“We might as well take a break,” Quentin muttered.
“Works for me.” Aryal moved to the edge of the forest where she found a dry, grassy place. She threw down her things and sprawled beside them, loosening the sword buckled at her hip.
Quentin padded over to join her, setting his pack alongside hers. She noticed all over again how he moved silently, despite his size. He levered himself down to the ground beside her with his usual cat’s grace. He hardly ever lost his footing, and when he did, he recovered himself quicker than almost anyone else she knew.
His body and his face might be in deep shadow, but she knew better than ever just what he looked like. Not only what he looked like, but how the most private part of him tasted.
The image of him, tied and spread out in front of her like a feast, flashed through her mind, and she reacted physically, hunger flaring again in a sharp, urgent pulse. Gods, he had been perfect in every detail, golden tanned skin, lean-muscled body, and an aura of danger that was to her as intoxicating as catnip. He really hadn’t liked it when she tied him down. She could tell by the muscle that bunched in his jaw. But he had submitted, and that had been an epic moment.
And when she had taken that gorgeous, succulent penis of his into her mouth, he’d hissed between his teeth, a quick, inward drawn breath. It made his long abdominal muscles tighten into a rippling cascade that bunched and flexed underneath his golden skin.
She took in deep, even breaths. She didn’t need to be able to see him to know that his long body had tightened. She could sense it, like the crackle of electricity in the air. He rolled onto his side, propped his head in one hand, and growled very softly, “We’re going to enact that bargain soon.”
Part of her catalogued just how romantic the scene was. Starry night, oversized full moon, and that long, arched stone bridge stretched out as a backdrop for the dark silhouette of one of the sexiest men she had ever seen.
She didn’t have a romantic bone in her body, and she was not affected by any of it. Well, not much. Sure, maybe the sky. She was always a sucker for a beautiful sky, especially when she could fly up into it. And the scene was pretty enough. Certainly the man was sexy, especially when she had him hogtied to a table.
None of that led to romance.
She scowled and told him, “Our bargain is null and void at the moment. No electricity, no clocks, no way to time a half hour. And I’m not trusting you without some kind of an independent timekeeping device.”
He laughed under his breath. The deep sound was witchy and wicked. It wound its way into her mind, like the brush of a black cat along her bare skin, and it enticed her to do things she would never otherwise consider doing, like twisting to mirror him, drawing him close and kissing him.
She almost did it, but then she pulled back at the last moment.
“We can amend the bargain. I’ll bet we could find an hourglass in some kitchen when we raid for supplies.”
“I had no idea you were so interested in me,” she mocked.
“My interest in you is purely pornographic.” He reached out to trace her mouth with a finger. “Your tongue is very talented when you stop using it to talk.”
Laughter threatened to shake through her. She stifled it. She didn’t want him to think she found him amusing, and he sure as hell wasn’t charming. “Remind me to tell you that you say the nicest things—when you start saying them. Maybe that’s what I can use my half hour for, to compel you to compliment me.”
His teeth flashed in a shadowed gleam of a smile. “You think I couldn’t compliment you without being compelled?”
“I don’t care about the compliments,” she told him. “I just want to watch you struggle.”
He slipped his forefinger between her lips and penetrated deeply into her mouth. Not only did she allow it, she sucked him. His breathing deepened.
“You’ll have to find some other way to do that, then,” he whispered. “I’ve hated you, and you’ve pissed me off more than anybody else I’ve ever met. You’re also one of the best fighters I’ve ever seen. I watched you every time you were in the Arena during the Games. And I was too mad to admit it at the time, but what you did back in Prague, when you pinned me against the metal door, was crazy awesome. And of course then there’s your mouth. Your wet, warm, extremely dexterous, tight mouth.” He pulled his finger out slowly until just the tip rested between her lips. Then he pushed it back in, fucking her in an almost leisurely way. “See how much better things are when you shut up?”
She had known hate sex with him would be hella good. It was even better in this … place they had come to, this not-quite-hate-but-something-else place. If you find an hourglass, I’ll consider it. But next time I go first.
“What if I don’t want you to go first?” he murmured, sliding his finger along her tongue in a slow, intimate stroke. “What if I want to bargain for something else?”
Behind the silhouette of his head, something moved on the bridge.
It was a quick black streak of—something.
She rolled to her feet and drew her sword in the same motion. In one lightning-fast, fluid motion, Quentin sprang upright and whipped out his sword too. He spun to put his back to hers, and only then asked telepathically, What is it?
Whatever else she might think or feel about him, his instincts as a fighting partner were dead-on accurate. She approved. She said, I saw something move on the bridge.
What?
She could feel him at her back through the thin material of her T-shirt. His body heat radiated against her skin, and the back of his shoulders brushed hers. She said, I don’t know.
They watched and listened. Nothing moved except for leaves in the wind. The only noises she heard were normal night sounds. She scented the air and smelled nothing out of the ordinary, and, because she was who she was, she looked up. There was nothing in the sky that didn’t belong there.
All the while, Quentin stayed at her back, hot as a burning ember and steady as the earth underneath her feet. She had the time and the space to think, all of that coiled danger at my back, and for once it’s on my side.
It felt strange, good and even exhilarating.
He didn’t relax, but after a few moments, he asked, You’re sure.
Yes, I’m sure I saw something, she told him. No, I don’t know what it was. It was a streak of something black. It didn’t look like it was connected to anything, and it moved independently of everything else. It was almost like—
She looked up at the night sky again. The entire scene radiated normality. She didn’t trust it. She stared at the bridge, and studied both ends where it disappeared into the darkness under the trees. It was empty.
Quentin spoke out loud. “It was almost like what?”
“It was almost like a shadow, except there wasn’t anything physical attached to it,” she said. “Or it wasn’t attached to anything else.”
She grabbed her pack by a strap and strode for the bridge. Leaving behind any belongings was a rookie’s mistake. Quentin followed and they leaped onto the bridge. Throwing their things together, they moved to opposite ends of the bridge.
Aryal stopped just before stepping off of the bridge and going under the tree line. She still held her sword. She bent and sniffed at the stone, running her fingers lightly over it. It was dry and still held a lingering warmth from the heat of the day. There was no scent of any creature that passed by recently, just the faint odor of dirt, recent rain and mildew.
She straightened and retreated to the packs without putting her back to the dark, shadowed forest, and she didn’t stop until she came to Quentin.
Full moonlight fell on them. It was almost as clear and bright as daylight. It emphasized the strong slash of cheekbones on his face, and that lean, stubborn jaw. He sheathed his sword and stood with his hands on his hips. “No magical residue,” he said, still speaking quietly.
She sheathed her sword too and told him, “If you say anything about disbelieving me, I’m probably going to p
unch you again.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “Remember, I saw how you reacted. You’re one of the oldest creatures I’ve ever met. You’re also one of the most combative, and yet you’re still alive. I give your instincts and reactions full credit for that, because my gods, the total number of people and creatures who must have tried to kill you over the years must be mind boggling.”
She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. “I think I’m going to take that as a compliment too.”
A quick grin flared and died on his face. “You would. So, what we have is something very dark and quick that moves independently, and leaves no footprints, no scent, and no magical trace behind.”
“That sounds right.”
He walked over to their packs and handed hers to her. “That sound like anything you’ve ever run into before?”
She shrugged her pack on. “Nope.”
“So what we really have is an anomaly.”
“That’s about the size of it, although it’s only an anomaly to us,” she pointed out. “It might be a perfectly natural part of the environment here.”
After donning his own pack, he belted it at the waist. His head bent, he said, “I don’t like anomalies.”
“I don’t either.” She looked at the shadowed forest ahead of them. “In my experience, there’s almost always an explanation. And it’s hardly ever a good one.”
TWELVE
Quentin rubbed his face. It felt like his life was full of too many goddamn anomalies. So many of them centered on the sexy, frenzy-inducing female who stood beside him.
His modern mind kept snagging on the concept of her identity. Part of him kept insisting she was masculine, but then he would look at her, really look at her, and realize that she was feminine in a way he had never known before—strong, confident, and completely devoid of the mannerisms and characteristics that popular culture defined as femininity.
She wasn’t ruled by fear of defying conventions. As far as he could determine, she wasn’t ruled by fear in any form, and all her emotions were painted in primary colors. At times it seemed primitive, even exasperating, but it was always colorful and exhilarating.
When she loved someone, she would do so completely and passionately, no reservations or qualifications, or the kind of emotional blackmail that said “I will love you if you will only do this, or be that.”
What would it be like to be loved with that kind of … purity?
He looked at her and experienced a sense of freedom, a previously unnamed, unidentified emotion. Something inside of him had cut loose, the wild, dangerous part of him he usually kept under such strict control. It felt like it ran unfettered.
Usually the only time he felt this way was when he had turned into the panther and took to an uninhabited area so that he could roam without concern of running into humans or other creatures. Where that wild part of him was going and what it would do when it got there, he didn’t know.
He forced himself away from useless reverie and concentrated on the tasks at hand.
“All right,” he said. “I think we should keep moving. We don’t have any shelter here, and we do have a lot of shadowy places where any number of anomalies can hide.”
“Agreed,” she said. “We should keep going until we find shelter, break out of the forest, or until morning comes.”
Without any further discussion, he headed off the bridge and away from the path, into the forest. Rather to his surprise, she allowed him to take the lead without argument. They moved quietly through the underbrush. Even though they hadn’t been attacked, all of his senses remained on high alert. He didn’t like the number of unanswered questions they had accumulated.
He guessed that the coastal scene they had seen earlier was as much as twenty to twenty-five miles away from the cliff house. Moving carefully through the dark as they were, they wouldn’t reach that before morning. He was starting to get tired, which meant Aryal had to be getting tired too. Instinct drove him now, and he didn’t think it would be a good thing to go into the city without getting some rest first.
He said as much to Aryal telepathically.
Makes sense, she said simply.
He waited but she didn’t say anything more. It was another one of those anomalies that he had begun to accumulate. They weren’t arguing nearly as much as they should have been. Since she could pull an argument out of thin air, that probably meant she was plotting something, but his whack-job radar wasn’t going off, so he doubted his own conclusion.
It was interesting to experience her as an asset, as opposed to a drain or an outright danger. He could acknowledge that her skill set made her useful in her sentinel position in investigations, but that was an intellectual observation. Now he was actually experiencing what it was like to work with her as a partner, and she was every bit as good as he would have expected any of the other sentinels to be—fast, sharp, relevant and logical.
He liked what he saw of Aryal as a working partner. He respected it, respected her. That was another anomaly.
Of course so far they hadn’t really had to interact much with other people. And they did pretty much kick the shit out of each other already. He grinned.
Time became a formless thing that passed uncounted in the shadows. He sank into his animal awareness, feeling the muscles of his body work while he noted the details of his surroundings. It wouldn’t do to relax and slip into carelessness. He watched the more intense shadows, looking for anything that seemed especially dark and that moved differently than any of the leafy fronds or tree limbs that swayed in the breeze.
When he finally came up to another tree line, the change was so abrupt it surprised him. He stopped before breaking out of the underbrush, and Aryal brushed his back before she stopped too.
They had come upon a meadow with long, coarse grasses that looked tall enough to come up to their chests. That meadow could disguise a lot. He glanced at the sky that was beginning to lighten in one direction. Okay, he was calling that direction east. Dawn was not that far away. It was still too dark to see much beyond what was close in front of them, but he guessed that, as long as they had hiked, they had reached the other side of the forest and were now probably a few miles away from the coast.
“I don’t think we’re going to get any better place to stop before we reach the coast,” he said. “And I don’t want to get there without having had some rest first.”
“We should camp here,” she said. “And take watches. That way we’ll both get some sleep.”
“Works for me.”
Aryal lost a coin toss, which meant Quentin could rest first. He ate a protein bar quickly to stave off the worst of any hunger pains. It didn’t have enough calories to satisfy him, especially after the expenditure of energy over the last two days, but it would be enough to let him take a nap.
He stretched out underneath a tree to catch any shade it might give after the sun came up, and he used his pack as a pillow. Aryal stood nearby, leaning back against another tree with her arms crossed and one booted heel hiked up on the trunk. She didn’t face either the meadow or the forest, but positioned herself at an angle so that she could look easily in either direction.
She looked comfortable, capable, and alert enough to stand guard all day.
He watched her surreptitiously from under lowered eyelids as she tore open a protein bar and took a bite. She had tied her hair back with a piece of leather, but a few fine strands fell forward on the clean line of her forehead. The T-shirt she had worn underneath her sweater was a plain white cotton tank top. It hugged the long slim line of her torso, highlighting her high, slight breasts and the twin peaks of her nipples.
His body clenched with hunger. He thought of how her breasts felt in his hands, the softness giving way under his touch, how her nipple tasted in his mouth.
Unbidden, what she had said yesterday played through his mind again.
If you do anything to actively try to hurt any of the people I care about—that’s when I
will come after you, and I won’t stop until I hurt you bad, or you end up dead, or maybe even both those things. That’s my bottom line.
It really was quite simple.
From everything he had heard, harpies rarely gave anybody a second chance at anything. If you got on their shit list, you usually stayed there forever. She really might not care about his smuggling past, but he also realized what a huge concession she had made when she let go of her investigation. There wouldn’t be any more chances after that.
If she ever found out what he had done to Dragos and Pia last year, he had no doubt what would happen. It would be open war again, and this time the hostilities between them wouldn’t stop until one of them was dead.
That was the thought that finally leashed the unfettered, wild part of him.
He turned his head away from her. Only then was he able to get some sleep.
She woke him after a couple of hours, and without a word they exchanged positions. Dawn had broken, bringing humid warmth. He felt sweaty and dirty, and he wished they were near running water again.
Aryal curled on her side and threw part of her jacket over her face. After that she didn’t move. Quentin rummaged in his pack for the last of his food. He had one more can of beef stew, which he would be heartily glad to see the last of, and three protein bars left. He ate all of it except a final protein bar. He wanted to eat that too, but instead he tucked it away. The promise of new, different food was close, but it wasn’t with them yet.
The sun rose higher and so did the heat. The area was quiet except for the occasional drone of insects and trill of birdsong. No unexplained shadows, no anomalies, at least not any within sight.
He hadn’t had the chance to think much about the four missing Elves—too much had been going on, and Aryal had consumed most of his attention—but now he did so with a sense of foreboding. He didn’t know two of the names that Ferion had given him: Cemalla and Aralorn, the one female, the other male.
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