Kinked

It was sometimes easy to forget how much older the other sentinels were than Quentin, including Alex, who had made passing references before to ancient Grecian wars as if he had lived through them—and no doubt he had. Wyr tended to live very much in the present, more so than almost all the other Elder Races. Quentin had thought before that it must have something to do with their animal natures.

“Sure, I’m old enough,” she said. “But the world is a very big place, and I had no interest in what Elves were up to. I’ve never been near the passageways here.”

He almost asked her what she had been interested in, all that long ago, before he remembered he could hardly stand to hear the sound of her voice and caught himself.

Instead, he said, “Ferion confirmed that the Numenlaur passageway is very near where the stories say it is. That means I’ve been through that area before. We’ll have to park at one of the camping sites and hike in.”

“All right.” She paused. “I suppose we’ve passed the point where we might be able to stop at a farmhouse and rent rooms.”

Quentin rubbed his face. “Yes. We’ve got two options for tonight. There’s a turnoff soon for a ski resort. It might be open, if you want to try there. Or we can rough it.”

Amusement flashed over her face, keen and bright like a blade. “I like roughing it.”

Pow, the banked sexuality that smoldered between them came roaring back to the surface. It filled the interior of the car. He listened to the tiny sound of her breathing, the subtle friction of air as she shifted in her seat.

She was squirming.

He knew exactly what he would have done if they hadn’t been in a moving vehicle. He would have advanced on her, pushed her back against some kind of surface. He would have taken her chin, tilted her head back and bitten her throat.

He just didn’t know whether he would have done it before or after he kissed her.

“Hate sex,” he hissed.

Her eyes flashed to him. She looked furious, or agonized.

He ran his hands through his short hair and stretched, deliberately arching his back. Her hands clenched on the steering wheel so that the knuckles showed white.

He laughed, low and soft. She started it. By damn, it was good to know he got under the harpy’s skin just as much as she got under his.

She was good at shock value, he would give her that. The things that fell out of her mouth were sometimes as raw as the punch she had thrown at him earlier.

Maybe the idea was growing in its appeal now that it had been with him for a few hours. If he wouldn’t let himself kill her, he could at least screw her until they were both senseless.

Then maybe he would get rid of whatever poison she had injected into his system.

His hands fisted as he remembered the feel of that taut, tight body of hers pinning him against the warehouse door. Nobody had ever pinned him, aroused him, and then laughed in his face before. He owed her for that. Hard and raw.

Her life was one eternal rampage. Maybe it was time someone turned the tables on her and went after her with the same kind of relentlessness with which she went after the entire world.

And maybe it was past time that someone took that harpy down a peg or two, and showed her who was boss.

SEVEN

By the time Aryal finally parked the car in a gravel parking lot at a deserted campsite, it was late afternoon and clouds obscured the nearby mountain peaks. Tantalizing hints of land magic had begun to tickle at her senses for the last half hour or so of the drive. She longed to take flight and hunt for the elusive feeling, soar over the mountain range and kick her feet in the thick clouds.

The day had warmed enough to melt the patchy snow at the lower altitudes, but sunset came early in March in the Czech Republic, and the temperature was already falling again. When she opened the car door, the damp chill air was like a cold, wet washcloth slapping her in the face. The fresh air smelled wonderful, and it felt good and bracing, but it wasn’t enough to cool the heat pouring through her body.

Grateful to be out of the confinement of the car at last, she stretched her aching back. Instantly an image of Quentin stretching in the car flashed in her mind. He looked like a great, lazy cat as he did it, his blue eyes vivid in his tanned face. He smelled like virility and feline Wyr. The scent got up her nose and made her crazy. Her Wyr side wanted to claw at him. Hell, her human side wanted to claw at him too.

Gods, this had turned into a long trip already, and they were only on the first day. And she had lost her only comfort, the conviction that everybody would be better off if she just committed a quiet, itsy-bitsy little murder.

Aryal flew by her instincts, and every instinct had screamed for so long that Quentin was a dangerous man. And he was dangerous. Not many creatures could get her down on the ground with their hands around her throat.

Had she let that skew her perspective? Is that why she had pursued him so relentlessly? After all, a dangerous man would make an exceedingly dangerous criminal.

But he had been telling the truth earlier, and so had she—she really didn’t care about the smuggling he had done. If she pushed it and continued to squander her time digging into his past, maybe she could get enough evidence to kick him out of his sentinel position, but what would it cost her?

He was already well liked, and he was Pia’s special friend. And Aryal had taken sober note of not only Dragos’s words, but of Grym’s as well, along with the cold assessing way that Graydon had looked at her when she had gone to talk to him in the cafeteria. She had already used up all of her considerable free rein with not only Dragos, but with almost everybody else too. She was riding high on everyone’s annoyance radar and low on tolerance. Nobody’s first impulse was going to be to give her any slack.

So she spent the drive doing something she rarely did, which was considering the possible consequences of her actions. The exercise hurt her brain and offended her nature. But the bottom line was, all that effort and upheaval would be to pin him for crimes that she didn’t give a shit about anyway. Gah, if only he had been a spy, or involved in some super secret assassination plot against Dragos or somebody else she loved!

At least she didn’t have to give up her hate on him. She just had to give up the whole “hunting for an act of God to squash him like a bug so she could innocently present his crushed and lifeless body to Dragos” plan.

She had to admit, that did make life a lot simpler.

And besides, giving up on the plan was one thing. She could still hurt him a whole lot if he gave her any reason to. She cheered at the thought.

They were going to have to leave the car, maybe for some time, so she had parked in an unobtrusive spot underneath some trees for whatever shelter that might offer from the elements. As she looked around, she noted that the campsite had permanent metal grills for cooking. Probably small animals had built nests in half of them. She preferred setting up her own fire ring.

It was early to stop for the day, but there was also no reason to wreck themselves. This land was beautiful, but it would not be friendly terrain in mid-March, and it was not like they could push hard, finish their assignment and go home early. And Dragos had already said they couldn’t show up again in New York before two weeks were up.

They’d already had a sleepless night and a transcontinental flight, and Aryal had eaten only one full meal since yesterday. Granted it was a big meal, but her body was telling her that it was ready for another one.

Quentin had exited the car too. He studied the scene with one arm resting on the car roof. Lifting his head, he scented the breeze. He said, “There are wolves in these mountains.”

Sentinel or no, a large enough pack of any kind of predator could bring one of them down, but the wolves weren’t really a threat to either her or Quentin. Any wolves would sense that they were the more dangerous predators and normally give them a wide berth. A wild pack would have to have an overriding reason to attack them.