Tempting the Enemy (21 page)

“You should eat,” he said, not even looking up as he adjusted the fold of the duvet beneath the pillows. “We won’t be here much longer.”

Jade’s eyes narrowed. That was it? No more inquisition? No more judgment?

“Food is still hot. I assumed you’re not into salad, but if you are, we can pick something up. We’re expected at sundown, so you have maybe an hour.”

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“You’re going to ignore what just happened?”

“Which part?” he asked silkily, his shoulders rolling back as he deigned to meet her glare. “The part where you set yourself on fire or the part where you hid in the bathroom?”

Why, the arrogant, overbearing— “I was thinking the part where you took one look at me using my abilities and had to force yourself not to be sick.”

Finally, he scowled. “I didn’t—”

Jade raised her chin, daring him to lie. “Empath, remember? And that’s not a gift I need moonlight for.”

“It wasn’t
you
,” he answered, impatience cutting his voice into jagged edges. “It was the fucking jewels.”

She pulled in a breath to continue yelling at him, only to draw up short, all her hard-earned anger stumbling to a stop.

“I didn’t take you for the greedy kind, Jade.”

“I’m not.”

He snorted, his derision clear. “The cool million or so in that pack say otherwise.”

“Only because you have no idea what you’re talking about.” More than she should have said, but she couldn’t quite stop herself. “Just because you knew one of us once doesn’t mean you know everything about my people.”

“
I’m
your people.” He took a step forward, no doubt attempting to intimidate.

“So are they!” she snapped, before realizing what she’d admitted. Her hand shaking, she rubbed tiredly at her forehead. Getting angry with him just got her mired further. “Look, you don’t understand, all right? You don’t know and I can’t tell you. These are things the Order keeps sacred and secret.”

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“Then maybe when they send their mercenaries out to kill children, covered head to toe in those goddamned things, they should make sure they do the job right, don’t you think? Witnesses have a way of remembering.”

“What?”

He stared at her, gaze hard, hands fisted. “When she came that night, she was wearing them. Jewels. Gold.

Like fucking armor. So much of it she clanked when she hit the goddamned ground. So don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“But…that makes no sense.”

He speared her with a stare. “Explain.”

She shouldn’t. She knew she shouldn’t. But something was very wrong with his story. Something she needed to understand. Why, since she had no intention of staying, she couldn’t say, but she felt it. And with the realization that she was going to confide in him, she took one step closer to an edge in her mind she wasn’t ready to look beyond.

“The Order would never send a novice scarlet to take on a pack of Wolves.”

“We were children, not a pack.”

“And people fight hardest to protect their children.”

Something he should know better than anyone else.

“Scarlets are too valuable to risk that way. They would never have sent her if she needed all of that.”

“Needed what?”

“The
stones
, Rysen.” She closed her eyes, gathering her courage. God help them both if one of the Rouges were listening. “They’re for the
weak
.”

His head reared back. “You’re not weak.”

A surprised laugh escaped her at his insulted expression. Insulted for
her
. He was wrong, but even in 182

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the midst of the argument, she was…touched. “For those who can’t focus their abilities on their own well enough.

We use the stones to magnify our powers. If the woman who came to your home was covered in them, she’d be of no use to the Order. She’d be unreliable and ineffective.

They would never have allowed her such an assignment.”

If she didn’t know better, Jade would have thought he’d gone ashen.

“Vayere wasn’t weak either. She had no trouble at all focusing her skills, not once. I saw her carve a rose in a tree for the girls using just her voice. She never had any of that shit on when she visited us before.” He sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at her. “If what you’re saying is true, she could have used those jewels to flatten the compound into dust and no one would have known we were ever there.”

His pain, self-recrimination, horror, ebbed around her, but he didn’t move. He sat, still as stone, staring forward without seeing. A pull, deep in her heart, strong as a tide, had her crossing to sit next to him. As the night before, she wasn’t sure how to help. How to comfort.

Comfort was as alien in the enclave as forgiveness. Then she remembered what he’d said the night before. Was this what he meant? That he didn’t want her gifts to take his hurts. He just wanted…her?

Unsure, she slid her hand beneath his arm, curling it over his chest, doing the same with her other arm around his back. When he didn’t stop her, she laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes and forced herself to relax against him. She didn’t know how long they stayed that way before he lowered his head against hers, his hand curving around her biceps to press her closer.

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“She knew I would have to kill her,” he rumbled.

“She knew, but she gave us a chance to survive anyway.”

Jade held on, her fingers knotting in the smooth fabric of his shirt. His emotions buffeted her on all sides, almost battering her, but she couldn’t let go. He’d never forgive her if she let go, she knew it in her soul.

“Why? Why not warn us, give us a chance to leave?

We would have gone. No one had to die that night.”

“Someone would have,” she answered, pieces falling into place in her mind. “She must have taken the assignment for a reason, maybe to protect as many of you as she could. Someone else would have been assigned, someone who would have killed you all. She gave her vow to fulfill it. I told you, our word means more than our lives. If she hadn’t done what she promised, the Tribunal would have judged her.” And her entire family. “Believe me, you showed more mercy than they would have.”

He shook his head, moved to pull away from her.

“Dead is dead.”

“Not to us.” She clung tighter, lifting her face to whisper to him. “There are ways to punish us beyond our deaths. But that’s not what matters. She made her choice, knowing the cost. You did nothing wrong.”

“She was my
friend
. And I ripped out her fucking throat.”

“She killed your mother. Killed
children
. What were you supposed to do? Ask questions first?” If it had been her, she’d have incinerated the woman where she stood.

“Why else bring the jewels? She was counting on you to do what had to be done to save the others.”

“I did it,” he answered, his voice hoarse and bitter. “I killed her, stole every bit of gold and gems I found on her 184

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and left. To protect them, I’ve done what no one else was willing to do. Over and over again.”

“Then you’ve honored your friendship.”

“You don’t understand. I do it as a
punishment
.”

“No, Pale.” She cupped his jaw, the silk of his beard sliding through her fingers as she made him look her in the eye. “You lead because that’s what you are.
Who
you are. Alphas are forged in blood, even I know that. Blood always has regrets.”

He fought her, his jaw working beneath her fingertips, so she did what instincts railed at her to do. She kissed him.

He went still, his mouth hard and unyielding, but she refused to let that stop her. She nipped at his full bottom lip, licked, gripping the back of his neck when he pulled back. She licked again, along the seam. A smile pulled at the corners of her own mouth when he growled, lips definitely softer.

Both hands in his hair now, she held him where she wanted as she teased, as just the tip of her tongue flicked over him. She planted her foot on the ground, pushed her body up to standing and moved so that she stood between his open knees, never breaking off her assault. His hands came with her, clamped onto her hips almost hard enough to bruise. Fingers gripped her backside, the heavy points of his claws making themselves known. Heat exploded in her center. Electricity danced straight to the heart of her and made her jump in response. He swallowed her gasp, yanked her against him and rolled her onto the bed beneath him so he could kiss her as thoroughly as he liked. As she liked.

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“I think I’ve just figured out how to win arguments with you,” she whispered when he gave her a second to breathe again, her voice rumbling just as much as his could. All around them both, his color twined, pleased. If she had one, she had a feeling it would be wrapped around him just as tightly, just as content.

“I concede nothing but the fact that you’ve learned how to redirect me.” His hand pulled the strap of her undershirt down, baring her to a gaze so hungry she could feel it on her skin. “And that you have the most incredible breasts ever created.”

Tempting as it was to let him have his way, shushing their discussion as if it didn’t matter, she couldn’t let him do it. She cupped his jaw again, holding him in place until he looked at her. “Trust me, at least in this. She knew what she sacrificed and what she was taking from you. It was her choice, not yours.”

She thought he’d let her go, get up and walk out of the room. Thought he’d at the very least brush her words away as meaningless. After a few motionless seconds, he settled over her, laid his cheek against her heart and nodded, his color emanating his warmth and acceptance.

“I trust you with all that I am, Jade. For always.”

In the quiet intimacy there, her hand sliding through his hair, his breath warming her naked skin, something in her heart unknotted and began to float free. Something pure, animal in its rightness. She stared up at the ceiling, tears filling her eyes at the emotion she almost didn’t recognize. Was afraid to recognize.

It’s small
, she told herself, continuing to stroke his hair. A flicker she could easily ignore until it went away.

But it warmed her. And it was growing. Growing dangerously fast.

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Oh, God, don’t let me start to love him…

The tears spilled into her hair, not because she thought God wasn’t listening.

Because she knew it was already too late.

Chapter Thirteen

Pale drove the car, dusk well past them but his sense of unease was only getting stronger. He’d had to drag himself from Jade, wanting nothing more than to climb between those sheets and hold her for another night. But time—and this killer—were moving whether he was ready or not. Another body dump had been found at dawn.

Once he told her, her efficiency at redressing and slinging her pack over her shoulder had almost amused him. The longest part had been forcing her hair back into the black bowl. She’d scowled in the mirror because he’d managed to muss her beyond easy repair. Small strays escaped the rigid braids everywhere, like fractures in her perfect façade. They gave him hope.

Her face when he asked if she’d be willing to look at the remains in the morgue hadn’t.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said again, glancing at her in the seat next to him. God knew he didn’t want to see her go through what she had in the woods again.

“I don’t see any other options. The sites were useless.

The last Wolf victim had nothing to divulge. The boy could barely speak. You know as well as I do, this is the only thing left.”

“Will it hurt you?” He didn’t believe reliving anyone’s emotions could be painless, no matter what she said. And she’d definitely been holding something back in the woods.

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She shook her head. Not meeting his gaze, he noticed with a deepening frown. “Human signatures aren’t nearly as strong as a shifter’s or a Sibile’s. When I know what to expect, I can shield myself. Stay separate from their memories and watch without feeling it myself. I’ll be fine.”

“You knew what to expect on the mountain,” he reminded her, pulling into the empty back parking lot to the county building. The day shift had ended, leaving skeleton crews to carry the load at night, when the public had no access. Probably for the best, considering the fewer people who saw her, the fewer people might remember her.

“And I
didn’t
get hurt on the mountain, did I?”

He parked, pulling up the brake with more force than strictly necessary. He wanted to argue with her. Hell, he wanted to strap her in and drive as far from Moonridge as he could get. Neither one would do him any good. “You should brace yourself,” he added in a soft voice that wouldn’t carry through the windows of the car. “The assistant coroner, Mitch Kroft, is a Wolf. I would rather have come while he was off shift, but he’s their night guy.

No way around him.”

She frowned, finally looking his way again. “Is he mated?”

Did she know mated males were no threat to her?

“He wishes. He’s a white Wolf from Colorado. Nothing wrong with that normally, but throw in that he cuts up people every day and that’s pretty fuckin’ creepy. Like some kind of albino cannibal. The females here have about as much interest in him as they do the mange.” He reached for his door handle, opening it and hoping to God Dee Tenorio

189

the bad feeling in the pit of his gut didn’t mean shit. “Stay close. Kroft can be a little…weird.”

Edgy or not, his passing judgment seemed to amuse her as she climbed out of the car. “Says the oh-so-normal beast-man who stalks the night?”

His harrumph lacked bite, especially since he was hurrying to get out and catch up with her. Why didn’t this woman have the slightest care for her own safety?

“Exactly. Kroft doesn’t have my good manners.”

At least she waited for him to close the door and hit the auto lock before smiling cheekily over the top of the car. “Meaning he’ll skip the niceties of asking my name before he rubs against my leg and bites me?”