City of Shadows (23 page)

“Even with you questioning him?”

“Even with me. You've experienced their loyalty firsthand.”

The beating, the tunnels, yes—I knew what their loyalty felt like. I searched Samuel's face—the determined press of his lips, the intelligence in his eyes—and the fae desire to touch tingled through my hand, curling my fingers into my palm. Would he turn away from me?

“I'm not letting this go,” I said through clenched teeth.

“We wait.” He stepped closer. “And we watch.” Another step.

Samuel eased his hand up my arm. His touch skimmed my shoulder and then his warm fingers brushed my face. He moved quickly enough to waylay any protest I could muster. “The note doesn't change anything,” he said, his words soft, whisper-like, and those whispers held hidden promises. “We have streets to patrol. Control and order to maintain. I'm closer to him than any other fae this side of Faerie. He'll confide in me.”

His
words might have been severe, but the intention in his touch was something else entirely. “It's clear he's lying about a lot of things,” I said. While half my thoughts clung onto the severity of Kael's plans, the other half were already lost in the tingling play of Samuel's touch and what might happen should he close the small distance between us.

He tucked my damp hair behind my ear. His fingertips spilled tingles where they brushed my cheek. The fading light scattered in his beautiful fae eyes, lending them an endless depth, the kind you could lose yourself in.

He eased his fingers into my hair, tilting my head up. “You hide it well, but there's true beauty in you, Alina. Fae beauty. You're afraid of it.” He touched his lips to mine, just the lightest of brushes, and whispered, “You don't need to be afraid, not with me.”

His words, he couldn't know how they wrapped around my fears, softening them, until beneath the brush of his lips, I forgot why I was afraid to get close to anyone. With him, it didn't matter what I was. A single touch wouldn't send me spiraling into madness, or summon something dark and untamable as it did with Reign. Samuel wanted me, for me. And that was okay. His lips on mine, his hands pulling me against him; I forgot my fears, forgot trying to be something—
someone
—I wasn't.

“Do you still need this?” he whispered, words slightly ragged around their edges.

“Yes.”

“Do you
want
it?” His smile moved against my lips.

I hooked my arms around his neck and pulled him down into a kiss that would leave no room for doubt. He moved against me, his hands finding places I didn't
know
could make me gasp. He came alive beneath my touch, his body moving in a tantalizing combination of hard and soft. He was a different Samuel now. An apex predator tamed beneath my hands. Not the stalwart fae warrior, but someone else, someone who knew the real me. Someone who cared. And my lonely heart broke open.

A
sparkling nighttime London was our backdrop while he discovered all my weaknesses, and teased them with his mouth, his fingers, his tongue. His kisses burned, his touch too, but not from draíocht. My fingers against his warm skin summoned breathless growls. My playing nips earned me the kind of deep, throaty response that had my insides fluttering. I didn't want him to stop, and for a while, I wasn't the construct, I wasn't even Alina. Beneath him, he roused the raw, most basic part of me. I didn't need a reason. This wasn't about love. Just need. A pure, simple, uncomplicated need to be a woman. To be alive.

Chapter Eighteen

Relentless patrols kept the FA on edge and the general out of sight. Samuel assured me he was doing everything he could to earn Kael's confidence, but the FA was stretched thin. The next few shifts saw Samuel stepping in to stop what might have turned into a deadly knife fight. I too might have been losing my mind if it hadn't been for the moments Samuel and I stole between shifts, and between his sheets.

“
You need draíocht,” he said, trailing his fingers down my bare arm, spilling a little cool draíocht in their wake.

Good shivers skittered low. I tucked my chin into my chest and pulled his arm around me. Tangled together, sheets knotted around us, it seemed nothing else existed in the world. Outside his bedroom, doors slammed and murmuring voices occasionally passed on by. These moments, short-lived as they were, made me forget the chaos unraveling on London's streets. I could forget a lot of things while held close against him, listening to the steady beat of his heart. I liked forgetting, it made the worry, the doubt, and the fear seem distant.

“I know. I'll go to the clinic.”

He brushed his chin against my shoulder and purred low and deep. The sound of it rumbled through his chest. I smiled and shifted just enough to elicit a deeper growl, the sound I hunted for when I knew I had him. In every way, Samuel was made to entice. He had a body that begged to be touched, a sharp mind, and a deeply delicious wicked streak that spoke to all my inhibitions and tore them right out. I was under no illusions, this wouldn't last, not least because of the fae spirit I had residing in my temporary soul. But I'd take him—all of him, while I could.

“Nyx came close to being overwhelmed tonight,” I said, remembering how the gang of fae had descended on us in a Camden parking lot.

“She's too quick and smart to ever be overwhelmed.”

He nipped at my ear, eliciting my own purr. I twisted in his arms and punched him in the shoulder, which didn't do a damn thing other than prompt him to raise an eyebrow as a challenge. I'd have liked to challenge him. His look told me he'd like it too.

“
My shift starts soon.”

“Where are you patrolling?”

“Islington.”

My latest patrol in Camden had reminded me of the promises I had to keep. Andrews and his sister. “The FA need help.”

Samuel's smile was fading, as it often did when I mentioned work. When in his uniform, he wore his role like a second skin. The smiles, the playful glint in his eye. He kept all of that well guarded among the FA. He'd told me the FA didn't need a friend, they needed a leader.

“You're thinking of your policeman friend?” Samuel asked, clearly recognizing where my thoughts were headed.

“The Met should be involved.”

“It's not up to me. And Kael, he's wary of allowing the police access to our methods.”

Wary of being found out, more like.
“Andrews is with SO-Thirty. Maybe they know something that could help us.”

“Special Operations don't know anything. Kael's made sure of that.”

“But Andrews is different. It's not just a job to him, he knows more than most. If I tell him what's happening, he'll help.”

Samuel brushed my hair out of my face, tucked it behind my ear and then spilled his touch down my neck and over my shoulder in a way that had me wishing we had more time.

“You shouldn't go back to him,” he said. “Your presence will make his bespellment worse, if he hasn't already succumbed.”

And
that was the other reason I needed to see him; to know if he was okay. It had been weeks since he'd begged me not to leave. He'd have seen the FA on the news, he'd know all about the rise in violence, and of course my apparent heroics during the ogre event. I might not have found Becky, but I could tell him about Under's catacombs being sealed, about the origin of the ogre. He might be able to help locate the fae who were dabbling with the draíocht.

“Go to your detective then,” Samuel sighed, recognizing defiance on my face. “Don't be surprised if he turns you away. You've felt that temptation. Imagine it magnified tenfold and you'll have an idea how the need is eating him up.”

I knew that. I did. And I knew going back to him would probably destroy whatever shred of friendship we might have had left, but the FA needed help, and Kael was a bastard. It was time to get the people of London involved; that meant the Met's Fae Special Operations, SO-Thirty. Detective Danny Andrews would have helped before. He'd
want
to help now.

Samuel trailed his fingers lower. A curious curl of a smile tilted across his lips. “I have approximately thirty minutes before my patrol.” He bowed his head, watching where his fingers traveled along my arm. The hooded, hungry focus in his eyes when he trawled his gaze back to me had all the hallmarks of a predator's gaze, one locked on his prey. The hunt was on.

My cell rattled on the bedroom shelf. I scooped it up on my way out of the door and answered the unknown number as I strode down the FAHQ's halls.

“Alina, you need to come. It's Reign,” Shay said, words rushed and breathless.

“
Hold on …” I headed out the main entrance door, careful to check the lit windows for any twitching drapes. Nobody was watching. “Go on.”

“You have to come. I … Please.” She rattled off an address in the East End and hung up. I had a half hour to kill before my next shift and had planned to call ahead and then drop in on Andrews. I wasn't going to make it to the East End and back in half an hour, but Shay's tone had been urgent. I had to go. I quickly tapped out a text to Nyx letting her know I was heading to the clinic for my top-off
—
that way they wouldn't question me.

The train took me only so far. I had to walk the rest of the way alongside a traffic-snarled road and beneath an overpass. Derelict Ford factories loomed out of the dark. They'd long ago been decommissioned and left to rust. Redevelopment hadn't quite reached this far out of the city yet. The din of traffic dulled my hearing. Fewer streetlights bred layered shadows. I had my daggers in sight. Those and the red-and-blacks should be enough to deter any unwanted attention.

The address didn't exist. At least not that I could find. I had the right street, but the barren swathes of cracked concrete didn't have numbers.

“Alina…” A whisper, spoken like a promise. Shivers spilled down my back. I turned my head, expecting to see Reign, but the access road was deserted. I could feel him though; that incessant tug gently drawing me forward. He was here.

I freed my daggers, ducked through a gap in the chain-link fence and slipped quietly down the side of a hollow warehouse. The sounds of traffic faded, until all I heard were the beats of my own steady heart and the wind.

Considering
how I'd last seen Reign—on his knees begging me not to summon the worst of him—I wasn't entirely sure how he'd greet me. I tightened my grip on the daggers and followed the undercurrent of power into the warehouse.

He sat almost dead center on a chair in the vast cathedral-like space, leaning forward, arms resting on his knees, waiting. There wasn't much else to look at. A tattered old couch, a small table. And we were alone.

“Look at you.” His voiced filled the space, ricocheting about the shadows until the quiet devoured it. “Rocking the FA colors like never before.”

“We need to talk.” There was no sign of Shay.

“Yes we do.” He got to his feet as I drew closer. He looked as good as always, in that raggedy way of his. Ruffled hair, colorful eyes, a smile playing on his lips.

I kept my daggers at my sides but relaxed a little as I drew close enough to see a closed file on the table. “What's going on?”

“I'm sorry about the call. I had to get you away from the FA, and you wouldn't come if I just asked you to.”

More lies. “You put Shay up to it?”

He slid his gaze away and moved to the table. “If you'd like to stick me with your FA daggers, American Girl”—he spread his arms, flaring his coat without looking behind him to see if I was moving—“take your best shot.”

I considered it, if only because he deserved to know what it felt like to have your heart ripped out.

“It'll take more than a dagger in the back to kill me,” he added.

I couldn't see his face to know if he smiled, but he sounded as though he did. “You just have to be dramatic, don't you? You couldn't just pick up the phone and talk to me, like normal people do?” I noticed a few more personal items along
with
a few overnight bags. Was he living here? Was Reign sleeping rough on the street?

“Some things have to be said face-to-face.”

An unexpected slice of guilt cut through me. This was a long way from his Kensington house. I resheathed my daggers, crossed my arms, and plastered a rigid expression of indifference on my face.

I wanted to reach out to him, to tell him to talk to me, to let me back in, but we'd moved way beyond light touches and soft words. Only a bitter-cold distance existed between us now.

Reign turned, came forward, and held out the file, expecting me to take it.

“What's that?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Proof.”

“Of what?” METROPOLITAN POLICE was stamped across the front.

“Your new FA friends and their lies,” Reign said.

I kept my arms crossed and met his gaze. He even had the balls to look sorry. “Did you get this from Andrews?”

He pushed the file closer. “He wants to help you.”

“I'm not the one who needs help.”

“No?” After giving the file a shake, he turned and tossed it back onto the table. “You're in the wolves' den, Alina, and they've got you so wrapped in their ways you can't see them hunting you.”

I sighed. Nothing was going to change. He hated the FA, and the FA hated him. And I was stuck somewhere in the middle. “Y'know, they think you're leading a band of fae in opening a path back to Faerie.”

He
snorted. “I'm possessed by Cu Sith, not nuts.” He slid a sidelong glare my way. “You don't believe their lies.” Lines appeared between his eyes, cutting deep. “Do you?”

“I—”

“He's really gone to town on you, huh? Little pet Alina led along by General Kael. What's the appeal? I know you like 'em old, but—”