Play of Passion p-9

by Nalini Singh

  She pushed back her hair. “I give up. Stay here. Die of blood loss. I’m going to go slip into a nice warm bath and eat the slice of New York cheesecake I bribed Lucy to sneak up to me past the ravaging hordes.”

  “You have cheesecake?” He prowled over to crouch by her. It was hard, so fucking hard, to pretend this was only a game, to play with her, when all he wanted to do was bury his face in her neck and just . . . be. “Will you share if I come back?”

  A low feminine growl that probably would’ve sent most men packing. “Are you trying to blackmail me?”

  “Would I do that?” Needing to touch her, he pressed his lips to the skin of her shoulder.

  She didn’t push him away—a high-ranking female allowing skin privileges to a male she thought needed the anchor. He didn’t want to be just another male, just another wolf. But if it would get him near her, then he’d take it . . . for now.

  “Indy.” Shifting so that he was behind her, he buried his nose in her neck, drawing deep and smiling in savage satisfaction when he scented her alone. No male. She didn’t have a lover she’d accepted to that level. He’d already known that, but it was good to have the confirmation. Because he’d made his decision—to stop circling and fight for what he wanted.

  And he wanted Indigo.

  Smart, dangerous, fascinating Indigo.

  Reaching back, she tugged at his hair. “No cheesecake unless you stop using that stupid nickname.”

  He nipped at her fingers. Got a sigh. “Come on. Let’s go home.” She shifted under his hands, a beautiful deep gray wolf with eyes that were a startling burnished gold.

  Taking a deep breath, he shifted beside her and let her lead them back. Once in the den, she bullied him to the healer and stood there snarling low in her throat until he shifted into human form and let Lara poke and prod at him. Only when Indigo was certain he was behaving did she leave.

  His joy dimmed.

  He could still feel her skin, silky and wet against his, still taste the wild heat of her mouth. God, but he craved the right to have her. Except that she was a dominant female, the highest-ranking woman in the pack, and he was a male whose dominance level was ambiguous—an unusual situation in a wolf pack, but his work for their alpha depended on him being seen as outside the hierarchy. However, no matter how you cut it, she outranked him; she’d been lieutenant for years. Added to that, she was four years older.

  Frustrated at his thoughts, he moped his way back to his rooms when Lara released him, barely noticing the flesh-colored thin-skin bandage the healer had slapped on his side. He was just getting out of the shower when he heard the door to his room open. Indigo’s scent followed a moment later. Rubbing haphazardly at his hair, he wrapped the towel around his waist and walked out to find her sitting cross-legged on his bed, her back to the wall, a huge slice of cheesecake on the saucer she had in her hand.

  She was here. In his territory.

  Leaning against the bathroom doorway, he just watched her. Her skin was flushed with heat, so she’d taken that bath. And the hair she usually tied up in a ponytail lay sleek and damp down the back of her white T-shirt. Her soft black pajama pants hid the long length of her legs, but Andrew had memorized every lithely muscled inch of her.

  “Do you want some or not?” She lifted the fork.

  Not stupid enough to refuse, he shot her a smile deliberately laced with pure wickedness. “Let me put on some clothes. Unless you want me naked?”

  A feminine snort. “Seen it, felt it, don’t want to buy the T-shirt.”

  The insult cut. He was male, and he wanted her until he could hardly see straight. But he couldn’t let her know that, not when she already held all the cards, so he shrugged. “Fine.” And dropped the towel.

  Indigo almost choked on her cheesecake as Drew walked over to the bureau on the other side of the room. Oh . . . my. Her eyes couldn’t seem to move off his butt. Hard and muscled and bitable. Definitely bitable.

  It was all she could do not to moan when he pulled a pair of sweats over that beautiful golden skin, those taut muscles. About to ask him to take the thing off, she realized exactly who it was she was ogling. What was wrong with her? Horrified, she stabbed the fork into the cheesecake and stuffed a big gob into her mouth just as Drew turned.

  There was no longer any humor on his face, and suddenly, she saw not Riley’s younger brother, not the laughing, teasing male who could charm every female in the den to get what he wanted, but the tracker who’d hunted down his prey in a storm so harsh even the feral wolves had taken shelter. And he’d never lost the scent—a task she’d have thought impossible given the mix of torrential rain and driving wind.

  Shoving his hands through his hair, he walked over to the bed. The muscles at the front of his body, she thought, were as impressive as the ones in the back. But her eyes, right then, were on his face. She couldn’t read him, she realized with gut-wrenching shock, not like she could the other young males. But she knew she’d insulted him. Predatory male changelings could be very touchy about that kind of a statement from a female—but that was usually within the confines of a relationship or courtship.

  Still . . .

  He sprawled beside her, bracing his back against the wall. Turning a little, she scooped up a bite of cheesecake on her fork and lifted it to his mouth. He took it, holding her gaze as she drew the tines out from between his lips. Her body warmed with a slow burn of heat as she remembered those lips on her mouth, strong and confident . . . and tempting.

  He flicked out his tongue to lick up a bit of the cream, his eyes never leaving hers. When he sat up and took the fork from her hand, she let him. And when he raised the cheesecake to her lips, she almost let him put the tines to her mouth. Except that the intimacy of the act suddenly hit her with blinding force.

  “Drew, we’re not—” The cheesecake was in her mouth, the flavors lush and rich, the tines warm as he drew them through her lips oh-so-slowly.

  Drew took a long, deep breath. “I can scent your hunger,” he murmured, his voice dropping until it scraped over her skin, raw and arousing. “I want to taste it.”

  Thrown off center by the unexpected, shocking shift in atmosphere, she shook her head even as her muscles seemed to melt, her body aching in a way that had nothing to do with the hunt they’d just completed. “I don’t sleep with my subordinates.”

  “And I don’t report to you.” Another bite of cheesecake lifted to her lips in teasing promise. “I’m independent of the lieutenant hierarchy.”

  Her skin tingled, her palms itching to trace the sculptured beauty of his pectorals. It had been so long since she’d had a lover. The pickings weren’t exactly plentiful for a dominant changeling female in this region—though since Drew’s brother, Riley, had mated with a cat, she’d checked out the leopards, too, even gone on a date or two. None of the men had made her body spark. Not even a little.

  But that body was making up for lost time now, her skin seeming to stretch as a voluptuous warmth invaded her very cells, curling through her veins to pulse beneath flesh turned unbearably sensitive. Too long, she thought, shocked at the spread of need, it had simply been too long. “Drew . . .”

  His mouth so close, his tongue licking over the seam of her lips to steal a tiny bit of the creamy treat she’d bought into the room. “Let me in, Indy.” The heat of him was wild, fresh, young, and it stroked over her like a physical caress.

  Groaning, she nudged the next bite to his mouth. “I can’t sleep with Riley’s baby brother.” She wouldn’t be able to face her fellow lieutenant when he came back from his trip to South America.

  A hard glance out of blue eyes gone a turbulent cobalt. “I’m not a child, Indigo.”

  She was so startled at his use of her full name that she blinked. “You’re too young for me—and I was your trainer, for God’s sake.”

  He snorted. “Next excuse.”

  The tone of his voice made her hackles rise. “Careful, Drew. I’m not one of your little playmates.” He
had a harem that tumbled into his bed at the crook of a finger. And they all apparently left happy—none of his former lovers had ever bad-mouthed him. In fact, as far as she knew, they continued to adore him.

  “Did I say I wanted a playmate?” Putting the cheesecake carelessly on the mattress on his other side, he reached for her. His fingers were on her jaw and his mouth on hers while she was still forming a response to his snapped question.

  The punch of sensation went straight to her gut, but so did the wolf’s confusion at the sudden change in this relationship. She pushed against his chest. Of course, since he was a predatory changeling male, he kept on kissing her. She could’ve gotten away, but unwilling to reject him so roughly, she chose to push at him again. He broke off only long enough to say, “You want me. I can scent it.” His tongue licked against hers in blunt demand, his free hand closing over the back of her neck as he pressed her to the wall, the heat of his skin burning her through and through.

  A red haze of anger, powerful enough that she had to fight to keep her claws sheathed.

  Wrenching away using the skill and strength that made her one of SnowDancer’s most senior lieutenants, she swept off the bed, fury pulsing in every inch of her. The kiss she would have forgiven. Even the pushiness—she understood what he was, wouldn’t have penalized him for it. But the hand around her neck, the way he’d tried to use his body to pin hers to the wall, and most of all the arrogance with which he’d taken it as a given that her touch-hunger made her his for the taking? No.

  “I,” she said, in a tone so calm it took all of her control to maintain it, “haven’t given you the right to touch me as you please.” There was play . . . and then there were lines you didn’t cross. “Next time you try to touch me like that”—in possession, in ownership—“be prepared to get that pretty face shredded.”

  So infuriated she couldn’t hear anything but the surge of her own blood, she turned on her heel and left. The worst of it was that she’d trusted Drew, thought he was a friend who accepted and appreciated her for the dominant female she was—but clearly, he was just another cocky young male who thought the lieutenant could be brought to heel by sex. And where she might’ve easily forgiven everything else, she could not forgive that betrayal.

  CHAPTER 3

  Enclosed within the privacy of a secure London apartment, Councilor Henry Scott looked across the desk at his “wife,” Councilor Shoshanna Scott, and considered the pros and cons of their relationship. They were Psy—unlike with the other races, emotion didn’t come into the mix when undertaking that evaluation. Their marriage had been—was—a piece of political strategy, a way to placate the human and changeling media by giving them an easily relatable image.

  However, of late that plus was being canceled out by the questions people were asking about the exact nature of their relationship—there had been too many leaks and the emotional races now had information they should have never had. It had led to several probing inquiries at the most recent press conference, inquiries that wouldn’t have been made even two years ago.

  But, though problematic, that issue could wait.

  “It is still possible to close the Net to outside influences,” he said, focusing on the more important concern. “Nikita is incorrect to say that things have reached a critical mass, that Silence is close to falling.” Councilor Duncan had been tainted by her constant and prolonged contact with the changelings in her territory and, as such, was a threat to the purity of Silence, the Protocol that erased their race’s madnesses as it erased their emotions.

  Henry intended to reinitiate that purity at all costs, and he had a significant amount of support. Membership in Pure Psy, the group formed to ensure Silence didn’t fall, was rising day by day. “Our race neither wants nor needs any change in the Protocol.”

  Swiveling in her chair, Shoshanna picked up a remote and switched on a screen to her right. “These are the key players we need to eliminate in order to initiate a full closure of the Net.”

  The first image on the left was that of Sascha Duncan, Nikita’s flawed daughter. It was followed by those of Faith NightStar and Ashaya Aleine. “All high-level defectors from the Net,” he murmured, watching as Shoshanna brought up more images.

  “The males they’ve bonded with in the DarkRiver leopard pack will also need to be executed,” Shoshanna added. “Changelings are proprietary about their women.”

  “They’re also relentless,” Henry said, staring at the row of images. “We need to eliminate the entire pack, or at least the strongest part of it, if we’re to ensure success.”

  “Correct.” She flicked up another image, that of a man with ice blue eyes and hair of an unusual silver-gold. “The alpha of the SnowDancer pack needs to go, along with his lieutenants.” Nine new images appeared on-screen. “The wolves are too tightly allied with the leopards to risk leaving them untouched.”

  “I thought our data stated that SnowDancer had ten lieutenants.”

  “It appears they’ve lost one, or we had the wrong information in the first place.”

  That, Henry knew, was quite possible. Their spy in the SnowDancer ranks had been executed over a year ago. Since then, any information they had was sketchy at best. “Any assassination attempt on a changeling stands a high chance of failure. Their natural shields give them enough of a warning that they have an opportunity to retaliate.” And while he considered the animal races far less intelligent than his own, he respected their physical strength against weaker Psy bodies.

  “Agreed, but we can finalize the logistics later. However,” she continued, “in light of the close alliance between SnowDancer and DarkRiver, it may be a good strategic move to remove the wolf alpha from the equation before we target the leopards. Their emotional natures will mean they’ll be weakened by the damaging psychological impact of such a loss.”

  Since Shoshanna had proven skilled in predicting such responses in humans and changelings, Henry had no argument with that. “Focusing our resources on the San Francisco area first,” he said, “makes sense. The majority of the problems have been spawned by a relatively small group.”

  Two more images appeared on the screen—Nikita’s human security chief and the fractured Justice Psy who was likely in a relationship with the man. The J-Psy’s shields were inexplicable and impenetrable, but the fact that she was still in the Net in spite of her broken Silence was so unacceptable that it needed no discussion.

  Another three images. All fellow Councilors.

  “Nikita needs to go.” Shoshanna’s tone was flat, with no room for compromise. “Ming has access to significant military resources. If we can’t co-opt him, he must be eliminated.”

  “Agreed,” Henry said. “But he is not a primary target.” He nodded at the third image. “What are your thoughts on Anthony?” He didn’t trust his wife an inch, but he respected her political acumen. Just as he respected the fact that one day soon he’d have to kill her—to ensure she didn’t kill him first.

  “Uncertain,” she said now. “Anthony has supported Nikita in the Council on the issue of Silence, but he has also supported our interests at times and could therefore be turned. He has no connections outside the Net except for his subcontracting arrangement with his daughter, and that decision is one I may have made myself in the same situation.”

  Since Faith NightStar was the strongest F-Psy in the world, able to predict futures other foreseers couldn’t even glimpse, her services worth millions if not billions, Anthony’s decision was one Henry understood as well. “He is, however, protective of his investment. We’ll have to think carefully before we eliminate Faith.”

  “Yes, we can consider her toward the end.” A pause. “F-Psy are, after all, often fractured and kept under psychic guard. She could be reassimilated into the Net.”

  “A possibility.” Henry made a note to investigate whether Shoshanna had a “pet” F-Psy of her own. Her telepathic reach was more than powerful enough to direct the unstable mind of a broken foreseer. “These
two,” he said, picking up the remote to highlight the images, “are the primary targets. Kill them and we bring the city to its knees.”

  And he already had the operation in place to ensure it.

  CHAPTER 4

  Andrew knew he’d messed up—badly.

  Standing under the cold spray of his morning shower, he pressed his forehead to the tile, his hand fisted against the cool white surface. He didn’t blame Indy for thinking he was only interested in sex, in the physical. Yes, he was sexually hungry. Very, very hungry. But not just for sex. For sex with Indigo—he’d wanted her for what seemed like forever, but these past few months, his needs had turned highly specific in every way.

  The sole thing that had kept him from imploding was the fact that he knew she hadn’t been with anyone those months, either.

  And now he’d gone and mucked his chances up but good. Not only that, he’d reinforced her opinion of him as a young male led by nothing but his cock, not worth taking seriously in the personal arena. “Damn it.” Wanting to strike out at something—preferably his own stupidity—he wrenched off the shower and stepped out to rub himself dry. He was thrusting a hand through his damp hair when his phone beeped. It was his alpha.

  “My office, five minutes.”

  Adrenaline pumped through his veins at the summons. Better, far better, to be given some task that would mean racing through the cold climes of the Sierra than trapped in this room, this den, saturated with Indigo’s unique scent.

  Rainstorms and fire, ice and steel, that was what Indigo was to him.

  And it was a scent that was waiting for him in Hawke’s office. Sucking in a breath as he entered, he reined in the lunge his wolf wanted to make. Indigo glanced at him from where she stood in front of their alpha’s desk, but her eyes told him nothing.

  However, the straight line of her spine, the angle of her jaw, it all said “keep your distance” loud and clear. Though it kicked him in the guts that he’d broken the trust between them, Andrew wasn’t about to listen to the silent order. And if Indigo thought he’d give up that easily, she had no idea who she was dealing with.