Hidden Trump (Bite Back 2)

by Mark Henwick

  It all stopped when Dad got sick, of course.

  These days, she was a freaking shrink over in New York, like they need another one there. She would be formidably scary now, if the dish was finally ready. I grinned to myself. It would be good to see her again and see how she was. It’d take more than frogs to put me off.

  We went back inside. I looked at the insurance letter again and shook my head. They had really gone overboard on this. They were refusing to pay for the damage to the balcony doors, claiming it would have been impossible to get up to the balcony, which I was going to enjoy disproving. They practically implied that the Quinns had damaged their own doors. For what? Then they insisted that the front door must have been left open, and that constituted negligence, which put the whole claim in doubt.

  The really bad news was that the medal wasn’t even covered on the insurance, not that you could put a value on it.

  “I’m very careful about the door when I do go out, which isn’t often, these days.” He settled himself back into his chair, and I perched on the arm of the sofa.

  “Okay, one step at a time. We prove it’s easy to get to your balcony from outside first. You said there were two things?”

  I heard the sound of the front door, and got up. Niall’s lips moved. I can lip-read and what he mouthed was short and Anglo-Saxon.

  His wife, Ruth, bustled in and stopped dead. Her face went chalky pale.

  “What’s she doing here?” she demanded.

  Whoa! Where was ‘hello, Amber, we haven’t seen you in years?’

  “Amber’s come here just to try and help with the insurance claim, Ruth,” said Niall.

  Her face went to the other extreme, red with anger. She struggled before she regained control. What on earth had happened?

  “I am sorry, Amber, just barging in and not saying hello. This has been a very trying time for us, and thank you for the offer. I know you mean well, but what could you do that the police can’t?”

  “I haven’t said I would do anything about investigating the crime, Mrs. Quinn,” I said. “I’ve agreed to prove the insurance company got it wrong. You know, saying the burglar couldn’t have gotten in from the balcony.” I was going to ask again about the second thing Niall had mentioned, but he was making signs for me to shut up.

  “But that’s a waste of money we don’t have,” she said.

  “I’ve said I would do it for free,” I pointed out. I never was good at shutting up, and why had she gone so overboard when she’d seen me?

  “Then you shouldn’t waste your time on our behalf either, thank you, Amber. I think we’ll manage to get the insurance company to allow our claim on our own.”

  “Ruth, you know they’re not playing ball,” said Niall. “They haven’t answered the last letter, and the guy won’t even speak to me on the phone.”

  She glared at him for not supporting her, but seemed to reluctantly concede the point. Better late than never, she remembered her manners and offered me coffee. I wanted to get away from here, but I couldn’t refuse—it’d get back to Mom as rudeness on my part.

  We sat in the kitchen around their table. Mrs. Quinn was one of those people who edge towards whatever it is they want to talk about. When she finished catching up on my mother and feeding me news of Cassie, I could almost hear her creeping up on the subject of Kath.

  “We had such a good talk with Kathleen,” she said finally. “We heard all about the engagement. Taylor sounds like a wonderful catch for her.” Her eyes slid across to Niall, and they did that silent, longtime married couple communication.

  Niall, who’d been sitting back and just listening, shifted forward in his seat and leaned on the table.

  “Amber,” he said, “we’ve known you so long. Y’know, when you came back from the army…well, when you came back, it felt like you’d never been away. If only Cassie had been here, we’d have had you come around for dinner.”

  Despite his quick recovery, I caught the stumble and made the connections in my head. Niall called Kath to get my number. Kath claimed I was never in the army.

  My service record in Ops 4-10 was sealed and not even the army pay division had access to it. When I left, Ops 4-10 paid me a retainer, but rather than set it up properly, they’d disguised it as a veteran’s disability compensation. A pen-pushing bureaucrat called Lieutenant Krantz had got on my case, certain I was going to lead him to a huge fraud running in the army. When Colonel Laine had hauled him off, he’d tried to get his revenge by telling Kath I couldn’t have been in the army because he couldn’t see any records for me. That had set off an avalanche of mistaken assumptions in my sister’s mind.

  “With you and Cassie so close, we feel you’re like a daughter to us, Amber,” said Mrs. Quinn. “You do feel you could tell us if you were in trouble, don’t you?”

  What else had Kath told them? In her last drunken rant, she’d accused me of being a whore and a drug addict as well as lying about being in the army.

  “It’s not that we think you’re in trouble,” said Niall quickly, shooting looks at his wife. “But…” he paused and ran a hand over his forehead. “Look, your mom always made a big thing about you. Kathleen’s always felt she was being measured against you. You understand that, don’t you?”

  I nodded. Even the demon in my throat had shut up. This was like watching a car crash happening in slow motion and not being able to stop it.

  “And now she’s such a successful lawyer, doing well in her firm.”

  “I’m doing fine too, thanks,” I managed to say. A little stretch of the truth.

  “Of course you are,” said Mrs. Quinn. “It’s just that it’s not quite the same thing.”

  I would rather have my job than Kath’s, but I was never going to persuade the Quinns of that. They had an old-fashioned opinion of what was an acceptable job for a woman. Lawyer was daringly advanced for them. There was a good reason Cassie had chosen to be a psychiatrist in New York rather than Denver. PI came down somewhere with sweeping streets.

  “You don’t resent her success, do you?” said Niall.

  “No! I’m happy she’s doing well. I’m happy she’s engaged. I—”

  “It’s just that she said you caused a bit of a problem for her with your behavior at the charity ball last week. With the partners in her firm,” interrupted Mrs. Quinn.

  “The problem was that she hadn’t bothered mentioning she had a sister until I showed up,” I pointed out. “That kinda drew attention to me.”

  “Yes, that was clearly a mistake on her part,” said Niall.

  “But that wasn’t really it, was it, Amber?” Mrs. Quinn wasn’t going to let this go. I could see Niall thought Kath resented me and was blowing things out of proportion. Equally, Mrs. Quinn thought there was something in it. It was all a matter of what Kath had actually said to them.

  “She told you she was being evaluated for a partnership?” asked Mrs. Quinn.

  I nodded.

  “And she asked you to be discreet. But I understand you danced with all the international delegation—”

  “It was a ball, Ruth,” Niall said, holding his hands up as if to slow her down.

  Mrs. Quinn stopped, but there was more of the meaningful, silent communication between them.

  “Look, Amber,” said Niall. “It wasn’t really about dancing with the delegates. And there was probably a good reason for the other things Kathleen said. But you must know the partners in that firm of hers are…very traditional. ” He licked his lips nervously. “We understand a business like yours takes a long while to get going, and things might be a bit tough for you now. I can really understand how dazzling it must be when someone that rich pays attention to you.”

  It took a second or two to register. It was almost funny. During the course of the charity ball, I had danced with a whole string of vampires, including Luc Matlal. And I’d danced an enjoyable waltz with a werewolf, Alex. I’d saved Jen from Tucker’s attempted assassination as we left.

  But the
thing that Kath and her firms’ partners had noticed was that I’d enjoyed dancing with Jen, too obviously for their conservative tastes.

  Before I could say anything, Mrs. Quinn cut in again. “Obviously, we don’t know her, but the things you hear about the way these wealthy people live…”

  “Drugs, orgies, that sort of thing?” I took my jacket off. “Kath probably said she could see I was taking drugs. Have a look.” I stretched my arms out over the table. I was right, they tried to look for needle scars without actually appearing as if they were. “As for Jennifer Kingslund, she hired me as a PI and security consultant, and yeah, we’ve become friends. Why that should be of any concern to Kath or the partners at her firm, I have no idea.”

  My cell just had to beep right then and I pulled it out to glance at the caller ID. Oh, gods. Alex. What great timing.

  “Look,” I said, getting up. “I appreciate that you’re concerned for me, and clearly, I’ve got to talk some sense into Kath, but I’ve got to go now. It’s been great seeing you again. I’ll be back here at four this afternoon, Niall.”

  I tried to appear as calm as possible, but as I trotted down the stairs, I was seething. What the hell did she think she was doing, talking to the Quinns like that? Niall apparently didn’t believe it all, but Ruth was another matter. I hoped I’d done enough to prevent Ruth from calling Mom and upsetting her on her vacation.

  Kath had overstepped the boundary this time, and I was going to have to tell her that in plain terms. If she couldn’t handle that, my sister and I had a problem.

  But there was something else back there with the Quinns. The Mrs. Quinn I’d known wouldn’t have been so shocked to start with, regardless of what she’d heard about me. The thing that seemed to set her off was the thought that I was investigating the theft of the medal. Her first reaction had been alarm and dismay.

  I was very, very interested in the second thing Niall wanted to talk to me about.

  Meanwhile, I had a man to call back. A werewolf, to be more precise.

  “Alex?”

  “Amber, are you around?”

  “I can be there in five. Thank God you called. We need—I need to—”

  “Door’s open for the right person,” he interrupted me.

  “Oh, it’s a magic door, is it?” I said, thrown off my train of thought and warming to his tease. I tossed my jacket into the back and got in the car. “How does it work?”

  “Smoke, mirrors and the flexor, extensor and brachioradialis in the forearm and various adductor muscles in the shoulder and upper arm. Mainly.”

  “God, clinicians are the pits,” I groaned.

  “Ex-clinicians,” he corrected me. “Yeah, but we really understand how bodies work. See you in five.” He ended the call.

  I wondered if I could make it in three. My body had some understanding it urgently wanted him to do. After I’d cleared up a couple of things, my conscience said. He might not want to do anything for me after he heard what I had to say.

  Chapter 11

  There was no sign of smoke or mirrors when the door opened. Alex was wearing nothing but shorts and he looked hot enough that there should have been smoke. I checked out his flexor, extensor and adductor muscles, mainly by feeling his arms closing around me as the door slammed shut.

  I’m no waif, but I felt insubstantial against his body. I slid my hands over his back, enjoying the feel of his strong muscles under my hands as I hugged him tightly to me. There’s nothing so precious as something you might lose. Oh God, what would he say when I started talking about cross-infusion? My head fell back and his mouth closed on mine. I’d let myself have just this one kiss, then I’d have to tell him everything.

  His lips were insistent and demanding. I trembled at the depth of response he stirred in me. My legs went way wobbly, but that was fine, he didn’t seem about to let me go any time now. My hands continued discovering him, kneading his shoulders, caressing his neck. He was like a living sculpture, so damned beautiful, and the scent of wolf and lust came off his skin like a fine wine.

  I had to stop now or I wouldn’t be able to. I broke the kiss.

  “Wait, Alex.” My heart was racing, and it was difficult to get enough breath in my lungs to speak. “We have to talk.” My voice came out croaky. I put my hand on his chest to push him away, felt the thunder of his heart beneath my palm and all my remaining strength drained from me.

  “Hmm. Yes,” he said. He kissed my neck. “Talk is good.” The way he said talk meant something else entirely.

  “No, really talk—”

  I squawked in alarm as he grabbed my butt and lifted. He threw me over his shoulder and walked back into the hall and up the stairs. Of course I struggled. Carefully. He might have dropped me, after all.

  “Alex, no! The living room. We need—”

  “Uh-huh.” He turned sharply down the corridor to the bedrooms, making me clutch at him. The sensuous, rhythmic play of his back muscles under my hands drove me crazy, lighting up fabulously erotic images behind my eyes.

  “Put me down,” I yelled, and he obeyed, slinging me onto his bed. A part of my mind noted it was a very solid bed, very well made. No distracting rattles or shakes. That was a good thing, because he leaped onto the bed after me.

  I glared at him. Just because I had enjoyed it didn’t mean I should let him get away with it. What kind of a girl did he think I was?

  “Is this what you think—”

  He kissed me again, gently this time, as his hands tugged my T-shirt from my jeans. I’d shredded his shirt, the last time we’d made love. More accurately, the last time we’d been about to make love. Was it only yesterday morning? He was more in control than I had been and my shirt survived.

  We had to break the kiss to get the shirt over my head. The sports bra went with it.

  I had to stop this.

  “Alex—”

  I gasped. His lips trailed down my neck and my traitorous body arched.

  No, no, no. It wasn’t fair to him. I had to warn him.

  The rest of me had other ideas. My nipples were hard beneath his kiss, almost painfully sensitive to the touch of his tongue. I reached up and sank my fingers into his silky hair, gripping it and pulling his head down against me. All my good intentions were evaporating like water in the desert.

  “Oh, save me,” I breathed, my words and actions running away from each other.

  To hell with fair.

  All the crap I’d been through, all the stress of becoming Athanate and now Were as well, the gut-wrenching fear of losing David and Pia, the fraying of family bonds that kept me centered as a human, they’d all built into a thunderhead that burst out and scoured every hesitation right out of my head.

  Our hands fumbled and hindered each other as buttons popped and zippers rasped open. His hand was down the back of my jeans, almost levering them off me, and suddenly slow, deliberate, playful. I groaned. His hand slid along the flesh of my butt, down my thigh, prolonging the contact, making it absurdly sensuous. He tossed my jeans off the bed and poised over me, fists sunk into the mattress on either side of my neck, trapping me, damn alpha wolf posturing.

  I twisted, catching him by surprise and shoving him back onto the bed. I rested one hand on his chest, my fingers flexing and sinking my nails into his pecs, but not pushing him down. Dominance is not all about strength, wolf. I tore his shorts off and threw them away.

  Oh my!

  I placed both hands on his chest, very deliberately, slowly. We were panting, watching each other, enjoying the play.

  Mine!

  He surged up and grappled me onto my back, looming over me.

  His body was tense as a mooring cable, tremors running through it. The look of desire in his face made my whole body sing, and an aching need pooled in my breasts and belly and spread down into my groin. I wanted to keep that look, I wanted to hold it in my hands, I wanted to be able to feel it forever.

  His eyes held mine as his head lowered over my breasts. It was just
a kiss. A kiss. His lips on my nipple. His flesh against mine. I gasped at the sensations. My eyes shut, all the better to feel him, as he traced a lazy path of lust down my quivering stomach.

  In moments, I had no thought of anything else. He shouldered my thighs apart and I clutched him as his serpent tongue whispered wickedly against my trembling body.

  I gripped his hair and pulled him back, reaching down for him.

  His eyes were all wolf now. Golden, scary, wild, as I guided him inside.

  I moaned as he filled me and we began to move, matching each other, rocking together in a haze of delight. I held onto him desperately, my arms and legs wrapping around his sweat-slicked body as I abandoned myself to the soaring sensations, burying my face against his neck.

  His neck. The dark thrill seared through me like sheet lightning. His blood, hot with desire, was pumping through him not a finger’s width away from my mouth, my fangs. Oh my God, no. My sight dimmed and I howled with hunger.

  But it was too late anyway. The rising tide of pleasure was like an avalanche, lifting us together and hurtling us over the edge. I arched backwards and screamed in release as my climax hammered through me and his frenzied thrusts peaked.

  We shuddered to a halt like an ancient, battered locomotive run off the rails. And peace fell. Shocked, wordless, touching, kissing peace. And the knowledge that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

  Chapter 12

  He’d rolled us around so I was lying on top of him.

  I had thought for a minute there that I could make this work, like a normal relationship, boosted by the glow of satisfaction from fantastic sex. Right. I knew too little about my own nature, almost nothing of his and absolutely nothing about what had happened to my marque. This couldn’t work. Anyway, he wouldn’t want to be kin any more than Jen would. And I’d just made love to him without warning him about what had happened to me. He was going to be pissed.