Dangerous Games

I glanced over my shoulder. He strode toward me, wearing black gym pants and a black singlet top. His skin gleamed with sweat and heat, and he looked sexier than any man had a right to. Desire surged, but my gaze caught his and it fled as quickly as it had risen. His dark eyes gleamed with a ferocity I'd never seen before—a ferocity that was both ancient and inhuman. As if, in that one brief moment, I was viewing his soul and it was nothing that belonged in this time.

Nothing that belonged on this earth.

Then he blinked and smiled, and the strangeness was gone, leaving me wondering if communicating with the dead woman had shaken me more than I'd presumed. I mean, Jin mightn't be human, per se, but he had to be at least a subspecies or some sort of nonhuman. Didn't he? What else was there?

A comment Quinn had made a few months ago floated through my thoughts. He'd said that while he was raised as a human, technically he was only partially so. That the other half of his being was something that no longer existed.

If a half-breed from a race that no longer roamed this earth could survive through the ages, then other, darker things surely could.

The chill that raced through my soul this time was one of foreboding. I didn't want to know about those other, darker things. I really didn't. But I had a bad, bad feeling that not only was I fucking one of them, but I was stepping deeper into their world the longer I stayed by Jin's side.

He stopped and leaned forward to kiss me, and it was all I could do not to recoil. His mouth was cool and quick against mine and, for that, I was grateful. Right then, anything more passionate would have been too much.

'Hi,' he said softly. 'Nice to see you again.'

He smelled of musk and man and dark spices—all scents normally guaranteed to set my hormones a-dancing. And admittedly, despite the chills and foreboding, desire did stir. I was a wolf, after all, and danger was an aphrodisiac.

But running underneath his lust-worthy scent was a trace of sex and blood, mixed in with a hint of jasmine. I couldn't help wondering if his exertion had been more the rough horizontal kind—involving straps, whips, and naked, perfumed flesh—rather than mere gym work.

'Looks like I've come here at a bad time.'

He shrugged. 'There's a gym and spa special running at the moment, so we've a bigger crowd than normal tonight. I'm afraid I can't give you that massage I promised, but I'll get Terri to start you off with the treatments, and I'll see if I can grab a break in the next twenty minutes or so.'

'Look, if you'd rather I leave and come back—'

'No.'

His grip tightened on my arm and the alien light gleamed briefly, starkly in his dark eyes.

'I have no idea how long I'll be,' he continued, 'but I'd rather you wait.'

'Then I'll wait.'

He nodded and pulled me forward, kissing me hard. It was very much a signal of intent and part of me quailed—if only because it suggested that last night was only a teaser. That tonight I'd get a more in-depth introduction to his darker needs and desires.

How far was I willing to go for the sake of the Directorate and tracking down a killer?

I didn't really know anymore, and that was perhaps the scariest thing of all. If my determination not to do what the Directorate and Jack wanted me to do had slipped so much in a matter of months, what would I be like a year down the track? Would I become the willing fighting and fucking machine Jack wanted me to be? Was it as inevitable as the cycle of the moon?

A tremor ran through me. Jin broke off the kiss, and smiled. 'I shall try to hurry,' he said, trailing one hot fingertip down my neck. His touch paused near the pulse point, and his smile widened. 'I'd hate to waste such delicious excitement.'

'Then don't.' I stepped back. 'The sooner you go, the sooner you can be back.'

He laughed, then turned and walked away. I repressed another shiver and tried to ignore the humming of hormones that just loved the danger Jin represented. Sometimes being a werewolf was a pain in the ass.

I looked across to the receptionist. Her face was carefully neutral, but her distaste rode the air. Resisting the urge to tell her I actually sympathized, I said, 'Where do I go for my treatments, then?'

'Just follow the door to your right. Terri will take care of you.'

I followed the directions and pushed through a set of swing doors. A meaty-looking black woman possessing slick, tied-back hair and hands big enough to snap a bus in two approached from the opposite end of the hall. She stopped when she saw me, well-shaped eyebrows rising almost in alarm. It wasn't hard to guess why. She knew what I was, simply because she wasn't human herself.

I stopped several feet in front of her, and looked her up and down. I'd only ever met one bear-shifter before, but this woman left Berna for dead when it came to sheer muscles and size.

'How did you get past the monitors at the door?' she asked, her voice a low growl that was more curious than antagonistic.

I met her dark gaze with a raised eyebrow of my own. 'Probably the same way you do.'

'You're a half-breed?'

'Yep.'

She nodded. 'The sensors read us half-breeds as humans. Kinda handy in a situation like this.'

It would have been if I'd actually been half-human. 'When we want to go where the rules say we can't go?'

She grinned. 'The club rules say no nonhumans. Doesn't say anything about us half-breeds.' She motioned me down the hall. 'I've set you up in cubicle three. I'll give you the massage, then Raj will show you to the spa. There's a twenty minute limit, unfortunately, because we're full tonight.'

'Can I be nosy and ask why you're working here? It's a bit of a risk, isn't it?'

She shrugged. 'The worst they can do is fire me. And the pay here is better than other clubs. Gotta go with the money when you've got a family to feed, you know?'

I nodded, taking in the scents and sounds as we walked down the hall. Hints of sweet oils and feminine musk rode the air, mingling with the tangy spice of male and the faint scent of chlorine. No jasmine, though. No hint of sex.

Whatever Jin was doing, he wasn't doing it in this section.

'Are you the only nonhuman working here?'

'Yep. All employees have to present a birth certificate as evidence of humanity, but mine says human, so I'm okay.'

I raised my eyebrows. DNA tests at birth had been mandatory for at least thirty years, and Terri looked a lot younger than that. 'And how did you manage to achieve that?'

She grinned. 'My old man worked in the labs and fudged the evidence.'

'Dangerous stuff.' And worthy of at least ten years jail time if it ever came to light.

She shrugged. 'He's dead now, so what can they do to him?' She opened the next to last door on the left. 'You want to strip off and place all your valuables in the locker? I'll wait out here.'

'And am I supposed to walk around in nothing but my skin?'

She grinned. 'I've heard tell you wolves make a habit of it.'

'Well, yeah, but humans get quite antsy about it.'

'Which is why you put on the robe hanging next to the locker you've been assigned.'

'Ah. Thank you.'

The changing room was on the small side, and smelled faintly of lemon and ginger. There weren't many other lockers in use, meaning there weren't a whole lot of women in tonight. After quickly stripping off and putting everything in the locker, I grabbed the robe and walked around the room, sniffing the air lightly. And found the scent of jasmine coming from a locker on the far side of the room.

I glanced at the door, wondering if I should take the chance of breaking into the locker. I needed to find out who the woman behind that scent was, if only because she might be one of Jin's regulars, and therefore might know something more about him. Like what he really was.