“After? About what?”
“About us.”
About us.
It was like they’d circled back to the start of the conversation and she was totally lost.
“What about us?” She didn’t like the way the question squeaked out of her.
He took her left hand, the velvety-rough pads of his fingertips raising goosebumps down her spine. When he unfurled her clenched fingers, he revealed the furrow where the bullet had seared across her flesh. The line was red and angry-looking but not as bad as she’d thought it would be. Not that it mattered anyway; she was too distracted by the heat of his caress sinking deeper than the superficial wound.
“My ichor is still in you.” He smoothed his thumb across the speckles of residue staining her skin, and she knew if she wasn’t more careful than she’d been with the gun, his touch would mark her too, invisibly and permanently. “It protected you from Ashcraft’s nightmares, and it should finish healing this wound before dissipating. But after that…”
He kept saying
after
like he thought she had a clue. She’d always thought of pale, willowy Esme as the ghost and little Piper as the child, but maybe
she
was only a haint of the girl she’d been, with no place of her own anymore and no dreams left.
She stared at the tender brown of new skin—that she’d apparently stolen from Torch’s ichor. What did she have to show for
herself
? What did she have to give to
after
?
Snatching her hand out of his, wincing when she tore the wound open again, she hunched her shoulders. “You mean the sex? That was just…” She cast around for an explanation. “A thing.”
“A thing,” he repeated flatly.
She hated the feeling that he was judging her. “I saw your treasure room,” she reminded him. “It’s empty.”
“And you’re only interested in the riches.”
“No,” she flared. “Of course not. I wanted to be an artist, remember? But you apparently didn’t want
anything
, if I had to guess by what you kept. Am I supposed to think you wanted…”
Wanted me?
She couldn’t leave that plaintive wish hovering unsaid in the air. “Wanted more than a fuck?”
“It’s already been more than one,” he said.
She stared at him.
“In the past,” he continued more slowly, “it would’ve been only once. I couldn’t risk anyone knowing more.” He peered at her. “But you already knew.”
Pique made her snappish. “I’m glad I was easy for you.”
He snorted back, shaking his head so his spiky blond hair wavered. “Hardly.”
His amusement lit a flush in her cheeks. “Then why are you bothering me with this?”
He shrugged. “I guess I like bothering you. The dragon likes when you bare your teeth at me.” His sexy grin flashed as if he’d let off those bottle rockets. “And I like that you thought you could take a dragon.”
Her breath caught in her throat, her hammering pulse backing up in her veins with something like…panic. “I was wrong, though, wasn’t I?”
Lashes half shuttered over his dark eyes. “Day’s not over yet, is it?”
Did he still think she might betray the Nox Incendi? Turn him over to Ashcraft in return for—what? The power that had ended with her mother dead, her uncle greedily in thrall to a warlock, and she herself with nothing?
And she was giving
him
shit for his empty aerie?
“Soon,” she muttered.
He didn’t respond, and the lack left her more hollow than the crystal dome where she’d been taken by the dragon.
Chapter 16
Torch parked the Vette at an overlook with a view of the lake. The clouds had clotted in a strange way. He knew his skies, but these were thick and dark yet so separate from each other that when the high desert sun glared through, the reflection off the salt water was almost blinding. The few boats on the lake were fleeing for the marina, obviously not liking the look of the weather any more than he did.
Anjali peered out. “The lake effect can kick up some bad storms, but this looks weird. Do you think Ashcraft is doing this?”
He grunted. “I think alchemists never focused much on the weather. How about witch doctors?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember my mother offering any charms for storms.”
If Ashcraft was controlling the weather, that suggested he was stronger than any of them could have guessed.
“Whether he’s responsible or not, fewer witnesses will be to his liking.” Torch frowned. “But the storm isn’t bad enough to provide cover for, say, a dragon.”
Anjali consulted her uncle’s phone again, then pointed to the dark line bisecting the lake. “The railroad causeway is the closest way to the location he sent. It’s more than a mile out.”
The broken rubble that built the causeway sloped down from the tracks to the water, rippling in the wind. Even if a train came along, there was plenty of room to climb down to the salt-encrusted lower rocks.
His hackles prickled. But a treatment for the stone blight was out there. And Anjali’s chance to make amends for what she’d done. Not that he needed her to apologize by risking her life, but he understood
she
needed to show her friends, especially Esme, that she was sorry. He felt the same way about being the clan’s enforcer.
That was the real reason he’d never looked beyond his one-night stands and never added a single coin to his treasure: because he had to keep proving himself to Bale, Rave, and the others.
Maybe it was time he finally found something he wanted to keep.
His phone chimed and he fired off a few quick messages, trying to not look like he was eavesdropping while Anjali talked to Piper, explaining what had happened with her uncle and Ashcraft.
“It’s just…” She sighed. “You told me Uncle Gwain was taking advantage when he asked me to work at the shop again, and I knew you were right, but I had no idea how bad it was. How bad he was. And the ash-hole was—is—so much worse.”
Anjali had the phone pressed to her ear too hard for him to hear Piper’s responses, but her eyes closed in rejection. “You say that, but I still feel like I just keep falling in with terrible people.” After a moment of listening, her lips curved. “Besides you guys.” She opened her eyes, and her gaze darted toward him; he was aware of the gossamer weight of her stare though he kept his fingers busy on his phone. And his ears cocked to Piper’s whispering words, which were too damn soft. “I don’t know,” Anjali murmured. “I just don’t know.”
What didn’t she know? The dragon’s tail twitched and his spine quivered in response.
“I love you guys. You know that, right?”
His fingers paused on his phone. What he wouldn’t give…
But he’d already established he didn’t have anything to give.
“Okay, yeah. Later.” She disconnected and leaned her head back, staring up at the eerie clouds.
“
Are
you okay?” He took her left hand and checked the healing. Not as fast as his wounds closed, but she shouldn’t have any trouble clambering over the rocks.
She rolled her head against the seat to look at him. “No. I think I’m pretty fucked up.” She straightened. “But I don’t think I’m going to let that stop me.” She checked the time on the phone. “I should start walking.”
“Keep the phone on,” he said. “I’ll be able to hear everything. If Ashcraft tries anything besides handing you the antidote, I’ll be there in a heartbeat.” He angled his phone toward here, showing her the map of their location. “There are two more dragonkin, here and here. And I’ll have a wolf-shifter team in a boat by the time you walk out on the causeway. I wasn’t expecting a rendezvous by water, but we’ll have it covered.”
She glanced up in surprise. “We’re not alone?”
He tsked. “Of course not. Most of the Nox Incendi can’t—or shouldn’t—leave the Keep, but I’m not risking you out there alone.”
Her lips twisted. “Risk the antidote, you mean.”
He took her chin in his hand and made her look at him. “No. I mean what I said. Your uncle, Ashcraft, they told you lies. But I haven’t, not once.”
Though he had her in his grip, she stared into his eyes as if she was the one who held him fast. “You haven’t.” Despite her fierce gaze, her voice wavered. “Must be a dragon thing.”
“Then believe me.”
Her short lashes fluttered uneasily. “Believe you what?”
He slid his fingers back along her jawline under her dreadlocks and curled behind her nape. Her eyes flared so wide that the sun—angling between the clouds—gleamed back at him with endless fire.
“This.” Tilting her head, he dropped his mouth down over hers, inhaling her soft groan.
She fisted her hand in the neck of his t-shirt to draw him closer, and he leaned across the center console. He burned with the desire to take her, there in the open under the threatening sky, and damn the mission.
But she curled her hand tighter and with her fisted knuckles shoved him back. “If I don’t leave now, I’m going to have to run across the train tracks to make it. And I don’t run.”
“Yeah. You stand and fight.” He let his admiration shine in his voice.
She bit her lip and clutched the door handle but didn’t open it. “But you’ll come get me if…”
“I’ll come get you.” He didn’t even bother questioning the “if”.
She nodded and hustled out of the car, sliding the phone into her pocket. Walking out to the causeway, she didn’t look back.
His phone chimed again—texts from the others saying they were in their positions—but he didn’t want to lose his connection to Anjali.
She passed the no-trespassing sign and hopped up onto the tracks. A dozen or more trains used the causeway every day, and though he knew she’d be able to see one coming from a good distance, still he didn’t like the look of her out there, so exposed. And he knew it must be worse for her. She did not like being exposed. In any way.
For all that he was head of security at an exclusive casino and enforcer for a secretive clan of shapeshifters, he’d always left himself wide open. How could he convince her to let him in—not just for a night or two, not just to her body, but to make herself vulnerable to the dragon fever that would scorch all the way to her soul?
In the convertible that wasn’t his, in a city where he didn’t know anyone, under a sky he barely recognized, he wondered why he even thought she’d listen.
“Torch?”
Her voice was muffled by her coat pocket so she sounded as if she was whispering in his ear.
“Don’t bother answering,” she continued. “I won’t be able to hear you over the wind out here.”
He watched her getting smaller as she kept walking along the tracks. She wasn’t running, but her strides across the wooden ties were long, and the ends of her red dreadlocks flagged in the wind.
“I just wanted to say, I’ve never… What happened between us was more than I ever… Oh fuck it, you know what I mean.”
His hand tightened on the hard edges of the phone, but it was nothing like holding her sweet curves.
“I’m almost there, so I’m going to stop talking. Wouldn’t want the ash-hold to think I’m crazy. Ah fuck, I am crazy.” Her voice wavered and softened to the point Torch wasn’t sure if she still meant for him to hear her. “Don’t let me down, okay?”
He wanted to yell to her, to promise. But his sharp dragon eyes caught a flicker on the water, straight out from her position.
At first he thought it was just the strange mirage/reflection of the stormy sky in the wind-rippled salty water. Then he thought it might be the boat his backup team had borrowed, although he’d warned them not to get too close.
Anjali was probably almost a mile out along the causeway, and she turned to face the disturbance.
It was a boat, but strangely proportioned for a rich man’s pleasure cruiser. Its shallow draft was almost like the Viking longship, something meant to be pulled up to shore. Against the glare of water and sky, its bleached hull was almost invisible.
There were islands in the lake, Torch had noted when he looked over the map. Some of the islands only counted in low water years when evaporation outpaced the input from rain and rivers. Did Ashcraft have a hidden place somewhere nearby?
The boat rocked in the wind, nosing closer to the causeway. Anjali started to pick her way down the shattered rocks.
And suddenly, Torch wondered if saving his people was worth losing her.
***
If she broke her ankle on these rocks and tumbled into the water and drowned, she was going to be pissed.
Anjali couldn’t watch her footing and the boat at the same time, so she was surprised to see how close it had gotten while she scrambled closer to the water.
When she’d first met Lars Ashcraft, she’d been jealous of how rich he was but also impressed by how little he seemed to care about it. He’d driven a brand-new but not flashy Audi, and his suits were bespoke but not cutting-edge. Later, when she’d discovered he’d taken Esme, she learned he kept a tarp and duct tape in his trunk, and the lining of his coats held a special pocket for his drugs and his knife.
What he hid was not shame or even ambivalence about his family fortune but his hunger for something more unsavory.
Even before she glimpsed his familiar, elegant form, she knew the boat was his, since it had the same look of understated expensiveness masking something deadly, like a tycoon’s shark-skin briefcase. If the shark was still alive.
She raised her voice, wanting to be sure Torch heard her. “Ashcraft, throw me the trap and the antidote. I need to get back to the dragon before he figures out what’s going on.”
With a jolt, she realized she hadn’t needed to fake the desperation. She needed to get back to him. Why could she say that aloud now, to the ash-hole, and not to Torch?
Standing at the wheel, Ashcraft nudged the boat closer, working the controls effortlessly. Though the snub nose looked like it could easily roll up onto a regular shoreline, the rocks of the causeway were too steep and jumbled.
“Anji, I wondered if I’d ever see you again.” His red-brown hair was long enough to ruffle in the wind, but too well behaved to flop.
She wondered if that was a spell. If so, he’d make millions. Except he already had millions.