Authors: Elizabeth Lapthorne
As he turned to face her,
Blade reached out a hand and gently brushed her bangs from her eyes. He knew
that once she’d composed herself and they got back to work she would want the
lights raised and would put her sunglasses back on to protect her eyes. While
they had a moment of privacy, of the kind of intimacy only possible after such
powerful lovemaking, he wanted to stare into the clear violet-blue depths of
her stunning eyes.
“You’re beautiful,” he
said.
The words fell from his
lips and instantly he flushed.
A poet or a soppily
romantic fool Blade was not, and had never been. More and more, however, he
discovered the urge to spout nonsense or do something crazy in
Ange’s
presence.
They had only been paired
together for a matter of days. Add to that their belief that their team leader,
Captain Will
Allcott
, would be closing the case they
had been working on soon enough. From all indications that meant Blade would go
back to his regular partner.
Blade worked well with
Sage. He wanted to remain her partner. That didn’t mean he had any desire to
stop working with
Ange
or felt a particular rush to
close this case.
Ange
shifted in his arms and they cuddled
together. Blade’s mind continued to work hard and he had to admit it wasn’t
just the potential for losing this intimacy and closer working relationship
with his witch that had him feeling uncomfortable. Too much of their mission
felt unfinished.
“I can see you thinking,”
she murmured softly to him. She snuggled close, her slender frame fitting
perfectly into the dips and hollows
of his own
. One
arm wrapped warmly around his waist and he automatically moved his arm around
hers and drew her closer.
A few hasty excuses and
denials rose to the tip of Blade’s tongue, many of them well-worn from previous
one-night stands or short-term flings. Women, in his experience, hated it when
he thought of work or cases that perplexed him during the warm afterglow of
sex. He should have known
Ange
would be different.
More than any other partner he’d had, she understood—and had many of the same
bad habits.
“It doesn’t feel over,
does it?” she asked, echoing his earlier thoughts.
Blade nodded and pressed
a kiss to her head.
“No,” he agreed, “it
really doesn’t.”
Blade watched languidly
as
Ange
arched her spine, stretching herself out. She
made a small moue with those enticing lips of hers, glancing about the room and
seeming to ponder the wisdom of getting up. Blade lowered his head to brush his
lips across the silky smoothness of her hair—and also to hide his smile—when
she scooted closer and instead of moving pressed farther into the warmth of his
body.
Blissful satiation
overwhelmed every inch of his body, the warmth of sexual satisfaction invading
deeply into his muscles. Relaxed and at peace with the world, he couldn’t
imagine anything making this moment any more perfect. They lay together
silently for a moment and even though it took a bit of effort Blade managed to
keep his mind away from their mission and not review the possibilities of what
could occur next.
Not for the first time,
Ange
proved that she was on almost an identical mental
wavelength to him. Her words showed clearly that her mind had strayed where he
had been furiously trying to keep his own from going.
“Captain Will should be
organizing a team briefing soon—the samples his forensics techs collected
should be yielding results any time now,” she said.
Blade had to repress the
far too dramatic urge to shudder when he recalled the samples she was talking
about. A new drug had recently been released into the human world. More
potently addictive than anything seen previously, with higher highs and
catastrophic lows, its street name was Jolt, or Purple Jolt. Blade had wondered
whether the irony of its name was purposeful or just a coincidence. The drug
was an extreme jolt to the system and had resulted in a number of casualties
over a very brief period of time.
A handful of the best
Enforcers and human police had been temporarily commandeered into an elite
joint crew. Their only assignment as a team was to discover and stomp out the
growing drug trade.
Blade’s
partner Sage and her
life-partner Chase had discovered the manufacturer creating and distributing
the drug, a half-magical, half-human man named David
Sarke
.
The team had raided the annex
Sarke
worked from, but
their quarry had escaped and an explosive device had kept them all too busy to
capture him.
Captain Will—their
undisputed leader and a commanding human in his own right—had managed to have
his back-up team box up most everything for their labs while Sage and
Ange
had monitored and delayed the bomb for as long as
possible.
Powerful as the two
witches were, they had only been able to do so much in the time they had before
the explosive had detonated. The laboratory had been blown to bits and the
remains had burned for hours afterward, eradicating any chance of finding more
hints.
Will had ordered a
comprehensive suite of tests to be conducted, frequently adding more and more
requests as he thought of them before the technicians could scurry away. Before
Blade had managed to leave the site he had personally witnessed
Will
call the lead Forensic analyst half a dozen times to
order even more tests, until they had simply agreed to test it for “everything”
and be done with it.
Blade and
Ange
had been assigned to discover who had financed the
drug. Initially Blade had been
fuming,
certain Will
could have given the mundane task to another of their group and kept him and
Ange
in the middle of all the action. Training, however,
had reared its head and
Ange
had murmured to him
soothingly how sometimes the most important jobs were in the details.
Once again his new
partner had proven
herself
wise and far more adept
than he at looking below the surface of a given situation. The more they had
researched the financial backing behind the drug, the more complicated, twisted
and steeped in subterfuge the situation had become.
“Hopefully those lab
results will give us a few directions to move in. But now we also know who
Sarke
is. That should help us narrow down that enormous
list of Mages who have potentially been giving backing—knowingly or
unknowingly. If we get really lucky we might even be able to finish tracing
those donations and discover who the brains and management behind the drug is,”
Blade insisted optimistically.
Ange
smiled at him and cupped his jaw,
her thumb teasing a light caress over his lips.
“You’re just a ray of
sunshine, aren’t you?” she mused with a soft laugh.
Blade growled and nipped
her finger. In fun more than with serious lecherous intent, he rolled her
beneath him and palmed her breasts. His fingers tweaked the sensitive peaks of
her nipples and he simultaneously inserted a thick thigh between her legs to
spread her further open to his touch.
“I’ll show you sunshine.”
He began to playfully tease but was cut off as their pagers sounded
simultaneously. Blade let his head drop so his forehead rested against
Ange’s
for a moment. Her hair was soft, silky and as
tempting as sin, much like the intoxicating witch herself.
“Dammit,” he moaned, “I
thought Will would at least give us the night off. What the fuck could have
happened now?”
“It might not be Will,”
Ange
said, but she didn’t sound confident of her words.
They climbed from the
large bed and checked their respective beepers. Blade shook his head at the
simple code showing on the small screen. It was indeed their team leader,
calling an emergency briefing in under an hour despite the lateness of the
evening—or earliness of the morning, depending on how you looked at it.
“We need to get a life,”
he grouched.
Ange
playfully slapped his ass.
“You love it,” she
insisted with a laugh. “Don’t try to give me that shit about how
hard
it
is being such a sought after, respected and highly esteemed Enforcer. You’d
rather lose a limb than quit this job, not to mention that had we been kept out
of the loop you’d probably have attempted to tear Will’s throat out later.”
“I wouldn’t have
attempted
any such thing,” Blade replied firmly as he stalked naked and unashamed
into the en suite. “I would have
succeeded
in tearing the man’s throat
out. Will has
a strength
and human power all his own,
and I’d certainly have a struggle to fight him. But I’d be damned if I’d ever
lose to the man. Not that it would ever come to that, but you know what I
mean.”
Blade opened the door to
the shower and turned the faucet on, then quickly adjusted the spray. Usually
he liked his showers hot anyway, but now he nudged the heat up as far as he
could bear, knowing he would need the needle spray to massage his muscles and
blast away any faint remnants of sleep that might be tempted to draw near.
Knowing speed was of the
essence,
Blade gathered the soap and cleansed his body of
their sex. A few minutes later, finished, he was about to turn the spray off
when he heard
Ange
step into the stall behind him.
“Hmm,” he murmured
throatily, his hands resting on the soft flare of her hips as he bent down to
taste her soft skin. “I don’t think we’ve managed to christen the shower yet.”
She laughed and shoved
him hard enough that he needed to regain his balance by pressing the palm of
one large hand against the tiled wall.
“I would love to,” she
countered, “but we’re already going to have to speed to get there on time. A
quickie in the shower will only make us later and more than a little
conspicuous.”
Blade unrepentantly
kissed her hard, their teeth clicking against each other while their tongues
fought for dominance. Growing hard yet again—a truly astonishing feat
considering how many times he’d come in the last four hours or so—Blade enjoyed
the steadily growing addiction she caused. He craved her touch, her taste. She
was a potent drug in his system now.
When they were clinging
to each other, only then did he pull away. Reluctance to leave the steamy
intimacy of their shared moment rippled through his body, but Blade knew and
agreed with
Ange’s
point. They were both consummate
professionals and prior to this situation he never would have even attempted to
drag out leaving a warm bed and willing witch. In the past he had always just
upped and left with a fond kiss and a scant backward glance.
Yet he was reluctant now,
with his witch.
“Next time,” he promised
them both.
Ange’s
eyes were darker than usual, her
pupils dilated so there was only a thin ring of dark-blue around the black.
“Next time,” she agreed
when she could muster the breath to do so. Blade climbed out of the shower
stall and quickly dried himself with a fresh towel, pulling a second one free
for
Ange
to use when she was done.
Moving back into his
bedroom, Blade opened drawers and quickly dressed in boxer briefs, black
camouflage pants, a comfortable dark button-down shirt and a black sweater. His
boots completed his outfit and he collected his keys and a few other items he
never traveled without, including his favorite pair of thin, deadly throwing
knives.
By then
Ange
had returned, fresh and dry from the shower. Blade
watched with admiration as she changed into a clean pair of dark denim skinny
jeans, a fresh shirt and a sweater. It took a moment for her to tug on her
leather boots, but then she was ready and clearly eager to get moving. He
smirked and almost commented on her having a few changes of clothes at his
apartment—a thing she had argued heatedly about not needing a few days
previously. Finally Blade had insisted it was wise, would certainly be needed
sooner rather than later, and eventually she had capitulated.
Considering the effort it
had taken to convince her and the fact that she had only brought the changes of
clothes and neatly tucked them into his spare drawer the day before, Blade had
to forcefully stifle the urge to make an amused comment. Eventually, after a
minute or more of internal wrestling, he decided not to, as it would make him
sound like an old married wizard. Blade decided he was better than that, and
besides
Ange
might see it as petty.
“Shall we go?” he asked as
she carefully put her sunglasses on to cover her eyes. When she nodded in
response he shook his car keys at her and led the way from the bedroom.
“Not yours,” she
insisted. “We should take my bike.”
Blade paused partway down
the hall and chewed thoughtfully on his lip. “What if we need to ferry some of
the others after the meeting? We might be meeting to discuss our next move.
Only you and I can fit on the bike. In my car we can take Sage and Chase—hell,
even Will, Julian or Matthias can cram in if we’re in enough of a rush and
they’re happy to squeeze three people in the back seat. I love your bike, you
know that, but I think it smarter to take my car when we’re not sure what’s
happening.”