‘I don’t bullshit you,’ she said.
He looked across at her again, his eyebrows slightly raised.
He rolled onto his side in one easy, fluid movement, the blanket over him falling dangerously low – not low enough to expose himself fully, but to confirm, from glimpses below that hard, flat stomach, he was surely naked – and totally at ease with it. ‘You seem to forget we’re different to you, serryn – that we pick up on things you don’t. Whatever words come out of your mouth, they can’t hide the hitch in your breath or the telling change in your pulse rate.’
She rolled onto her side to face him, lying within inches of him. ‘And what’s my pulse rate doing now?’
His gaze lingered on hers in a way that felt fatally intimate.
But she wasn’t going to be the first to look away – not when he was that close, not when she would have given anything for him to lean forward at that moment, to know what those lips felt like against hers.
‘Turn around,’ he said softly.
She laughed, but with more uncertainty than she’d intended. ‘Yeah, right.’
‘Scared, serryn?’
‘Not scared, but not stupid either.’
‘And I only ask nicely once, remember?’
She searched his eyes for the part of him that had almost seemed accessible for a brief while, but it had gone again. The lycan giving orders was back. The lycan who expected to be obeyed.
And a part of her that was unavoidably curious, that refused to show she was scared, did exactly as he asked.
As Jask spooned into her, his erection nestled against her behind, she felt an uncharacteristic surge of panic, of excitement, the intimacy stunningly disconcerting. His thighs felt strong and warm against hers, his solid chest moulded against her back, his breath caressing the nape of her neck.
But rather than seduction, all his movements seemed to be about settling down – the way he pulled a pillow beneath his head, flattened his palm against the duvet just in front of her chest, trapping her against him.
He was lying close enough to feel her every move.
He wasn’t closing in for sex – he was closing in for sleep.
It was just another in a long line of insults.
‘I don’t need to be restrained,’ she said, resentment leaking into her tone.
‘And I don’t need you wandering around the compound while I’m asleep.’
‘You could lock the door.’
‘I still wouldn’t trust you.’
‘So I
do
make you anxious.’
‘You want to provoke members of my pack like you provoke me; I won’t be held responsible for their actions, but for now I need you alive. And like I said, I need some sleep. So do you.’
She rotated to face him in the small place he had left her between his chest and arm. ‘So that’s it?
This
is what I turned around for? So you could sleep?’
He turned her back around, pushed her wrists together, his leather wristbands brushing her skin. He pinned her wrists to the floor with one hand as he looped his leg over hers, keeping her still as he pressed himself tight against her again.
‘You sound disappointed,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, when I get that desperate, I’ll be sure to let you know. But well done for doing what you were told.’
She stared ahead at the window, but it wasn’t anger that ignited her, that she’d done exactly what he’d wanted her to. The hurt overruled it – hurt as she hung on the word
desperate
.
Her throat tightened, the final blow making her feel too sick even to retort. Instead she stared out of the window, at the dense clouds that threatened more rain – a familiar sight in Blackthorn.
Chapter Eight
Three days earlier
T
he knocking resounded through her dreams, stirring her from the comfort of much-needed sleep. Sophia winced, shielding her eyes from the bedside light Daniel switched on.
‘What the hell…?’ she groaned.
The knock resounded again, this time harder, more impatient.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Daniel hissed, clearly nursing as much of a hangover as hers. Drink that was no doubt responsible for him ending up in her bed again.
Sophia forced herself into a seated position. ‘I’ll get it,’ she declared, pushing her hair back out of her eyes.
But Daniel was already tugging up his jeans and yanking on a T-shirt as he padded across the tiny Blackthorn bedsit Sophia now called home.
‘Phia, open up!’ The familiar voice demanded, banging the door again.
‘That sounds like Abby. What the hell is she doing here at…’ she looked at the clock, ‘four in the morning?’
‘Only one way to find out.’
Daniel yanked open the door.
Abby stood clasping a brown A4 envelope in her hand, her stout arms folded across her chest. Her narrowed eyes momentarily widened as she stared up at Daniel then into the depths of the room at Sophia still in bed. ‘Exactly how long has this been going on?’ she asked, striding across the threshold.
Daniel closed the door behind her. ‘Morning, boss.’
Sophia pushed both hands back through her hair, clutching her head for a moment, still struggling to come round. ‘Like that’s any of your business.’
‘Whatever happens in my team
is
my business,’ she said harshly, glimpsing at Daniel now leaning back against the sink.
Sophia stared across at the envelope Abby threw down on the tiny, round dining table. ‘What’s going on?’
Abby yanked out a chair, her large brown eyes emanating annoyance. ‘This is what is known in the trade as one almighty fuck-up, Phia.’
As Daniel lifted the envelope, Sophia pushed aside the duvet. Grabbing her dressing gown from the foot of the bed, she tied it over her sweatpants and T-shirt on her way over to join her colleagues.
The look in Daniel’s blue eyes told her it wasn’t good.
Sophia reached for the photos he had started to discard on the table. She frowned at the numerous shots of Jake Dehain in the bar, laughing and joking over a bottle-strewn table.
Jake Dehain – Caleb Dehain’s younger brother. The Dehains who owned the most successful club in Blackthorn and ruled the west side of Blackthorn with an iron fist. Integral in the district’s third-species underworld, they’d been on The Alliance’s hit list for quite some time, and the night to strike had finally come twenty-four hours before.
And though Caleb frustratingly hadn’t fallen for their bait, Jake had – drinking their honeytrap to death, a process that killed any vampire. And she had no doubt Jake had suffered a painful death as the dead human blood penetrated his system – Trudy having given what short time was left for her disease-riddled body for the cause. Trudy who hadn’t warranted adequate medical assistance along with other humans abandoned to Lowtown. It was her way of taking down the system. Her only sense of control left – signing up with The Alliance.
‘What are you showing us these for?’ she asked.
‘Because these were taken three hours ago. Exactly twenty-four hours after Jake Dehain apparently bled Trudy to death,’ Abby announced, the tension in her voice contracting the tiny bedsit even more. ‘So do you want to tell me how the hell he’s still alive?’
Sophia stared at the picture, flicked through the next and then the next. Pulling out a chair, she sank onto the edge. ‘But it’s not possible. I saw it. I saw the footage. I saw her die. I watched her pulse rate diminish to nothing. I heard her last breath. I saw him collapse beside her. I saw it all. Right to them burning her body in the incinerator.’ She looked up at Abby. ‘We all did.’
‘I know. So how the fuck is that vampire still walking and talking?’
Sophia shook her head, frowning in confusion. ‘I don’t understand. We must have missed something.’
‘I put you on this job because you promised me you could do this, Phia. We had one shot.’
Phia kept flicking through the pictures in desperation. ‘Trudy was dead,’ she said. ‘He killed her.’
She’d stood beside Daniel in the safety of the van as they’d watched Jake lead Trudy into the outer rooms inside the club, at the same time keeping an eye on Jade trying to tempt Caleb in the same way. They’d monitored Trudy’s readings – pulse rate, respiration – as he’d fed. They’d watched her slip away. And they’d watched her body being cremated when the aftermath had been discovered by Caleb less than an hour later.
Just as every reading had told them Jake had consumed way above the safe quantity of blood from which there was no way back.
‘Then it seems she died for nothing then, doesn’t it?’ Abby declared.
‘Ease up,’ Daniel warned. ‘This isn’t her fault, Abby.’
‘Then whose is it? I put Phia in charge of this operation – after
she
insisted she was capable.’ Her glower snapped back to Sophia. ‘You should have pulled her out the minute you saw Caleb wasn’t taking the bait with Jade. You should have aborted. You knew the arrangement: Both brothers or neither. No suspicion raised.’
‘But Caleb did take the bait for a while. How was I to know he wasn’t going to go all the way? Jake had already left with Trudy. It was all underway. We had no way to stop
without
raising suspicion.’ She stopped on the photograph of Jake, his arms wrapped around a petite blonde on the dance floor, her back to the camera.
‘You assured me you could do this, Phia. You’ve let me down. You’ve let the whole of The Alliance down.’
‘Whoa!’ Daniel said, cutting in. ‘That isn’t fair. Phia spent weeks planning this. And you would never have agreed if she hadn’t proved herself over and over again these past few months. It should have worked. She can’t account for Caleb’s taste that night. And like she said, we
all
saw what happened to Trudy.’
‘Just as we can all now see she gave what life she had left for
nothing.
’
‘Trudy knew what she was doing; she knew what she signed up for and the risks that it might not work,’ Daniel said. ‘She wanted this. Not living out her last months in too much pain to care.’
‘What she wanted was a dead vampire,’ Abby snapped.
‘Then that’s what we’ll give her,’ Sophia cut in.
‘And how do you suppose you’ll do that?’ Abby asked. ‘Walk right back in there? Pick up where you left off? Just how many girls have we got willing and able to give their life for this? Trudy was gold dust and we wasted her. And if you think I’m letting Jade back in there only for the same to happen to her, you’ve got another thing coming. We had one shot and you blew it.’
‘There are other ways,’ Sophia insisted.
‘What – put a silver bullet through both their heads; stake them in the middle of the bar? That kind of defeats the covert element in this case, right?’
‘I’ll find a way.’
‘Too late,’ Abby said. ‘We couldn’t afford to mess this one up. The Alliance needs to go underground for a while.’
‘But we don’t have time for that. We’re finally making headway.’
‘We
were
making headway. Which is why I’m suspending you from the next target, Phia.’
Sophia snatched back a breath. ‘What? You can’t!’
‘I can and I will. I want your head down and you out of the way. Because if we mess up this next one, The Alliance is finished.’ She looked across at Daniel as she stood. ‘Two days and we reconvene. You’re heading up the next one, Daniel. Unless you’ve got a problem with that?’
‘Who is it?’ Sophia asked.
Abby only glanced at Sophia before looking back at Daniel. ‘We’ll reconvene in two days.’
She exited the room, slamming the door behind her.
Sophia sat in the silence, her attention returning to the array of photographs.
‘Bitch,’ Daniel hissed quietly as he resumed his seat.
‘She’s right though,’ Sophia said, as she rifled languidly through the photos. ‘I fucked up.’
‘Phia, you said it yourself – we saw what Jake did. It should have worked. And how the hell were you supposed to know Caleb wouldn’t take the bait with Jade? Can you help it that he wasn’t in the mood?’
‘Vampires are always in the mood for a free feed,’ she said, sifting through.
‘Caleb’s tricky. Everyone knows that. He’s got girls falling at his feet all the time. I’m not having you take the blame for this. If Abby thinks–’
Sophia froze. She picked up the photo, her hand trembling.
‘Phia?’ Daniel leaned forward, trying to catch her attention before he craned his neck to see what she was staring at. ‘Phia, what’s wrong?’
‘Fuck,’ she whispered. ‘The pretty blonde on the dance floor was now head-on to the camera, gazing drunkenly up at Jake, her arms wrapped around his neck. ‘That’s my sister. That’s Alisha.’
Daniel took the photo off her to stare at the image.
A split second later, Sophia was on her feet. She yanked open the kitchen drawer, rooted around and pulled out her phone. She paced the room, the phone pressed to her ear. ‘Pick up,’ she said sternly. ‘Come on!’
‘What are you doing?’
‘What do you think I’m doing?’
Daniel tried to snatch the phone from her. ‘You know the rules, Phia – no outside contact. That’s not even Alliance property. You know the risks–’
‘Fuck the rules!’ Sophia snapped, shoving him back. She raked her fingers through her mussed hair. ‘If either of them have touched her…’ she muttered, disconnecting from the pre-recorded message for the third time before re-ringing. ‘Alisha, it’s me,’ she said to the answer phone. ‘Call me as soon as you get this. Straight away, you hear me?’ She disconnected and typed in their home number.
‘You made contact. Phia, this is unacceptable.’
Sophia paced as the phone rang. ‘Something’s wrong,’ she said. ‘Leila always answers.’ As the tone rang monotonously, she slumped back into her seat. ‘Come on, Lei, where are you?’
‘Phia, when you signed up, you signed up to disconnect all ties. That’s how it works.’
‘Pick up!’ she hissed. But when Leila failed to answer, she disconnected, her hand falling limply to the table.
‘Phia!’ Daniel snapped.
‘No, Daniel!’ She slammed the photo back in front of him, her finger pressing on the image of her little sister. ‘This is my sister. My little sister – right here in Blackthorn with the worst fucking vampires since Kane Malloy, so don’t cite rules at me!’
‘What are you doing now?’ he asked as she marched to the wardrobe.
She yanked off her dressing gown and pulled out a T-shirt, black sweater and combats.
‘You’re going out?’
‘Too right I’m going out.’
Getting dressed, she tucked her phone in her trouser pocket.
‘Where?’
She met his troubled gaze. ‘Where do you think?’
He grabbed her arm as she swept past him. ‘No way. You are
not
going back to that club.’
‘Dawn will be here in the next couple of hours. My little sister is in that club right now. And I’m going to get her.’
‘Did you not hear what Abby said? She told you to lie low. Phia, this could jeopardise this entire operation. It sure as hell will jeopardise
your
place in the operation.’
‘I won’t implicate anyone else.’
Daniel slammed the door shut as she opened it. ‘You know better than this.’
‘What I know is that my sister is in trouble.’
Daniel dragged her back over to the table, picked up the picture of Alisha again. ‘She looks fine,’ he said emphatically. ‘She’s probably on her way home as we speak. You go barging in there and you could blow this whole thing out of the water. For once, think about what you’re doing. Give it another twenty-four hours. Give it time until we get a clearer picture.’
‘Alisha might not have twenty-four hours. I’m going to the club,’ she said. ‘And I’m getting her out of there. Now.’