He didn’t hold back as he leapt forward with a roar, arms outstretched, teeth bared, intent. She admired him fleetingly again—such animal grace and ferocity, almost like one of her kind—and then snapped into focus as instinct took over and a ripple of power shuddered down her spine.
Sensual and delicious, it sent goose bumps crawling along her skin.
She crouched into it, coiling, drawing down close to the ground, her eyes and ears and nose wide open and focused on him as he neared, seeking, calculating every nuance of his expression, every twitch of muscle and nerve that broadcasted his intent as clearly as a loudspeaker.
He was almost on her, reaching out, almost had a hand fisted in her hair—
—but she dodged his grip in one lightning-fast move and twisted away, smiling.
He skidded to a stop and swung around, growling his frustration, gravel grinding and spitting chunks beneath his heels. He whipped around and then lunged at her again, this time diving low to try and kick her legs out from under her with a sweep of his powerful legs. She leapt clear, executed a somersault in the cool air high above his head, and landed in a perfect three-point crouch, one hand and knee balancing her weight, one leg stretched out, her other arm held aloft behind her as counterweight, disturbing not even a single mote of dust as she settled silently on the ground.
Collectively, the gathered crowd gasped.
“Showoff,” Alexi muttered, glowering, but Eliana could tell by his tone and the gleam in his eyes that he wasn’t really annoyed.
He lived for this.
A successful man in the real world aboveground, Alexi was also one of the smartest people Eliana had ever met. He held postgraduate degrees in electrochemistry, applied mathematics, and computer science. By the age of twenty-one, he’d bought and sold his first company. By twenty-eight, he held patents in robotics, augmented reality and holographic technologies, and cryopreservation. And now, at thirty-two, he was CEO of an international conglomerate that was pursuing, among other things, the key to cold fusion.
Like most people of genius intellect, he was drawn to the odd and the eccentric, the unexplained and the unexplainable. So naturally he was drawn to the catacombs, and to Eliana, a riddle he was determined to solve.
He was. His combination of looks, smarts, and brawn was devastating.
“Five hundred says she pins you in sixty seconds,” Melliane called out from somewhere in the crowd behind her. A chorus of voices chimed in, arguing and yelling over one another, clamoring for a piece of the action. Eliana smiled; tonight the take would be good.
“A thousand if she does it in ten!” an anonymous man with a whiskey-soaked voice shouted above the noise, and that’s what finally decided it for her.
She rose to her feet in a single, fluid unbending of limbs and felt the animal rise to an almost unbearable peak within her, sinking tooth and claw into her muscles, her nerves, straining against her skin, hissing out with her own exhalation, writhing to be set free. Her eyes fixed on Alexi’s, and for a moment she was sure he saw it, too, the beast that lived ever long just beneath her skin. His brown eyes widened for a moment and then narrowed, preparing.
One long stride, two, three…a sudden rush of cool wind as she moved, the blur of bodies in her peripheral vision, the bulk of Alexi ahead of her, the muffled roar of voices from all sides, the smell of hot wax, damp rock, and humans. In a heartbeat she was on him, heat and muscle and the heady scent of clean skin and cologne and sweat, his hard arms tightening around her back as she slammed against him and knocked them both to the ground.
His breath huffed out on impact, but he didn’t loosen his grip. She gave him bonus points for that.
“Sorry, slick,” she whispered against his ear, “but playtime’s over.”
Then she flipped onto her back, dragged him along with her, threw her legs around his neck, and squeezed.
The roar of the crowd was deafening.
He tried with all his considerable might to pry open her thighs, but his face got redder and redder by the second, and then veins began to bulge in his forehead and neck. Beneath him she mouthed it again—
Finally he tapped out, and she released him. He fell back against the dusty limestone, coughing and laughing at the same time, brown eyes watering, both hands at his throat.
“Hellcat!” he rasped.
“Took you long enough,” Mel murmured with a quick glance at Alexi. Two of his friends were helping him from the floor, but he pushed them away, cursing loudly, preferring to get to his feet under his own power.
“Just long enough to let him save face,” Eliana murmured back as Alexi shot her a penetrating sideways glance and then turned away to slap one of his friends on the back.
“Somebody buy me a drink—I just got my ass kicked by a girl!” he shouted.
“Again!” someone shouted back, and he hollered a good-natured curse at the man. Eliana was the only one who ever beat Alexi in the weekly matches, but she beat everyone else, too, even the monstrous MMA cage fighter who’d once come to test her skills, so it almost didn’t count.
She was a freak of nature, that’s all. It’s always easier to dismiss the freaks.
A knot of moon-eyed, squealing catagirls in heavy makeup, miniskirts, and midriff-baring tops shuffled in his direction. He glanced in her direction to make sure she was still looking and then put his arm around the nearest one and nuzzled his face into her neck.
Eliana sighed. If she had been in love with him, his ploy might have worked. As it was, she only felt the same vague pang of guilt that she was so broken she couldn’t feel anything at all, even for someone she’d been so intimate with.
No—she’d never been truly intimate with Alexi. It pained her to admit she’d used him as a foil for her own black, bottomless loneliness. For a few chaotic months before she came to her senses and turned him loose, they were inseparable, her ebony to his ivory, her dark to his light.
Then, when the gifts started coming, flowers and candies and that beautiful filigree ring he called a “friendship” ring, she ended it. She sent him back to the catagirls who followed him wherever he went like a school of hungry remora.
She wasn’t good for him, and he deserved to be happy. Alexi, for all his swagger and chest-thumping, was a good guy. She hoped they could get to a place where they were truly friends, but she was beginning to doubt the possibility. It had been over a year since they’d been together, and his eyes still restlessly followed her.
He still wanted to solve her riddle.
“He’s got the right idea, anyway.” She turned her attention back to Mel, who was watching her carefully, something she’d caught her doing on more than one occasion. Eliana knew Mel worried about her, but the cornerstone, unspoken rule of their friendship was
“About?”
“Drink. Let’s go get one.”
Mel nodded. “Give me ten and I’ll meet you at the Tabernacle.” She grinned, and it made her face look even more impish than usual. “I’ve got to collect the money.” She turned and danced away in that particular way she had, almost skipping over the ground, her long, plaited black hair slapping lightly against her back.
