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965 Words
Though a tiny part of her was glad for the distraction. It kept her from thinking too much about the ticking clock of her assignment.
Perhaps she’d gone too far, though. If he truly thought he’d lost her, he’d be on the phone with Sommerley in a heartbeat, calling in reinforcements. She had no doubt she could escape him again, but a city full of Ikati, all intent on finding her, was another situation entirely. The thought gave her the chills.
She pressed on to the hotel at a quicker pace, tossing her empty gelato container in a sidewalk trash can as she went.
Nothing. He found nothing of her, not even a trace of her scent. Not at the Barberini Fontana di Trevi station, not at the baroque masterpiece fountain of Triton plashing in the plaza above, not along the elegant and bustling Via Veneto, not in the shopping districts or the labyrinth of tiny streets built in the Middle Ages of the Piazza Navona.
She was gone. Vanished.
And she didn’t even have the Gift of Vapor to explain it, though she was collared and wouldn’t have been able to turn anyway. He flew high over the city, district after district passing by below in blurs of painted color, his fury with himself increasing with each passing second.
A known criminal. A threat to the tribe. A pawn of the enemy. How could he have let her escape?
When the light showed faintly green along the eastern horizon, he finally gave up. He flew back to the Colosseum and resumed his human shape, retrieved his clothes and crescent knives, dressed, then took a taxi back to the Hotel de Russie, all the while trying to figure exactly what he would say to Leander and the Sommerley Assembly.
So sorry, but I’ve lost the one person who could destroy us all. Oops?
Somehow he didn’t think that would be sufficient.
At the hotel he brushed past the bowing doorman and took the elevator to the top floor. Once outside the door to the Nijinsky suite, he didn’t even bother with the key. He just Passed through it, clothes and all, and came to an abrupt stop inside the marble foyer.
A softly breathing bump was burrowed into the king-size bed.
Someone was sleeping in the bed.
Just as the thought flashed over him and he reached for his knives, he smelled her, warm sugar and woman, and froze in disbelief. She came back.
She came back.
It kept repeating in his head like a broken record, anchoring him to the floor with the sheer impossibility of it. Then another, even more confounding thought: Why?
Freedom was hers. She’d—inconceivably—outwitted him, she had the resources to orchestrate her escape to any far corner of the earth, but she came back. The relief that surged through him was cool and prickling, as palpable as rain. It was followed by a gripping desire to know exactly what made this dangerous, maddening, lovely woman tick.
Without making a sound, without turning on any lights, Xander crossed the elegantly furnished living room and went into the master suite to stand beside the bed. He stared down at her sleeping face for several minutes, just watching her. Her hands were folded beneath her cheek as if in prayer; her lashes made a silken black curve over her cheeks. Her hair spilled dark chocolate and mink over the pillows; those full lips, ever red even without lipstick, were soft and slightly parted. She looked beautiful and innocent and totally at peace.
He would be well within his rights to kill her now and not wait the two weeks.
No, he thought immediately. No. That body, that face, those plush ruby lips...no.
Then he cursed his own stupidity and wondered what the hell was wrong with him. She was a deserter! She was a traitor! She was...beautiful. Mysterious. Strong.
He closed his eyes, stretched his neck back, and hissed a long, quiet breath through clenched teeth. Then he retreated to the safety of a leather armchair, set diagonally across from the bed in a corner of the room, removed his knives from their sheaths at the small of his back, and settled back with one gripped in each hand, to wait.
When Morgan opened her eyes in the morning, Xander was standing at the edge of the bed, staring down at her with searing, molten eyes. Clutched in his hands was a pair of wicked-looking knives.
She sat up so abruptly the goose-down pillows slid off the bed. Even as she looked around wildly for something to stab him with—the pen on the night table, yes!—he was backing away, lowering his hands to his sides.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He seemed to mean it because he retreated as far as the bedroom door before he put his hands behind his back and sheathed the knives at his waist. Then he stood there looking at her silently with his hands loose at his sides.
“Excellent plan,” she said, heart thundering, “because standing over a sleeping person while holding knives is very nonscary.”
No response. The way he looked at her, searching and burningly intent, brought the blood to her cheeks. She pulled the sheets up to her chin and stared defiantly back.
“You came back.” His voice was different than yesterday. Just as grave, but softer somehow.
“I never left,” she answered, cross. “I just...I just...”
He c****d his head in a sharp, birdlike movement that brought to mind a raptor she’d once seen hunting a white rabbit in the New Forest. It hadn’t ended well.
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