Unleashed (5 page)

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Authors: Crystal Jordan

BOOK: Unleashed
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“Deus!”
Kienan heard Quill's claws scrabble against the wall, his other hand fisting tight in Kienan's hair. In retaliation, he let his fangs drag lightly over the other man's cock.
A feline scream ripped through the air, and Quill jetted come into Kienan's mouth.
 
Gea knocked on the back door of Tail, knowing there was always a staff member in the kitchen who would answer. It was her job to know when and where information could be found. The kitchen of the most notorious technobrothel in New Chicago was where prime gossip could be found. The newsvids would never get wind of anything as juicy as these people knew.
It helped that this was also the last place that her target had been seen alive, and that Delilah's sister Lorelei owned it. All roads led to Tail.
A wide smile creased the scarred face of Sienna, the retired jade who ran Tail's kitchen. “Good to see you, Gea.”
“You too.” She walked in and dropped a smacking kiss on the old woman's cheek. “Got any tidbits for me?”
Sienna laughed and handed her a pastry filled with rockfish. “This is the juiciest thing I've got for you tonight, but Lorelei and Dee are waiting for you in the office.”
“Mmm, thank you.” Gea's stomach rumbled and she realized she was famished. She hadn't eaten anything since before she'd been to Quill's, and she'd burned off a lot of energy since then. She took a bite, and the mellow flavor of the fish combined with spices exploded in her mouth. “You're the best, Sienna.” She spoke around the food. “I'm looking for a woman who was here a few months back—Felicia Tamryn. You know her?”
“I've met her once or twice, but I wouldn't say I
know
her.”
“The buzz on the street was that she left here in a hurry.” She stuffed the last bit of pastry in her mouth.
Sienna snorted. “Grifters sometimes need to make a quick exit.” She shrugged. “Lorelei would have been the last one to talk to her, so you might want to ask her about it.”
“I will. Thanks for the meal.” Gea felt a lot less shaky now that she'd eaten, and except for the occasional twinge, her leg seemed to be doing fine. All in all, it could have been a much worse night for her. Now, if she could get the intel she wanted, she'd be all set.
“Anytime.” The old woman waved her off, already back at work. “And, yes, I know. If anyone asks, you were never here asking too many questions about people who don't want you to find them.”
“You really are the best.” Gea skirted around the prep table that dominated the kitchen and took the staff hallway to Lorelei's office. The staff areas weren't gilded in the finery of the public areas, but they also granted privacy and quiet from the raucous customers.
The door to the office popped open before she reached it, so she swung it wide and stepped inside. Delilah sprawled across a red kleather chaise while Lorelei sat behind her polyglass and mercurite desk. She motioned to a wall of vidscreens behind her that showed angles of every room in Tail. “I saw you coming. Mooching for information in my kitchen again?”
“And food, naturally.”
Lorelei's green eyes—so like her sister's—twinkled with amusement. “What do you want to know about this time?”
“A few months ago, there was a couple in here, caused a small commotion.” Gea moved to the chaise, dropped her bag on the floor, and sat sideways next to Delilah, propping her feet up on the rolled arm of the couch. Her leg ached, but it felt better after she elevated it.
“What'd you do to your pants?” Delilah leaned in to look at the shredded cloth.
“There was this guy earlier—during my constitutional stroll—who just couldn't get enough of me, Dee. He wanted to take home a souvenir, so I let him have a bit of my pants.” Gea grinned as sweetly as she could, which wasn't very. “I'm nice that way.”
“I bet that's exactly what he thought, too.” Delilah settled back into her seat with a chuckle.
Gea glanced at Lorelei, but one of the vidscreens behind the desk caught her attention. A woman arched in ecstasy, her mouth opened in a silent scream, riding out her orgasm on top of a polyglass stand with a phallus built into it that thrust into her body.
“You got the updated version of the game,” she noted.
“Space Race 6000. Just installed it yesterday. My jades love it.” Lorelei's gaze swept the screens, checking her establishment.
The game always amazed and appalled Gea. It wasn't her style at all—she liked her pleasure a little more private. Two contestants stood on motion-sensing pads with controllers attached to each hand. A massive vidscreen on the wall was split in half, with each side trying to blow up the other's animated spaceships. It was innocent enough, until one looked at those polyglass stands beside each player. A male and female jade were mounted on the stands, and each time a contestant destroyed a ship on the screen, the stand vibrated and thrust the phallus into their jade's body.
Gea shook her head and refocused on Lorelei. Time to get the info she needed and get on with her night. “The woman in this couple was—”
“Tam.” Lorelei pushed her coppery hair back. “Yes, she was here and Breck found her. She demanded I make him leave, he made a few threats, and Pierce set him straight. There were a few
I hate you's
thrown in with a few
I love you's,
and they spent the night in one of the Peep Show rooms. That's the last time I saw either of them.”
Delilah slanted Gea a glance that made her look every bit the lynx-shifter she was. A cat, ready to pounce. “So, Breck hired you to find her? Is that what you wanted to see me about? You want the buzz on your client?”
“No. You, I'll get to in a moment.” Gea stayed focused on the elder Chase sibling. “You have no idea where she went after she left here?”
“I don't. Breck asked the same questions the next day, when he woke up alone. I can tell you what I told him—she snuck out the staff door you came in tonight just before dawn. I only know that because my vidmonitors picked up her escape. No one here saw her leave.”
Which was her intention. Sneaking out was pointless if you left a bunch of witnesses behind. A dead end, though. Unlike in the Downtown District where Gea lived or the posh Lakeshore District Delilah and her husband called home, the Vermilion didn't have vidmonitors on every street. There'd be no surveillance to help Gea track her target. She managed to repress a growl. Barely.
She turned her attention to Delilah. “A source of mine said Tam was in here that night to try and fence something to a bear-shifter named Meier. He's from—”
“Germany.” Delilah shuddered. “Yeah, I know him. Not one of my favorite people to work with. He's a mean bastard, but he's got connections to some very selective Eurasian buyers with deep pockets.”
His mean streak might explain why Tam had chosen such a public place for a meeting. Also a place with a lot of exits one could use, if the need arose. “I wonder if she ever managed to meet with him.”
It was more a rhetorical statement than anything else, but Lorelei answered her anyway. “She wasn't here long before Breck found her, and she hasn't been back since. If she met with Meier, it wasn't at Tail.”
Gea nodded. “Thanks so much. Your standard fee for information?”
“As well as the understanding that you were never here, and we never spoke.” Lorelei was very selective about whom she gave intel to, and what she was willing to talk about, so Gea was grateful when she could pry information out of the madam. Which wasn't often. More than likely, she'd only offered up the goods because Breck had already done the asking, and what had happened occurred in the public areas where other people could report on what transpired. Gea was just grateful that, unlike other sources, Lorelei hadn't felt the need to include details about what the couple had done in the Peep Show.
A knock sounded on the door and Gea slid to her feet. “Is there a private exit from here?”
Delilah flapped a hand. “It's just Hunter.”
A tall man with dark hair stuck his head in the door. His eyes lit when they fell on his wife. “Hello, kitten.”
“Hey, birdie.” Delilah rose and moved to his side. “Finish your business?”
“Yeah.” He nodded to his sister-in-law and to Gea, wrapping an arm around his wife's waist. “I came to say hello to Lorelei and to see if you'd like an escort home.”
“How could I resist?”
His eyebrows arched. “
Why
would you resist? Don't I always make it fun for you, kitten?”
“You two can go now.” Lorelei shooed them out. “Pierce will be back soon, and I want him to myself.” She shot a glance at Gea. “You too.”
“I'm gone.” Gea grinned, grabbed her knapsack, and sped out the door first. All the lovebirds could take care of themselves. She was going home and she was not stopping by her mate's penthouse on the way. Absolutely not.
With that in mind, she spun resolutely for the kitchens, winding through the staff hallways she'd become familiar with over the years. She turned a corner and what she saw made the breath freeze in her lungs. It felt as if she'd been kicked in the stomach. She covered her mouth as horror punched through her.
There was another man sucking off her mate.
Deus.
Deus.
Ecstasy molded his face and she knew from experience he'd just come, spurted into the other man's mouth. She hated that someone else had put that look on his face. She'd known he had other lovers. Probably many of them. A man like him could twitch his finger and have women—and men—fighting for him. He was handsome, young, rich, sexy without being a twisted pervert. Of course he slept with other people. Their arrangement wasn't exclusive, and that was her choice, wasn't it? She had no one to blame but herself.
It was only her who sensed the mating instinct. Only her who couldn't bring herself to let anyone else touch her. She'd tried. Deus, she'd tried, but she couldn't go through with it.
She swallowed the bile that burned her throat, spinning away from the scene that sent pain and jealousy knifing straight into her soul.
“Gea.”
She closed her eyes, cursed under her breath, and then faced them. Her eyebrow arched, and she tucked away all emotions to offer up a lopsided smile. “Sorry for the interruption, gentlemen.”
“Don't worry about it.” The man who'd been sucking Quill had risen to his feet and faced her. She focused on him rather than her mate. Anything not to think about what she'd just witnessed. It was one thing to assume he slept with other people, it was another to
know
it, to see it with her own two eyes.
“I didn't know you'd be here.” Something close to guilt flickered across Quill's face, but he covered it with a teasing grin. “I might have asked you to join us.”
“I was just passing through. Excuse me.”
“Your name is . . . Gea?” the other man asked, frowning. His hair was black and edged in silver at the temples, his eyes were a deep gray. He was tall, though not as tall as Quill, but broader. He had the kind of leashed strength that said his body was a weapon he knew how to wield. Deadly. There were shadows in his eyes that spoke of seeing too much and keeping too many secrets. This was not a man to cross. Ever.
Wariness slid through her, and she moved to skirt around them. “Yeah, I'm Gea. I'm on my way to the kitchens, so don't mind me.”
The sooner she got out of here, the better. What she'd seen would be seared into her memory forever, but that didn't mean she wanted to stick around like some masochist fool. She jolted when the silver-eyed man's hand closed around her arm and pulled her to a stop.
That inner wrenching that she always felt whenever Quill was near hit again, only in double. Mate. Both of them. Mate.
Deus, no.
No.
Awareness flared to life in that silver gaze, and panic bolted through her. She blurted out, “What kind of shifter are you?”
Please, please, don't let it be a species that mated for life. Please.
“Gray wolf.”
Fuck. He knew. He knew what they were, what she was to him. Her stomach turned and she had to swallow hard. “Oh.”
“I'm Kienan.” The pad of his thumb rubbed over the inside of her wrist, and tingles raced down her skin. She fought a shudder as emotions collided with each other. His gaze searched her face, inclining his head toward the door Quill stood beside. “This is my room. Come inside and have a drink with us.”
“Yes,” Quill said, and what could she do? If she ripped herself away from Kienan and ran the way her mind told her to, Quill would come after her, want to know what was wrong. He'd ask questions she couldn't answer.
“I'm tired. I should go home.” She tugged away from Kienan's grip, but his fingers tightened just enough to let her know she wouldn't escape so easily.

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