Kinked (16 page)

About last night, I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings. If I did, I’m sorry. Are you okay?

But the thing was, she wasn’t sorry for what she had said. She had spoken the truth as she saw it. And she didn’t think she had any power to hurt Quentin’s feelings. For that to happen, he would have to hold her in some regard so that her opinion mattered to him. At the most, she had irritated and infuriated him.

As far as asking if he was okay … She glanced sideways at
his unrevealing expression. The strong bones of his face were accentuated in the firelight. The tiny mark she had made on his lower lip had long since healed. He looked as he so often did, self-contained and remote, a citadel with a door of hammered gold guarded by an intricate, magical lock.

What would it take to unlock that door? Some kind of incantation written in a language she didn’t know.

She felt the same impulse to needle him that she always did when she saw that expression. For once she held it back. Instead she carried the hot cans over to the table, two at a time.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

She ate her own stew thoughtfully without replying. A second thanks in one day. He might be okay, but he was still acting a little off. If she took herself out of the equation, what was left?

She asked, “Do you know any of the Elves that Ferion sent to guard the passageway?”

“Yes, I do.” He scraped the last of the stew out of one can. “There are four of them, including a young Elf named Linwe, who is Ferion’s niece on his mother’s side.”

The Elven community was a tight-knit one, made even more so by the recent tragedy. She knew how she would feel if any of her friends were missing. She rubbed her face and said, “You know, we don’t have to spend the night here. If you want we can push on until we get to the passageway.”

He lifted his head from his food to look at her. “Push on.”

“Yes.” She widened her eyes at his look of surprise. “You’re worried about them, aren’t you?”

“I’m concerned about them, yes,” he said. He pushed away the empty cans. “But whatever has happened, we need to remember they don’t know that we’re coming. They can’t have any idea that we would wonder about their absence on this end of the passageway. And none of them would casually disobey orders, especially on an assignment such as this. Either you made a mistake and they really are camped at the passageway entrance—”

“I didn’t make a mistake.”

He didn’t attempt to argue with her. “Or they must have a compelling reason for not being there. No doubt we’re going to find them on the other side.”

“Okay,” she said. “It makes sense. But we can push on if we need to.”

A crooked smile hooked up one corner of his mouth. “Did you just offer to do something nice?”

Nice. She shrugged away the word and sniffed. “Not only do I have friends, I know what it’s like to worry about them, and want to do something to help them if I can.”

He sat back in his chair, stretching his legs toward the fire. “You’re friends with Niniane Lorelle, aren’t you? Didn’t you go to Adriyel to help her when she was on her way to her coronation?”

“Yes, I did, along with Rune.”

He regarded her curiously. “What was it like?”

“The trip? Got to camp, investigate a murder, catch some people involved in treason, and go to a lot of parties. It was fun.” She yawned. “All except for the bit where Niniane was kidnapped and Tiago almost died.”

Amusement crept into his voice. “As fascinating as your account of the trip is, I didn’t mean that. What was Adriyel like as a land?”

“Beautiful.” She studied him underneath her lashes. “You weren’t yet born when Urien closed the border, were you?”

“That’s right. It was before my time. My father is half–Dark Fae and half-Elven, but he was raised by his Elven mother and didn’t maintain close ties with the Dark Fae branch of our family tree. Now he lives in Palm Beach.”

So his mother was the Wyr. Aryal was fascinated with the concept of having parents. She thought if she’d had parents, they would have driven her crazy. Or she, them. “And your mom?”

He shook his head. “She died a long time ago.”

“Have you tried to get in touch with your Dark Fae family since Niniane opened the borders?”

A grim smile pulled at his mouth. “They’re dead too.
That side of the family bet on the wrong horse and got hanged for it.”

“Get out.” She sat up straight. “Were they involved in the conspiracy that killed Niniane’s family?”

He shrugged. “Apparently so. Remember, I’d never met any of them. They were just names to me. My father was pissed when he found out—not at the Queen, but at our family for having gotten involved in murdering the royal family.”

“Interesting,” she murmured. He hadn’t shaved that day, and pale gold dusted his jaw. His beard was a lighter shade than the smooth, sleek cap of hair on his head. Occasionally as he tilted his head, the firelight caught him just right and tiny sparks of light flared on his skin. It was … distracting. She wanted to lick his jaw, to find out if his beard was soft or rough, and bite at those tiny glints of light. She told him, “All right, yes.”

It was almost too subtle to see, but she had been watching him closely and could tell that his body had tensed. He turned and looked at her, his gaze full of barriers and secrets. “All right, yes—what?”

“I’ll take your dare,” she said, and her smile was just this side of a slow slide into suicide. “If you take mine.”

NINE

T
hat surprised him. She could see it in the quick dilation of his vivid eyes. Then he burst out laughing. The sound was darker, harsher than his earlier laugh had been. “I don’t believe you.”

“You should.” Leisurely, she stood, and he did too, springing upward with a catlike quickness that had her wondering if he had ever been truly relaxed that evening, or if his appearance had been disingenuous.

Disingenuous. She liked that word to describe him. It fit. On the surface, he was smooth charm with everybody else at the Tower, cloaking the blade that she knew lived inside him.

Genuinely curious, she asked, “How did you and Kitty Lawyer get along?”

“Who?” He looked blank.

“The chick you were with the night of the sentinel party. Wyr lioness, lawyer. Painted nails, high heels and possessive.” Kitty Lawyer had licked his chin too. Aryal’s smile soured. She’d forgotten that until just now.

He made a slicing gesture. “Not the topic at hand, sunshine. The topic
you
brought up, I might add. Unless you’re just throwing things out there at random to see if you can get a rise out of me.”

Mmmm. A rise. That sounded like fun. She turned away from temptation and forced herself to concentrate on what they were talking about. “I meant what I said.”

“Now you’re fucking around with me. You know you couldn’t do it.” He came around the table at her.

His predatory instinct had kicked in. Ooh, she should probably flutter around and act all flustered. Instead her eyes widened. “Not any more than you could?”

He circled her, as if assessing her physical attributes. “We’ve been down this road already.”

“Have we?” He had reached her back, where he paused, standing in utter silence. He was trying to rattle her. It wasn’t working. She stood still, arms crossed, in an appearance of relaxation while inside, adrenaline kicked in. Okay, maybe it was working a little. “I propose a different turn down that road. But of course, if you’re not interested, we can stop talking about it right now and hit the sack.”

He was interested. She could sense it pouring off him. He circled around to face her again, appearing casual again, except she knew better. The pulse at the base of his jaw pounded. He drawled, “I’m listening.”

She took a deep breath. “We hold an experiment and set a time limit. We get fifteen minutes each of total control over the other person. You think you could handle that?”

Once she had thought of the idea, she couldn’t stop. Surely fifteen minutes was doable. She could do almost anything for that long, including holding her breath. It would totally be worth it to own fifteen minutes of his ass.

Quentin looked suspicious. After he thought for a moment, he said, “Fine. On one condition. Your time comes first.”

“You wish.” She snorted. “We’ll do a coin toss.”

“No coin toss. You brought it up. They’re your terms. You go first.” His smile had turned catlike in anticipation. “Besides, you’ve bloodied me twice. You owe me.”

“I don’t owe you anything. You pounded my head on the pavement and throttled me. Twice.”

“You pinned me against a metal door with your fucking talons, for God’s sake.” He moved so close, he was in her
face. They stood toe-to-toe, looking in each other’s eyes. “You punched me.”

“You punched me first,” she pointed out. It had been a hell of a strike too, much faster than she had expected. She had admired that—and made a point to never forget it.

“Are we going to keep going like this forever, or are you going to strike the bargain you offered?” He gave her a hard smile that glittered in the firelight, put a finger under her chin and tilted her face just so. Then his mouth came to hover over hers, their skin barely touching. He whispered,
“Give it up, Aryal.”

Her breath came short and fast, and he had to know it, because the only way he could be closer to her was if he were French-kissing her. He started to laugh again, only this time it sounded angry. He really did think she had just been fucking with him.

She said, “Deal.”

He froze.

It was her turn to laugh. She always loved the feeling of cutting loose, no matter where she found it. Jumping off a cliff, starting a chase, losing all the doubts and questions and analyses. She was the original Nike girl. Just doing it.

She might not trust him, but she trusted her own judgment. He wouldn’t kill her. There was no way he could do it in this kind of setting and hope to sell it as an accident to Dragos back home, and besides, he had been telling the truth about that earlier. Just like her, he’d had the impulse and given it up.

If he hurt her really badly, he was going to have to cut her loose at some point, and then it was his turn.

And if he tried to renege on his part of the bargain, well.

Hell hath no fury like a harpy who’s been fucked over.

“Fifteen minutes,” she told him. “Set your iPhone’s clock when you’re ready to start. We wouldn’t want to lose track of such a short amount of time.”

Inside, her heart was leaping about like a jackrabbit. If she could have pounced on it to make it stop, she would have. How badly was she going to hate this? She needed to
keep her eye on the prize—her time with him, or a real sense of righteousness as she kicked his ass.

Angling his head, looking the very picture of incredulity, he backed up, dug in his pack until he found his iPhone, turned it on and programmed it. His thumb hovering over the screen, he glanced up. Anticipation had sharpened his lean features until he looked even more predatory than ever. “Last chance to back out.”

Surprised that he even offered, she snorted, the sound derisive. “It’s just fifteen minutes. You’re not that scary. Do it.”

He pressed the iPhone. Held it up and showed it to her. Fifteen minutes were counting down on the screen. Carefully he set it on the table.

Then he sprang at her, and even though she had been expecting him to do something, somehow she hadn’t been ready for his incredible speed. He pushed her back until she hit the wall. Already they were both breathing heavily, as if they had been fighting for a very long time.

He pressed his long, hard body against hers and took her chin in one hand, and with the other hand, he held a stiffened finger under her nose.

“Shut up,” he said. “Don’t say a word out loud or telepathically. We’re going to have fifteen minutes of silence from you. I know that’s going to break your head, and the thought of that makes my day, so just fucking do it. Don’t touch me, and did I say, shut up?”

Laughter exploded out her nose. She opened her mouth.

He glared at her. “One word, sunshine, and you forfeit your fifteen.”

Ouch. She had words, so many of them, crashing into each other like a freeway pileup. She made a frustrated noise and panted a little with the effort to hold them back.