Tempt Me (17 page)

Did everyone know about Wyatt except her?

No. It had to be an oversight. “Lukas was in and out of the conference room during the meeting,” she mused. “Scarlett wasn't feeling well.”

“Was Lukas sick, too?” At her nod, Sasha grinned. “I wonder if Scarlett’s told him she’s pregnant yet.”

“Scarlett’s pregnant?”

Sasha nodded. “And Lukas has morning sickness. Side effect from his genetic glitch.” She giggled without a whiff of sympathy. “Classic, huh?”

“Wow.” Two sitting Underworld Council members were having a child together? Krispin Woolf, the bigoted WerePack Alpha, was going to throw a clot when he heard the news. She’d been at the Council meeting where Elliott and Claudette, the Incubus First and the Siren First, had announced they’d become bondmates. Their happy news had sent Woolf into a rage, and Valerian’s serene confirmation that there was nothing in their charter prohibiting such a relationship hadn’t helped.

No wonder Scarlett was keeping the news to herself for a while. “What did you mean earlier about me finally putting Rafe out of his misery?”

Sasha wriggled her nose like Samantha on
Bewitched
. “Succubus, remember? Sexual energy’s my specialty, and his has been piss-poor since he stopped sleeping with Lorin.”

She slumped in her chair as if someone had surgically removed her spine. Lorin was tall and lean, statuesque and stacked. Visually, she and Rafe were a perfect match, except the pairing hadn’t lasted. Lorin had chosen Gabe Lupinsky, had bonded with him, instead.

Rafe must have been devastated.

“You kept him dangling long enough,” Sasha said. “Nicely played, though it made him absolutely miserable. It’s about time someone made him break a sweat.”

Her face heated. Rafe had broken a sweat last night, all right, and it had looked fabulous on him. “I didn’t keep him dangling.” Or if she had, it hadn’t been a conscious decision. Rafe hadn’t seemed interested in a repeat performance.

Sasha leaned closer, inviting her to spill her secrets. “So, how was it?”

She couldn’t hold back the grin. “Fantastic.”

An obnoxious trilling sound blared from her mini. Plucking up the device from the table, she silenced it and quickly skimmed. Network incursion at SL. First layer compromised, second layer penetration underway. “Damn. Gotta go.”

She stood quickly, dialing Cheyenne on the run. After a quiet night, Wyatt—or his minions—were making up for lost time.

***

R
afe paced his studio with a phone clapped to his ear, listening as his agent and business manager subtly—or so she probably thought—conveyed her concerns about his pace of production. “Brooke,” he interrupted, gazing at his work in progress, “things are going well—or they would be, if I could get off the damn phone and get back to work.” Bailey’s gorgeous legs extended from the damp clay in a graceful, sated bend it had taken him hours of painstaking focus to achieve. The rest of her body was still in the block, waiting to be exposed.

Memories of the previous night sizzled and burned. He'd never have enough time to sculpt them all. He felt frantic—as frantic now as he had last night.

Last night, he, who usually reveled in spending long, languid hours pleasuring a woman’s body without a single thought to his own, had wanted to push, shove, hurry...to do everything in his power to banish the shadows under Bailey’s eyes as quickly as he could.

He had to get a grip here. He had an avalanche of work to do.

“Brooke,” he said more forcefully, interrupting his tiny bulldog of an agent. She was probably chain-smoking right now, thinking that her husband didn't know.

“Okay, calm down, honey,” she soothed.

The endearment lost a little something in translation when uttered in her cement mixer voice. “Brooke, I’m working. Let’s talk again next week—” The first-floor door buzzer rudely interrupted.
Fuck me.
At this rate, he’d never get any work done. “Someone's at the door,” he said to Brooke. “I really have to go. Yeah. Bye.” Ending the call and tucking his phone into his pocket, he glanced at the security monitor. Chadden stood under the awning, protecting his face from the morning sun with an upraised hand and not much else. “It would serve you right if I let you fry,” he called into the speaker before slapping the button that unlocked the door.

As Chadden clumped up the stairs, Rafe scurried around, making sure his sculptures were covered. No way did he want Chadden to run his connoisseur’s eye over Bailey's naked form, even if it was only rendered in clay.

“Hey,” Chadden said as he opened the door.

“Hey. What do you want? I'm working.” It wasn't unusual for Chadden’s visits to stretch for hours on end, but not today. Images of the night with Bailey flickered in his thoughts like flame. He had to get them down before they fizzled out.

Chadden sauntered over to the mini fridge and extracted a can of Coke. “Want one?”

“No.” Despite his answer, a red can sailed toward his head. He caught it one-handed.

Chadden sprawled on the red velvet sectional couch and cracked open a can of his own.

Rafe glanced at the clock. Though his friend looked supremely relaxed, ready to settle in for a long, cozy chat, he’d have to leave for the restaurant soon. Though Chadden’s capable sous chef handled the Saturday lunch crowd, Chadden would be cooking that evening. Hyper-persnickety about his
mise en place
, he’d spend hours preparing the ingredients he'd need for the evening’s special.

Chadden glanced up at the ceiling. “Is she still here? Mind if I say hello?”

Setting the unopened can down on his long worktable, he crossed his arms, saying nothing.

“A little testy this morning, are we? Did the romantic evening not go as planned?” Chadden arched a black brow. “Too bad. Things were looking so promising when I left your table.”

He opened his mouth to snap back a denial, and then closed it. He wasn't going to talk about his night—and morning—with Bailey. It was...private, too special to share. Finding her in the shower earlier that morning, apparently preparing to leave without even waking him, had made his stomach clutch. “What do you want?” he repeated, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “I'm working here—or trying to, anyway.”

Ignoring him, Chadden looked around the studio, taking in—ah, shit. He hadn't covered two finished pieces over on the shelf, and Chadden had locked onto them like a fighter pilot on an incoming missile. Rising, he sauntered to the shelf and picked up a rendering of a stretched-out Bailey, cradling it in his long-fingered hands. “Very nice.”

“Give me that.” There was no lasciviousness in his friend’s voice or touch, just a quiet appreciation, but it was all he could do not to yank the sculpture from Chadden's hands. His hypersensitive nostrils flared, picking up the slightest hint of...was that envy? About what?

“You will treat her well.” The underlying threat was all the more pronounced for how softly Chadden’s words had been spoken.

“Of course.” An expression he couldn't read clouded his friend’s face, and his pulse kicked up a notch as a horrible thought struck him. “I—are you interested in Bailey, too?” Not that he'd step back if Chadden said yes. And he would not share her. Could not. Seeing another man's hands on her, even Chadden’s, would send him around the bend.

Chadden strolled back to the couch and sat, wearing a smile that was a little too wicked and nostalgic for Rafe’s peace of mind. “Settle down,” he finally said. “Have I ever told you about the first time Bailey and I met?”

“I know how you met,” Rafe retorted. “I was there.” Yes, he’d been at Underbelly the night of Scarlett's last public performance. He'd watched Bailey, under the influence of second-hand pheromones, cuddle right up to Chadden. Luckily, Sasha had been right beside her, because Chadden’s definition of ‘behave yourself’ tended to be...flexible. Rafe had volunteered to bring Bailey upstairs to Sasha's office so she could take a dose of pheromone intoxication meds, and...

Yeah, look how
that
had ended up. Bailey might have been safer with Chadden after all.

“She's entirely too innocent for me, but perfect for you, I think.” Chadden gave a theatrical sigh. “So, I need to find a new carousing partner, eh?”

Rafe shrugged, and let him draw his own conclusions.

Chadden cocked a thumb up to the ceiling, gesturing to the bedroom. “You’re... compatible?”

“You might say that,” he muttered.

“I'm happy for you, my friend.”

“Don't celebrate yet,” Rafe cautioned. Thanks to that asshole Wyatt Cooper, she was skittish about any relationship, much less one with another incubus. If it hadn’t been for her experience with Cooper, Bailey might be able to simply enjoy the sensations the pheromones produced, and not have to think so damn hard. Bailey was as responsive as a dream, her skin sensitive to the slightest touch, but he'd still noticed her thinking, assessing, much more frequently than he would have liked.

Chadden left the couch again, pulling back the tarp he’d draped over a completed sculpture. His gaze was frankly admiring as he eyed Bailey’s lithe form, as he stroked a finger down the line of her smooth, glazed back.

Her nude back. “No touching.” Shouldering Chadden away from the table, he draped the figure again, hiding it from his assessing gaze.

“Can't blame a guy for looking.”

“Yes, I can.” Rafe quickly walked to the stairwell door, and opened it with a flourish. “Go away. I have work to do.”

“Sculpting naked women. Nice work if you can get it.”

“I have.” He pointed at the stairs. “Go. Now.”

“No, no, really. Don’t beg. I really can't stay.” Chadden joined him at the door, wrapping one long arm around his shoulders, pulling him in for a hug. “Imagine. Rafe Sebastiani, off the market. An era is ending—” he grinned suddenly “—leaving more women for me.”

“Don't say anything,” Rafe warned. “She's skittish enough without becoming a fixture on the damn grapevine.”

“You think you’re not already there? Get real.” Chadden stepped over the threshold, but turned back one final time. “I wish you luck, my friend—and let me know if you need some oysters.”

“Get out.” Rafe closed the door and locked it. Chadden’s final smile had been more than a little wistful.

Maybe Chadden had had enough with variety, too.

––––––––

B
ailey sat upright on the futon, wiping her bleary eyes, squinting at the security screen mounted on the wall next to the door. Someone was coming into The Bunker.

Jack.

She plowed her hands through her hair and winced. Her wrist stung like a bitch.

What time was it, anyway? She’d taken the nap she’d promised to Elliott, but only after hours of grinding work, tag-teaming with Cheyenne and several members of her team. They’d spanked Wyatt’s clever little worm, but it had taken serious effort. Wyatt had rounded up some stellar talent to assist him with this gig. She still had no idea what his end goal might be. One way to find out would be to allow the worm to penetrate, to watch where it went and analyze its behavior, but that course of action was far too risky. After coding and testing a patch to shore up their infrastructure, she’d left deployment to Cheyenne, sent everyone on the Council a quick status update, then had stumbled to the futon and crashed.

Her stomach stung as badly as her wrist did.

“Hey.” Jack walked in, juggling a large white take-out bag and two bottles of water in one hand, and a flexible ice pack and an elastic bandage in the other.

“Hey.” Yawning, she stretched her arms overhead, wincing at the sharp pain gnawing at her stomach lining. She glanced over to the table, where Jack unpacked two clear clamshells of green salad, paper napkins, and plastic silverware from the take-out bag. While his back was turned, she scrubbed at her stomach with her knuckles—not that it helped.

“I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” Jack grumbled.

She barely managed to drop her hand before he turned. “Likewise.”

“But let’s get that wrist on ice first. I can tell it’s swollen from here.” Carrying the gel pack and Ace bandage, he joined her on the futon, and within a couple of minutes, her wrist was efficiently wrapped. As he walked back to the table to retrieve the salads, she saw that his khaki pants and oxford shirt still looked country club crisp, even this late in the day. She was still wearing last night’s date clothes, and the nap hadn’t done her wool pants any favors.

“Dinner is served.”

“Thanks.” She looked at the beautiful spinach salad he’d handed her, trying to muster up some enthusiasm. Most food just didn’t sit very well these days. She hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast with Sasha. “What time is it?”

“Just after eight,” Jack replied. “You’ve had a long day.”

“Yeah.” One more day where she hadn’t seen sunlight, not that there were many hours of sunlight to be had in the dead of a Minnesota winter. As they ate, she filled him in on the day’s work. “We’re clear. Until next time.”

“Why Sebastiani Labs? What’s he after?”

“Who the hell knows?” she said with a sigh. “I just know that I’m tired of his shit. And speaking of which...did you know that Wyatt Cooper is an incubus?”

Jack’s eyebrows rose. “What?”

So that answered
that
question. He hadn’t known. “Wyatt followed Rafe and me to Chadden’s last night. Rafe could tell he was an incubus as soon as he saw him in person.”

“Why didn’t Lukas say something at the meeting? That’s odd.”

“He did leave the conference room for a moment,” she said.

Jack unscrewed the tops off the water bottles, handed her one, and drank from his own. “He’s going through antacids like crazy.”

“I don’t think they’re going to help,” she said ruefully. Scarlett’s pregnancy wasn’t her news to share—and for that matter, it hadn’t been Sasha’s to share with her, either—but if the communication lapse about Wyatt’s species was due to pregnancy-induced brain fog, Jack should know so he could compensate for Lukas if he needed to. “Scarlett’s pregnant.”

Jack’s grin nearly split his face open, but he sobered quickly. “Krispin Woolf is
not
going to be happy.”