She shook her head. “Doesn’t mean I’ve got to let it go. Just means I haven’t found it yet.”
He turned to face her, his mouth pursed. “Have you ever considered that he might be innocent?”
She angled out her jaw. “He’s not.”
“Well, if he isn’t, sooner or later he’s going to trip up. In the meantime, you earned this night too,” Grym told her. “Don’t let him ruin it for you.”
She made a face as Grym clapped her on the back and disappeared into the crowd, headed for the nearest bar. Caeravorn was ruining the night for her. Just the very fact of his presence at the celebration made her stomach tighten. Watching him enjoy himself was about as pleasurable as taking a bath in acid.
He exuded testosterone along with all the rest, an alpha male supremely confident in his own abilities, and why wouldn’t he be? He had just clawed his way to the top of the Wyr demesne and earned his place with the best of the best.
Her gaze narrowed. He was a beautiful man, she’d give him that. He owned a popular neighborhood bar named Elfie’s, where he tended to wear clothes that were more upscale, but here he dressed simply like the other sentinels in jeans, boots, and a dark blue T-shirt that turned his blue eyes brilliant.
Sex would have always come easily for him. It would come even easier for him tonight. He could have as much sex with as many people as he wanted.
One of his companions was a corporate lawyer for Cuelebre Enterprises, a Wyr lioness who was the antithesis of Aryal in almost every way. Aryal studied the other woman, assessing her as if she were an opponent. Instead of Aryal’s six-foot height, the lioness stood at a snuggly five foot six. Males were suckers for females of that size. The other woman had a sinuous, curvaceous torso, while Aryal had an athletic build, her muscles long and lean.
The lioness’s limbs were tawny and sun-kissed, her piquant face cleverly made up to emphasize her tilted eyes and full mouth. She wore four-inch heels, and her waist-long hair tumbled down her back and was lightened with expensive golden highlights.
Aryal had gray eyes and angular features, and the only time she had ever worn makeup was when she had gotten drunk with her friend Niniane, who had somehow managed to coax Aryal into letting her put pink lipstick on her. That experiment had lasted all of five minutes. Aryal wouldn’t be caught dead in heels of any height unless they hid a spring-hinged blade, and she barely remembered to brush her thick, black, shoulder-length hair, which was why it so often ended up tangled, especially just after a flight.
The lioness stood on tiptoe and leaned against Caeravorn’s arm as she said something in his ear, deliberately brushing her breast against his bicep. Then she sent a warning glance around to the others who stood nearby while she licked at the champagne that dripped off his chin, and Caeravorn grinned and cupped her ass. Clearly if that chick had anything to say about it, she would be his only partner for the night.
Aryal’s lip curled. Aw, look. Two Wyr felines going into heat. There wasn’t even any suspense to it.
Caeravorn turned to give the female a slow, sexy smile, and his gaze fell on Aryal. His long blue eyes narrowed, and his expression chilled. He said something to the female as he pulled away from her. She gave him a pouting, kittenish smile and made as if to follow him, but as she tracked his trajectory, her gaze fell onto Aryal and she jerked to a halt.
Yeah, that one was irritating, but she wasn’t stupid.
Caeravorn shouldered past a few people and approached Aryal, his eyes glinting. He was broad shouldered, lean hipped and long legged, and he had a lithe, almost boneless stride. Aryal’s gaze drifted over his hard face and equally hard body. Under the cover of her crossed arms, her talons came out, quiet and slick like well-oiled switchblades. She clicked them together as he prowled close.
So dirty.
He was an outlaw in masquerade. Her gaze fixed on the bulge in his jeans. Was he an outlaw sexually as well?
Kitty Lawyer’s antics must have been doing it for him, because as he came toe-to-toe with her, he smelled like healthy male, champagne and arousal. Aryal hated the fact that he smelled incredibly delicious.
“You are the most ungracious, obstinate creature I have ever had the misfortune to meet,” he said. She cocked her head and contemplated his hard, well-cut mouth. “Give it up, sunshine. You lost.”
Genuinely amused, she smiled. She leaned forward until she was in his face, and she whispered, “I know something you don’t.”
His teeth were even and white as he snapped out, “You fucking wish you did.”
“No, I really do know something, Caeravorn. What are you, a hundred and sixty, a hundred and seventy years old?”
He sliced at the air with one hand. “What difference does my age make?”
“You young Wyr are all alike,” she said. “Maybe your panther side will dictate a limit to your life span, or maybe your Elven and Dark Fae blood will prolong it, but either way, you don’t really understand what it means to be immortal. The past is nearly as limitless as the future.”
“Make your point,” he growled.
Her voice grew softer, pitched for his ears alone. “I’ll give this to you. You’ve been meticulous, you really have. You’ve covered your tracks well. But nobody in this world is perfect. That means that you have fucked up somehow, somewhere. That’s what I know. I have all the time in the world to find it, all the time, and do you know what that means? That means I’ve already got you. It just hasn’t happened yet.”
She watched the rage build in his face and body language as she spoke. She might not have gotten him yet, but she got him good enough for now, as she shoved him over the brink and his temper splintered utterly. He lunged for her throat.
“You’re not a harpy,” he snarled. “You’re a fucking pit bull with lockjaw.”
Her head fell back, and she laughed as his iron-hard hands circled her neck. Fingers tightening, he cut off her air supply. She hooked an ankle behind his leg and threw her entire body weight at him, knocking him backward.
They crashed to the floor together. People shouted and scattered, while others leaped toward them. All the ruckus seemed to happen somewhere else. Right here it was just her and Caeravorn, in intimate, struggling silence.
As he hit the ground, his hands loosened from her neck. When she landed on top of his muscular length, she twisted to bring up one elbow, hard, underneath his chin. The blow connected and snapped his head back. For one pulsating moment his long, powerful body lay as a supplicant beneath hers, his neck bared as she straddled him.
It was glorious.
Then a freight train slammed into Aryal, knocking her several feet from Caeravorn, who flipped, still snarling, onto his hands and knees. With his head lowered and teeth bared, his gaze fixed on her and he prepared to spring.
Wow, he had really lost it. She must have said something. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bayne, Constantine and Alexander pile on top of him, their combined weight knocking him flat again.
Her freight train resolved into Dragos’s new First Sentinel, Graydon. Graydon was the largest of all the current sentinels. In his human form he stood almost six foot five, and he carried a good thirty pounds more than the other gryphons.
All of that weight was hard, packed muscle, which currently took up residence on her chest. He pinned her arms to the floor by the wrists. Normally his roughhewn features were set in a mild, good-natured expression, but not at the moment.
Not even bothering to struggle, she looked up at Graydon with her eyebrows raised. “What?”
His dark slate gray eyes were furious. “People have been through hell this month. We’ve all gone to war, and then we beat the shit out of each other in the Games. Everybody needs a little goddamn R and R, and you can’t leave well enough alone for a few fucking hours at a party.”
Angling her jaw out, she savored her next words for the rare treasures they were, as she said in perfect, pious honesty, “He started it.”
TWO
No
w in March, two months after the party, her own words mocked her. Her triumph at the party had been all-too short lived.
The bitter winds matched her mood. The slicing chill of the wintry air cooled her overheated blood as frustration clawed at her. She let the tumultuous currents buffet and toss her about.
She might have all the time in the world with which to hunt Caeravorn. She just didn’t have all the patience in the world. Not when he was a daily fact of her existence. It was one thing to have him constantly in the forefront of her mind as a subject of investigation. Now she never knew when she might run into him at the Tower.
She knew she would run into him whenever Dragos called for a sentinel conference. She started to avoid those whenever she could get away with it, until Dragos stomped on that little maneuver by ordering her to attend every meeting.
Caeravorn was a smooth operator. Everywhere he went, women trotted after him like hypnotized puppies. He was even tempered and charming with everybody—everybody, that is, except Aryal.
They were not just driving each other insane. Collectively they were driving everyone else insane too. Echoes of their feud began to ripple through the other sentinels. Tempers flared until one day even Alexander, who was easily the most mild natured of them all, snapped at both of them. Then Grym and Constantine went at it, verbally ripping into each other like a pair of fighting dogs.
It was certainly no secret that Aryal loved a good fight. Conflict was like mother’s milk to her, but this went deeper—it had all the makings of a true schism, and that had to stop.
As she realized that, she thought of something else. Now there was the baby to consider too, because Pia cared for and trusted her friend Caeravorn. She might have had a problem with letting Aryal around her son, but she would have no problem letting him have free access … and that, to Aryal’s eyes, made him even more dangerous than ever.
So as soon as she figured out how to do it, she would kill him.
The decision was a relief. It gave her frustration a viable outlet, and the results would be better for everybody, instead of taking the long course as Dragos had decided on doing. Taking the long course meant giving Caeravorn access to sensitive knowledge and allowing him the chance to do major damage before he could be brought down.
The long flight had finally cleared her mind. She angled her wings to take her out of the wind current and spiraled down to the sprawling city below. A cloudy night covered the city’s vast array of lights in a moody cloak. The temperature was barely any warmer closer to the ground. The air felt wet and cold, and icy sleet coated the trees, roads and rooftops.
She had no intention of changing until she could get inside quickly, since she would feel the cold more in her human form. Instead, she cloaked her presence and flew along the corridors created by the streets and tall buildings, until she came to Elfie’s, Caeravorn’s bar. At almost four A.M., the bar was closed and the entire ground floor dark.
A sliver of light shone from a window on the top floor, which was the third story in the brick building. She drifted closer, her outspread wings holding her course steady. Caeravorn owned the building and lived in an apartment over the bar. As a sentinel, he now had an apartment at the Tower but he rarely stayed there.
All of the windows on the building were covered with slender, black metal security bars, even the windows on the upper floors. She grinned. Caeravorn didn’t trust his safety to the open sky. What a shame.
She flew to the lighted window, grabbed hold of the bars and flapped her wings until she had the tips of the deadly talons on her feet hooked into the side of the building. Her talons were sharp enough to slice through steel. Digging them into the mortar between the bricks was relatively easy.
She tugged experimentally at the bars as she checked out the bolts that fastened them to the wall, but they were anchored solidly in place. All of her weight rested on a half an inch at the tip of her talons, and the bars at the window were coated in a sheet of ice. The perch was uncomfortable and precarious, but she could hold it for now.
The window was cracked open, the curtains not quite pulled closed. Heat and illumination poured out of the gap, and a wordless, tribal music that carried a hypnotic rhythm. It slipped into her bloodstream and pounded at her throat and temples. She peered inside.
The sight slammed her.
Caeravorn and a naked woman were in the room. He wore a pair of midnight blue silk pants that rode low on lean hipbones. His torso was bare. The woman sat on the edge of a bed. She wasn’t the lioness. She was a pretty, young-looking brunette, with firm, small breasts and dark, erect nipples.
After one glance at her, Aryal’s gaze fastened on Caeravorn. She couldn’t look away. His body was simply fantastic. His powerful shoulders and chest were broader than they seemed normally. His height must fool the eye when he was clothed. He looked stern, almost remote, the smooth proud lines of his face closed to scrutiny.
This was not a lovemaking scene, then.
He twisted and reached for something on a nearby dresser, the pale golden skin of his back rippling with muscles.
Compulsively Aryal followed the curved line of his back to his lean buttocks. Her hands were starting to burn from the pain of holding on to the slippery, ice-covered bars, but the warmth of her grip was melting the ice and she ignored it as best she could.
He turned back to the woman, a short piece of leather in his hand. He held the length to the woman’s mouth. “Bite it.”
Her gaze lifted to his, the woman opened her mouth and accepted the strip of leather. He told her, “Get on the bed. On your knees.”
The woman obeyed. That was when Aryal realized the brunette wore silk-lined wrist cuffs with a short length that ran behind her back, along with black stiletto-heeled pumps. The woman climbed onto the bed, facing away from Caeravorn.
Caeravorn yanked down his silk pants. His large, erect penis jutted out over a smooth, tight sac. Aryal couldn’t look away as he palmed himself. Her breath grew tight and short, and her entire body felt like it was on fire.
Then she looked up at his closed expression. He looked bored, totally alone.
He told the woman, “Bend over.”
The woman did, laying her upper torso on the bed with her knees spread so that her ass pushed up in the air.
Aryal hissed as the pain in her hands grew to be too much. As Caeravorn moved up to position himself behind the brunette, she had to let go finally and let gravity pull her away. As she fell she twisted, wings outspread to buffer her descent. She dug into the air with all of her strength to climb upward into the frigid, cloudy darkness, wild to fly anywhere as long as it was far away.
After Quentin took the woman, he slipped on his silk pants and called a taxi while she cleaned up. Then he paid her and escorted her down the side stairs to the ground floor. It was all perfectly cordial.
That was when she made her mistake. She wheedled.
“We had a great time together, didn’t we, baby?” she said as she sidled closer.
She probably called everybody baby, Quentin thought. Just like that John Cougar Mellencamp song. It was a lot easier to remember than names. He stepped around her and looked out the glass door for any sign of the taxi. The street was empty of traffic.
The woman came at him again and put her hands on his chest. “When can we see each other again, baby? Let’s make it soon. How about the weekend?”
There it was again. Baby. He lifted her hands away. He could have said, I almost fell asleep but then I came, but he managed to hold that one back.
Instead, he told her, “I don’t know why you worked so hard to pretend you climaxed. We’re not boyfriend and girlfriend. We’re never going to see each other again.”
Her lower lip stuck out. Holy gods, he would rather stick his head in the oven than deal with another sex kitten pouter right now. “I thought you liked the special things I could do for you, baby. Don’t you want me to do them for you again?”
Invisible claws ran down a me
ntal chalkboard inside his head. He said, “You didn’t do anything special. You did what you were told.” For God’s sake, he hadn’t even spanked her. Hot damn, there was the taxi, creeping carefully down the ice-covered street. He opened the door and a welcome blast of bitter air slapped him in the face. “ Good-bye. Don’t come back to Elfie’s.”
Finally offense rippled across her face. “I wouldn’t come back here if you paid me to,” she hissed.
Yes, she would.
“Yeah, we’re done with that too.” He had intended to pay for her taxi trip on top of her fee and the generous tip he had already given her, but she irritated him so much, he closed and locked the door firmly as soon as she stepped through it.
“Fuck you, big bad sentinel,” the woman shouted.
He braced one hand on the doorpost and angled his head to look out the door. She walked backward to the taxi, giving him the finger with both hands.
Hadn’t even spanked her. Hell, the handcuffs hadn’t been real. They were sex toys, the kind that broke open if someone tugged hard enough. It had been a vanilla version of BDSM—they hadn’t even needed to set a safe word. He really had almost fallen asleep.
The special things she had done for him.
He hung his head and laughed. It sounded as humorless as he felt.
Those invisible fingers down a chalkboard had left behind a headache, which grew as he climbed the stairs back to his apartment. Elfie’s took the entire ground floor of the building. He used the second story for storage for the bar.
His apartment took up the third floor. It was an open-concept design, with a kitchen, dining area and living room all in one huge space, mellow golden oak floors throughout and filled with the clean, spare lines of midcentury modern furniture. Two large, more traditional rooms were set up as bedrooms, each with their own baths.
He had always planned to create a rooftop garden, but an architect had once told him that the entire roof would need to be reinforced first. The project would involve so much upheaval he hadn’t yet found the time. Now that he had become a sentinel, he doubted he ever would.