by Mina Carter
Shit. They were after Iliona.
Launching himself to his feet, he almost trampled Mila as she headed toward the table with his drink.
“Sorry, doll,” he apologized, spinning her around in a quick two-step move that would have done any dancer credit. “I gotta go. Put it on my tab, would ya?”
Not waiting for her answer, he sped toward the door, dragging his cell out of his pocket and hitting the speed dial for Cal. One of them had to get to the PPA offices . . .
Or Iliona Graham was a dead woman walking.
Chapter 9
“Yeah, I really need to secure some funding for the expansion. We’re getting busier and busier. I just don’t have the space here for the extra staff we need.” Iliona had her cell tucked under her chin as she tapped away on her keyboard, scanning through emails at the same time.
“Any luck with the different funding options?” Evie asked on the other end of the line. The rustle of paper and the slight echo of her voice told Iliona that her friend was also multitasking.
“Nu-uh.” She shook her head, frowning as a subject line of an email caught her eye. More spam. Some days it seemed her in-box was crammed with the stuff, making important emails difficult to find. “Most were a bust. Waiting to hear back from one or two more . . .” She sighed. “I’m not expecting much, to be honest. Despite everyone saying they’re happy to help paranormals and the drive for paranormal rights . . . when it comes down to it . . . to actually doing something that will help.” She chuckled bitterly. “Yeah . . . they’re not interested.”
Evie snorted on the other end of the phone. “Unless there’s some publicity, and they get their pictures online of course.”
“I know, right?”
A sound outside Iliona’s office caught her attention, and she frowned. It was late . . . The other staff had gone. Or should have anyway. She pulled the cell away from her ear and listened. There was definitely somebody moving around out there. Perhaps one of the office staff had come back? Probably forgotten something.
“Evie,” she said. “I’m gonna call you back. Think someone came back into the office. I want to make sure everything’s okay.”
“Sure thing, hon. Talk to you later.”
Iliona slipped her cell into her back pocket as she rose from her seat. The door to her office was open, giving her a truncated view of the corridor. It turned left into the main office, and during the day, she could hear the hum of conversation. Now it was silent, apart from a small rustling that sounded like somebody going through drawers.
“Hello?” she called out, moving toward the door. There was no answer. A chill meandered up her spine.
“Is anybody there?” she called out again, pausing at the doorway to her office.
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, echoing around the emptiness of the deserted office, she kicked herself. She’d seen more than her fair share of horror films. She usually screamed at the too-stupid-to-live heroines that of course someone was there. The question itself was a circular prophecy—the very act of asking ensured that there would be.
The chill down her spine grew roots, reaching fingers around her rib cage to shorten her breath and kick her heart rate up. Silently, she reached for the emergency kit by the door. Her fingers wrapped around the iron-banded baton as she pulled the Glock from her shoulder. The days where someone could just wave a gun and frighten an intruder off were long gone. Ten years ago, everything that went bump in the night had not only come out of the closet, but out from under the bed, grave, and nightmares too. These days, anti-intruder kits contained silver for weres, iron for the fae, and garlic and stakes for the vamps, among other things.
The Glock in one hand, she gripped the baton in the other, pointed down along her forearm. The entire staff had gone through Hand-to-Hand Training 101 with the elite of the armed forces. That had been before the real combat training had started. “How to Kill a Werewolf in Ten Gruesome and Violent Ways” had gone down as a treat in the office, while “Staking for Success” had been a laugh, despite the obvious marketing speak in the title.
It was just a pity the instructor had known fuck-all about staking vamps. Given his impressive waistline, she’d suspected he was far more familiar with steaks of a different type. After they’d done the stuff the government recommended, they’d gotten the big boys in. No one could teach someone how to kill a vampire better than a vamp, and combat training with the were they’d brought in had given her a healthy dose of respect for the furries.
She kicked her heels off before padding toward the front of the office—all the while aware that if Marion had forgotten to lock the front door again and it was a member of the public, she was going to look stupid as hell. The last thing she wanted was to end up with a charge of assault and battery, or at the very least, scaring the crap out of a poor, unsuspecting criminal . . . she shook her head at that. Be still her bleeding heart.
The office was L-shaped with the offices hidden away in the corner. She liked it that way. It meant she could plaster her PC desktop with pictures of scantily clad men without anyone whining at her. Nothing worse than an office do-gooder preaching about sexual discrimination, or harassment, or whatever posting half-naked pictures of hunky men on a PC desktop was called. Sandra, one of the admin staff, called it scandalous. After the third lecture she’d gotten on the disintegrating morals of the younger generation, she’d learned how to trigger her screensaver with one key.
There was a sound from around the corner. The scuff of a boot, papers being shuffled, drawers yanked open, and then slammed shut.
Thieves looking for a cashbox? Iliona’s lips curled back from her teeth. Some little asshole was trying to rob them. Sure, it was just a cashbox, but it didn’t matter. Theft was theft. Theft hit the bottom line of the company. And if the company got into trouble, they’d have to let some of the staff go . . . most of whom were paranormals who couldn’t get another job. Anger ripped through her like wildfire. She’d always laughed at that expression in books before, but now she understood it. Starting small, a mere spark, it grew as realization dawned and tore through her with explosive force.
“Stop right there, you fucking asshole!”
She stepped around the corner and leveled the Glock, sure she was facing a human. Paranormals had bigger fish to fry than trying to rob an office for its cashbox. Most of them, like vampires, were old enough to have amassed fortunes of their own, or like the wolves, simply didn’t care about money unless it could buy them land to escape from humanity. Brownies didn’t steal. They sat there to count the stuff, which, since they had a fetish about double-entry bookkeeping, could be a help. You just had to leave them some paper.
“Stop right there. Oh, fuck—”
She got a quick impression of a hulking figure before it turned. There was a flash of green where its eyes should have been. It grew, shoulders filling out to the size of a barn as it turned toward her. Her heart hammered, body registering the danger even if her mind refused to.
“You stay where you are, mister.” She waved the useless Glock as if to warn it off. What the fuck was it? She’d heard of the green-eyed monster, but this was ridiculous. “These are silver—”
It moved quicker than her brain said was possible. No surprise. There was no way it could be human. Backing up, she stumbled over her own feet, firing rapidly as she went down on her ass. Hard. The bullets had no effect, the creature looming over her. Its fetid breath, like rotten meat and sulfur, made her skin crawl. It roared, and she flinched. Her ears rang. Any moment she expected claws and teeth to rip through her skin like rice paper. Then a sound came from behind the creature dry humping her legs.
A second later there was the meaty sound of flesh tearing. She tensed, waiting for the pain to kick in. A whimper escaped her lips, like the sound of a wounded animal with no place left to go. There was no pain. No pain meant it was bad. Very bad. Something warm, wet, and icky dripped onto her shoulder a second before the creature was torn from her.<
br />
Flung across the room, it thudded against the wall and slid down into a small heap on the floor. The landscape that’d been mounted there dropped with it, crashing down over its head to dangle around its shoulders like a fancy necklace. Iliona blinked as she recognized the signs.
“Oh shit. Wraith.”
Lurching to her feet, she reacquired her aim, her hands shaking. Its eyes blinked and closed as it slid sideways. A second later, it disappeared in a puff of magic and smoke. She staggered a little, relief surging through her. There was no way she could win against a wraith, and she knew it. Before she could hit the floor, though, a pair of strong arms closed around her from behind and hauled her up against a broad chest. Harder than human, encased in skin like warmed marble . . . she breathed a sigh of relief as she recognized the touch of a gargoyle.
“Cal,” she breathed, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding on for dear life.
Breathing a deep sigh of relief, she nestled closer and tried to forget whatever flavor of nastiness had just tried to get his jollies with her and not in a good way. More in a way that would leave her a bloody smear on the floor. As always, Cal was warm and solid, and his arms around her felt like a haven from the rest of the world. A surge of heat hit her broadside, and suddenly the only thing in the world that mattered were his kisses.
He jumped as she ran her lips across his neck, and she smiled. No doubt he was a little surprised at her getting amorous after she’d almost become wraith-chow. But didn’t people who’d been through a life-threatening situation often want to eat everything in sight or have sex? Something about primal drives. She didn’t know, didn’t care. All she cared about was getting his lips on hers.
Nibbling lightly, she worked her way down and smiled against his skin as the thick length of his cock hardened and pressed against her. Chuckling against his neck, she slid her hand between them to stroke along the solid length of his cock. Despite herself, her eyes widened. Damn if he didn’t feel bigger every time she touched him. Could they change the proportions of their bodies? Because, hot damn, his cock felt huge. Definitely bigger than when he’d pressed against her the other night.
“Didn’t realize offices did it for you,” she murmured against his neck, fumbling with his belt buckle. Screw slow seduction, she needed him now. Sooner. Yeah, so there had been a dead para a few feet away, but screw that. She needed some life-affirming sex right there with her gargoyle man.
“Iliona? Are you okay?” Cal asked, which brought another smile to his lips. Her hand and lips paused. There was one problem with the picture . . . The guy she was touching wasn’t the one who’d spoken.
“Fuck!”
Heart pounding, she shoved away as though she’d been burned. Three rapid steps backward and she was stopped by the edge of Sandra’s desk, knocking into it so hard the plant on the corner did a crazy two-step. She ignored it in favor of looking up at the guy whose cock she’d been getting up close and personal with. The guy she’d thought was Cal.
“Fuck. Me.”
Her eyes must’ve been as wide as dinner plates as she stared up at him, widening farther when Cal came to stand level. They were freaking twins. The only difference she could see—other than the dress sense—was that the new guy was slightly broader in the shoulders.
“I’m Gran.” The new guy cocked an eyebrow, the heat disappearing from the blue eyes she was used to seeing on his . . . brother? Cal had said gargoyles weren’t born, so could they have siblings? Whether they could or couldn’t, being watched by two sets of identical eyes was disconcerting as fuck. She didn’t get time to frame a reply before Cal turned to glower at the newcomer. She waited, but neither spoke.
Belatedly, she remembered that between themselves, they were telepathic. Which made sense. When someone spent most of their time unmoving on a building, it stood to reason they would develop some way of communicating. Being stuck in your own head for that long . . . you’d go stir crazy. She’d never seen a gargoyle freak out before, but she could imagine it wasn’t a pretty sight.
Finally, she got bored with them staring into each other’s baby blues.
“Hey, stone guys! How about a little explanation for the freaky doppelganger thing you got going on here?”
❖
Cal turned back to Iliona, forced to hide his smile. She stood there, her hands planted on her hips and a mulish expression on her face as she looked from him to Gran and back again.
“Well?” she demanded, her voice firm, but he could hear the waver in it. See the tremor in her lip. When he’d received his brother’s voice mail message saying that she was in danger, his blood had turned to ice. He and Gran had run into wraiths in the past. While they didn’t pose a danger to gargoyles, no human stood a chance against them. They’d lost many villagers during a bad winter in the 1750s, all wraith victims. Tracking the creature had been made harder by the vicious weather that year, the few tracks such a creature left destroyed by the ice.
All the way across the city he’d been terrified that he’d be too late. That he’d arrive to a scene of horror . . . to Iliona already locked in the embrace of the wraith, her skin and eyes draining of color as it buried its sharpened finger bones through her rib cage and into her heart. Crashing through the door, he’d pulled up sharply, staggering in relief as he spotted her, alive and well, wrapped in his brother’s arms.
Gran cut him off with a glare. “You can explain it. And for God’s sake, get your girlfriend somewhere safe before something else comes after her, would you?”
With that, he was gone, leaving the two of them looking after him as the door crashed shut. Cal turned toward Iliona, to find her looking at him.
“Oh my God . . . I touched his dick,” she whispered, her expression shocked.
He braced himself for the rush of jealousy at the reminder that she’d been kissing and touching another man. But it didn’t arrive. Instead, heat rolled through him, his cock semihard in his pants. The thought of her and Gran together turned him on more than he could have imagined. Quickly, he shoved the thought down and locked it away. They might have shared women in the past, but he doubted Iliona was into anything like that.
She looked at him, and the carefully constructed mask broke, shattered apart as she ran a shaking hand through her hair. “I kissed him, but he wasn’t you.”
Shit. He reached out and pulled her into his arms.
“Shhh . . . it’s okay,” he murmured, giving in to the temptation to drop a kiss onto the top of her head. “There was no way you’d have known.”
“But . . .” She shook her head, tension and distress in her voice. “I should have known. I’m good with people. I’m used to paranormals. I should have been able to tell. My God, you must think I’m—”
He stopped her with a finger over her lips. “Honestly, it’s okay. There’s no way you could have known. We’re identical.” His lips quirked at the corner. “With our clothes on anyway.”
She paused at that, a little frown appearing as a furrow between her brows. “Why? Does he have an extra nipple or something?”
Cal rejoiced at the return of a smile in her eyes, banishing the panic and worry that had been there. He didn’t blame her. From what he knew of humans, most men would have reacted badly to finding his woman in his brother’s arms.
Was she his . . . Could he count one heated incident in her kitchen, albeit interrupted, and a kiss on a demolition site as the start of a relationship? More, the start of the relationship between a paranormal man and a human woman. The pro-human elitists would have a fucking field day if they got hold of it.
Yes, he decided as he lifted a hand and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Yes, she was definitely his. Every primal male instinct within him insisted on it, wanted to roar their defiance to the sky and to any other who thought they could claim her.
“No,” he said, chuckling. “No third nipple. Nothing so exciting. He has a scar, from here to here.” He drew a line across his pec. “Some villag
ers with pitchforks . . . That sort of shit happens. Or did back then. Thankfully not so much now. And that”—he smiled and tapped her on the end of the nose gently—“is down to people like you. The ones who are trying to make a change for people like me.”
She nodded, a pleased look in her eyes, and finally smiled softly. “I do try . . . You know, because of what I did before?”
“I know, love.” He pulled her against him tightly again and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “I know. Now let’s get you home, shall we?”
* * *
❖
* * *
He didn’t have to twist Iliona’s arm on that one. She was all for getting out of there as quickly as possible. She called Cooper and informed him of the attack in the office. Warlock born and bred, he’d assured her that he would deal with it and ramp up the wards that were already in place. Reassured that nobody else would be attacked, she let Cal take her home.
He didn’t let go of her hand all the way back to her apartment building. And to be honest, she didn’t even think of arguing. It felt nice. The strength in his fingers, the warmth of his touch, and the soft calluses on his palm . . . all screamed safety and security.
Their relationship seemed to have reached a crux point, every moment alive with possibility. And tension. Awareness arced between them as he held the elevator door open for her.
She murmured her thanks, pressing far closer as she squeezed through the gap than she needed to. His breathing caught, the soft hitch doing things to her that should have been illegal. Hell . . . he only had to stand there to trigger reactions deep within. Men like him should come with a warning label.
This was the second time she’d been saved from something nonhuman, and though it hadn’t been Cal who had saved her, it had been his brother. Who was identical . . .
Guilt rolled through her. She should have been able to tell the two apart. She’d been kissing his brother for heaven’s sake. He’d smelled so damn good, felt so good . . . She pushed the thought away again. She’d only come on to him because of his resemblance to Cal. If he’d looked different there was no way she would have made that mistake. No way she would have been all over him like a bad rash. No way at all.