“Hmm?”
“I’m sorry what I said earlier upset you.” His lips twisted like he was tasting his next words before speaking. “I’m attempting to understand and respect your perspective on the coterie, but could you perhaps do the same?” His fingers traced the ribs of rose gold circling his throat. “Our bonds mean different things to each of us.”
Miller had been born a nameless slave to a laundress in another world, another time. His father was a prince, and his father’s wife had murdered Miller’s mother when she learned of the woman’s existence. Of his existence. Miller had exacted his revenge and lost himself to an unquenchable bloodlust. Conquest had slaked his thirst, called him to heel, and he had sworn fealty to her in thanks. He told me once that knowing Conquest could put him down if he crossed those lines again had saved his sanity, allowed him to heal. He cherished that bond between them, between us.
The core of what made me the person I am rebelled against what Conquest had done in allowing him to serve her, but he wasn’t human, and the longer I applied those ideals and expectations to the members of my coterie, the harder this transition would be on all of us. Miller had told me himself he luxuriated in wearing a collar, but his leash had been slipping through my fingers the past fifteen years. Maybe it was time I picked up the slack. “Installing the window fulfilled that need for you?”
His knuckles whitened around the house key I had given him, and his voice came out raw. “Yes.”
“What you and Santiago did for me with the bay window? That, to me, was an act of friendship.” I struggled to articulate my thoughts. “Friendship is a type of bond too, right? It’s a commitment you willingly make to another person. Friends do favors for one another, like you did today, and it’s all good. There’s no debt on either side. There’s only the joy of offering a person who is important to you a token of your esteem.” I extended my arm and waited for him to clasp hands with me. “This is my promise to you. I will be your friend, and you will be mine. We will protect each other, be honest with each other, and care for one another, and we will do these things of our own free will without obligation. And if one of us steps too close to the ledge, the other will pull them back, whatever it takes.”
A hard breath gusted from his body as I reaffirmed the connection he craved. “Yes.”
“I should make those calls.” I squeezed his fingers one last time, the touch soothing him. I waited for the recoil to hit, for my palms to go sweaty, but the rest of my coterie, one by one, appeared to be wriggling through the crack Cole had smashed in my armor. “See you around?”
“You have my number.” Serenity radiated from his very pores. “Call anytime.”
Miller looked good with a grin crinkling his cheeks and his gray eyes, so often turbulent, softened in contentment. A scorched breeze rustled his usually tidy chestnut hair, and he reached up to brush it back into place with his fingers, mixing sawdust in with the dark strands. The urge to ruffle his bangs surfaced, a first for me, but I curled my fingers into my palm before I acted on the impulse. As the tallest member of the coterie, I would have to half-climb him to reach, and so far, only Mt. Heaton had inspired me to consider picking up that particular hobby.
“Shoo before you’re late for your meeting.” I flicked the broom at his feet. “Do you really want the client’s first impression of White Horse to be Santiago’s scowl?”
“Good point.” He lifted his hand in a wave. “Later.”
While he went to chat with Thom, who was sunning himself on the hood of the remaining truck, I finished balling up the scraps of paper and plastic, discarded the junk pieces of trim, and picked up a few stripped screws and bent nails. Miller was gone by the time I finished sweeping the porch clean, and Thom had moved on to climbing a tree on the opposite side of the yard. I left him mewling on a high limb, pleading with me to fetch him, but I hardened my heart. He would remember he had wings and that he could fly down. Eventually. Shaking my head at his antics, I jogged upstairs to find the second surprise of the day waiting for me.
CHAPTER FOUR
The rotary phone dented my pillow, its weight creasing the note pinned under its wide base. Ignoring the itch in my fingertips to snatch the paper and skim, I did the smart thing and completed a methodical search of my room before locking the door behind me and surrendering to my curiosity.
A rhythmic thudding filled my ears as I sank onto the mattress and tugged out a square of embossed stationery. The paper was heavy, the writing bold, and the message curt.
“This is your new phone,” I read aloud. “Use it.” Puzzled, I lifted the rotary phone and discovered a slim leather bifold case that opened to reveal a black metal cellphone the thickness of a credit card. There was no brand name, and powering it up gave no hints as to its service provider. “Curiouser and curiouser.”
Briiiiiiing.
A shocked gasp parted my lips as the display lit up with an incoming call.
Briiiiiiing.
Cold sweat trickled between my shoulder blades, the bite of hope so hard it drew blood.
Ezra only ever called on my birthday. Today was not my birthday, and plenty of people used that ringtone. Even Cole had for a while after Santiago stole his cell for a prank. And yet…
Briiiiiiing.
“Luce?”
The sudden boom of a masculine voice in the lull between rings startled me so hard the phone slid from my fingers and clattered to the floor. I spun toward the door, the locked door, and found Thom standing on the threshold. “How did you…?”
“I picked the lock when you didn’t answer.” His nostrils flared as he sifted through the scents in the room for hints of what had me panicked. “I knocked several times.”
“I didn’t hear you.” I tapped the note against my palm, and his eyes snapped to the paper. “I found this and that phone when I came upstairs. Someone broke into the house and entered my room while I was on the porch.”
“May I?” Thom extended his hand for the note, and I passed it over for his inspection. He sniffed the edge of the paper then touched his tongue to the corner. “I recognize this scent.” He glanced up at me. “Adam Wu.”
“Wu was in here?” I swung my scowl around the room. “How did he get in?”
“I’m not sure.” Thom hesitated with his palm above the phone, asking silent permission I was quick to grant him. “He touched this.” A long inhale puffed out his chest. “No, not touched. He carried this with him for some time. Days.” The edge of his lips curled. “The phone is brand new. I smell that too, the metallic burn of fresh circuitry. Wu marked this on purpose.” His gaze traveled to the dent on my pillow. “He left this in your me space as a message.”
A ball of dread formed in my gut. “What’s the message?”
“That you’re his.” Thom hissed at the screen. “He’s staking his claim.”
“Is this a demon thing?” In my gut, that ball started bouncing. “He told me I was his new partner.”
And that was about the time I started feeling ten kinds of stupid for not calling Kapoor to verify Wu’s credentials.
“Perhaps,” Thom allowed. “Without knowing his breed, it’s impossible to say for sure.”
“Give me a second.” I held up a finger and dialed Kapoor on my cell while Thom returned the other to its spot on my pillow. He answered on the fourth ring. “Hey, I got a visit from an Adam Wu yesterday and —”
“What?”
Thom, who had no trouble hearing both sides of the conversation, winced at the near-shout.
“Adam Wu,” I repeated. “He swung by my house.”
A door clicked shut in the background on Kapoor’s end, and a lock engaged. “What did he want?”
“Mostly? To remind me I have three weeks left before the NSB expects me to pay up on my end of our deal. He also wanted to introduce himself, seeing as how we’re going to be partners.”
“Partners,” he echoed. “He told you that?”
“Yes, he did.” I eyeballed the present he
’d left me and wondered if Kapoor would apoplexy if I told him about that too. “Why do I get the feeling you had no clue about any of this? Aren’t you my liaison with the taskforce?”
“This move is above my pay grade,” he said, apology clear in his voice. “I’ll have to make some calls to management and get back to you.”
“What, exactly, is your pay grade?” This was the second time he’d palmed off big decisions on some nebulous higher authority. “Is there someone else I should be talking to about this? I have people depending on me, and all these half-ass answers aren’t going to cut it.”
“I’m not a small fish, Ms. Boudreau, but you seem to have landed a whale.” Kapoor gusted out a sigh. “Wu is not under my jurisdiction. He works independently, and his position is fluid. Give me a day or so to track him down, and I’ll get your answers.”
Forget a day or so. I was dialing him up when this call ended. “What is he?”
Kapoor hesitated for so long, I wasn’t sure he was going to answer. “I am not at liberty to discuss that.”
“Of course not.” I snorted. “What was I thinking? The right hand of any organization never knows what the left is doing. Why would this taskforce of yours be any different?”
I ended the call before Kapoor fed me another line.
“He came in through this window,” Thom said from behind me. “His scent lingers in the wood.” I turned as he tongued the dark stain. “This is an old scent.” He glanced at me. “He’s touched this wood many times over several visits.” He shoved the window open and leaned outside, breathing deep. “The sash is the only exterior part of the window or house he touched, but its scent is multi-layered as well.”
There was only one way a person got through a window without climbing. “You’re saying he can fly.”
Not a revelation considering at least two of the five members of my own coterie had wings.
“Yes.” Thom rubbed his nose as though it tickled. “I can’t identify his breed, but I have catalogued the scent. I will know it if we come across it again in another charun.” Had he shifted, his stub of a tail would have been twitching. “Wu is something new, something we have never encountered.”
“How is that possible?” By their own admission, the worlds below had all been conquered.
“I’m not sure.” He stared out the window, up at the sky, and removed a phone from his pocket. “I must tell Cole.”
“I have calls I can’t put off any longer too.” I checked the time and grimaced. “Would you mind giving me some privacy?”
Thom stepped out, dialing as he went, and I heard his footsteps on the stairs as I started down the list. I texted Rixton and then Sherry, and then I pinged Uncle Harold before calling the Trudeau landline and speaking to Aunt Nancy about Dad, whose condition hadn’t changed overnight. She was quick to assure me he hadn’t noticed my absence, but that didn’t exactly give me a case of the warm fuzzies.
After we finished chatting, I took a quick shower to fix the hot mess my hair had become overnight and dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved tee that wouldn’t suffocate me before padding downstairs barefoot.
Thom was nowhere in sight, and I needed to get a move-on, so I walked out onto the porch to search for him. “Thom?”
No answer.
“Thomas?”
Still no response.
I slid on flip-flops and hit the yard. I didn’t have to go far. He was sitting in the same patch of frilly white flowers where he’d been chasing bees earlier. I circled around to get in front of him, jerking to a stop at his glazed expression. His phone rested across his palm, his fingers open, and a deep voice boomed from the speaker. I knelt and scooped up the cell, pressing it against my ear.
“Hey, it’s Luce.” I winced as Cole geared up for another bellow. “I’m here with Thom. Do you have any idea what happened to him?”
“He was updating me on the situation with Wu, but he started slurring his words then stopped talking altogether.”
“He looks dazed.” I pressed the back of my hand against his forehead and his cheek, and he pushed into the touch. “He’s running a low-grade fever.” Contact must have broken through to him on some level. He lay back in the grass and rolled from side to side a few times, a purr rumbling in his throat. Eyes fixed on me, he curled around me, rubbing his chin over my hip like he was marking me with the scent glands cats have below their jaws. Not the most comfortable sensation in the world, but I could manage. For him. Words in that foreign language they all spoke poured from his lips, and then he laughed. Once he started, he couldn’t control the manic burst of amusement. “Um, correction. He’s not dazed. He’s high as a kite.”
“Wait there,” Cole ordered. “I’ll be there in ten.”
Ten minutes turned out to be more along the lines of five. I was unable to stand as the bone-white dragon landed in the front yard, due to the man curled around my hips, milking my thigh with the claws tipping his fingers, but my entire being snapped to attention at his arrival. The beast swiveled his rounded ears, and his crimson eyes narrowed on Thom. His whiplike tail thrashed at his side, its barbed end striking far too close for my comfort. His white mane stood on end, framing his lion’s face, and he angled his branching antlers toward Thom.
“Cole.” I scooted forward to shield Thom as best I could from the ornery dragon. “He needs your help.”
The great creature shook his head once as if to clear it, and then he surrendered to the change that left me sitting before an equally irritated man, one that caused heat to pool low in my gut. “Get his hands off you.”
I made no move to comply. It wasn’t like Thom was doing anything wrong. He was clearly not in his right mind.
I was starting to think he wasn’t the only one.
“Now,” Cole roared with a ferocity that kicked my pulse up about a million notches. “Or I will do it myself.”
I jumped to unwind from Thom, who had tuckered himself out and started snoring, and marched over to Cole. “What is your problem?” I shoved him, the contact a dropped match in a puddle of gasoline, and my palms itched from wanting to do it again, to savor his heart pounding wild beneath my hands. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”
The cold smile lifting Cole’s lips promised murder. “He. Touched. You.”
I was about to snatch a knot in his metaphorical tail when the cold place crashed into me without warning, dumping ice water over my libido. Something was wrong was me, with him, with Thom, but what? As my head cleared, I examined the area for clues, but only one thing caught my eye.
Lacy petals clung with bees, their sweet perfume a tickle in my nose.
“The flowers.” Cole had landed feet away from where Thom had collapsed. “I think we’ve got a problem.” Cole clamped his hands on my hips. “Okay,” I squeaked when the hard length of him pressed into my lower stomach, and he thrust once. “We’ve got a big problem.”
The husky chuckle threading through Cole’s voice did terrible things for my self-control.
“Why don’t we take this to the porch?” I wiggled in his grip, which, yeah, probably not my smartest move. His pained groan ignited fresh sparks below my belt. I had to think fast, and then it hit me. “You don’t want Thom to see us, do you?” I rested my hand on the flat expanse of his chest. “You don’t want to share me with him, do you?”
“Mine,” he snarled an inch from the tip of my nose. “You belong to me, Luce.”
Giddiness swirled through me when he spoke my name. Mine. Not hers.
The reckless urge to close the gap between our mouths rocked me forward onto the balls of my feet, his lips one bad decision away from mine. A growl was pumping through his chest, and his grip on my hips turned bruising. The sharp bite of pain heightened the burn until I was ready to go up in flames with him.
The glacier coldness in his eyes stung with their intensity. “Tell me I can have you.”
Tell him, as in we were locked in a stalemate until I granted him permission to take this to the next
level.
But was the plea one from a man who craved the woman with him? Or from a slave to his mistress?
I didn’t know, and since I couldn’t tell, I withdrew and sucked in air until my ovaries stopped threatening spontaneous combustion.
Maybe I shouldn’t be standing out here either. My grasp on the cold place was always tenuous at best.
“Let’s talk about this on the porch.” I backed away from Thom, from the field, and Cole stalked after me. “Here.” I patted the top step. “You sit right here and I’ll go —” I yelped as he yanked me onto his lap. “Okay. This works too.”
While Cole nuzzled me, his teeth plucking at the tender skin of my throat, I slid my cell from my pocket and texted Miller with 911. Generic, yes, but he was a smart one… and crap. He was also supposed to be meeting with Santiago and an out-of-town client this afternoon. Too late to untext him now. That meant it was up to me to figure out how to diffuse the situation, and there was only one quick fix I could think of for a guy in his condition.
Bone Driven Page 5
