Page 6
Mr. Rain let himself out and rounded the town car to stand next to me. He didn’t have the same apprehension as Desmond about touch. His hand pressed against the small of my back, his deft fingers avoiding my weapon and angling me forward with a gentle nudge. The contact of his fingertips, even through the leather of my jacket and the flimsy cotton of my shirt, sent a shimmering thrill up my spine and all the way down into my groin.
The unexpected intensity of the lust brought on by such a small touch terrified me. Certainly this wasn’t normal. I was not in control of my own desire, and I hated being out of control in any way.
Sandwiched between Desmond and Mr. Rain with Dominick following at our rear, there was no easy way out. We walked towards the building that Dominick had parked in front of, and I immediately recognized its high-gloss black exterior and the cascading wall fountains on either side of the twelve-foot glass doors. The building had been featured in both Architectural Digest and an episode of Lifestyles of the Fabulously Wealthy. I had only seen it in passing, on my way to or from killing something.
Rain. Rain was the name of this six-star beast of a hotel, where room rates started at eight hundred dollars a night and only went higher from there. Realization began to dawn on me, but I still hadn’t put all the pieces together. I knew enough to know that when I fit in the last few bits, I wasn’t going to like the big picture.
A doorman stood in the entrance, looking unfazed to see one small woman being flanked by a pack of men. Pack? Poor but appropriate word choice.
“Good evening, Mr. Rain. Will you be needing the car again tonight?”
“That remains to be seen, Carl. Please have it at the ready,” Rain instructed. The doorman nodded, and I felt a pit building in my guts. “Tell Melvin to ensure that no phone calls are forwarded to the apartment until further notice. ”
We crossed the massive lobby in a few quick strides. It didn’t allow me much time to marvel at the slick black and silver details, but I did notice that the interior walls, much like those outside, were made of black marble waterfalls. The polished elevator doors slid open, and I was ushered inside the mirrored box.
Elevators were a conundrum for me. The vampire in me did not blanch at being encased in a tight space, as the undead are programmed to accept this as a survival requirement. Though I had never been inside a coffin myself, vampires were predisposed to like tight, dark areas. The oft-overlooked werewolf part of me, however, longed to claw at the doors until I was allowed out.
It felt like we rose for an eternity. Mr. Rain’s hand slid under the base of my short jacket and shirt and grazed my bare skin. I wanted to slap him for his forwardness until I realized that the tension had completely drained from me just at the thrill of direct content. His faintest touch had soothed the beast within. My wolf was no longer panicked.
Boy did I ever have questions for this guy.
I’d met werewolves in the past and had killed two out of necessity, but none of them had created this surreal wave of tranquility in me.
“Who are you, anyway?” The words slipped from my mouth in a breathless whisper, all of my abrasive rage lifted from my voice. The other two wolves exchanged a glance.
“I am Lucas Rain,” he said, as if it were just any normal name and he was just any normal guy introducing himself to a girl for the first time.
A breath caught in my throat, and I swayed from the shock of learning his true identity. How stupid could I have been to miss it? Mr. Rain? Rain Hotel? God, I was slipping. This was the Lucas Rain, an intensely private billionaire real-estate magnate.
He had, as rumor held, bought the Boston Red Sox as a twenty-first birthday gift to himself. He never showed his face in public. Page Six only published blurry photos of him in baseball caps or hooded coats.
Models constantly insisted on having bedded him, but none of their stories aligned well enough to establish where he kept his permanent residence. The only thing they could all agree on was he was a vigorous and gifted lover, and never asked for second dates.
Conjecture and mystery surrounded everything about the Rain family. Lucas’s father, Jeremiah, and his father before him, had each been just as secretive and shut-in as Lucas now was. The only Rain descendant who relished the spotlight was Lucas’s sister, Kellen, who put the Hilton sisters to shame with her debaucherous public antics. Lucas was like a ghost, nothing known about him for certain. But here I was, standing side by side with him, and if his touch was any indication, he was more real than any ghost I’d ever encountered.
I also knew the reason he cherished his secrecy as deeply as I did my own. There was something that Lucas had kept hidden from the prying eyes of humankind for his whole life, and I was already in on the secret.
For a werewolf native to New York state and specifically New York City proper, the name of Lucas Rain was held in reverence for a completely different reason, one that would never be published in the tabloid columns.
I was in an elevator with Lucas Rain, the werewolf king of the East.
Chapter Seven
The elevator doors opened with a sigh, and I stumbled out away from Lucas and Desmond. Dominick stayed in the elevator, waiting to see what was about to unfold. I had not previously been afraid for my safety, but it was now occurring to me that if anyone wanted to make me disappear with no questions asked, it was Lucas Rain. He had the wealth and the power to make it happen. I broke into a cold sweat.
This did not go unnoticed.
“Why are you afraid? That’s not the reaction I’m used to getting. Unless of course someone has done something to wrong me. I don’t even know you, so I don’t think you have a reason to fear me. ” He looked genuinely puzzled.
The doors had opened onto a private floor, and I was all alone with these men. Having my gun offered me little comfort, apart from knowing headshots would kill werewolves. But the memory of the threat in Desmond’s eyes, and knowing how easy it had been for him to take the weapon once, left me unsure of my chances against three creatures whose individual skills nearly equaled my own.
On a good day I was stronger than the average werewolf, but I wasn’t stronger than three male wolves in their prime. I reached down into the depths of my psyche and tried to yank my vampire awake to no avail. Outside, the pale gray hues of the warning dawn were painting the sky, and the vampire part of me, for all intents and purposes, was dead to the world. Fuck. That left me with werewolf instinct and the training Keaty had given me.
Lucas stepped forward and looked at me the way a human observes a caged animal that was in danger of hurting itself.
“Would it make you feel safer to be here if you could call someone and tell them where you are before we continue?”
The man was a born politician and problem solver. It was little wonder that at only twenty-six he was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and, more impressive than all that, was the sole monarch to a secret civilization of thousands. The offer was so simple. It was the exact right thing for him to say.
I was unaccustomed to civility in my line of work.
“Umm, yes, actually. ” I cocked my head to the side, trying my best to understand what he really wanted from me. Outright asking him seemed too…obvious?
“I’m afraid your cell won’t work up here. Everything gets routed through the landlines. Desmond will show you to the study. We have a phone there. You can have all the time and privacy you would like. Then you can join me upstairs. ”
“Upstairs?” I gazed around, getting a better look at my surroundings, not grasping the full size of his living quarters.
“Yes. I own the building, so I took the top three floors for myself. An oasis above the city. It makes it easier to stay home when home is this size, I guess. ”
“And no cell phones is a big factor in maintaining your oasis?”
“I just don’t like them. I have one, but I find it’s more of a distraction than anything el
se. My personal time is limited for obvious reasons, and I’ve taken measures to make sure I can enjoy it in peace. ”
“I see. ” I wasn’t sure I did.
“Before I leave you I have to ask, and I hope it doesn’t seem rude coming so late in the game. What is your name?”
I almost laughed. At this point it felt like I’d been with him for days, and it was an adjustment for me to find someone who didn’t guess who I was within moments of meeting me.
“Secret. ” Then to assure him I wasn’t just coyly avoiding telling him my name, I added, “Secret McQueen. ”
“McQueen,” he repeated, casting a glance at Desmond. “Well now. Isn’t that interesting?”
“Makes sense. ” Desmond shrugged. But I saw his color pale.
I hadn’t encountered that many werewolves in my time in the city and had only been formally introduced to one of them. Funny that Desmond’s reaction was almost identical to that of the other wolf I’d met—cavalier but uneasy. It didn’t bode well. If they had any intention of explaining what the revelation meant, it didn’t show. Instead, Lucas bid me a temporary farewell with a nod, and Dominick trailed after him into the depths of the apartment. The main floor was a labyrinth of locked doors and long black hallways. I had not yet seen a window, and the whole area was lit by majestic stone chandeliers.
Desmond set off down a hallway, anticipating that I would follow.
“So…” I began, not sure if he would be open to conversation. “Are you and Dominick his…bodyguards?”
Desmond stopped in front of an open doorway, his tall, lean body filling its frame. He gave me an assessing look like he wasn’t sure what to make of me. “It’s true, then, what Lucas said. You really are ignorant of the ways of your own people. ”
I bristled. “Wolves are not people. ”
His eyes locked on mine in the unnerving way he was proving to be a pro at. “Wolves are just better versions of people. At least, unlike ghouls or vampires, we are still alive. ” I knew this wasn’t an attack because he didn’t know what I was, but I took offense anyway.
“At least vampires don’t feel the need to burst free of their own skin once a month to go chase rabbits in the moonlight. ”