Keri Arthur - Fireborn

After a moment, footsteps approached. “Where the hell are we?”

“Still at the Crown.” Jackson’s voice was grim. “Just in the room next to ours.”

“Did they drug you, too?”

“Yeah. It was in the wine, apparently.”

Bastards. “Did they also try to erase your thoughts?”

He laughed softly. “They certainly tried, but the mind of a Fae isn’t as easily influenced as a human’s, and mine less so than most.”

And a phoenix couldn’t be influenced at all. We were spirit, a totally different life-form from human, vampire, shifter, or were. I scrubbed the back of my hand across my eyes, wondering whether I had enough energy to go find my bag and grab some aspirin out of it.

“I’m guessing they put us into bed together?” I asked, wondering who’d undressed me. And why it even mattered.

“Yeah.” The bed dipped as he sat down next to me.

“Here, take this.”

I opened my eyes. He was holding out a glass of water and two white pills. Aspirin . “God, I think I love you.”

He laughed softly. “I’m a Fae. We don’t do love, just plain old lust.”

I downed the painkillers, swishing some of the water around to take away the lingering bitterness. “I know, but you’d be quite safe from me emotionally even if you did.”

“Good.” He plucked the glass free from my hand. “But I just wanted to make sure we both understand where we stand. Hate for either of us to want what they couldn’t have.”

“What I want is sex. But not,” I added hastily, as a lusty gleam appeared in his eyes, “right at this particular moment.”

He laughed and rose. I noted in amusement that he was more than half-ready for action. I resisted the temptation and dragged myself into a sitting position. “I don’t suppose you gleaned any information from them before you were knocked out?”

He shook his head as he dumped the glass back in the en suite. “Those two were clams. What about you?”

I grimaced. “Not really. The drug took effect before they began questioning Radcliffe.” I hesitated, remembering my brief conversation with him. “Is he married?”

Jackson plopped down next to me and stretched his long legs out beside mine. “Not that I know of. Why?”

“Because when I asked him, he said no, but his body language said yes.”

“Why would he lie about something like that?”

I shrugged. “Given he’s into the black market, maybe he doesn’t want anyone to know about her. Maybe he fears she could be used as leverage against him.”

“Possible.” His expression was contemplative as he began to run his fingers idly up and down my leg. My head might be locked in pain, but the rest of me seemed to be in fine working order. “Did either of the cops hear him say that?”

“Not that I know of.” I hesitated. “But Adam—the vampire—would have read his thoughts. He’d surely know.”

“Not necessarily.” His touch was slowly moving around to my inner thigh. Anticipation began to thrum through me. So much, I thought wryly, for the headache. “Despite what humans think, not all vampires are telepathic, and the ones who are usually need to be very specific in what they’re looking for. They haven’t got carte blanche access to the mind, especially when it comes to weres.”

“Yeah, but knowing Sam, he’d have someone on his team who was one of those few who did.” I paused. “So Radcliffe was a wererat?”

He glanced at me, his expression surprised. “You couldn’t tell?”

“I thought he was, but the senses of a phoenix aren’t that specific.”

“But they’re very prettily packaged.”

I smiled at the compliment. “So our next course of action is looking for the wife?”

His hand slipped between my legs and the caressing continuing, running up and down my inner thigh, sending shivers of delight racing through my body.

“Either that, or we attempt to find out who else Sherman Jones worked with. He’s our only other lead.”

“He’s missing.”

“Someone on the streets will know something. They always do.”

His fingers lightly brushed the junction of my legs, then moved away again. I resisted the urge to growl in frustration. “We do have one other option, although I daresay the cops have already checked it.”

“What’s that?” His voice was becoming more and more distracted. This time, his fingers didn’t brush. They slid through my slickness, caressing and teasing.

I took a somewhat shaky breath and somehow managed to say, “The waitress.”

“The waitress?”

“The one my boss used to chat with every morning.”

“Then she’s definitely an option.” He shifted, grabbed my hips, and tugged me down the bed. “However,” he added, as he slid his body over mine. “There’s only one woman I want to talk to right now.”

Except there wasn’t a lot of talking from that moment on, just a whole lot of loving, until an hour had passed and we were both replete and exhausted.

“Best cure for a hangover ever invented,” he said, his breathing a harsh rasp as he finally lay down beside me. “Unfortunately, we now have less than half an hour to be out of here.”

I glanced at the clock. It was nearly ten fifteen, which meant I was more than a little late for work—if I had a job left, that was. I shifted onto my side and propped my head up with my arm. “I need to go to the lab and report in.”

“I’ll drive you there, then walk across to the café and apply some Fae charm to the waitress.” He hesitated. “She got a name?”

“Sandy, I think. But there was also a Michelle he often talked to. One of them reported Sherman Jones lurking about, but I’m not sure which.”

“Good. As you said, the cops have probably gotten everything out of them, but it doesn’t hurt to double-check.”

I nodded, then swung my legs off the bed and headed for the shower. Unsurprisingly, he followed; exhaustion in a Fae was apparently a rather short-lived state. It meant my shower was rather longer than intended, and we barely checked out of the hotel in time.

We parted company just down the road from the Chase Research Institute and, as I headed inside, the awareness of being watched again rose. It seemed my official watcher was still very much on the case.

“Hey, Emberly,” Ian said, his brown eyes somber when they met mine. “Heard you had one hell of a weekend.”

“You could say that.” I picked up the pen and signed in. “I don’t suppose Abby has left a message for me?”

I hadn’t received anything on my phone, which was slightly odd, given everything that had happened.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, she has. Lady Harriet wants you upstairs ASAP.”

“Upstairs? As in, her office?”

He nodded gravely. “’Fraid so.”

“God, that cannot be good,” I muttered. “Wish me luck.”

“Luck,” he stated cheerfully, making me smile as I headed for the elevators.

Lady Harriet’s offices were on the top floor of the Chase building. I’d never actually been there before—when they’d employed me, I’d gotten as far as the personnel offices two floors down. Plebs were rarely invited any higher, so it was with some trepidation that I stepped out of the elevator and walked along the plushly carpeted corridor to the double doors that presumably led into her offices.

They swished open as I approached. Abby looked up from the landing-strip-sized desk she sat behind. “Emberly,” she said, her voice oddly distant. “Ms. Chase has been expecting you.”

“Yeah, sorry, but it’s been one hell of a weekend and I slept—”

“That is not important right now,” she interrupted. “Please go straight in.”

She pressed a button on the control panel to her right, and the doors directly in front of me opened. The room beyond was both huge and shadowed, and it suddenly felt like I was stepping into the den of an ogress. Unease stirred, and I had to force my feet forward. The floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the full length of the room should have flooded it with light, but the heavy curtains were drawn, making me wonder if Lady Harriet had a vampirelike phobia about sunlight. She wasn’t one, of course, because she was often out and about during the day, going to meetings and doing interviews, but the utter darkness was still odd.