Part of me wanted to tug him upstairs right that minute and have my way with him, but there was still one rational brain cell working. Having sex with Ian could complicate matters more than I was ready for. I’d had no-strings relationships with co-workers before, and it had never been a problem. But, I wasn’t sure it would be the same with him.
I needed to know what he was feeling right now. I knew he wanted me. I pressed my hip into the hot, hard proof just to prove my point. He moaned against my mouth and tightened his grip on me. Oh, sweet fuck! I was almost lost. I clung to that last dreg of sanity for a moment longer. I couldn’t read his thoughts, but feelings could betray thoughts pretty well. I needed to know he was as lost as I was, and I needed to make sure he wasn’t feeling anything messy and complicated.
I opened my powers up just a little and the hot, raw patterns of sexual desire mixed with pure male satisfaction pounded against my senses. I had never opened my senses before when I was this sexually aroused. It was more intoxicating than I ever could have imagined. I pressed my hip into him again and felt a fresh wave of lust flow off him and wash over me. Oh, yeah, this was going to be fun. I wanted him, he wanted me, and we would have each other. Now. Consequences be damned.
I fought for enough control to push away long enough to suggest we go upstairs, but that meant pulling away from his heat and I didn’t want to. He was so hot. I was so …
Cold. One moment I was on fire, then a sudden, icy cold clamped around me. I had been bathed by my own arousal and the waves of energy coming off Ian, and then suddenly, there was no energy. I opened my senses as wide as they would go, but there was nothing. It was a complete lack of energy surrounding me. My hands dropped from Ian’s neck, and I staggered back out of his grasp. My stomach lurched.
“Fiona. Fiona, what’s wrong?” I could hear the growing concern in Ian’s voice, but I couldn’t respond. I could see Ian, Pinky, and all the other people in the bar, but the air around me was completely and totally devoid of energy as if they were dead. No, not dead, because their spirits would be there. There would be energy from the stone in the walls, the wood in the bar and chairs. But there was nothing. It was as if nothing existed. I was in a void, a vacuum.
Then, as suddenly as it had left, all the energy popped back into place. With my senses wide open like they were, the emotional energy of every living thing in the bar slammed into me all at once, sending me stumbling forward. If Ian hadn’t reached out and caught me, I would have been on my knees. As it was, I grasped at his arms and clung to him for support while I quickly shut down my senses.
“Fiona, damn it, answer me. Are you okay? What’s going on?” Concern and fear were thick in his voice.
“I’m fine. I’m fine.” I tried to make my voice as normal as possible as I brushed back his hands and stood on my own. “I…”
What? What was I supposed to tell him? I couldn’t tell him the truth. No one outside my family knew about my ability to read emotional energy, and this was not the time or place to tell him, even if I trusted him with the secret. Which I didn’t.
“I’m just tired. I haven’t slept much in the past couple of days, and I think I got a little overheated out there.”
At least he had the decency to try to hide his smug grin. “You should probably go up and get some rest. We can continue where we left off some other time when you are well rested and up to the task.” He stopped trying to hide the grin and let it fly full force.
I pointedly ignored the last part of his statement, even though my still quaky insides threatened to burst into flame again. I shot him my best don’t-fucking-argue-with-me look and said, “What I really need is another drink.”
For a moment, he looked like he wanted to protest but then thought better of it. He lightly took my elbow and led me back to the bar. Normally, I would have protested being led like a child, but I was still shaky on my feet and the extra support was welcome.
When we got to the bar, Pinky reached across and grabbed my hand. “Are you okay, Fee? What do you need?”
I smiled into his kind eyes. I didn’t want him to worry, and there was nothing I could tell him in public. I shot him an, I’ll-tell-you-later look and hoped he got it. “I’m fine. Could use another glass of that mead though.”
To my relief, he seemed to get the message and didn’t argue with my order. Within moments, I had a fresh glass in my hand. I turned to Ian, who was still glaring at me in concern.
I was just about to tell him again that I was fine, and possibly get a little pissy about it, when something by the door caught my eye. The crowd parted to let a tall, lethal-looking man walk in. He was around 6’4 and broad shouldered with dark brown, shoulder-length hair and about three days’ worth of beard growth. As if the black leather pants, ankle-length leather duster, and shaded glasses in the middle of the night didn’t make the vampire look scary enough, the huge, curved sword at his hip did the trick.
Forgetting my dizziness, I took off at a dead run towards him and jumped. He caught me effortlessly and pulled me into a hug. “How are you, Tiny Fee?” he asked affectionately, with a slight hint of an accent he hadn’t lost after more than five hundred years.
I hugged him hard around the neck and laughed. “Jarrett, I am not tiny. Quit calling me that. And let me down, you big lug!”
He grinned. “You are tiny to me.”
“A building is tiny to you, you monster,” I quipped. But damn, the man was sexy. He was tall, but his frame was lean and muscular. Even without the super-vampire strength, he would be a force to be reckoned with in a fight. If he weren’t my best friend, outside of my family, I probably would have slept with him long ago. Many times in fact.
“What are you doing here? I didn’t know you were in Nash,” I asked. I was also surprised to see him in Pinky’s. Jarrett rarely made it into Nash, and I didn’t think he’d ever come to Pinky’s before. Pinky’s was my home and even though he was one of my best friends, Jarrett was, like Ian, a part of my work life, and I usually tried to keep the two separate.
“I just flew in today,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. I saw an airship docking this morning. I had no idea you were on it.”
“Yeah, no one did. Trying to keep my whereabouts a little hush-hush,” he said, unnecessarily. Jarrett always tried to keep his whereabouts a mystery. His job demanded a low profile. Well, as low a profile as a huge, super-sexy vamp could have.
“So, how long you here for?” I asked.
“A couple of weeks, actually. I’m waiting on an informant to show up. Wanted to get a little down time in before the meet.” He pulled his dark glasses off and winked at me.
Wanted, like hell. Being a Blade, especially a field agent, didn’t exactly come with regular office hours. When you were in the field, as Jarrett was most of the time, you were on the job non-stop. As a result, field agents had to take a certain number of mandatory leave days a year. Most Blades looked forward to the time off. Jarrett wasn’t most Blades. He lived and breathed his job, and he had to be forced to take leave time. But either way, it was cool for me. We’d get to hang out a bit without being worried someone was going to try to kill us. It would be a first.
“Oh, but I’m here because Sam sent you a message,” he continued. “He said to tell you he got the reports from you and Barroes and sent them on to the Guard. The case is back in the Guard’s hands, and you can take a few days off.”
“Well, looks like we are both on leave.” I grinned.
“Since I’m here and neither of us has anywhere to be tomorrow, can I buy you a drink? Or is your boyfriend over there going to try to slit my throat?” he asked, looking over my head.
“He’s not my boy…” I trailed off as I turned and saw the murderous expression on Ian’s face. “Oh, hell. Come on before he kills us both.”
I pulled Jarrett over. “Ian, this is my friend Jarrett Campbell.” I put emphasis on the word friend, not knowing exactly why. My relationship with Jarrett was none of Ian??
?s damned business. “Jarrett, this is Ian Barroes.”
“The head of the Nash Necromancer’s Guild,” Jarrett supplied. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Great to meet you.” He reached out a hand, which Ian grudgingly shook. “Look,” he continued. “If you guys are in the middle of something, I can head down to the end of the bar and chat up that cute redhead.”
Obviously realizing Jarrett was no threat to him, Ian’s expression softened. “No, it’s okay. It’s obvious you two have some catching up to do and frankly, it’s way past my bedtime. I’m going to head out. It was nice meeting you.” He gave Jarrett an absent wave and headed towards the door. As he passed me, he stopped and leaned in as close as he could get without touching me. His breath was warm on my ear as he said, “We will finish our earlier, um, conversation another time.”
Chills of anticipation shot through me as he straightened and walked away.
Once Ian was gone, Jarrett said, “That looked pretty damned intense. You want to talk about it?”
“Not even a fucking little.” I chugged the rest of my mead.
Jarrett laughed.
“I haven’t seen you around these parts in a couple of months. You been in the wild and scary south?” I changed the subject not so subtly.
Jarrett laughed. “Actually, no. I’ve been in No Man’s Land.”
“Fuck! Detroit? I’m glad to see you’re still alive.” I said it with a laugh, but we both knew I wasn’t joking.
Jarrett was the best of the best. The Blades were the most powerful, toughest paranorms in the world, at least the ones on the right side of the law. Jarrett was a part of an elite team of Blades called the Kukri, named after the curved, machete-like blades they all carried. The Kukri was made up of the toughest, hardest, and most powerful of the Black Blade Guard. But there was more to it than power. If that were all it took, I would have been a Kukri long ago. The Blades that were a part of the elite team had a certain lethalness about them. The Kukri weren’t normal Blades. They were spies and assassins. They did the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs, and took no prisoners. If you were bad enough to have a Kukri sent after you, you’d soon be dead. With the Kukri, there were no second chances.
As badass as Kukri were, even they rarely ventured into the No Man’s Land of Detroit. According to the history books, Detroit had been a thriving metropolis several times the size of Old Nashville on the banks of a lake the size of a small inlet sea back in the Tech Age. In addition to the ravages of the Cataclysm, it had, like most of the major metropolitan areas of the Americas, been bombed during the Religion War that erupted at the start of the Cataclysm and, like all of the big cities, famine and disease ran rampant.
While Nash, parts of Atlanta, and some other small towns and cities had been at least partially saved by paranorms coming out of the hiding they had been in for millennia, showing their powers and using them to save themselves, norms, and as much of their society as possible, Detroit experienced the polar opposite. Radiation and chemical poisoning from bombs and industrial plants made many areas unlivable by all but vampires and some mages. Any norms that didn’t flee the city when the Cataclysm began were killed either by the effects of the bombs or by the invading vampires and mages.
They took over, rioting, killing, and pillaging. The city was now overrun with the most dangerous thugs and criminals the world had to offer. The Paranorm Council took a hands-off approach to Detroit and only rarely sent agents in to follow a criminal, and usually only if they suspected the criminal had plans to recruit a crew for future crimes in a Paranorm Council Allied city-state. The magnitude of those future crimes would have to be pretty bad. If Jarrett had been sent in to Detroit, then someone awful had been on the loose.
“So, is there a big bad coming down the line I need to be prepared for? Or did you get your guy?” I asked, only half joking. Normally, a Kukri always got his guy, but when you went into a viper’s nest like Detroit, you had to play your cards a little differently. Sometimes just getting in and out alive with a little more info than you had when you went in could be considered a major win.
“No worries, Fee. I got the guy I was sent in after.” His face was expressionless, but something in his eyes told me he hadn’t told me the whole truth. It also told me not to pry. If he needed to talk, he would in his own time.
He drained his glass and said, “But enough about work. Let me buy you a whiskey, and you can tell me all about that hot redhead.”
I followed his gaze and couldn’t hold back the peal of laughter. “That’s my sister.”
One eyebrow shot up. “I see. Does that mean you’ll kick my ass if I hit on her?”
I laughed. “No. But I can’t guarantee she won’t.”
“Hmm.” He grinned. “A challenge! I love to be challenged.”
I just laughed. I could have told him about Anya’s rule about never dating, or even fucking, vampires, but I didn’t see any need. Anya was a big girl and if she didn’t want his attention, she’d tell him so. While I knew he thought of sex and conquests in much the same way as Anya, I knew I could trust him to back off if she said no. And if he didn’t, I put my money on my sister, even if he was a badass Kukri.
I settled onto the bar stool next to Jarrett, took the glass of whiskey, and drained it in a single gulp. It burned going down, and then a warmth spread through my body, pushing out the coldness that had invaded after leaving Ian’s arms.
Slamming the glass on the bar, I said, “Buy me another one and I might even put in a good word for you with my sister.”
He did. Then another and another. We spent the rest of the night drinking, laughing, and reminiscing over old times, and I did my damndest not to think about what had happened out on the dance floor. Not about the weird energy disappearance and not about Ian and what it had felt like to be in his arms.