How in hell was she supposed to get along with him? She had no idea. If they tried to clear the air, they might just kill each other after all. If she sucked it all down and tried to pretend—well, she was horrible at pretending and hiding how she felt. She might as well go back to clearing the air again.
That led to killing, which she actually didn’t have a problem with, except that she wasn’t supposed to kill Quentin. She was supposed to find some outside agent in the guise of an act of God that was supposed to kill Quentin. Pushing her beer to one side, she thunked her head on the table. Argh, Dragos! How did this whole thing get so complicated?
Actually, she might feel bad about her whole plan except that she knew Quentin was a career criminal, a dangerous man who could not be trusted. Getting rid of him really would be the right thing for everybody.
A soft voice sounded at her elbow. “Miss, eat too much? Maybe need some plop plop, fizz fizz?”
She lifted her head and squinted at her well-meaning server, a middle-aged woman with a kind, apple-dumpling-soft face. “I’m fine, just exasperated.”
“Oh, sorry,” the woman said, looking apologetic. “No understand hisaxpillated.”
As most ancient Wyr did, Aryal knew a variety of different languages, but she didn’t know Czech. She pointed at her empty plates. “Good lunch.”
The woman smiled and nodded. “Good!”
After Aryal paid for her meal, she thumbed on her iPhone. The cost of mobile roaming from Europe was astronomical, as much as two euros per minute or more, but it wasn’t worth buying local phones in case someone from New York needed to get in touch with them. Besides, very soon, they would be headed into an area where cell phones wouldn’t work.
She found Quentin’s number and texted him the location of the pub. Then she settled back, watched out the streaked window and waited.
Ten minutes later a taxi pulled up to the pub. Quentin slid out of the backseat, his long, lithe body moving with his signature boneless grace. Not even the gryphons moved like he did, their heavy, muscular lion’s bodies intermingled with the body of an eagle’s. Quentin was sleek and sinuous, a racy Ferrari surrounded by bulky SUVs.
The harsh, gray daylight emphasized his strong bones and hard, closed expression. His cheekbones were two sharp arcs slicing across his face. His short, dark golden hair and bright blue eyes stood out against the colorless surroundings.
Aryal’s heart pounded. She slid out of her seat and strode outside.
Quentin’s frowning gaze connected with hers with a clash she felt all the way to her bones. She jerked her head at the rental, and he gave her a curt nod. The taxi driver had parked and stepped out to open the trunk of his car. Aryal unlocked the hatch of the Peugeot and stood back as the two men loaded supplies into the trunk.
Just as he had promised, Quentin had known exactly where to shop, because not only had he bought food, but he had bought basic camping supplies as well. Packages containing two small dome tents, tarps and sleeping bags, and other gear went into the backseat. She thought she saw the tip of a liquor bottle in one of the bags. He had been fast and thorough.
After Quentin paid the driver, who left, he turned back to Aryal and held out his hand. “I know the route we need to take,” he said. “I’ll drive.”
There it was again, his love of control.
“You can’t,” Aryal told him in a pious tone. “You’re not on the rental policy. I drive.”
Like she gave a fuck about the terms of the policy, but she did get a lot of satisfaction out of denying Quentin something. Yeah, she was just that petty.
His face tightened but he didn’t bother to say anything. Instead, he pivoted and stalked to the car to slide into the passenger seat. She jingled the car keys in satisfaction and climbed in too.
Oh gods, the car was almost as bad as the plane had been. The small, enclosed space trapped the heat from their bodies together. Quentin’s male scent washed over her, tantalizing, even addicting. Her traitorous body reacted to it even as her uncertain temper teetered at the edge of some kind of cliff and fell off.
She jammed the car into gear and gunned the engine. They shot down the street.
Quentin muttered a curse as he braced himself against the dashboard and yanked on his seat belt. “You’re a goddamn menace.”
“I know,” she said almost happily as she headed for the warehouse area. Her fist tingled in anticipation.
They passed the entrance for the highway. Quentin twisted to stare at her. He said slowly, “You missed the turn.”
She didn’t bother to reply. Instead she pressed down on the gas pedal. They rocketed into the deserted area that she had found earlier. She could sense that Quentin’s long, powerful body had gone combat tense. He was waiting for her to pull the car to a stop, his fast catlike reflexes poised to respond.
So she punched him before she stopped the car.
Her right fist shot out and caught him square in the jaw. The blow snapped his head to one side and slammed him against his door. Aryal stomped on the brake hard. The car slid to one side, tires squealing on the wet, slick pavement. She jammed the gear into park, shoved open her own door and rolled out before the car ever stopped skidding.
As quickly as she moved, Quentin was just as fast if not faster. As the car shrieked to a stop, he poured over the roof and leaped at her, his whole body moving with fluid power and his face, released from civilized constraints, transformed by fury.
Aryal feinted and danced out of his reach, as he made a grab for her. He missed, just barely, and the tips of his fingers slid lightly down her face and collarbone like a lover’s caress. Her skin tingled from the contact, warm in the frigid wet air. Should she change and take to the air? Not yet. It felt too satisfying to get down and dirty with him here on the ground.
So dirty.
She spun, bent at the waist and kicked backward. Her legs were powerful weapons, built for springing high into the air so that she could take flight from the ground. If she had made a solid connection on any part of his body, bones would have snapped.
Instead she only managed to kick air. Iron hands latched onto her ankle. Quentin heaved, and then she was airborne after all. He swung her like a bat at a baseball game, spinning backward. Wind whistled in her ears.
When he let her go, she flew into the corrugated metal of a closed warehouse door. The hollow boom echoed off the surrounding buildings as she slammed into the ground. A starburst of pain bloomed where she made contact with the wet concrete. If the maneuver had happened to almost anyone else, at the very least it would have knocked the breath out of them, but her rib cage and lungs were as powerful as her legs.
She coughed and rolled, pushing hard, hard, because gods he was fast. His boot caught her in the ribs before she could gain her feet. He kicked her so hard it lifted her into the air, and she slammed back into the metal door again.
She hit the ground a second time, only this time she landed on her hands and knees, and all her talons flicked out, switchblade fast. This was finally getting interesting.
She couldn’t kid herself. He let her get to her feet. He stood poised on the balls of his feet in a boxer’s stance, fists ready. She straightened slowly, watching his eyes. They were hard and flat, showing nothing of his intention.
He threw a high jab, aimed at her face.
She didn’t try to block it or hit back. Instead she slid sideways as she grabbed his wrist, twisted at the waist and yanked. He had thrown his body weight forward in the punch, and she used that extension to propel him around so that he struck the corrugated metal door. He was tensing to gather himself for a spring even as his back hit, but she could have told him not to waste his effort.
It was too late. She had him.
Even as he impacted, she slammed his wrist into the door, all five of her talons splayed. They were strong enough to pierce metal, and that’s what they did. She drove them through the door until she literally pinned his wrist, using her own hand as a handcuff. As h
e instinctively brought up his other hand to strike at her, she grabbed that wrist and drove her talons into the door, tightening the fingers of both hands. Her fingers were not as hard as her talons, and the torn metal cut into her flesh.
It was worth it.
Sharp incredulity twisted Quentin’s face as he realized what had happened. He shouted in rage point-blank into her face as he tried to heave her away from him. It strained her grip through the metal of the door. He was immensely strong, and he might have been able to manage it in almost any other position, but with his arms splayed and her body pressed against him, he couldn’t get enough leverage.
Her voice hoarse, she said, “That never would have worked if you had been any of the older sentinels. They would have known better than to try to trap me against this kind of door. It’s one of those things you learn. If you live long enough.”
He snarled wordlessly, his long, powerful body straining against hers, and it was every bit as glorious as when she sprawled on top of him at the sentinel party. Every bit, and more. He arched his back, pushing hard against the door so that fresh pain bloomed in her rigid hands, and he tried to knee her.
She wasn’t as vulnerable down there as a male was, and again, he couldn’t quite get enough purchase to knock her off of him. With an agile twist of her hips, she opened her legs and straddled his long, hard thigh as he shoved upward. He connected with her sex, not hard enough to bruise but enough to almost lift her off her feet.
She gave an almost soundless grunt and clamped her legs together on his thigh. He bared his teeth and shoved upward again. Even through the barrier of their clothes, the friction felt good. She didn’t need anybody else to tell her how twisted that was. But he was all there, too close and personal, his muscles bunching and flexing underneath hers. The sound he made was raw and animalistic, and he was all trapped, all hers.
They were both breathing heavily. She let her eyes drift half closed as she looked at the strong line of his tanned throat and imagined licking it while his head was tilted back in supplication. Sexual heat flashed through her, stronger than ever before. Instinctively she tightened her legs on his thigh. It increased the friction, and a jolt of intense sensation pierced her body so that she sucked air.
Quentin was staring at her, his face savage. A hard length grew against the jutting bone of her hip. She froze as the delicious, addicting smell of his arousal wrapped around her, as warm as a silken blanket and as inevitable as a python’s tightening coils.
Realization clunked her over the head. She had a feeling it had been trying to get her attention for a while now.
He was fighting the same unwelcome attraction for her as she was for him.
She laughed. Talk about twisted. There they were together, tied up in their own little knot. She whispered, “You know, we ought to just have some hate sex already, and get it out of our system.”
If she had thought his eyes were brilliant before, now they turned incandescent.
The erection pressing against her hip grew harder and longer. The air between them was so charged, they could light up the city for blocks around. It tingled across her nerve endings, raised the tiny hairs at the back of her neck.
Nobody had ever accused Aryal of having an excess of sanity. She deliberately pressed her hips against the hard length of his cock, causing friction for the both of them. They both hissed.
Quentin bent his head close to hers, his teeth bared. Even though she had him trapped, he was still very dangerous. She watched him warily. She knew he had some kind of magical training, and she held herself tensed for some kind of offensive spell.
But he didn’t reach for any magic tricks. Instead he growled, “You may have me pinned at the moment, but you’re trapped too. You can’t do anything with your hands locked like that.”
She twitched a shoulder. She could feel the blood pounding in his body. “I promise you, it’s worth it.”
He was breathing deeply, his gaze focused with laser intensity on her mouth. “I smell your blood.”
“That’s been worth it too,” she whispered. Her hands were going numb. At this rate, she was going to have to work at getting them unclenched again.
He roared, “WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE TO GET YOU TO BACK THE FUCK OFF!”
Stray floating strands from her tangled hair blasted back from her face. She let her head fall back, carefully arched away from him so he could not strike at her throat with his teeth, and she laughed again. “I dunno, maybe a confession?”
“A confession.” His gaze ran compulsively down the line of her throat as if he couldn’t help himself, but his voice was flat, disbelieving. Then something seemed to snap inside of him. He snarled, “You want a confession? Fine. I broke the law. I broke it more than once. I broke it lots. I liked breaking the law. Are you fucking satisfied now?”
He caught her with her mouth hanging open, and every word he spoke was the truth. She shut her mouth with a snap. “Goddamn it, I knew it,” she said softly. “What do you do, run a smuggling operation?”
“I don’t run a smuggling operation. I did. In the past. I shut it down last year. You won’t find any evidence, because there isn’t any. I’m that good. Everything that happened is locked inside my head. Shipping manifests. Dates, times. I never put any of it on paper. I worked with a double-blind system. Nobody knew the other parties involved. Most of them didn’t know they were smuggling.”
She picked apart every word he said with her truthsense dialed high. Her eyes narrowed, she asked suspiciously, “Why did you stop?”
His chest heaved as he gave an explosive sigh. “Something bad happened. I tried to do something. I wanted to help out a friend and had good intentions, but I almost got a couple of people killed. After that, I pulled the plug on everything except the bar.”
“So that’s it—that’s everything? That’s all you did?” Everything except the something he had tried to do, at any rate. She asked hopefully, “No espionage?”
He snorted. “No.”
She made a face. “No murder for hire? No spying?”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he snapped. “I made damn good money. That’s it.”
Good gods, he was telling the truth. She tried to disbelieve it anyway, but couldn’t muster any conviction. It was … disappointing. She pressed, “What did you smuggle? Drugs? Human trafficking? Guns?”
He glared at her in exasperation. “Don’t be so goddamn dramatic. Of course I didn’t. I smuggled in liquor for the bar, gold and diamonds, some artwork. High-dollar stuff. I might have dabbled in some magic items from time to time.”
She scowled. At the most he had cost the Wyr demesne some tariff money, and a whole lot of her time. “If that’s all you did, why the fuck didn’t you just say so earlier?”
He sneered. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
She studied him, her mouth twisted with frustration. After all this time, that was it. He lost his temper bad enough to spit out the truth, and she didn’t give a shit about any of it after all. She said, watching him closely, “You really gave it all up. You don’t break the law in any way, anymore.”
“No.” Everything in his hard voice and face radiated the truth. “Not since before I decided to try out for the Games and committed to becoming a sentinel.”
“Bah,” she said in disgust. “How pathetic.”
All that obsession, all that work. For what?
She forced her stiff fingers to open and wiggled them out of the holes her talons had torn into the door. Letting go of his wrists as she backed away, she shook out her aching hands and inspected the cuts on her fingers. They stung, but they weren’t too bad. They would heal soon enough.
Quentin pushed away from the metal door immediately and didn’t stop moving until he was several yards away. All the time he stared at her with narrowed eyes. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s your whole reaction—‘how pathetic’?”
She gestured impatiently. “I don’t care about any of that shit.”
r /> Hands on his hips, he angled his head, the perfect image of a man who had been pushed too far. In a very quiet tone of voice, he said, “You. Don’t. Care.”
Was it something she said? She curled a nostril at him. “No, I don’t.”
He detonated.
SIX
Quentin’s wrath took him outside of his body until he felt as if he hovered in the open area, an invisible spirit looking down at the two figures from above.
He roared, “What the fuck do you mean you don’t care? What have the last two hellish years been for, IF YOU DON’T FUCKING CARE?
Aryal stared at him as if he were a lunatic. “Well, I didn’t know what you’d done, did I? You’re a dangerous man. You proved that when you became a sentinel. I knew you did something, but I didn’t know you did just that.” She threw out her hands as she spoke, making a throwaway gesture. “I can’t believe I wasted all that investigation time on a petty thief.”
He was airborne before she had finished speaking the last words. In one giant leap, he was on her, his hands fastened around her throat again. The flying tackle knocked her flat on her back on a snowy patch of pavement. He sprawled on top of her, instinctively shifting so that he trapped her with the weight of his body.
He had never felt this way before, about anything or anyone. Someone was growling. Belatedly he realized that someone was him. He pounded her head on the pavement. “All. That. Time. All. That. Time.”
He was vaguely aware that she had grabbed him by the throat too, the tips of her talons poised at his jugular. He should probably care about that.
She said in a choked voice, “In retrospect, we should have talked about this while I still had you pinned.”
“You would make a paciflstic saint homicidal,” he panted.
She burst out laughing.
He was strangling her. And she laughed.
Incredulity wormed its way into his rage-soaked brain. He stared down at her.
Her angular face was suffused with color, those stormy gray eyes dancing. Her black hair spread out in a sulfurous fan, gleaming dark against the white snow. She didn’t care that his tightening fingers cut off her air supply any more than he cared that her hand was poised to tear out his throat.