HIS WOLF TOLD ME EVERYTHING

Chapter 17: Nice Ankles, Terrible Liar

Edena had talked a senator's son out of a drunk-driving story, a celebrity chef out of a racism scandal, and a cabinet minister's wife out of a divorce announcement on live television.

She had never been caught with her hand on a billionaire's door.

She turned around slowly, keeping her phone flat against her thigh, screen dark.

Hollis stood a few feet away, sleeves rolled to the elbow, call apparently over. He was looking at the amber light on the keypad. Then at her hand, still raised toward it. Then at her face.

"Fiendh," Edena said.

His eyebrows went up a fraction.

"She needed air." It was out of her mouth before she'd fully decided on it, which was always a bad sign with lies. "She's been cooped up all day in an office full of spreadsheets, and then you made her watch you murder an egg, and she got restless. I opened it so she could breathe. Wolves need air."

"There's air conditioning."

"Wolves need *real* air."

"You were going to lock it."

"I was *locking* it. Because I'm considerate."

He said nothing. He just looked at her, the way he'd looked at the Dubai numbers, line by line, looking for the one that didn't add up.

Inside her chest, Edena felt Fiendh stir. Felt that hot little ripple of intent. Felt her wolf lean, very deliberately, toward Hollis.

*Don't,* Edena thought. *Don't you dare.*

Too late.

Hollis's face did something complicated. His mouth twitched. His eyes dropped, briefly, to the floor, and then came back up to her face with an expression she'd never seen on him before, something dangerously close to amusement.

"What," Edena said. "What did she say?"

"She says," Hollis replied, "that you're a terrible liar."

Edena's face went hot.

"And," he went on gravely, "that you have nice ankles."

*They're very nice ankles,* Fiendh said, utterly unrepentant. *I've been meaning to tell him. Someone had to.*

"She's not wrong," Hollis added, "about the first part."

"And the second part?"

He didn't answer that. He reached past her, very close, close enough that she smelled cedar and lemon and the faint ghost of a burnt egg, and pressed his thumb to the keypad.

The light went green. Locked.

Then he looked down at her, from very near, and his voice was quiet.

"Next time your wolf needs air," he said, "you tell me. And I'll open it myself."

He stepped back.

He didn't ask again. That was the frightening thing. Hollis Rourke, who had looked at her like a threat assessment since the moment they met, let it go, just like that, and walked to the bar and started putting the Dubai papers back into a folder as if nothing had happened.

*Oh,* Zikal whispered to Edena, and his voice was soft and a little stunned. *Oh, he's choosing to believe you. He never chooses that. He checks everything. He once had a man followed because he said "to be honest" too many times in one meeting.*

Edena slipped her phone into her bag and didn't look at the bar.

She didn't look at the row of wall sockets, neat and white and identical, behind it.

Guilt arrived late, the way it always did, like a guest who'd missed the train and turned up anyway, dripping, at the worst possible moment. He'd locked the door himself. He'd made it his idea. If anything came through that door tonight, he would never know she'd been the one who opened it.

*You could tell him,* Fiendh offered. *Right now. Just say, "Funny story, I left your door open for a criminal." He might laugh.*

*He won't laugh.*

*He laughed at the egg.*

*He did not laugh at the egg. I laughed at the egg.*

*Well,* Fiendh said, *somebody should laugh at something. This is the gloomiest kitchen I've ever been in, and I lived inside you for years.*

---

He made coffee, which he could do, it turned out, as long as a machine the size of a small car did most of the work. They took it out onto the terrace.

Up close, the pool was even more ridiculous. Long and narrow, lit from underneath so the water glowed a clear electric blue, the far edge disappearing into nothing so the water seemed to pour straight off the side of the building into the city. The night wind came up off the harbor, cool and salty. Somewhere below, a siren wailed, faint as a seagull.

Hollis set his coffee on a low table and, without a word, sat on the edge of the pool, rolled his trousers to the knee, and put his feet in the water.

Edena stared at him.

"What?" he said.

"You're a billionaire."

"Billionaires have feet."

"You're a billionaire paddling."

"It's my pool." He nodded at the space beside him. "Sit."

She sat. Cross-legged, on the warm stone, a careful arm's length from the edge.

Hollis glanced at the gap between her knees and the water. Then at her face.

"You're not putting your feet in."

"I'm fine."

"It's heated."

"I'm fine *here*."

He didn't push. He just looked at the water for a while, kicking his feet slowly, the blue light rippling up over his face. Then, quietly: "You've been sitting with your back to that pool all night."

Edena's heart stopped.

"Every time you walked past the glass, you looked away from it. You walked the long way round the table so you wouldn't have to see it." He was still watching the water. "It's not just the pool, is it? I bet you take showers, never baths. I bet you've never been swimming in your life."

*He notices everything,* Fiendh whispered, half thrilled and half terrified. *Cage, he notices EVERYTHING. It's like dating a security camera.*

*We're not dating.*

*Tell that to your ankles.*

She didn't answer.

"Edena."

He'd said her name. He didn't do that often. It landed like a hand on her back.

"Something happened to you," he said. "In water."

The city glittered. The siren faded. The pool lapped softly at the stone, and somewhere very deep in Edena's memory, black water closed over her head and a boy's arm slid through her fingers.

"Yes," she said. Just that.

She waited for the next question. *What? When? Where?*

It didn't come.

Hollis took his feet out of the pool, swung round, and sat cross-legged on the warm stone facing her, so close their knees nearly touched. Water dripped from his ankles onto the tiles.

"You don't have to tell me," he said.

She looked at him. At the wet trouser hems. At his grey eyes, steady and unguarded in the blue light, for once not calculating anything at all.

"Why not?" she whispered. "You make everyone tell you everything."

"I know." His voice was rough. "I'm trying something new."

*Oh,* Zikal breathed. *Oh, no, he's going to—*

*Shut up,* Fiendh hissed. *Shut UP, it's happening, don't you DARE ruin it—*

He leaned in. Slowly. Giving her every chance to move away.

She didn't move away.

His hand came up and touched her jaw, light as a question, his thumb at the corner of her mouth. She could feel the warmth of his breath. She closed her eyes.

And then, from deep inside the penthouse, a sound.

*Ding-dong.*

The doorbell. Except the penthouse didn't have a doorbell, because the penthouse had a private elevator, and a private elevator didn't need a doorbell, which meant it was the intercom chime from the elevator lobby, and someone was standing in it, pressing the button over and over again.

*Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong.*

Hollis froze, his hand still on her face.

Then, muffled by the glass but unmistakable, a voice, singing loudly and very badly:

"*Hollllll! Open uuuup!*"

Hollis closed his eyes. "No."

*Ding-dong. Ding-dong.*

"*I know you're in there! I can see your stupid lights from the street!*"

Hollis dropped his hand from her face and stood, dripping, and walked inside to the intercom panel by the elevator, and pressed the button.

The little screen lit up.

Rory Rourke filled the frame, grinning, his golden hair wild, his collar open, a bottle of champagne in one hand, swaying very slightly in the walnut-lined elevator like a man on a boat.

"Hol!" he crowed into the camera, so loudly the speaker crackled. "I need a bed and a brother. Not necessarily in that order."