The Strip (11 page)

James thought for a moment. He wasn’t out of breath, but he was indeed impressed by the Dormant’s sudden speed. She’d taken on a nearly blurred appearance as she’d darted down the alleyway, moving much faster than should be possible. In fact, Valentine had only ever known one wolf who could move that fast.

“What are you two doing here?”

Valentine wasn’t surprised. He had smelled the other alpha before his British accent filled the alleyway. But Lily spun around, alarmed.

“Cole!”

Malcolm laughed mirthlessly. “You never learn, do you, luv?” He stepped from the shadows against the wall, his tall form moving into the beam of a street light at the end of the passage. “It’s Malcolm.”

Lily swallowed audibly. And then she seemed to remember that she no longer had anything to fear from him. She straightened, rolling her shoulders. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

Malcolm studied her in silence. This was the first time he’d seen her since she’d been transformed. “I must admit you’re stunning, Lily. The Change looks good on you.” She grew uncomfortable beneath his gaze. “It makes me wonder what Charlie will look like when I turn her.”

“You marked her, didn’t you?” Lily accused.

Malcolm frowned. “You didn’t answer my question. Why are you here?” His gaze skirted from her face to Valentine’s. “What business do you have with Claire?”

“She’s in danger,” Lily told him point-blank.

Malcolm’s gaze flitted back to her. His smile was wry. “From me?” he asked softly, his emerald eyes filled with secret meaning.

Lily gritted her teeth. The man could be so infuriating. Two years seemed to have seen no difference in him. “No,” she ground out. “From a Hunter who wants her so badly, he followed her from Pennsylvania.”

Cole’s smile disappeared. His handsome face became expressionless. He looked at James again, as if for confirmation. James nodded.

“Now you answer my question,” Lily demanded. “Did you mark her?”

Cole turned his attention on her once more and fought the temptation to let loose a few tendrils of his power so that they could flay at her senses. For some reason, it irritated him that she and James, who used to work for
him
, were interfering in this business. And the news of the Hunter stirred up something volatile within him. He felt the need to lash out. To kill anyone and anything that came within ten feet of Claire St.James.

Charlie was
his
.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Lily stated simply. “And that would explain the sudden burst of speed.” Lily sighed then, crossing her arms over her chest. “She’s a female born,” she continued. “When you mixed your blood with hers, something strange happened. Namely, she got a bit of your power.”

“It isn’t important,” James interjected. “What is important is finding the Hunter before he finds her.”

Lily frowned and her gaze dropped to the ground. She was remembering something. “We’re too late on that front,” she said. “He already knows where she is.” Images skated before her subconscious and she closed her eyes, trying to see them more clearly.

Cole’s voice cut through her thoughts like a hot knife through butter. “What does he look like?”

* * * *

Jessie Graves stood from where he’d been crouched on the building’s roof top. He had watched Charlie run down the alley and get into the taxi cab. Now, he pulled his cell phone from the front pocket of his jacket and speed dialed.

“What is it?” came the greeting on the other end of the line.

“Complications have arisen,” Jessie spoke calmly and quietly. He didn’t want the man and the woman in the alley down below to hear him. “There are too many players on the field.”

The man on the other end paused, obviously considering these words. “I’ll patch you through.”

Jessie waited as the line clicked a few times and then a second person picked up. The man’s voice was deep and gravelly, his tone serious, even though he spoke slowly. “Graves,” he greeted. “What seems to be the problem?”

Jessie made his way to the roof's fire exit and then back down the extensive stairwell. As he moved, talked.

Chapter Six,
The Hand

Charlie got out of the cab and dug into the front pocket of her jeans to pull out a twenty. She handed it to the cab driver. “Thanks for the quick ride,” she said. He took the bill and nodded, a big smile on his lined face.

“No problem, lady. Any time you need a ride, give me a call.” He put the twenty in a compartment with his other money and then drove away.

Charlie turned toward the entrance of The August. Already, the door men were opening the double glass doors for her. She took a deep, shaky breath and then went inside.

The night had been long. The last twenty-four hours, an eternity. She felt a little drunk and didn’t know whether it was from the beers she’d consumed or from everything that had happened with the man who called himself Malcolm Cole. She was confused and she was scared. But most of all, she was just exhausted.

She made her way to the elevators and asked the voice-activated computer inside to take her to the 42
^nd
floor. A camera confirmed that her voice actually belonged to her, and the elevator doors closed just before it began to rise. Charlie’s ears popped twice on the way up. The doors dinged open again and stepped out into the massive foyer that led to the few select apartments beyond.

As she walked down the hall, her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of the front pocket of her denim jacket and flipped it open without checking the LCD to see who it was.

“Hello?”

“You never made it to your last class, Charlie.”

Charlie stopped in her tracks, her breath caught in her throat. A cold, strange chill swept over her. The mark on her right arm began to warm up. She registered all of this in the split second after she recognized the voice on the other end of the connection.

“Reese.”

“I assume you have a good reason for allowing your training to falter.”

Charlie’s pulse sped up. She had no idea why she should suddenly feel so afraid, but there it was. She was scared. David Reese had always frightened her to some extent. The man was big. He was tall and built and very, very strong. He was handsome, but in a cold way. He always kept his long blonde hair tied in a leather strap with knots so intricate, they automatically made her think of bondage. As if he knew what she was thinking, his brown eyes would taunt her, his cruel lips would smile in that knowing, secretive way that they always did.

He used her nick name, even though he knew she didn’t want him to. He looked at her as if he could see right through her; as if he knew more about her than even
she
did. When they trained together, he always managed to find a way to get her in his arms so that he could torment her even while he taught her to save her own life.

It never failed to leave her feeling incredibly conflicted. Safe in the knowledge of the education he gave to her.
Unsafe
in the way he
gave
her that education. But he was in Pennsylvania. She was in Nevada. So, why did the sudden sound of his voice scare her so badly?

“I’m sorry, Reese. There was no time – ”

“You know I don’t accept excuses, Charlie.” There was a pause on the other end and all Charlie could hear was the blood rushing through her ear drums. “You owe me a session, sweetheart. I intend to collect.”

The line went dead.

Charlie stood still in that hallway for what seemed like forever. She slowly lowered her phone and stared at it. She blinked a few times. And then she closed the phone, re-pocketing it.

When she seemed to have found her breath again, she let out a shaky sigh and closed her eyes, running a hand through her long, strawberry-blonde hair.

“Too much,” she muttered. “Just… too much.”

She opened her eyes and continued down the hall, forcing thoughts of David Reese to a back burner. He was miles away. She could deal with him later.

She found her door, inserted her key card, and went inside. The accommodations beyond were cool and dark and, admittedly inviting. Charlie pulled off her jacket and hung it on the side of the chair that was tucked under a round table beside the front entrance.

Then she made her way straight to the lavishly made bed in the adjoining bedroom of the massive suite. She pulled off her shirt half way there and left it on the carpet. Next came her bra and then, as she stood directly beside the king-sized mattress, she unbuttoned her jeans and slid out of them, leaving them in a pile beside the bed, along with her underwear and shoes.

The cool air in the room made Charlie immediately aware of how wet she still was. The moisture between her legs served as a cruel and unwanted reminder of the man who had brought it there. An image of Cole’s green eyes flashed in her mind. She saw his fangs and shivered, hugging herself.

But then her stomach tightened and warmth rushed across her belly as she imagined those fangs scraping gently across the skin on her neck. Her collar bone. The top of her breast.

Charlie looked down to find that she was running her fingers along her skin, as if blazing the trail that she imagined him following with his mouth. With his hands…. At once, she felt vulnerable, but deliciously so. She couldn’t help it when she leaned luxuriously, across the bed and took her time crawling across it to un-tuck the covers. As she did so, she stretched like a cat and felt the cool air brush enticingly against every inch of her bare flesh.

Finally, she pulled the covers aside and slid beneath them. The sheets were so incredibly soft, she actually let out a low moan as she settled in between them and pulled them up to her shoulders.

What’s wrong with me
, she found herself thinking.

None of the night’s events made any sense. Everything was insane. It was like she’d stepped through some crack in reality and wound up in Bizarro world. The Twilight Zone.

But, despite it all, the only thing she could really think about right now – all she could truly concentrate on – was the need that was growing within her. The material of the sheet on her skin was too soft, too enticing. It felt like a caress. She felt heated and wanton. She needed….

Beneath the covers, Charlie spread her legs, bending her knees so that she was exposed beneath the sheets. Her fingers trailed down her chest to her stomach and then slowed. She closed her eyes and, instantly, Cole was there, filling the darkness with his presence. Distractedly, she noticed that her right arm felt warm. It tingled in a pleasant way.

The fingers of her right hand were warmer than usual when she parted the downy hair on her mound and continued to glide downward. Another moan escaped her lips. She felt her long eyelashes against her cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut tight and brushed her fingers against her opening.

A moist warmth coated her fingertips. She bit her lip.

Oh God
, she thought.
I need
….

She needed
something
. Something she couldn’t give to herself.

The mark on her arm heated up a little more and her eyes opened. Everything in the room had come into stark contrast. She blinked a few times, wondering at the sudden change. She couldn’t normally see this well in the dark.

But another strong wave of desire rolled over her and her eyes shut once more, her body trembling as she shuddered beneath the hunger awakening within her. Before she could attempt to once more take matters into her own hands and lessen the need coursing through her heated body, Charlie began to feel strangely sleepy.

Sluggish.

The heat was still there. It still demanded and she still hopelessly yearned. But her eyelids were so heavy. She let them fall and allowed her arms to rest against the mattress. Within a matter of several short seconds, her head lolled to one side, her body having been shoved ruthlessly into a wholly unnatural sleep.

A few moments later, the door to her suite opened and Vincent Cromwell walked in. His tall, dark frame filled the doorway for a minute as he scanned the room. Then he stepped aside and another man followed him into the foyer.

This man was just as tall as Cromwell, but more massively built. His long, blonde hair fell slightly past his broad shoulders in silken waves. His blue eyes burned like cold-fire sapphires as they scanned the room just as Cromwell’s had.

He looked like an angel. But the unforgiving lines of his coldly beautiful face and the cruel set of his sensual mouth marked him as….
Fallen
.

“She’s in the bed,” Cromwell spoke softly. His amber eyes glowed in the room’s darkness. His voice sounded slightly hoarse. The man beside him nodded and moved through the apartment, allowing the door to swing shut behind them. Cromwell followed him.

The two men paused in the entrance to her private bedroom. The blonde man’s blue eyes began to glow, his pupils expanding slightly as he took in Charlie’s unconscious, lithe form sprawled across her bed. The sheets and covers bunched up around her as if she had been writhing beneath them. Her long, silken locks spilled across the pillows like a shimmering rose gold waterfall. One long leg had freed itself from the tangle and it enticed with its lean line and slightly shimmering, golden skin.

“Keep her under.” The man spoke, his tone low and commanding. Cromwell nodded once and moved into the room to take up station at one corner beside the tall windows that overlooked the city’s ever-bright lights below.

“She always has been,” the man finished. He bent slightly, grasping the covers in one strong hand. Slowly, he pulled them down until they fell over the foot of the bed, leaving Charlie fully exposed and vulnerable.

The man’s eyes went from blue to black in the space of a nanosecond. Charlie’s sleeping formed shivered and her brow furrowed in a frown. Slowly, languidly, she moved on the mattress, her skin flushed with goose bumps in the cold night air. One of her hands fisted in the sheet over the mattress, clutching it tight. Her full, pink lips parted as she sighed… and then moaned. Her legs drew up, bending at the knees. And then she straightened again, her hand gliding in sleep across her stomach.