“This isn’t part of your investigation, Detective.”
“It’s wonderful how you can make ‘Detective’ sound like an insult.”
“I’m doing what you wanted. Keeping things impersonal.”
“Are you?” She turned to study him, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. If things weren’t personal, you wouldn’t be pouting.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Pouting. That’s certainly in line with your other notions of my character. But you’re right, of course.” The car slowed. “Things are personal between us. I’m not the one in denial about that.”
“I meant that you keep
making
things personal. Or trying to. Which your present snit proves is a big—what are you doing?”
“Behaving like a fool, most likely.” He’d pulled to a stop, dead center in the road.
“You aren’t going to suggest I get out and walk.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He tossed his sunglasses on the dash, then unfastened his seat belt.
The sudden jump in her heartbeat said she knew what he intended. She refused to listen to it. He wouldn’t. Not when there was so much at stake, not while he thought he was still a suspect—not in the middle of the road, for heaven’s sake. “There’s a blind corner just ahead. You’d better move this car, unless you want to get hit.”
“You may hit me,” he said, and seized her left arm. “In a moment.”
Her right hand flew out—not to slap, but to punch. He snagged it in midblow and struck back. Not with his hands, but with his mouth. On hers.
She bit him.
His breath sucked in, but he didn’t pull back. No, the bastard chuckled. He rubbed his bloody lip over hers, slowly. Gently. Then he licked her lower lip.
And she . . . didn’t move. Couldn’t move. As if he’d shot a bolt of some strange metal through her body, she was pinned and quivering, her entire being vibrating to a new, soundless music.
He let go of her hand to cradle her head, deepening the kiss. And once freed, she didn’t push him away. She touched him. His ear, and the hair that curled over it. His shoulder, firm and flawlessly male. His fingers stirred the hair at her nape, and God help her, but the music took on a familiar beat, the pounding rhythm of need. She made a small noise and chased his mouth with hers.
He answered with a masculine purr of approval. His hand settled over her breast, teasing the nipple. His mouth stopped coaxing and took.
She met his greed with her own. His shirt was thin, yet still in her way. She needed his body, needed it bare so she could touch and claim every plane and hollow. She knew him—no, she needed to know him, would know him, now, always, every part of him—
Lily heard herself moaning. The sound shocked her back into her right mind—or whatever was left of it. She jerked her head back.
He bent to her exposed throat, kissing, sucking.
“No—no, you can’t. We can’t—” The frantic sound of her voice frightened her. She pushed at him.
He lifted his head and looked at her out of eyes gone blind with desire, the pupils so large they nearly swallowed the irises. “No, of course . . . not here. I shouldn’t have . . . come here,
querida,
you need to be held. Come, I need this, too,” he said, and unfastened her seat belt.
His hand was shaking.
Like her. As if she’d been plunged into an icy pool, tiny shudders chased up her spine and shivered along her thighs. Her jaw tightened, and it was hard to get words out. “Don’t touch me. You can’t help. You did this. You did this to me.”
“I kissed you. The rest is not my choice, either. This console is damnably in the way,” he added, but it didn’t seem to be giving him much trouble.
Nor was she. She let him arrange her, her mind overturned by confusion . . . her body still craving his.
His arm around her shoulders urged her as close as the console would allow. His chest heaved with breath as ragged as hers. “I’m sorry,
nadia
. I was angry, but I’d no right to be. You didn’t know why you upset me. It’s hard for you. So much you don’t understand.”
She understood that this was wrong. She told herself that, but didn’t move. “You’re using some kind of spell. You must be, even though I can’t feel it.”
“I’m not. You and I . . . you’re right that this is no ordinary attraction. We are bound. Neither of us chose it, neither controls it.”
“No!” She forced herself to straighten, pulling away. “There’s always choice. Sometimes limited by—by circumstance . . .” Such as developing an incredible case of the hots for a man she had no business getting involved with. A man who lacked even a nodding acquaintance with fidelity. A man who wasn’t entirely human.
“We can’t always control our emotions,” she finished more quietly. “But we choose whether to act on them.”
“Why do I think I know what your choice will be?” He rubbed his neck, sighed. “Lily, it won’t work. No amount of common sense or willpower will cut the connection between us. You can’t turn your back on this as you might an infatuation.”
“Amazing. We agree on something. I am not infatuated with you. I’m not altogether sure I like you.”
“I’m aware of that. At the moment, I’m not too thrilled with you, either. You’re stubborn, infuriating, prejudiced—”
“I am not prejudiced!”
“Then you have no problem with my nature?”
“It’s your sexual habits I’m not crazy about.”
His crooked smile was less than happy. “You’ll be pleased to know that you’ve changed my habits. Permanently.”
“Sure, and you’ve got a bridge you’d like to sell me, too.” She looked straight ahead, tucked her hair behind her ears, and hoped she didn’t look as all-to-pieces as she felt. Dammit, she was still shaky. “Don’t you have a ceremony to attend?”
He just sat there, looking at her. She refused to look at him, but his gaze seemed to have weight. And heat. Her heartbeat wouldn’t behave.
Finally he put the car back in gear. “There’s a great deal you need to know, and no point in telling you any of it. Not when you’re determined to disbelieve me. When you’re ready to listen, let me know.”
For the rest of the drive, she was as silent as he.
CLANHOME
was a long, winding strip of land that bordered BLM land in places, and a wilderness preserve elsewhere. Maps indicated it was accessible by only two roads—this one, and a private road to the north that led to the tiny community of Rio Bravo. The stretch of Clanhome that met this road was fenced and gated.
Rule pulled to a stop at the closed gate. A young man in shorts—and nothing else—was waiting to open it for them. He looked fit and friendly, barefoot and freckled, a regular Jimmy Olsen of a werewolf. There was a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.
After opening the gate, he didn’t move aside for them to pass, but came up to the window. Rule put it down. “Sammy.”
“Hey, Rule. Benedict says for you to take your guest to the Rho’s house before you go to the Grounds.”
Rule flicked a glance at her. “You can tell him you gave me his message.”
The young man grimaced. “I said it wrong. It’s the Rho who wants to see her, not Benedict.” He peered into the car, obviously curious about Rule’s passenger.
Rule didn’t introduce her. His fingers drummed once on the steering wheel, then he nodded. The young man stepped back, and they drove through the gate.
“Apparently,” Rule said, “you’ll be meeting my father after all.”
“Good.”
“You’re speaking as the detective with a murder to solve, I assume. Not as the woman I’m involved with.”
She wanted to tell him they weren’t involved, but the words stuck in her throat. She’d all but inhaled him a few minutes ago. Whatever they were,
uninvolved
didn’t fit. So she said nothing.
Past the gate, the gravel road wound around the rocky shoulder of an aging mountain, then headed down into a long, shallow valley. Nestled in that valley was what amounted to a village. Two dogs—a terrier of some sort and a shaggy collie mix—raced along the shoulder with them as they neared the village.
She hadn’t expected dogs. It didn’t seem to fit with the wolf thing.
There was no clear line between wilderness and town. No tidy blocks or fences. The modest stucco, timber-frame, or adobe houses seemed to have been plopped down at random, with some on the main street, others peering out from the pines and oaks covering the slopes on each side. They passed a gas station, a small produce market, a café, a laundry, and a general store.
There were people, too. The road split to circle a grassy area a little larger than a football field where several dozen people were gathered. The location for the ceremony she wouldn’t see? Like the guard at the gate, the men she saw mostly wore shorts, period. The women—why hadn’t she expected to see women?—wore shorts, too, though they added shoes and a T-shirt or halter. A couple of them waved; several others simply stared as they drove past.
Farther up the street, a teenage girl sat on the porch steps of a small stucco home, drinking a canned soda. She wore a gauzy dress . . . and had one arm looped casually over the huge, silver-coated wolf panting cheerfully in the heat beside her.
The wolf turned his head to watch as the Mercedes went by.
The Rho’s home was set partway up the slope at the end of the street. It was a sprawling stucco home with a red tile roof—lovely, but hardly a mansion. Not what she expected of a man worth three hundred million. Rule pulled into the curving drive, and she saw the man standing at one corner of the house. He was middle-aged and as nearly naked as everyone else she’d seen.
The blade in his hand was entirely naked. All two or three feet of it. “Good God. What’s he, the palace guard?”
“Something like that.”
Rule pulled to a stop in front of the house. The guard watched them. He didn’t look nearly as friendly as the one at the gate had. “This doesn’t say much for your claim that everyone’s happy not having a vote.”
“You’re unacquainted with the situation.”
“You could fill me in.”
“I don’t know what the Rho wants you to know.”
“And you don’t make decisions like that without consulting him?”
“Not when I’m speaking to the police.” He opened his door.
She started to reach for him. She had no idea what she was going to say, and didn’t have the chance to learn. The door of the house flew open, and a young boy burst out. “Dad! Dad!”
Rule shot out of the car almost as precipitously. He was rounding the hood before Lily got her seat belt undone, his face filled with such a fierce joy that she felt embarrassed, as if she’d intruded.
She climbed out slowly as the two connected, the man grabbing the boy and lifting him off his feet to swing him in a dizzy circle, then settling him on one shoulder as easily as she might sling her purse on a shoulder. The boy had short, straight hair a shade darker than Rule’s, a softer chin, and no beard, but otherwise was a miniature of his father.
Though maybe the resemblance was exaggerated by their identical, beaming expressions.
“So what are you doing out here?” Rule demanded. “What about your lessons?”
“It’s lunch!” he cried, indignant. “Anyway, I finished the spelling, and I know all the states, and Nettie says we’ll do math after.” He grimaced. “I am not looking forward to math, you know.”
“I know. But you’re doing better with division all the time, and you’ve got multiplication dicked. What’s seven times seven?”
“Forty-nine! And you’re
not
supposed to say dicked.”
“I forgot. There’s someone I’d like you to meet,
ma animi.
”
“Yeah?” He looked away from his father’s face, ignoring the guard, and saw Lily. “It’s a girl.” He was surprised.
“A lady,” Rule corrected. “Lily, this is my son, Toby Asteglio. Toby, this is Lily Yu.”
“You?”
“It’s a Chinese name,” she said. “It sounds like the English pronoun, as if I’m always talking about someone else, doesn’t it? But in Chinese it can mean lots of things, depending on how it’s written.”
“Do you talk in Chinese?”
“Sometimes, when I’m with my grandmother.”
“Cool. My friend Manny, he’s teaching me Spanish. His folks talk in it all the time, and I can’t tell what they’re saying, but I know a little. I can count to twenty.
¿Como está usted?
”
“Muy bien, gracias,”
she replied gravely. “
¿Y usted?
”
“You talk Spanish, too! Hey, Dad!” He patted his father’s cheek. “She talks Spanish. Maybe she can teach me so’s I don’t forget, since I have to be here a while. Gammy says you’re nuts for dragging me clear across the country,” he added. “Or if you aren’t, then you’d better get your act together. I don’t think I was supposed to hear that part.”
“Probably not,” Rule said. “However, I’m working at getting my act together.”
“She didn’t mean it bad. She says that a lot. If I forget my homework, she says I’d better get my act together. But I’m glad you haven’t gotten it together, ’cause I get to be here awhile.”
A tall woman with a cloud of frizzy gray hair hanging nearly to her waist stepped out of the house. “Toby, you need to finish your lunch, or Henry will be convinced you’re coming down with something.”
“I’m not sick!”
“You know that, and I know that, but will Henry believe us?” The woman wore running shorts and an athletic bra. Her skin was coppery from heritage as well as sun, and her muscle tone was excellent, making it hard to guess her age. “Hello, Rule. Toby certainly knows the sound of your car. He shot out of the kitchen like we’d lit a fire under him.”
“It’s just sandwiches,” Toby informed his father. “But with Henry’s bread, so they’re good.” He addressed the next to Lily. “He makes it himself. Gammy just buys hers, but Henry makes it. He lets me help sometimes.” Back to Rule. “Are you going to have lunch with me?”
“Ms. Yu might, after speaking with your grandfather,” Rule said. “I can’t, not this time.”
Toby made a face. “Oh, yeah. I forgot. You can’t come in. But after the ritual . . . ?”
“I’ll come see you,” Rule said gently. “Work hard on your division, and you and I will go to the creek.” He swung the boy off his shoulder, kissed his forehead, then set him on the ground and swatted his backside lightly. “Go eat.”