by Stacia Kane
“I was trying to put him off until I had a chance to talk to you, to really explain. I wanted you to go to Florence with me, remember, I thought we could—”
“No. I can’t fucking believe you would do that to me. Now Win thinks you’re considering making me your mistress? Who else knows that? Did you even think how that makes me look?”
“Did you even think how it makes me look, to have you refusing to do the ritual for me?”
“You never asked me to do it for you!”
“Fine.” In a flash he was across the room, hauling her to her feet by the shoulders and looming over her, his dark eyes flaring red, his body throwing off heat like a furnace. “I’m asking you now, Meg. Will you do it for me? Do the ritual and be with me. Give up your job and be with me. Marry me, damn it.”
His lips cut off any answer she could have made.
Chapter Nineteen
Harder, and harder still. It wasn’t just a kiss, it was a demand; it was him taking charge of her, taking control. And in the blink of an eye she was controlled, helpless in his arms, her own twining around his neck, tasting salt from her tears as their lips devoured each other’s and the flaring bright energy in her, his energy pouring into her, threatened to send her over the edge before anything even happened.
His lips left hers to travel down her throat, kissing, biting. His fingers squeezed her ribs almost hard enough to hurt. “Please, bryaela. Please.”
She wanted to say yes. Would have wanted to say yes even if his hand hadn’t slid up under her shirt and found her breast, even if his mouth hadn’t found her earlobe and was sucking on it the way he knew she loved.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t because he’d lied to her; no matter what his reasons or how sensible they were, he’d kept something that important from her. She couldn’t because asking her to give up her job and her show would have been different if he hadn’t presented it as a requirement.
But those were incidentals. She could have gotten over them. What she couldn’t get over was the idea that he’d actually considered marrying someone else. He’d actually thought, even for a moment, about taking another woman into his bed, making another woman the mother of his children. She couldn’t get over the way he’d spoken of her giving up her job as if it was nothing but refused even to consider giving up his.
Of course it made more sense financially for him to keep his. He wasn’t lying about how much more money he made than she did; she had a box full of diamond jewelry and several stamps in her passport that attested to that, not to mention the other things, things he bought because he was thinking of her, or he thought she’d like them, or whatever other reason he’d come up with.
But he hadn’t even considered it. Hadn’t even paid her the respect of pretending to consider it. Hadn’t even attempted to work out some kind of compromise, to discuss it. As if her work meant nothing, was just playacting she did while waiting for some man to sweep her off her feet.
Too bad that was exactly what had happened. And too bad she couldn’t let him do it again.
All of this passed through her mind in a flash, while his lips found hers again, searingly hot, almost driving her few coherent thoughts away. Without her realizing it, her hands had found his bare skin under his shirt, the smooth, strong expanse of his back, the row of sgaegas—little spikes—down his spine.
Those sgaegas were what he’d shown her to convince her that he was really a demon. And she’d touched them, and her body had gone hot and shivery, and suddenly she wasn’t kissing him anymore because she was crying too hard.
“You lied to me.” The words choked her; she pushed him away, and it felt as if she’d ripped something out of her chest. “All this time you kept this from me, you didn’t tell me. How can I trust you? How can you act like my job is nothing?”
“I don’t think it’s nothing.” She could feel his eyes on her, pleading with her, but she refused to meet them. “But it’s too dangerous, it’s—”
“If it’s too dangerous,” she said, her voice shaking, “then it’s been dangerous all along. You said yourself, whoever’s after me now might be after me because of you. And you never mentioned it. You let me be in danger all this—”
“No! God, no, it’s—”
“Can you promise me that? Can you swear that just being with you, just seeing you, didn’t put me in any danger? That someone isn’t trying to kill me right now because of you, and it has nothing to do with my job or anything else?”
The room was so cold. His chest was warm, she knew, the way he always was, the kind of warmth she could curl into, the kind that would never fade.
But she couldn’t do it. All she could think of were lies and betrayals and the idea that everyone had known but her, that they’d all been conspiring to keep it hidden, that she’d looked like a fool to everyone.
The idea that he’d known she might be in danger and had still not told her.
“No.” He took another step back. “No, I suppose I can’t.”
The pale green carpet had a subtle pattern to it; she hadn’t noticed it before. Now it swirled at her feet, blurred with her tears, became nothing more than a fuzzy wash of color as her eyes lost focus. They stood there, a few feet apart, so close she could have reached him in a few steps.
She’d never felt so alone in her life.
He cleared his throat. Paused. Did it again. “So what are we doing, Meg. I don’t . . . What do you want to do?”
It wasn’t a matter of what she wanted to do. She wanted to take his hand and go to bed. She wanted him to sit down so she could curl up in his lap and feel, just one more time, totally cared for. Totally understood and approved of.
But she wanted more than that out of life too. So she said, in a voice that didn’t sound at all like her own, “I think I should get my own room. I don’t think I can do this. I can’t trust you anymore.”
He made a small sound. She couldn’t look at him to determine if it was a laugh or . . . something else. She didn’t think she could stand knowing. “No, you stay here. I’ll have one of the boys come later for my clothes. Unless you want me to pack now.”
“No. I’ll get my own room. I can get my own, you know. I have my own money, I don’t need yours.” It was a low blow, and she knew it; she saw him twitch out of the corner of her eye. “I’m going to go now.”
This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be actually happening. She glanced at the clock; half an hour had passed. Half an hour, and her life had fallen apart into sharp, horrible little pieces.
“Okay. Okay, then. I’ll . . . I’ll have them bring your things.”
She walked toward the door, every cell in her body screaming to stop. To turn around, to run back to him. She loved him. Surely they could work this out. Couldn’t they work it out? How could this be happening?
How could he have considered marrying someone else? How could he have even considered it?
She paused in the doorway for a second. He stood where she’d left him; his eyes looked damp. She quickly skipped over them. The late-afternoon light streaming through the windows caught his dark, shiny hair, the sharp bones of his face, and the almost hawklike nose. She loved those bones. Loved that face. Loved him, fuck, what—
But he’d lied. Not about unimportant things but about their future. And she couldn’t accept that, couldn’t forgive him, at least not yet, if ever.
She closed the door.
She stood for a second staring at it, listening to the sound of it closing over and over again in her head. Then she made her way down the hall on legs she couldn’t feel and called the elevator for the lobby.
“Megan?”
The gentle tapping on the door was like a hammer bludgeoning her skull.
“Megan? Can I come in?”
Tera. Megan lifted her aching head and tried to find the door; her eyes, emptied of tears, were so dry her lids felt sticky when she blinked, and her vision was blurry.
“Yes, come in.” Her throat was sore; no
big surprise, considering she’d barely managed to get through the endless paperwork of getting herself a room and made it up there—a nondescript hole on the seventh floor—before being messily, horribly sick. Her wonderful stomach struck again.
Her fumbling fingers finally grasped the lock. Turning it felt like lifting a thousand-pound weight, but she managed it and stepped back.
Tera held up a white paper bag. “I brought you some fries.”
Ugh. “Thanks, but I’m not really hungry.”
The room wasn’t a suite, just a typical hotel room like Elizabeth Reid’s—bed jutting out from one wall, small desk, TV. It was still the Bellreive, so still larger and nicer than a budget hotel, but the difference . . . She didn’t want to think about that. Or about that suite. Or especially about who was in it.
Tera sat on the bed. “Nice room.”
“You should have seen the desk clerk. He looked at me like he thought I was going to leap over the counter and try to eat his brains.”
“I’m not surprised. You look like you died three days ago.”
Normally Tera’s casual bluntness didn’t bother Megan, even amused her. Not today. “Yeah, thanks, Tera. I feel just great, so—”
“No, Megan, listen.” Tera took her hand. The touch of her skin felt odd, too cold somehow; it had to fight to reach her through the numbness. “I know I’m not the most sensitive person in the world, okay? I know that. But . . . you look bad, like you feel bad, and I don’t want you to feel that way. It bugs me. I want you to feel better. So you should talk about it if you want. And I won’t say anything mean about him, I promise.”
Megan shrugged. This wasn’t helping her fight the hard ball of pain in her chest. “Say anything you want about him. I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I don’t.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“He lied to me, he …” She’d thought she was out of tears. She was wrong. “He lied to me, Tera. I never thought he would do that. Not like that. Not about us. And then he . . . he asked me to marry him, like that was supposed to fix everything, and I said no …”
She couldn’t finish. Couldn’t say anything more. And lucky for her, she didn’t need to, because Tera reached out and held her while she cried.
It may have been five minutes or half an hour, she didn’t know, but when she pulled away, she felt better. Just telling someone what happened felt better. Well, of course it did. What the hell did she do for a living, if talking to someone about problems didn’t help?
It was her job. And it was important. And she was good at it. She still had that; she was still who she was. She still wasn’t alone. Somehow that gave her the strength to wipe her eyes, to lift her head and straighten her back. “What time is it?”
“Almost six.”
“Shit, I have to get ready. Dinner’s earlier tonight, there’s going to be business discussions, and …” He would be there. God damn it, why did this have to happen now? When she’d have to see him that night and every night for the next week? When she was—oh, shit, she was trapped in a hotel with a bunch of demons who would be absolutely fascinated to know what had happened.
She wasn’t just going to have to see him and pretend everything was fine. She was going to have to see all of them and pretend she was fine. Wasn’t that just fucking great?
She made it to the reception room by seven, luckily. Late was not a good thing to be when one was attempting to behave as though nothing at all was the matter, but it was a close call. She’d spent almost twenty minutes with cold wet teabags over her eyes, and Tera promised she looked fine, so she guessed she did, even if she felt like a bombed-out building. One thing about Tera, her judgment was believable.
Tera had also gone back up to the suite to get her a few things, her suitcase and makeup bag. That was when Megan realized Nick had been sitting on the floor outside her door the entire time.
He stood beside her now, his arm reassuring under her hand. Roc sat on her opposite shoulder; she felt bracketed by the two of them, encased in what little protection was available.
“I assume you’d like a drink,” Nick said.
She nodded. The room was fairly full, with the Gretnegs and their assistants …
“He’s not here yet. He told me he’d come late, so it wouldn’t look so odd you two arriving separately.”
She forced a smile and hoped it hid her embarrassment. “Was I that obvious?”
“No. But I can imagine what I would do in your situation. I mean, if I ever actually sustained any kind of relationship.”
“Honestly? Right now I think you’re better off.”
They’d reached the bar. The demon behind it—one of Gunnar’s, she thought—poured her a gin and tonic, but before she could get it to her lips, someone touched her shoulder.
Leora. Shit.
The girl’s wide blue eyes met hers without guile. She was wearing a dress almost the exact same color; the effect was to make her look like innocent youth on legs, and Megan feel like a crone in her own black sheath. All of her dresses were black, damn it. She hadn’t brought anything else. If she hadn’t been so busy being miserable and sick, she would have tried to run out and buy something, but as it was, she was just hoping desperately to make it through the evening without bursting into tears.
Her entire body hurt. Her chest felt as if a bomb had gone off inside it.
“Megan, I was hoping I could talk to you for a few minutes?”
Megan shot a desperate glance at Nick, but his lifted eyebrows indicated the same sort of helplessness she felt. To deny the girl would be rude, and demons were fairly obsessive about manners. On the other hand, though . . .
the thought of actually speaking to Leora made her palms sweat.
No real choice, though. So she nodded. “Sure.”
Leora led her off to the side, to the pole where she’d had her discussion with Greyson what felt like hundreds of years before. A new wound opened in her chest.
“My dad wanted me to talk to you,” Leora said. “He thought maybe if we got to know each other better, it would help.”
Oh, no. Oh no no nonononono. “I don’t think we have any issues that need helping.”
“Well, you know, he thought maybe if I talked to you, you could talk to Greyson. I mean, I’m not supposed to tell you that, I don’t think—I’m not very good at all of this stuff.” The blush on her cheeks was very becoming. Megan wanted to slap them. Not so much because she was angry but because it was the only way she could think of to make Leora stop talking.
“I think Greyson can make up his own mind about things.”
“Well, yeah, but my dad says it’s because of you that he hasn’t said yes yet, and . . . I’d really like him to. I think you and I could be really good friends. I don’t want to get in the way of what you two have, but I want to—”
Greyson walked in.
Leora hadn’t finished talking, but Megan heard her voice only as a dull buzz in the background. She was too busy staring, not sure if she was proud or furious that he looked perfectly elegant and well rested, as if not a thing had happened.
Leora followed her gaze. “Oh! There he is.”
He saw them. The faint down-twist of his mouth and wrinkle of his brow gave Megan some satisfaction but not much. She was just miserable, and things did not improve when he approached them.
“Ladies,” he said, with a fluid bow that raised her suspicions. “How lovely to see you both. I hope you’re not talking about me.”
Leora giggled. “Of course we are.”
He cocked his right eyebrow. “I assume you want me to ask what you’re saying? I won’t, you know.”
Megan’s suspicions were confirmed. He was drunk. He never behaved like some Regency ballroom rake unless he was completely plastered. She’d only seen him like this twice; it took a shitload of liquor to make a demon drunk, and he didn’t tend to drink that heavily. He must have spent the entire afternoon guzzling scotch.
Of course, she’d spent hers puking and sobbing. So she couldn’t help feeling he’d had the better idea.
Leora didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong. “You know we’ll tell you anyway.”
“Oh, you might,” he replied. Carter brought him another drink; he tossed it down his throat with an efficiency that made Megan wince. “But Megan? She’d never tell. And I’d certainly never ask her. Her responses to my questions are horrible.”
Megan choked out what she hoped was a close approximation of a lighthearted laugh. “Maybe you just don’t ask them correctly.”
“Maybe I don’t, at that. I always thought women found begging undignified. Looks like my suspicions were confirmed.”
“Maybe begging doesn’t mean anything when it feels like all the decisions are being made for us instead of with us.”
He scowled. “Seems to me the decision was entirely yours.”
“Oh, does it? Here I was thinking—”
Leora gave a delicate cough, more suggestion of a sound than an actual one. Megan practically jumped. She’d forgotten the girl was there.
“I think we’re ready to go in to dinner.” Leora pointed at the open double doors, at the others filing through them.
“Of course.” Greyson hesitated for such a brief time that Megan felt certain Leora hadn’t noticed it; then he offered Leora his arm. “Shall we?”
She giggled and took it, blushing again, while Megan wished desperately that an entire herd of angels or FBI agents or exorcists would burst into the room and end her misery right there.
No such luck. Instead she stood alone and watched the two of them sail off to the doors until Nick and Roc came to get her.
It wasn’t until she settled herself in her chair—blessedly they’d been shifted around for this meal, and Greyson was across from her rather than right beside her—that she realized the implications of her discussion with Leora.
Did Win truly believe she was the reason Greyson hadn’t agreed to marry his daughter? And did he want that marriage badly enough to kill for it?
Chapter Twenty