“I’m sorry.” Heat flooded back, this time only to my cheeks.
“Why on earth are you sorry?”
“That was so inappropriate.”
He laughed. It was an exuberant, booming, honest laugh. He put an arm around me, and I flinched before realizing there was no sexual overtone in the gesture.
“If you hadn’t done it, I would have. Just being in the same room with you makes me dizzy.”
“Me too.” Though dizzy should have been substituted with horny as sin, his phrasing seemed more polite.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“I hope not.”
“This is how it’s meant to be with us. Is there any better evidence that we’re supposed to be together?”
“I don’t know if an irresistible urge to shred your clothing and molest you is really evidence that we’re soul mates.” I managed a smile. I still wasn’t so certain we were destined to be together, but I couldn’t deny there was something remarkable about our physical connection.
“I hope this hasn’t put you off having dinner with me.”
“No.” I bit my lip in contemplation. “But if you don’t mind, I’d really like to eat out.” I faced the door so as to not look at the bed.
“Don’t trust me?”
“I don’t trust me.” That was the God’s honest truth. “I think it’ll be a lot safer with a table between us.”
I got a mental flash of him pushing me down on a large dinner table and ripping my shirt apart with his bare hands. I turned my face away.
“If you think that’ll help.” I knew from the chuckle in his voice he’d been thinking the exact same thing.
Chapter Sixteen
The elevator ride down was silent and tense. I was wedged between Lucas and Desmond, and it created a bizarre flavor combination in my mouth. On Desmond’s right was the blond werewolf who, at only an inch or so taller than me, looked short compared to the other two who were each over six feet. With all the oddness of meeting with Lucas, I’d forgotten his name, but he reintroduced himself as Dominick. He had the carefree smile and glinting eyes of a troublemaker. I liked him instantly.
Desmond had returned to being surly and stared at the elevator doors with a steadfast scowl. From this angle I could see his hair was longer in the front than in the back, and he constantly pushed it out of his eyes. Against my better judgment, I decided the way his eyes squinted in frustration was actually rather attractive. What the hell was wrong with me?
As I contemplated Desmond’s profile, Lucas took my hand in his. I didn’t shake free in spite of the fact that I normally loathed any kind of public display of affection.
It felt odd for me to allow it since we weren’t really a couple. But I couldn’t deny I liked the way my hand felt when it was wrapped inside his large, warm palm.
We exited, not in the lobby but one of the basement levels. The parking garage was lit by scattered fluorescent bulbs, giving it a cold, blue hue in sharp contrast to the warm light of the hotel. The shadows were abundant, providing plenty of ideal locations for people and things to hide themselves. I found myself wishing I’d gone home to get my gun after meeting the Tribunal. Weapons of any kind were forbidden inside the council headquarters. I thought it was unnecessary to ban them considering the vampires themselves basically were weapons.
A familiar black town car was waiting for us. This time Dominick held a door open for me to enter on my own, rather than me being forced into the back. I sat far enough from Lucas for another person to fit between us, looking out the tinted window as we drove into the light-dappled night.
There was a feeling of unease in my gut that had nothing to do with my wolf or what had happened between Lucas and me upstairs. I kept seeing Sig’s face and hearing him say, we would very much like him alive.
I’d like to go on a Dominican cruise and get a tan. I’d like to not wrestle with a monster who threatened to burst out of my skin every full moon. Both of those things seemed about as likely to happen as my capturing Alexandre Peyton alive.
It also brought back the nagging question, what was Peyton doing here in the first place? His vendetta against me was secondary to whatever brought him to New York. Keaty and I had established that last night during our post mortem.
Peyton wouldn’t have crawled out from whatever rock he’d been hiding under unless he had a damn good reason. He was old and smart, and you don’t get to that age without a strong survival instinct. For him to emerge as a known rogue in the city where three of the most powerful vampires in the Eastern U.S. ruled, though? It was more than just bold, it was a declaration of war.
But I still didn’t know why that war was starting. I also wanted to know how high Kill Secret McQueen was on his to-do list.
Lucas, ever the gentleman, allowed me to stew on this as we drove, until he placed his hand on my thigh. “Secret?”
I turned my unfocused gaze from the window to look at him.
“We’re here.”
Here had brought us to the front of a club known as the Chameleon Lounge. Depending on what circles you ran with, it was either the most famous nightspot in New York or you had never heard of it.
The Chameleon Lounge was run by weres for weres, and like the council headquarters, humans did not see the club in its true form. To human eyes the building had become so run down even bums refused to sleep there. To a were, it was a posh and lavish place to see and be seen.
If Lucas was bringing me here on our first date, he must not be too ashamed to be spotted in public with me, because by tomorrow morning every wolf in Manhattan would know we’d been here together.
I got nervous. I’d honestly been expecting us to dine at a nice human restaurant. One of the places he wined and dined models and movie stars to the delight of local gossip seekers. Part of me had hoped to be called a mysterious blonde in the weekend edition of Page Six.
This was serious. Not just to our relationship, either. This meant I was about to flaunt my newly discovered royal status to a room of full-blooded weres. Inside the club the name Secret probably didn’t hold water, but the name McQueen did. And Lucas Rain walking in with a McQueen implied something huge.
Everyone in the club knew more about soul-bonding than I did, so while I might not understand it, the deeper meaning would be evident to them.
I avoided spending time with werewolves because, just as Lucas had the night before, they could smell death on me. He had accepted it as a side effect of my chosen career, but what conclusion would a room of strangers draw? And how long would it be before someone pieced together my association with the vampires and the scent lingering on me?
I gave this courtship until my first full moon with him. When I didn’t change into a wolf, I had no doubt Lucas would be done with me.
There was no way this could work.
I grabbed his arm as he began to exit the car, and he gave me a quizzical look. His blue eyes gleamed in the interior car lights.
“Didn’t you want to go somewhere else? Like Nobu or something like that?”
I knew sushi didn’t appeal to either of us as wolves tended to crave more substantial meals, but I ate out so rarely—blood-bag takeout from Calliope’s alternative-reality Starbucks didn’t count—I said the first restaurant I could think of.
He smiled and patted my hand like I was a nervous child. The gesture was mildly condescending, but I doubted it was intended in that way.
“I know this must feel like I’m throwing you into the deep end right after your first lesson, but trust me”—he emphasized the last words by squeezing my hand—“this is the best way.”
With my stomach planted in my shoes, I let him draw me out of the car. Dominick held the door open and gave me a conspiratorial smile. Though he was a wolf, and just as near in proximity to me as Lucas or Desmond had been, he left no taste in my mouth. It confirmed what I’d thought at the hotel. I didn’t react to other werewolves the way I reacted to those two.
Desmond was waiting by the entrance doors, and when he opened them a wave of warmth and noise swept out into the cool spring evening. Holding my hand, Lucas passed through the opened doors and into the club.
For a few moments my dread kept me from breathing. My lung capacity was substantially greater than that of most girls my size and was the only thing that kept me from turning blue and passing out. One of the many benefits of not being human. I had to admit, in spite of my reservations and complaints about what I was, there were definite perks.
Sadly neither of those perks, vampire nor werewolf, could get me out of this situation.
The unique feeling of being near a fellow werewolf was amplified by the presence of so many being together in one room. The warm, comforting feel that made the beast inside me respond like she was home washed over me, and all the hairs on my body rose with a shudder. It was the most overwhelming and electric sensation I’d ever experienced—standing this close to so many who shared one half of my curious heritage. When I was with vampires there was a cool silence. Being among the wolves was like getting dropped into a nest of fur and live wires.
I wanted to rub my face against the tangible energy in the room.
I also really wanted to be wrapped around Lucas again. Hoo-boy he hadn’t been kidding when he used that deep-end metaphor. I had begun running my hand up and down his arm and had to force myself to stop. I put my free hand in my pocket to keep it from shaking. What was happening to me? One day with the wolves and already my control was slipping. It scared me.
The din in the room quieted to dead silence and all eyes were on us.
A beautiful woman with dynamic, curly red hair strode up to us, wearing a skin-tight violet bandage dress that hugged her ample curves more dangerously than a mountain road. Her heels were six inches high, which made her calves look like they were sculpted by razors. In a dress that tight with heels that high, any other woman would be relegated to standing still and looking pretty.
This woman, with her audacious body, approached us in a manner that brought the word slink to mind. She moved with a grace that would make supermodels insane with jealousy.