“Is this too tight?” I asked, voice huskier than I’d planned on it being.
His warm fingers grazed mine, and it was as if a jolt of lightning had suddenly run through me. I tried not to, but my thighs twitched at his touch.
How long had it been since I’d had sex? With anyone?
I frowned, realizing it had been too long, too damned long. I was a siren, for the gods’ sake. I needed to feed the bottomless hunger every now and then just to keep my bestial side in check. But I’d been so busy, so focused on work, that somehow it had completely slipped my mind. I knew if I’d fed my beast, these innocent touches wouldn’t be affecting me so much.
“Tighter,” he said, and I grunted, more to relieve some of the sexual tension flexing like a hot flame between us.
“You make that sound so dirty.” I smirked and squeezed the tie tighter, banding my fingers around the front of his neck so that his windpipe bulged against my palm.
He sucked in a sharp breath and shook his head, and I could have sworn he rumbled a sound of appreciation so low that it vibrated straight through my thighs. My knees felt as though they were in very real danger of giving out on me. I needed to end this situation quickly.
I’d never seen a collar quite like this one. It didn’t buckle. It laced together and was done in such a way that, done right, the laces would form an intricate knot at the back.
I frowned, wondering what the knot was for—until Hatter reached down and picked up something and handed me a black leather leash just a second later.
“You want me to walk you?” I asked in disbelief.
“I believe,” he said in his whiskey-drawl, “that is exactly what this costume was designed for. But if you’d rather not, I’m sure I could find someone else to parade me about.”
I snorted, shaking my head softly. “Alice has a cruel sense of humor, I think.”
“Well,” he said as he adjusted his collar, “if there is one thing I can trust Alice to handle, it’s how to dress me for a costume ball, especially one like this. Besides, our outfits will be tame compared to what I’ve seen at most S&M balls I’ve been to before.”
I slipped the leash out of his grasp, quickly looped it through the knot, gave it a good tug to make sure it was secure, and nodded. “Do this often then, do you? You can get up now, by the way. I’m done.”
As he glanced at me over his shoulder, with his hands on his slightly spread knees and no shoes on his feet, it was so easy to imagine that he wasn’t my partner but my lover. I swallowed hard. Hatter and I hadn’t gotten to finish what we’d started ages ago, but it was impossible to now, even if I’d had a mind to. Which I didn’t. I absolutely didn’t.
“I’ve done a great many things, Elle, and if you ever truly want to know them, all you have to do is ask.”
My skin prickled at the thought. Just what kinds of things had my very straight-laced partner done before? At least, he appeared straight-laced on the surface, but I’d suspected for some time that Hatter was far from a vanilla kind of man. Considering he’d made a life with one of the hundred realms’ most infamous madams, I was almost certain that his sexual conquests were as experimental and numerous as mine.
“After all, you are my partner,” he said softly.
I thinned my lips. Partner. The reminder was like getting ice water dumped on my head. “Yes, we are that, aren’t we?” I took two small steps back and smoothed down the bottom of my dress, feeling fidgety and strange. “I guess its time we should go.”
He stood in one lithe motion, his movements darkly seductive. It had to be Wonderland that did that to him, turned him into sexual napalm, because the alternative wasn’t one I was sure I comfortable with.
“You’ve got the key,” he reminded me, and I reached into my bodice, where I’d tucked it beneath my breast.
I flashed the gold card at him. I loved Thantor sometimes. Travelling through way stations would have been a giant pain in our arses. At least this way we could arrive at Midas’s gala exactly on time.
“Got it,” I said then glanced at his trousers and failed to see any pockets. “Where did you hide the coordinates?”
“Latitude forty degrees, one minute, sixty seconds north. Longitude seventy-six degrees, thirty-seven minutes, thirty-five point thirty-nine seconds west.”
I frowned. “And you’re sure of this?”
He tapped his forehead. “I’ve got a brain for these sorts of things, Detective. Trust me.”
“I do.”
I swiped the key card through the air. The key had been created by the familiar of a high-ranking wizard. They couldn’t in and of themselves create magick, not like their masters, but they could harness small amounts of their masters’ magick, enough to create a special key that would help us access parts of the hundred realms shut off to almost everyone else. Being part of Grimm PD didn’t often come with perks, but this was definitely one of the rare few.
A tunnel of swirling starlight opened before us, beckoning us to enter. Hatter went to take a step, but I grabbed his elbow and gently turned him toward me. I’d been thinking on the ride into Wonderland that I owed him more than I’d given him this morning.
In his own way, he was showing me he cared. I wasn’t used to accepting kindness from anyone. But he was trying, and so would I.
“Before we go,” I said softly, looking down at the carpet of jewel-green grass at our feet, “I just wanted to say— ”
“You don’t have to, Elle. I understand,” he said gently.
Pursing my lips, I looked up at him with determination. “No, but I do. For so long, all I’ve had to rely on was me. That was it. I was betrayed by the one man I thought loved me more than anyone else in all the realms. And I lost the one man I’d ever really loved.” I shook my head, reliving the memories all over again. “It made me cold. Bitter. Callous. I know that.” I frowned, finding it so difficult to say the words, even though I knew I should.
He grabbed my hand and closed his bigger one around mine then covered both of ours with his other one as well. I swallowed hard, drowning in the jeweled depths of his eyes.
“Great loss affects us all in different ways, Elle. I get that. Maybe more than anybody. You never have to apologize for surviving the best way you knew how.”
I nodded slowly, my tongue swollen with so many unspoken words.
Looking at the entrance to the starlit tunnel, I knew one thing. There was no way I was going to work through all of this right now.
“If we don’t leave soon, we’ll be late,” I said.
Nodding, he reached behind himself and grabbed hold of the black leather rope tied to his collar. “Agreed. But in case I forget to tell you later, you look very handsome tonight.”
I felt my lips twitch, stupidly pleased by his words. I’d been called many things in my life—beautiful, otherworldly, sexy. But never handsome. I pressed a fist against my midsection. There was something endearingly old-world about Maddox that I never would have thought I’d find attractive, yet here I was, contemplating doing something so beyond foolish again. I knew where this led for me—the same place it always did. I knew better than this.
If I had any shred of decency left to me, I’d walk away, put up my shields, and push him away. It was for the best, for the both of us.
“Let’s go, Elle,” he said, handing me the tip of the rope, and for some damn reason, it felt like more than just a rope when I took his offering, as if it was a metaphor for something more. I shivered.
“Yes, Hatter, let’s go,” I whispered back.
CHAPTER 23
DETECTIVE ELLE
WE STEPPED out of the tunnel. I clung tightly to Hatter’s rope, knuckles white from my tight grip.
The first thing I noticed was the spicy, fiery scent of brimstone. The next was the wafting heat that seemed to permeate the room and come from the very ground itself. There was a dull red glow and the sound of thickly burbling water. I frowned. Not water exactly, because I didn’t feel even a drop of it
in the air.
My skin felt hot, itchy. I swallowed hard and automatically rubbed a hand against my skirt, reveling in the silky smoothness of my enchanted waters threaded through the fae fabric, calming myself with each steady stroke. I would be fine, though I definitely didn’t want to be here long. I felt Maddox draw closer to my back, his warmth pressing against me, but unlike the dehydrating heat of this strange world, his was welcomed.
I glanced around, studying the area, wondering if perhaps we’d been given the wrong coordinates. I heard no music, saw no other guests. I knew Midas well enough to know that this couldn’t possibly be all, though the exotic locale would certainly be something I’d expect of the eccentric king.
I had an inkling of where we might be, though I’d never had occasion to come before.
The sky was a ghostly shade of navy blue with large skeletal beasts flapping massive bat-like wings as they gracefully glided by so quietly that unless I’d been looking at them, I would never have known they were there at all. Their eyes glowed like pinpricks of dancing flame.
What trees there were had been completely stripped of their leaves. They were black and twisted gnarled things with enormous roots that tore free of the blackened soil.
“Where are we?” I whispered, “Is— ”
“This is Hel,” Hatter said deeply, voice a velvety dark burr.
I glanced at him from over my shoulder. He had his eyes closed, and there was a pained look on his face. His jaw muscles were clenched tight, and now that I’d noticed that, the rest of him looked tense too.
“Are you having a vision?” I asked, hand lingering close to his forearm, ready to share in it with him.
He gave the merest shake of his head and opened his eyes. They blazed like jewels, and there were pinpricks of fire at his pupils, the same as there’d been in the beasts that had wheeled overhead. But they didn’t glow the way they did when he was having a vision. This was his internal fire, and it looked to be going haywire.
“Just a little unwell of a sudden.”
I gently frowned. “Do you need to go back to Grimm?”
He shook his head. “I’m sure this will pass soon. I’m fine.”
He did sound stronger. But it was clear that whatever was going on with him, he didn’t want to make a big deal of it, and as long as he could do his job, I wasn’t going to make a big deal of it, either.
Nodding, I inhaled and turned to look back at the expansive dead zone. It was one of the two hells of Grimm, somewhat more habitable than its sister realm, Hell. Hel was said to be inhabited by creatures of air, land, and water. Whatever those bat-winged beasts had been in the air, it did look as though there was some form of life here.
“Okay, so why are we in Hel? Are you sure you didn’t get a coordinate wrong?”
“I didn’t get it wrong.”
I shrugged and tossed my arms up. “Where now? What else did the invitation say?”
“That there’d be an escort for us. We just needed to answer a riddle.”
I rolled my eyes, remembering Cheshire’s constant riddles whenever I wanted to ask him anything. “Great. And why the hells is there a riddle when we were given an invitation? Doesn’t that negate the whole ‘invited’ thing?” I asked grumpily.
He shrugged and said, “He’s rich.”
And I didn’t even need to ask him what he meant, because he was absolutely right. The filthy rich did whatever the hells they wanted for the simple pleasure that they could, and for some bloody reason, it amused them to watch the peons sweat. And I should know, considering I’d once been heir apparent to the mightiest water realm in all of Grimm.
Pursing my lips, I looked to the left and right, sweating my arse off and getting more uncomfortable with each second that passed. Maddox’s gold paint had to be sweating off too. If someone didn’t pick us up soon, there was no way in the twin hells that Midas would invite us into his inner circle, not looking like drowned rats by the time we actually got there.
I tapped my toe, growing more and more fidgety with each second that ticked by. Where was this bloody escort, anyway?
A small mewling growl of displeasure tore up my throat. It was never wise to go traipsing through a realm one was unfamiliar with. Each realm was full of traps, and this being Hel, I doubted they’d be much fun.
“Be patient, Elle,” Hatter said behind me. “The escort will be here.”
“I’m just oozing patience,” I snapped and wiggled my fingers. “Can’t you tell? And how would you know, anyway? This is Hel. Just what kind of bloody escort should we expect, anyway?”
I glared at him, and he only smirked. “Oh yes, you overflow with it. And I know.”
He said those last three words with complete authority, as if he really did know. And that was impossible, because until he’d landed a job at Grimm PD, Maddox had been realm bound, as most Grimmers were, which meant he was blowing smoke up my arse to try to get me to calm down.
I opened my mouth, not sure what else I meant to say, when I suddenly smelled the thick stench of thousand-year-old eggs—a delicacy in certain parts of Grimm. They were black on the outside and putrid green on the inside. Ichabod had a taste for them and would often use them like a weapon against me on the days he felt petty, masticating on them like a feeding cow, stinking up the entire precinct, and getting more than just my wrath for it.
Central station now had a strict no-putrid-eggs-for-lunch policy.
To me, those little bastards smelled like the wind passed by an ogre after a particularly malodorous meal of rancid meat and fatty bone marrow. I grimaced, placing my knuckles against my nostrils and breathing shallowly.
Maddox’s pupils were glowing with fire again. What was wrong with him? He always had tight control of his flame, but today, I’d seen him flicker with it twice, and I knew that whoever we’d been waiting for must have finally shown up.
Frowning, I turned back, expecting to encounter a nightmare crawled straight out of the bowels of Hel, not a beautiful male, skin as dark as night, each muscle clearly delineated and brushed with a light dusting of gold-flecked powder. He was nude, save for a codpiece he wore tied around his waist, with the most absurdly huge erection that was impossible to ignore even if I’d tried, which I wasn’t. I marveled at its thick realistic looking veins and the way it bobbed as a real cock would as he did a quick bow of greeting.
Good grief, he could impale someone with that thing. Who’d want to try that? But then I felt my body tingling at the thought, and I smirked. Apparently, I’d gone far too long without sex if even that thing could rev me up.
On his face was a black-and-white mask of a lion’s face mid-roar. Eyes glowing the red of hell flame stared through the eyeholes. He was a demon, or some form of demon hybrid. Of that, I had absolutely no doubt, and he was staring unflinchingly at Maddox.
I couldn’t read his face behind the mask, but his body was tense, tight, and I wasn’t sure, but it seemed to me that he was definitely twitchy all of a sudden. I frowned, glancing back at Maddox. What the feck was this? Did they know each other?
“My name is Rasputen,” he said, drawing me back to him and shutting down my curiosity for the time being. His voice was thick and gravelly, purring and exotic. My nipples turned into tiny little beads of instant wanting. I inhaled deeply, and this time when I did, I didn’t scent putrid egg but dark fields of rich clover. My heart started to race, and my thighs began to quiver. My channel flooded instantly, and it was hard not to pant like a bitch in heat.
I gripped tight to Hatter’s rein, wondering briefly how he was handling it.
Everything about this escort was meant to entice, to make you want, need, to the point that you’d go mad for a taste of the dark promise he had to offer. But the promise of heaven was actually more like hell when it came down to it, because that beautiful creature was a thing that had crawled straight out of the fiery pits, just as I’d expected something that came from Hel would.
“Incubus,” I gritted out, fight
ing his inherently decadent nature with some of my own, allowing just a drop of my siren’s will to spread through me, clearing out the haze of lust that had tried to infect my blood and bones. I shook my head free of the cobwebs and glared haughtily at him.
How embarrassing if I’d dropped my panties right here and right now for it.
Sex with a demon like that was a big fat nope in my book. Demon blood was infectious and addictive, and considering demons weren’t capable of love, if they dragged you under their dark pull, it could quite literally spell your doom.
Rasputen dipped his head. “Siren,” he said, and I could hear the smile on his lips. “A riddle I have for thee. In hell I hide. In heaven I am. But I am not in box. What am I?”
I frowned and turned to glance at Hatter, an unasked question in my eyes. What the fecking bloody hells?
He licked his front teeth, his golden face deep in thought, his eyes faraway. I could see him working through the riddle in his head.
Riddles were tricky beasts. Get them wrong, and there were no second chances. With Cheshire, if I said anything other than the answer, he’d consider I’d lost. Some riddlers would accept questions, and some would even give hints when asked. So which type of riddler was Rasputen? I looked back at the incubus.
He was still, flaming eyes on me alone. “Speak if you must, siren,” he intoned in the voice of a male who sounded as though he’d just eaten a bowl of gravel.
“May we have a hint?”
“No. And you have only seconds left.”
I blew out a harsh breath. Damn Midas to the twin hells. If I got sent back to Grimm Central empty-handed, Bo was going to have my proverbial nuts in a vise. Normally, I was good with riddles, but I wasn’t good with them while under pressure. I could swear I felt the seconds ticking past, each one a loud boom in my ears.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom!
“ Heaven. Hell. Not in box,” I mumbled, trying to see the correlation between the three. The first two were obvious enough, but box was throwing me. Why had he worded it that way specifically, not in box , instead of the grammatically appropriate not in a box ? Was that a clue? “Bloody hells. Hatter?”
The Grimm Files Collection Boxed Set Page 31
