“So when you—”
He stopped nuzzling and lifted my chin to force me into eye contact. His intensity sent a rush of heat right to my gut, and farther south. “Are we going to talk about work?” His voice was rough.
Struck mute, I shook my head, and in a movement too fast to track, he reached up, fusing my mouth to his. A soft moan came from one of us, I wasn’t sure which. One hand twined in my hair and the other stroked the bare skin of my back as his lips and tongue made me forget . . . whatever it was I’d been thinking about.
His light eve ning stubble scratched delicious heat across my neck as he got up with barely an effort, pulling my legs around him. He walked us to the bed and lowered me not so gently, pausing long enough to ease off my boots.
“Are you sure?” Alex’s eyes were glazed and hungry, his breathing ragged.
I sat up and hooked my fingers under the hem of my sweater.
He stayed my hands. “My job.” He pulled it over my head slowly, then pulled down the straps of my bra, following his fingers with his mouth. “So. Damned. Beautiful.” His voice rumbled against my skin.
“Yeah, you are.” My fingers eased down his chest, across the ridges of his belly, and rested them on his hips a few moments before reaching for his jeans. He pulled back to help.
“Nope. My job.” I laughed, pushing him to his back and taking charge like I knew more than I did. He didn’t seem to mind a little clumsiness, raising his hips to accommodate me. Nope, he didn’t mind a little clumsiness at all.
Jeans and socks and underwear hit the floor at some point too, but I lost track of everything except Alex’s lips and heat and his busy, talented hands—at least until my brain kicked in briefly. “Wait,” I gasped, “do you have, you know . . .”
“Ungh.” He rolled off the bed and disappeared into the small bathroom. Cabinets opened and closed with frantic slams. “Aha.”
He reappeared with a box of condoms and pulled one out. Plenty more remained in case we got overly enthusiastic. Not that I was worried about disease—shifters can’t carry diseases as far as I knew. But the last thing I needed was a wizard-elf-loup- garou-shifter kid baking in the oven. Ye gods.
The break had given us a chance to catch our breath, but the heat hadn’t dissipated. He caught my wrists and pinned them over my head on the pillow with one hand, shifting his weight, and we began to move in tandem.
He groaned and slowed his movements—agonizingly slow. “You doing that on purpose?”
I bit his ear. “Don’t stop,” I gasped. “Doing what?”
His voice was strained. “Your magic’s buzzing all over my skin. Feels so . . .”
Must not have felt too bad, but I couldn’t ask because he hit a spot that wiped out all rational thought.
E
arly morning sun slanted through the blinds and backlit odd shapes across my closed lids. I snapped my eyes open. Alex was propped on an elbow, watching me like a cat sitting outside a fishbowl. Alert, patient, predatory.
“Morning,” I croaked, then a smidgeon more awake. “Do I smell coffee?”
He narrowed his eyes and waited a few seconds. “Hmm. Fascinating. No running away or making excuses for last night yet. It’s a good sign.”
I reached over and pulled him to me for a kiss. “Just one question. Was that pity sex? Because of the loup-garou thing?”
He rolled me on top of him. “Yeah, it’d be a pity if we didn’t do it again.” After which the man proved he was right. That would have been a pity.
Later, I showered and went on a clothes hunt. I found last night’s sweater and jeans, but my underwear had gone truant. Alex’s bedroom had gotten a direct hit from a sartorial hurricane. I was absurdly pleased with myself. It would be my first walk of shame, crawling home wearing last night’s clothes, even if there was no one else to witness it.
By the time I finished dressing, Alex was in the kitchen and pouring coffee, wearing a black sweater and a pair of jeans worn light in all the right places. His back was to me, so I leaned against the doorjamb and watched him a few moments, waiting for fear and regret to make an appearance. It was my MO, after all.
So far, my only regret was that it had taken us this long. A rare moment of peace, a dash of happiness, and one fine butt.
“Stop leering.” He turned to hand me a mug, appearing pretty damned pleased with himself as well. You’d think we’d been the first people to discover sex.
“I don’t leer, I admire.” I took the mug and sipped cautiously. Plain medium-roast. I’d have expected no less of a man who considered putting ketchup on his fries thinking outside the culinary box.
He treated me to that sexy little crease next to his mouth and kissed me. And kissed me again. Then the smile faded, taking his happy thoughts with it. He was shielding. “We need to talk about what happens next week.”
So much for the whole happiness and feeling-at-peace thing. Only I could spend the night with the sexiest man to ever come out of Picayune, Mississippi—no, make that the whole state of Mississippi (sorry, Elvis)—and barely have time to enjoy the afterglow before he had to get all serious and bring up my impending furmageddon.
I took my coffee into the dining room and sat at the table. I’d either take my chances with the Elders or I’d run, and I knew which path straight-arrow Alex would recommend. He could get me snowshoes for Christmas so I could go muskoxen- hunting, assuming there was a way to actually get to Ittoqqortoormiit without being zapped there in a transport.
I exhaled. “We know the virus is active, and I’m almost certainly going to shift next Thursday at the full moon. What else is there to say?”
“We need to talk about you getting your stuff together and your ass to Old Barataria before Thursday.” His voice was hard and businesslike. He’d been thinking about this a while. “I want you to do it. Go to Jean Lafitte.”
I’d frozen with the coffee mug halfway to my mouth, which was hanging open so far it could have caught flies, as my grandmother back in Alabama liked to say. “You
want
me to go to Jean?”
Alex hated Jean. Jean hated Alex. It was a perfectly equitable arrangement.
For the first time since this unfortunate conversation began, a hint of expression—disgust—stole across his face. “Of course not, and if he lays a finger on you I’ll kill him.” He paused, no doubt realizing Jean was immortal and his threats were ridiculous. “Okay, I can’t kill him. But I can dry up all his little business arrangements between the Beyond and New Orleans. He won’t be able to make a dime.”
That would hurt Jean a lot more than a bullet.
“Then why . . . ?” I didn’t finish the question. There was no point in asking why. Alex might be a by-the-rules kind of guy, but he didn’t trust the Elders to come up with a solution that didn’t involve institutionalization in a far corner of a cold, lonely place nobody could begin to pronounce. Or death by enforcer.
God, would they order Alex to kill me and Jake both? Was that what frightened him?
He rolled his head from side to side, popping his neck. “Set up a transport for me and I’ll come as often as I can. The Elders don’t have any jurisdiction in Old Orleans or any of its outposts, and Lafitte will protect you if they send someone after you. I have to give him that much credit.” Albeit grudgingly, judging by his tone.
I’d pretty much come to the same conclusion, and Alex’s words filled me with relief. I’d been so afraid that if I took the run-like-hell option, I’d never see him again.
“Here’s something I’ve been wondering about, though.” I’d been worrying about it ever since Jean suggested I hide out in the Beyond. “Let’s say I go into the Beyond on Tuesday. The full moon here isn’t until Thursday night, but there’s always a full moon there. Won’t I shift immediately?”
Alex drained his coffee cup and set it on the table. “No, Jake and I talked about him living in Old Orleans after he was turned awhile, before he decided to try the enforcer route. We did some research. The full moon in the Beyond isn’t tied to the one in the modern world, so weres and garous can change at will there— or not change. We just need a cover story to tell the Elders. You learn to control it, then you come back and do your job. Take full moons off and go into the Beyond for a day or two.”
That sounded so easy, but the first time I came across a prete who could sniff me out as a loup-garou, I’d be turned in and Ittoqqortoormiit wouldn’t be an option. If I went into the Beyond, I’d have to stay. We’d figure the rest out later. “Agreed,” I said.
“Good. That’s settled.” Alex got up to replenish his coffee cup and glanced out the dining room window. “What the hell does he want?”
“Who?”
“Eugenie’s boyfriend, that Randolph guy. He’s on his way over here, coming from your house.” Alex headed toward the back door. “You ever figure out what he was? Still think he’s not human?”
“I know he’s not human. I’m thinking elf or faery.” I set my mug down with a thud. Talk about romance killers: first the loup-garou talk, and now my neighborhood stalker.
Alex opened the door, and I heard the low pitch of voices.
“I gotta go with Randolph a few minutes. Stay here.” Alex went into his bedroom, and I followed the sound of dresser drawers opening and closing. He came out strapping on his shoulder holster with his bigass Smith & Wesson, then stopped to pull on his shoes.
“The Axeman again? What’s Quince Randolph got to do with it?”
“Stay here.” He walked out the front door and shut it behind him with a rattling slam.
Wait. Who did Alex Warin think he was, anyway? One night of bucket-list sex—okay, a night and a morning of amazing bucket-list sex—did not give him the right to be bossy. I had to murder that instinct before it became a habit.
I scrambled into my boots and strode out the front door, looking catty-cornered across the intersection at Plantasy Island. An Uptown matron struggled out the door carrying an oversized exotic plant with yellow-and-green-striped leaves, but there was no sign of Alex or Rand.
Digging my keys out of my jeans pocket, I walked next door and climbed my front steps, glancing across Nashville Avenue at Eugenie’s house. The open sign was on the door to her Shear Luck salon entrance, so she probably had a customer.
A window- rattling thump sounded from inside my front parlor, and I heard male voices. They were in my house? Dread stealing through me, I tried the front door and found it unlocked. “What are you—”
I tripped over something just inside the door, and it took a moment for me to realize it was my overturned sofa. I looked around, trying to understand what I was seeing. My house had been trashed. The mirror over the mantel was shattered, and broken glass glittered across the hardwood floor. Furniture lay overturned, stuffing spilling out like billowy cotton. A hole had been gouged in the plaster wall, exposing wires and lathing. My freaking ceiling fan even had a blade broken in half.
“You should have stayed next door.” Rand stood in the doorway between the back parlor and the kitchen. I heard Alex’s footsteps—at least I hoped they were Alex’s—going up the stairs to the second floor.
“Who did this?” My first instinct was to blame Rand, but after a second’s thought I knew it wasn’t him. He’d been trying too hard to get in my good graces for some reason, and he also was too much of a tree hugger to risk broken glass and overturned furniture ruining my antique hardwood floor.
“Come here and you can see who did it.” He stepped aside and I edged past him into the kitchen. “Look by the door.”
I had no desire to touch the ax embedded blade-first in the wall next to my back door. It was covered with crusty red and black gunk that I had no doubt was from the
Times-Pic
reporter still clinging to life in a local hospital. “He came for me last night and I wasn’t here,” I whispered, looking around. The kitchen was intact. “He just tore up the living room to make sure I knew he’d been here.”
What might have happened if I hadn’t gone to Alex’s last night? Could I have fought him off? Gotten to the elven staff in time? Been trapped in my second-floor bedroom? I’d been in such a hormonal frenzy when I went to Alex’s I’d forgotten to set my security wards. They’d probably have kept him out.
“Where’s Sebastian?” I looked under the kitchen table and atop the cabinets, and finally spotted him on the fridge, glaring at me from between two cookbooks. As soon as I spotted him, he yowled at me and ran out of the room. At least I knew he was safe.
Rubbing my arms to try and smooth out the chill bumps that had taken up residence, I approached the ax. The handle was smooth, light-colored wood, and a wide black stripe around the base matched the ones from the other crime scenes.
Ken had discovered that both of the big-box homeimprovement stores had sold out of axes—about two dozen total. I doubted the Axeman had been shopping, so I’m betting it was the necromancer. He’d paid cash, however, so there was no way to trace the sales until the NOPD studied the security- camera footage—and hoped the ax sales were made recently.
I reached out to touch the ax, then drew my hand back.
“You might as well go ahead,” Rand said, making me jump. He’d moved close behind me. “We all know the fingerprints on that ax handle aren’t going to match anything the police have.”
Sticking my hands in my pockets to keep from touching anything, just on principle, I turned to face him. “And how would you know that?”
Rand’s expression was serious. “You know damned well he isn’t human, and he’s targeting you for some reason. Do you know why?”
I stared at him. “What
are
you?”
He reached out with his right hand and twirled a lock of my hair around his index finger. I grabbed his wrist and tried to push it away, but he was strong—and an emotional void, as usual. “I’m somebody who doesn’t want to see you hurt.”
“Not good enough.” I grabbed his wrist again and fully opened my mind to his. A big freaking empty hole.
He frowned, morphing his pretty face into a picture of concern. “You’re really worried about the loup-garou change. You’re healing too fast and it’s taking hold. I can help you.”
A chill washed over me. He’d known the Axeman wasn’t human and he knew about the loup-garou exposure. What the hell was he? What did he want? Quince Randolph could read me like my thoughts were running across my forehead on a tickertape, and I could get nothing from him.