Enigma (26 page)

But she trusted him. Even drunk, even broken, even crushing her against the wall like he wanted to lose himself in her, she trusted him.

It only made the pain worse. She trusted him with her body, her heart. But not with his own.

Anna struggled, but not to get away. To get closer, arching to meet his thrusts. “I love you.” The words hitched out of her, raw and feverish. “I love you—”

He covered her mouth with his. She couldn’t talk with his tongue sliding over hers, couldn’t give him hope with every sound he muffled.

He pressed her legs against her body, driving deeper until she wasn’t trying to form words anymore, only making noises, incoherent, needy.

They could have stayed that way for minutes or seconds. Hours. Anna’s hands flexed, and he had to tighten his already bruising grip just to hold her. Her harsh breaths came faster and faster, and the sounds lost to his mouth dissolved into helpless moans.

Then she bit his lower lip, so sharp he tasted blood, and threw her head back against the wall with a thump. “Fuck, fuck—”

She came around him so hard and hot he couldn’t breathe. It couldn’t be over yet, not when he needed to mark her,
brand
her, but her body clenched around his cock again and again, shaking his control. Then her lips pursed and she choked out the start of his name—once, twice, each time losing the rest under a fresh moan—

It unraveled him. It destroyed him.

He crashed into her one last time as orgasm ripped away the world and flooded him with pleasure, enough to fill the empty hole in his chest. For a few blissful seconds, all that existed was the slick warmth of her body and his own shuddering release, and he wanted to live in that moment forever.

Maybe if he wished it hard enough, it would happen. Like the chair, like freeing Anna from the crystal, like all the ways things had
just happened
since Michelle had pushed that sword into his hand.

Tonight. Just give me this tonight.

He eased back and let Anna’s legs slide along his body. She was still panting, her eyes squeezed shut, so he hauled them both to the saggy mattress and fell back with her body draped over his.

Long minutes passed. Her breathing slowed, but her heart kept racing, pounding so hard he could almost hear it. When she finally moved, it was only to nestle her face into the hollow of his shoulder, and her words blew hot on his damp skin. “Don’t make me leave yet.”

Horror stirred, and Patrick embraced it. He
should
be terrified that he’d done this, that wanting and hoping and magic had twisted Anna, made her want him.

But somewhere beneath that darkness, he knew the truth—nothing could make Anna stay. Not magic, and sure as hell not him. So he wrapped his arms around her and took what she was willing to give, knowing it would be gone tomorrow. This was as close as he’d come to forever.

A long goodbye.

Chapter Nineteen

She couldn’t find her shirt.

Anna crept across the floor and winced when her hand slipped in the pile of dust that used to be a chair and almost bumped into the fallen lamp. The slight noise would be more than enough to wake a light sleeper like Patrick, and that was something she couldn’t afford right now.

Most of the previous night was a blur—the bar, the booze, dancing with the drunk couple determined to grind and charm their way into a hookup. Stumbling back to the motel only to remember her key, safe on the other side of the locked door.

She could have broken the lock, but that same blurry lack of judgment that had trailed her all night had followed her right to Patrick’s door. Once she’d crossed the threshold, the vodka hadn’t mattered. Everything had snapped into sharp focus, leaving her with nothing to hide behind.

She remembered every moment with painful clarity. Harsh kisses, pleading whispers, mind-bending pleasure—everything in direct, desperate counterpoint to the line she’d drawn.

God, he had to hate her. What sort of woman broke a man’s heart and came crawling back a day later, not to apologize, but to climb into his bed?

Giving up her shirt as a lost cause, Anna snatched a T-shirt out of Patrick’s open duffel and dragged it over her head.

“My lockpicks are in the side pocket.”

She tensed, not at the words but at the sound of his voice—exhausted to the point of numbness. Detached. Cold.

If she turned and saw the same emotional void on his face, she’d lose it. So she didn’t look at him as she dug around in the duffel. “Have you seen my phone?”

“Nope. Want me to call it?”

“It’s got to be around here somewhere.” She slid into her shoes and dropped to check beneath the desk.

The mattress springs creaked. A few seconds later something vibrated under the dresser. “There you go.”

She crawled over and rescued her phone. No telling how it got there, but they hadn’t exactly passed the night with subtlety. They’d trashed the room, made damn sure it was as wrecked as they were.

Besides the missed call from Patrick’s phone, she had a text message. “Alec wants us to meet him for coffee in about an hour.”

“Of course he does.” Patrick sighed and rested his elbows on his knees. “I’m a hypocrite. You know that?”

“No, you’re not.” It was hard not to stare, not to devote her attention to memorizing the lines of muscle, of ink. Anything but his defeated expression. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

His shoulders shook, and for one agonizing heartbeat she thought he was crying. But it was laughter that spilled out, rough and hard. “You know why I can’t knock you up? Because I paid a fucking witch doctor to make sure I couldn’t make any kids I’d have to abandon. That’s a real proportionate response to a lousy childhood, huh? Real reasonable.”

The confession hit her in the gut, because she understood the kind of pain that would lead someone to a decision like that. The hopelessness, believing things could never be different. The thought that he’d ever hurt that badly tied her stomach into knots. “Okay, so you
are
a hypocrite.”

“Yup.”

His nonchalance crashed into the pain, turned it into something hotter. Anger. “How dare you?” she demanded, advancing on the bed. “How dare you call me a coward when you
know
what it’s like?”

Patrick didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look at her. “Don’t sprain something scrambling onto that high horse, cupcake.”

“I’d have to knock you off of it first.”

“That’s what you did last night.”

“Oh, yeah? Why, because you let me crawl back here, into your pants? Because you didn’t do the noble thing?” She got in his face, made him look at her. “Because you fucked me?”

He glared at her for a tense, silent moment before exploding off the bed, shoving her aside in the same motion. “Now who’s the hypocrite? You didn’t want my feelings, so now you can’t have them. And I don’t want yours. If we’re just bad fucking news and destined to crush each other, let’s stop sharing all our weak spots.”

It was over. They’d been pushing and pulling for so long that it hadn’t seemed real at Mitch’s roadhouse, or even last night, but here it was. A big fucking wall that she slammed into and reeled away from, the catastrophic ending she’d always seen coming and yet, somehow, never quite believed.

It was actually over.

Twin throbs of pain sprung to life in her temples, and she turned for the door. Her hand shook on the handle, refusing to turn it. To open the door.

“I’m grateful, you know,” he said from behind her. “All those people who care about me—Julio, Kat, even my brother when he was alive. They kept trying to sell me the same fantasy. You’re the only one who’s ever had my back enough to shove my face in the truth. Not everyone gets to be loved.”

Her headache exploded, and it wasn’t a headache at all. Hot tears burned her eyes, and the first sob ripped past the lump in her throat. Another followed, and another, so close and wracking that she couldn’t breathe. Panic loomed, and she dropped the lockpicks and braced both hands on the door.

“Anna—”

She didn’t stick around to hear the rest.
Buck the fuck up, Lenoir.
She snatched up the fallen picks and stumbled out the door, determined to escape the quiet certainty of Patrick’s apology. Not
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it
, but
I’m sorry it has to be this way
.

She should know. It was the same voice she’d always used on him.

“So now Ochoa’s summoned me to a meeting, like he gets to snap his fingers and have me appear.” Alec stabbed his fork into a sausage and glared at his breakfast. “The witch must have turned up. You think she knows you two are on to her?”

Anna stirred her coffee and shrugged. “No clue. Best to assume she is, though, and be pleasantly surprised if we’re wrong.”

“A lot about this shit has surprised me. Like Oscar Ochoa in love with a human woman.” He shook his head. “He was going to give up everything for her. It almost makes me like the poor bastard.”

Carmen poured honey in her tea. “Things aren’t always what they seem, are they?”

“Except when they are,” Patrick muttered.

Alec shot him an assessing look before shifting his gaze to Anna, one eyebrow raised in a clear question.
Is this shit gonna fuck us up?

Acutely aware of her own red, puffy eyes, Anna took a deep breath. “If we assume the witch knows about us, it follows that she has a plan to get us out of the way.”

“The easiest way to do that would be to tell Jorge you tried to kill her,” Carmen supplied. “I mean, Oscar. And since Alec hired you…”

“We should assume she has access to all of Oscar’s memories,” Patrick added after a sip of his own coffee. “I mean, clearly she has access to his ghost. Not just that, she seems to need it.”

“So Jorge will be ready to confront a conspiracy.” Carmen laid a hand on Alec’s arm. “You won’t like it, but I want to come with you.”

“No,” Alec snarled. “Absolutely not. The Ochoas hate the Mendozas as it is, and if he thinks I tried to kill his son…”

She lowered her voice. “Where wolf politics are concerned? That’s an average Tuesday.”

Alec glared pointedly at her tea. “This is
not
an average day.”

Tea and crackers for breakfast, and Alec being more cautiously overprotective than usual. You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that Carmen had a secret, the kind that took nine months to grow and turned tough shapeshifter men into Jell-O. “Congratulations,” Anna told her. “Now, kindly consider staying the hell away from this showdown. I don’t want to have to keep Alec from burning down the building if someone looks at you wrong.”

“Listen to Anna,” Alec grumbled. “You don’t even have to stay with my mother. In fact, I don’t want her knowing where you are, either, so I called your brother.”

“From his
honeymoon
?”

Christ, Julio and Sera were still on their honeymoon. It felt like years to Anna, a lifetime since the wedding, though it had been a matter of days. And here they were, with Patrick not speaking to her, a world of hurt between them. Even that was drying up, and soon, there wouldn’t be anything left at all.

She dropped her spoon with a clatter. “Sorry.”

Patrick stepped into the awkward silence, blandly, coolly professional. “The easiest way to convince Jorge of the truth is to provoke the witch into using magic.”

Anna locked down her emotions and nodded. “We’ll give him the facts. And then, if we have to, Alec and I will hold him down while you out the witch.”

Alec quirked an eyebrow. “Are you up to it, McNamara? From what I understand, you’re still wearing your baby wizard training wheels.”

Patrick swung his sheathed sword up and dropped it on the table. The cups and plates rattled, and one or two sleepy patrons blinked at him, but Patrick held Alec’s gaze. “Don’t be an ass. This is way cooler than training wheels.”

The sword peeked out of the top of the sheath. The soft blue glow of the blade had faded, leaving gleaming steel that still somehow looked dull. Anna shoved at the leather, pushing it a few inches across the table. “Quit fucking around.”

Alec glanced at his watch. “Good idea. We have just enough time to get Carmen to the hotel and make it out to Ochoa’s place. Are we ready to do this?”

Patrick picked up his sword. “The sooner, the better.”

Anna caught his arm on the way out of the diner. “Hey. Hate me all you want, but be sure you have your head on straight. I don’t want to be responsible for another kid’s dead dad, all right?”

He jerked to a stop and sighed. “I don’t hate you, Lenoir. That’d be easy. I thought you’d get that.”

His vibrant blue eyes were dull now too, as dead as that goddamn sword, and all Anna wanted to do in that moment was light them up again. “Look, maybe after all this shakes out—”

“No.” Patrick’s hand tightened around the sheath until his knuckles stood out, stark and white. “Anything you throw me now’s gonna be about pity, and that’s the only thing worse than nothing. So just…no. We play out the game.”

And then we walk.
He left the words unsaid, but they were there, all the same.