“I was doing my job.”
“Then maybe Mac isn’t paying you enough.”
“I’ll tell him you said that.” Her smile trembled a little from forcing it. She looked away. “What are you so worked up for anyway?” In her experience the knight wasn’t easily rattled.
As if remembering that himself, his expression became unreadable and he fell into step with her. “I didn’t know Mac was increasing the security around here. No one has targeted him, have they?”
“Do you honestly think Mac would share something like that with me?” The wolf was even more stubborn than her brothers when it came to handling his own affairs.
Lucan shrugged, watching her from the corner of his eye. “Impressive, though.”
Surprised by the praise, she glanced at him.
“Why a wraith?”
Wondering if she was hearing something else besides just curiosity, she walked into the office ahead of him. “Because there isn’t a human or immortal who wouldn’t be scared to cross paths with one. No offense.”
Lucan couldn’t help what he’d become any more than she could help turning to stone during the day. Technically, she supposed she could help it now, but had been hiding it from her brothers for months. Until recently, they’d been too occupied with their mates to notice and ask questions she wasn’t prepared to answer.
“Your brother wasn’t scared of me.” Lucan stared straight ahead.
“Tristan was protecting his mate. And that wasn’t your fault, Luc.” She paused in front of the desk, not even realizing she’d reached her hand out until he carefully avoided touching her and stepped toward the window.
“I could have fought it harder.”
“And driven yourself insane in the process?”
As bad as the gargoyles had it, Rhiannon had reserved a worse punishment for those closest to Arthur. It didn’t matter that every one of Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table would have sacrificed their life for his—and many had on the bloody battlefield at Camlann—the goddess had made sure their fate was worse than death.
By enslaving every knight, forcing them to become her personal mercenaries—wraiths—they were blood- bound to complete any task they were assigned. Failure to complete an assignment triggered what some called a madness fueled by excruciating pain and offset by a mindless bloodlust.
According to her brothers, it was like watching a monster take over, swallowing the man and friend they knew and leaving behind a merciless, unfeeling beast. Finishing an assignment, one way or another, was the only way for Lucan to regain control.
“It all worked out,” she reminded him. Tristan’s mate had survived Lucan’s attempted assassination and was still keeping both humans and immortals in line at Pendragon’s, the bar Briana’s family ran.
“She isn’t alive because of anything I did.” He stared out at the Strip. “And the damage it caused…”
“My brothers don’t hold you responsible any more than I do.” Not entirely anyway. Lucan may have been compelled to kill her brother’s mate, but he hadn’t been the one who’d targeted her in the first place.
Wishing she could take away the regret in Lucan’s eyes, she contented herself with sharing the view. He glanced at her, but she kept her eyes trained on the neon lights and traffic moving below.
She wasn’t sure when she’d noticed his presence seemed to soothe the wildness inside her, but as much pleasure as she took in his proximity, she’d give anything to go back to how things used to be between them.
To a time when he didn’t go out of his way to avoid meeting her eyes and move so carefully, as though the thought of even accidentally brushing up against her was too much for him to stand. To a time when he’d been no more than her brothers’ friend—long before she’d ever wished things could be different between them.
Cian’s numerous stories of Lucan, before the knight had become another of Rhiannon’s victims, had laid the groundwork for a crush that had taken Briana by surprise. She hadn’t yet come into her immortality when they’d met centuries ago.
Their paths hadn’t crossed again until a few months ago, and not once in all that time had she stumbled across eyes such a haunting green or a smile that so tempted both woman and cat.
Lucan had nearly killed Tristan’s mate—making him
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Are you planning on running any more tests?”
“Probably.”
“Alone?”
She arched a brow. “I think I can handle a few glamours. I’ve been a big girl for a few centuries now.” She crossed to her laptop but something made her look over her shoulder at him. Was he staring at her ass?
His eyes snapped to hers, that familiar granite expression sliding effortlessly back into place right—but not before she imagined a flash of unchecked desire that she felt all the way to her toes.
“Lucan.” His name was out before she figured out what she wanted to say—what she’d
“Say hi to Cian for me, Briana.” He didn’t waste time with goodbye before walking away, his footsteps fading into nothing.
She stared at the empty doorway long after he’d gone, then forced herself to push all thoughts of him from her mind and finish her work—a task made increasingly difficult with every chance encounter.
By the time she was satisfied with the system—which took her twice as long as it should have—she’d lost interest in fiddling with anything in the control room. She needed to get out of here, someplace she could run. She’d been ignoring the needs of her animal half nearly as long as she’d been burying herself in work, and the cat felt more on edge than ever.
It didn’t help that the ride down to the hotel’s underground parking lot took forever with guests hopping on and off at every other floor. Next time she’d remember to use Mac’s private elevator. A few floors up from the parking level, a guy in an Elvis costume got on and purposely brushed up against her. Already feeling caged in, she grit her teeth at the contact, barely curbing the urge to slash out with her claws.
He did a double take as he stepped off at the lobby—probably wondering what the hell was wrong with her eyes—and then the doors closed, leaving her alone and all too aware of how close the cat was to the surface.
Closing her eyes before she made anyone else look at her a little too long, she took a deep breath, then another. The doors finally opened and she pushed away from the back wall, walking as quickly as she dared without drawing notice.
She rounded the last row of cars, and the same slow tease of awareness caressed her senses. A heartbeat later she spotted Lucan leaning against one of the cement support pillars. He wasn’t alone.
She couldn’t have continued past them if she wanted to. Not when she realized he wasn’t just talking to the curvy redhead all but plastered to his chest—he was drinking from her.
Briana Callaghan was trouble.
It was the only thought that kept Lucan from releasing his hold on the slinky redhead curled around him. He’d been reminding himself of it long before he left the penthouse and the whole elevator ride down.
Getting as far from Vegas—as far from her—as he could was his top priority until the redhead had asked him to help find her car. Forgetting where she’d parked turned out to be the least of her problems once it crossed his mind to use the mortal to satisfy the only craving he could do anything about.
With his fangs buried in the luscious spot above her collarbone, he didn’t have to think about Briana’s silky brown hair and stunning blue eyes or imagine how soft her fingers would have felt laced with his.
From the first hard draw of the woman’s blood, his senses exploded with power. He’d long ago given up fighting the nature of the beast Rhiannon had knowingly unleashed inside every wraith when she made them require blood to survive. Without it, they risked losing control of that beast that would overtake them if they failed her the way she believed they all failed her Arthur.
Rhiannon had nearly broken him in the beginning by forcing him and every other wraith to prey and feed on others to survive. It was her he imagined was weak and helpless against him in the beginning, her blood that was spilled each time he was forced to drink from another, his hatred for himself overshadowed only by his hatred for Rhiannon.
