What the hell was wrong with her? She’d practically jumped some stranger’s bones with a dead body sitting less than six feet away.
With as much dignity as she could muster, she unwrapped her legs from around the man’s waist and lowered her feet to the ground. Clearing her throat, Kel covered her still tingling lips with her hand, not quite aware that her other hand was still fisted in the stranger’s shirt. The heat of his hand at her neck still seared the tingling flesh.
“Um.” Kel fumbled around for a coherent thought, dragging her hand down to press against her chest, the frantic beat of her heart thudding beneath her palm. She felt drunk. “What about the dealer?”
“Bastard got away, but you obviously caught your guy.”
Kel blinked and looked back up at the tall, lean stranger and dropped her eyes to where she still clutched at him with one tight fist. Oh! She released his shirt and smoothed the material out, the movement turning into a caress, her dark eyes intently studying the taut curve of his pectoral beneath her fingers. Raife Merrick cleared his throat and Kel, realizing what she was doing, jerked her hand back as though burned.
What was wrong with her?
“Did you manage to ask him what he was doing here before he stuck his tongue down your throat?”
Kel narrowed her eyes on her partner before turning back to the stranger, who was still so close she could feel the heat radiating off his body. His very fine body.
No!
Kel jerked, slapping both palms against his chest in an attempt to gain some distance. It barely rocked him, and she was strong. Looking up, she noted his attention was no longer on her. His eyes were intently studying the Drachon, and a strange red flame was flickering around the pupil of each eye.
She’d seen that look before.
“Oh, hell no,” Kel snapped as she tried to put some distance between her and the effect this stranger had on her. One of his fists was still embedded in the hair at the nape of her neck.
His other hand had dropped down to his thigh, where she could see the long, gleaming length of a strange blade strapped to the hard surface of his leg. Her eyes darted back up to his face and then to Raife’s.
“Shimmer to the other side of me, Kel.”
“What?” Her eyes darted between them again. “You gotta be kidding me, right?”
The tension between the two men crackled in the air. The warm hand tangled in her hair slid down to gently grip her elbow. The delicious stranger was trying to maneuver her behind him. He and Raife were preparing to attack each other.
Terrific.
“Oh. Hell. No,” Kel snapped again, trying to push away from the sexy stranger, but his hand tightened on her arm. His gaze dropped down to seize hers, and her body involuntarily clenched again at the sight of the heated possession there. Something very raw and base writhed in agreement, wanting to lay claim to him in return. Without warning, her dormant canines sprang into her mouth for the first time in her life. She slapped a hand over her mouth.
“Oh, shit.” Kel cursed with a wince as one razor-sharp fang sliced her tongue. The metallic tang of blood filled her mouth, shocking her. Female Sanguen only took blood for one reason – to mate.
Holding her palm over her mouth, she shimmered away from both of them. The stranger immediately followed, his eyes still ringed with a seething band of fire and focused intently on her. A dark furrow deepened between his eyes, but he said nothing.
Did he even speak English? He was obviously a Sanguen, most likely a full-blood. He didn’t belong to any of the communities around here. She would have known him, and she definitely
didn’t
know him. She would have remembered him.
Well, okay, she knew the hard heat of his body against hers and the feel of his cock rubbing some delicious friction between her legs, but she didn’t
know him
know him.
Good God, she didn’t even know his name and yet his tongue had filled her mouth. A rush of wet heat flooded between her legs at the memory of the hot depths of his mouth. Shit!
Don’t think about that.
“Are you okay?”
Kel’s eyes jerked to Raife again, where he stood not six feet away, silently watching the stranger. The cleanup crew was waiting at the mouth of the alley, smiles gone, obviously sensing the danger. That damn dead user was still sprawled out in the gravel and garbage, eyes staring sightlessly out into the darkness, his blood a dark halo fanning out from his body.
As though he knew Raife was talking to her, the stranger jerked around, maneuvering so that she was positioned behind him. His lip curled with a low, rumbling sound of warning.
“Stay out of my mate’s mind, fire breather.”
Mate? Oh hell no!
She belonged to no man, no matter how hunky he was. Especially a man who’d dropped into a freaking drug bust. Kel shook her head vehemently, her tongue tentatively touching the tip of one elongated canine. Her body may have wanted him, but her mind still had the upper hand as long as she kept her distance.
“Kel?”
Raife’s eyes didn’t stray from the stranger as he awaited her answer. She knew the big Drachon would attack if she was threatened. He’d been around her since she’d been a teenager, sort of like the overprotective older brother. Kel somehow knew the stranger wouldn’t hurt her, but she couldn’t say anything around the unfamiliar fullness of her canines in her mouth. And they were freaking sharp.
“Release her, bloodsucker.” Raife’s voice was a low menacing growl.
“You have no right to interfere.” The stranger hissed, his hand tightening around her arm. “She is mine.”
“Not unless she wants to be.” Raife’s smile was feral. “And she don’t look like she wants to be.”
The stranger barely cast her a look as he dropped her arm to reach down with both hands and pull the blades cleanly away from his thighs.
“You don’t want to go there, bloodsucker.” Raife continued to smile, folding his arms over his massive chest. The stranger’s face was impassive with the exception of the rings of seething red that writhed dangerously in his eyes.
Kel shimmered between them, her back to Raife. “’Nuff.”
Her voice was muffled behind her hand, and she winced as one sharp canine sliced her lip. The resulting cursing was just as muffled.
Shit. Raife would tease her mercilessly thanks to the freaking fangs. It wasn’t enough that she’d climbed the hunk tower in front of her entire crew, but she’d scored a set of mating fangs too. This night couldn’t get any worse.
The stranger frowned down at her, his burning gaze dropping to brush over her hand clamped over her mouth and then lifting back to see what she hoped was a murderous expression on her face. His frown darkened, but the blood-red halo circling his pupils had faded. With a sigh, he replaced his blades and reached for her, then shimmered them a distance away, his shoulders angled to hide her from the eyes of both the cleanup crew and Raife.
One broad hand reached up to pull hers away, and Kel instinctively jerked away from him. What the hell did he want? She certainly wasn’t going to start kissing him again. Her new fangs would probably shred him, not that he didn’t deserve it.
“Let me see.” His voice was harsh and low.
Wanting to grind her teeth with irritation but thinking better of it, Kel lowered her hand. His large warm hands cupped the sides of her face, and his thumbs lifted her upper lip to reveal the lengthened canines. The tips of his thumbs slid firmly over the base of the long teeth, and Kel felt a shiver tingle over her, tightening her gums.
“Easy.” His voice was low, a mere vibration in his chest but oddly soothing as the pads of his thumbs massaged the tender tissue in her throbbing mouth. “Just relax. Retract them.”
Kel wanted to growl in frustration, but she concentrated on pulling the teeth back in like she did the special claws that extended from just above the nail beds in her fingers. The relief was nearly instantaneous. The pressure disappeared with the fangs. If only the sexy stranger would disappear just as easily.
Shimmering, she put some serious distance between them, although she was careful not to position herself too close to Raife. The last thing she wanted to do was incite another possessive display.
“All right, boys. Play date’s over,” Kel said, way more flippantly than she felt. Her knees still felt a little weak, and her heart rate hadn’t returned to that stroll-in-the-park level she favored.
“First,” she continued, starting to feel more in control as her mind returned to the business at hand. Incog, the special security company she and Raife worked for, had been hired to do a job. A job that was not yet complete. But the night wasn’t a total loss. She had the dead body of a badass Sanguen who had been way stronger than any other bloodsucker she had ever met. That made her wonder exactly what the hell he had been taking that gave him that kind of strength. The blood ring that dominated this neighborhood might be dealing in something more dangerous than human blood. The doc would figure it out back at Incog’s lab. If they got that body back sometime tonight.
Turning to motion the cleanup crew forward, she kept her eyes on the two males that still seemed to be snarling at each other. It was more than obvious what the stranger wanted of her, and her body’s response had been undeniable from the first time she scented him.
At the memory of that thick and spicy scent, she felt her body responding again as well as the tingling in her gums.
Whoa! No fangs. No mates. No way.
She needed to keep her head in the game which meant finding out exactly what the sexy stranger had been doing here in the first place.
“You,” Kel said to the man in question, clearing the telltale huskiness from her voice as she turned to appraise him, hopefully with more objectivity this time. “Who are you and what were you doing in this neighborhood?”
Blatantly ignoring her, the stranger scowled one more time at Raife before casting a dark, dangerous look at the cleanup crew advancing with a cart toward the dead body. It effectively froze them in place, and they cast questioning glances to her.
Kel sighed. Could nothing go easy tonight? Did she have to work so damn hard for everything?
“Look, guy.”
“Gabrial.”
Kel paused at the husky way he corrected her. His gaze roved over face before stopping with hot intensity on her lips until the need to run her tongue over the tingling surface became a burning drive. Grinding her teeth against the urge, she closed her eyes for a long moment.
Just a little control.
“Gabrial,” Kel said, hating the way her lips seemed to caress the name against her will. “We need to clean up this mess before the human authorities arrive. You’re obviously a pureblood so you should understand that our priority is to keep the humans out of this.” The sneer in her voice when she referred to him as a pureblood was subtle and unintentional, but a flicker in Gabrial’s green eyes indicated he’d caught it.
Gabrial turned his face to peer down at the body of the dead man; a slight lifting of his lip indicated his disgust. “I would leave him to the rats, but I must bring him back to my elders.”
Shit. Kel cast an impatient glance at Raife. It had been a long time since she’d been part of a formal House, but she clearly remembered their burial traditions.
“We have to process the body, Kel. The bloodsucker was kicking your ass, and I want to know what the hell he was taking.”
There was a short pause.
“And whether or not it works on Drachon.”
Kel turned to narrow her eyes on the smirking Drachon. “Bite me, dragon.”
Raife’s smirk dropped away, and he tensed as his eyes darted to Gabrial.
“That’s not funny, brat. This bloodsucker thinks you’re his mate. I really don’t want to mess with that.”
With a sigh, Kel stepped into Gabrial’s line of vision, and he refocused those incredible eyes on her. She forgot purebloods didn’t have a sense of humor. “We work for Incog.” There was a flicker of recognition. Good. At least he was familiar with the company. “We will need to examine the body. Incog can guarantee you return of the remains once our doctors have answered some questions.”
The stranger’s face was impassive as he stared hard at Raife.
The hollow wail of a police siren echoed around them. Time had just run out.
“Me personally, then.” Kel ground the words out, sliding her eyes closed for a long moment. “I will personally see that the body is returned.” The things she did for her job.
The man’s eyes flickered back to her, tracing her face. Finally he gave a curt nod. She could hear the cleanup crew rushing forward behind them.
“I must go, but I will return. That,
I
will personally guarantee.”
Kel finally released her breath when he disappeared. She turned and circled the area where the cleaners worked, eyes focused on the ground. She was purposely avoiding what she knew would be her partner’s smirking face. Raife could be such an ass sometimes.
She felt him move up behind her. “Keep it to yourself, Raife.”
There was a deep chuckle. “Where’s the fun in that, brat?”
Something winked at her from beneath a greasy fast food bag. She squatted down to palm it and slipped it into her hip pocket.
Bingo!
Tonight hadn’t been a total waste after all.
She rose to her feet and turned to fix her own smirk on her partner. “I was thinking it was more an issue of survival involved.”
There was the snide smile she was so familiar with, but his eyes were serious.
Hell
. When Raife was serious, it never boded well for anyone. “Don’t, Raife.”
“If you’re his mate, Kel –”
“I’m not.”
“If you
are
, there’s nothing any of us can do.”
Kel pressed her lips together stubbornly. Although Incog stayed beneath the Triumvirate radar, they were bound by the laws governing the Arcane Alliance. And the Alliance forbade interference between biological mates. The species of the Arcane were so genetically fucked-up no one found their bio mates anymore. Running her tongue over the sharp edge of her recessed canines, she suppressed the tiny surge of panic. She just needed to stay the hell away from him.