thrill of real excitement that she’d soon be walking those streets, which was followed by the sour, jarring realization that he would be walking right beside her.
Her fingers stole up again to trace the rigid metal rings of the collar. He better not be in the room with her when it came off, because slicing his face to ribbons with her claws had moved to the very top of her priority list.
The plane shuddered as the landing gear was engaged, and she leaned back into the plush confines of her seat.
First things first, she thought bitterly, watching the city rise up to meet them. Beautiful bastard. I’ll find them first, and then I’ll take care of you.
“There’s only one bed,” Morgan declared bitingly and turned to gaze at him in frozen, green-eyed hostility.
“Observant,” Xander replied drily and brushed past her into the plush opulence of the Nijinsky suite. The door swung shut on silent hinges behind him.
The Hotel de Russie was not the most famous hotel in Rome—that honor went to the Hassler, hands down—but it was the best. He’d stayed here on many occasions and appreciated its lush, terraced gardens, its central location between the Spanish Steps and the Piazza del Popolo, its uniquely Roman air of sexy, sophisticated gentility. It was immaculate and beautiful, decorated in classic Italian luxury: silk-paneled walls; gilt-framed oils; copious use of creamy marble and glistening mirrors and the kind of outrageously expensive, decadent bedding found only in five-star hotels or the very finest brothels.
But even the best brothels didn’t offer a pillow menu. It was here he’d first found he had strong feelings on the matter of duck feathers for his pillows versus goose.
He set the small bag with his clothes and the locked leather case that housed his collection of knives—the small collection, for traveling—on the large glass-topped desk in the main room, then walked across the expanse of vanilla carpet to the curtained windows. He pushed aside the ivory silk with one hand and gazed down at the piazza six floors below, at the Egyptian obelisk of Pharaoh Rameses at its center. Relocated to Rome by Caesar Augustus from its original home in Heliopolis—City of the Sun, oldest of the old Egyptian settlements—it was carved in hieroglyphs and towered over one hundred feet tall, a stark reminder of the blended, bloody history of the two empires.
The Romans had held public executions in the square below for centuries, right up until the last one in 1826. The thought struck him, not for the first time, that the Ikati really weren’t all that different from the humans they so despised. More Gifted, perhaps, but just as violent.
Perhaps even more so.
“I’m not sleeping with you,” Morgan spat from behind him.
Against his will, he summoned the vivid, heart-stopping image of the two of them naked, entangled in the sheets on that very large and decadent bed, Morgan arching and moaning his name beneath him.
“Don’t be stupid,” Xander said through clenched teeth, banishing the lucid illusion. “And don’t flatter yourself. This is only for convenience. I’m not letting you out of my sight.” He turned from the window and leveled her with a lethal stare that drained the blood from her cheeks.
But—God. Even with her blood-drained cheeks and travel-rumpled clothes and the hostility that pulsed off her in waves, her loveliness was astonishing and otherworldly, the kind he’d seen only once before in a painting of an angel by Caravaggio. The kind that made every male in the airport and hotel stop and gape as she passed by.
The unforgettable kind. The dangerous kind.
Even now as he glared murder and mayhem at her, a flash of heat tightened his groin at the ghost of that wanton fantasy of the two of them together on the bed, the same blistering heat that had enveloped him the first time he’d glimpsed her at Sommerley. Tall and lithe and slender as a sapling, with the eloquent eyes of a silent-movie star, she’d walked in the room and all the air had gone out. Then she’d tripped and he’d reacted on pure instinct to catch her and had taken in a lungful of her scent, warm skin and woman and exotic, dark muskiness, a perfume unlike anything he’d experienced before, fine and feminine and powerfully provocative.
Traitor, he reminded himself. Traitor and liar and mark.
“Well then,” she said, still frozen and fierce. “I hope you enjoy the floor.”
They stared at one another, deadlocked in silent animosity, until there came a tap on the door. An accented male voice called out, “Porter. I have your bags, sir.”
Morgan sent him one last baleful glare, then moved with stiff grace toward the wheat-and-cream striped sofa in the sitting room. She dropped her handbag unceremoniously on the floor and perched on the sofa’s overstuffed arm with her arms folded across her chest. One leg, slender and bare, clad in a strappy, high-heeled shoe that seemed useful only for accentuating the delicate bones of her ankle, swung back and forth in agitation.
He gritted his teeth again. Why in God’s name did she have to be wearing a skirt?
He went to the door, let the bellman in, and indicated where the man should set the bags. There was an inordinately large amount of them—all Morgan’s—and he had to make several trips back and forth from his bell cart in the hallway. The man kept throwing heated glances at the sofa, where Morgan perched while she watched him like a cat when it hears the can opener, all eyes and appetite.
Xander went to get his billfold from the duffel bag on the desk. When he turned back, the porter stood slack-jawed and silent in front of Morgan, stupidly gaping. She brushed her hair back from her face, a gesture that seemed somehow unnatural, as if her hands had just been doing something else, and smiled at him.
“Porter,” Xander snapped. Watching men fall to pieces all over his mark was going to get old, fast.
Blinking, the man turned. Xander held out a fistful of euros and jerked his head toward the door.
“Yes, sir,” the porter murmured and walked over to him—more correctly stumbled over—his face gone a curious and very unnatural shade of green. Xander frowned.
And was able to leap out of the way just as the porter opened his mouth and sent a jet of hot, yellow vomit spraying onto the vanilla carpet in the exact spot he’d just been standing.
Disgusted, he barked a string of curses. The man went to his knees, coughing and spitting, blathering apologies in Italian. From the sofa behind him came a laugh, low and pleased, and he looked up to find Morgan smiling at him, sweet as saccharine and just as fake.
“Oh my,” she said, still casually swinging her foot with its finely turned ankle back and forth. “I wonder if it was something in the water. Too bad you weren’t able to assist him with a dose of your wonderful acupressure. It looks like his ‘inner gate’ could use a little oiling.”
He felt the tiniest twinge of admiration that she would risk something so bold purely out of spite, right before it was swallowed by a wave of blistering anger so strong he had to curl his hands into fists to control the itch to curl them around her neck.
“Try something like that again,” he said, his voice very low in his throat, “and you’ll find yourself missing a pair of hands.”
She flushed red, and he was gratified to see it. The porter struggled to stand. He found his footing and backed away toward the door, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his beige linen uniform, still stammering apologies and assurances that someone would be up directly to attend to the mess. He reached the door and disappeared through it at a run.
Morgan bent and retrieved her handbag from the floor, then rose, all without the slightest bit of haste or discomposure. She retrieved one of her smaller suitcases from the row against the wall, then walked in easy, graceful strides to the door of the master suite. Inside the door she paused and turned, her hand on the doorframe, a smile on her face, the picture of untroubled elegance.
Only her eyes gave her away. The heat in her emerald gaze scorched the air between them like a lit fuse.
; “And if you ever threaten me again, errand boy,” she said quietly, swinging the door shut, “you’ll find yourself missing your di—”
The door slammed closed before he heard the final word, but he didn’t have to. He knew exactly what it was.
When the woman from housekeeping arrived twenty minutes later to clean the carpet, Xander was still standing in the middle of the living room, staring hard at the closed bedroom door.
It was two hours before she was sufficiently calmed to leave the master suite, and by then Xander was gone.
The shower helped. It was a mosaic-tiled, glass-enclosed expanse of luxury with silky lavender shampoo and French-milled grape seed oil soaps and three sets of jets set at various heights, the better to massage a body with hot, pulsing water from all angles. Seething, she spent what felt like forever under the sprays before she began to relax. When she emerged—puckered—there were Egyptian cotton towels, plush and pristine white, there were ivory cashmere robes hung from a gleaming silver dowel, there was a marble fireplace and what appeared to be a real Picasso hung above the dressing table. There was even a window with a view to the faraway, sunset-emblazoned hills.
What there was not was a gun. Which she very much would have liked to find hidden in one of the vanity drawers.
Bastard. Cold, arrogant bastard. If it weren’t for her promise to Jenna, she would put a bullet in his head and burn this place to the ground.
But she had work to do and couldn’t afford to spend any more time envisioning putting a gun against his temple or pushing him off the balcony or Suggesting to one of the hotel staff they poison his food. The sooner she found what she’d come for, the better.
And then to hell with him.
She dried her hair and dressed, then went out to the living room, expecting to find him skinning kittens or swallowing live goldfish, but there was only a pair of black kid-skin gloves—women’s gloves, supple and delicate—laid out beside a handwritten note on the glass-topped desk in the living room.
Dinner. Eight o’clock. Downstairs. Don’t be late.
Edge of Oblivion: A Night Prowler Novel, Book 2 Page 5