Beast of Fire -- a Demon Hunting Sexy Romance (16 page)

She punched the speed dial number for Lucan, and he answered on the first ring. “Hi,” she said, relief washing through her.
 

“You’re okay?”
 

He sounded grumpy. She didn’t remember him being so grumpy the year before. But then, he hadn’t been captive to Demons then either. “Yes,” she assured him, glancing around nervously, expecting someone to appear at any moment; the quiet and inactivity was a bit unnerving.

“Twenty minutes, woman,” Lucan bellowed at her. “You scared the crap out of me. I saw that wolf confront you. I thought he did something to you.”

He was worried, genuinely worried, she realized. That wasn’t something you faked. It wasn’t something born of hormones and mating fire, either. “Just saying good morning in his normal, pleasant way,” she commented dryly. Normal being rude and obnoxious, of course, and she figured Lucan would know that. “Nothing more.”

 
“That was Nick, wasn’t it? The security guy you mentioned.”

 
“Right,” she said, discretion her concern. “The bakery was a great idea. I can’t wait to try my éclairs.” In other words, his plan had worked. She’d convinced Nick she’d stopped in for breakfast. “I should run now, so I have time to eat before I get started here."

A frustrated sound filled the phone. “I hate this more than you know. I don’t want you to be there.”

She swallowed hard at the emotion in his voice, at the tremor that climbed through the phone line and into her body. But what could she say? Anyone could be listening. “I’ll call you later.”

“Call me by lunchtime and check in, or else—"

“I’m not sure I can do lunch,” she finished for him. “But I’ll call you and let you know.”
 

“You better,” he said. “And be careful. Don’t take unnecessary risks.”

“That goes for you, too,” she said and hesitated, trying to think how to really get the urgency of her point across and came up with, “Please.”
 

Silence crackled on the line and then a sudden burst of low, sexy male laughter. “Please?” he asked incredulously. “I kind of like that.” His voice lowered, took on a sensual note. “I think I’d like to hear it again.”

Was he flirting with her? The flutter of awareness spreading through her body certainly said yes. She wanted Lucan, wanted him so very badly she could not deny it. Nor could she hold back a little challenge. “I bet you won’t say that in person.”

The line crackled with a sudden silence. Then, “Not because I don’t want to.” His voice held a low, sensual quality that beckoned her with enticement and possibility. God, she wanted to know those possibilities. Two weeks from now she could well be in the snake pits, and still a virgin, someone who had never known the pleasure between a man and woman. Who had never known Lucan, the man who had set her fantasies on fire for a year now.

“Kresley?”
 

“Yes?”

“Do not leave without calling me.”
 
The line went dead.
 

She grimaced. So much for that steamy moment. She sighed and slipped her phone back into her purse, eying the clock as her stomach growled. Ten minutes until work officially started. She eyed the envelope, almost positive it was from Sheila. But it was work she had to do in order to be here, positioned to get the book, and the ring. She shoved it aside.

 
      
Kresley decided to take a quick moment to eat her pastries before she fell on her face, thankful for the secluded executive office. She opened the bakery bag, thinking about Lucan when she should have been thinking about her safety, about getting the book. She wondered about his past, about his interest in science, his transition from working in a lab to wielding a sword. She took a bite of her éclair and cringed at the cardboard taste. She crinkled her nose as she eyed the yummy-looking, chocolate-covered delight and wondered how it could taste so darn bad.
 

“Great,” she murmured, as she tossed it into the bag and into the trashcan. First meal she had attempted in more than a day, and it was horrible. And not really a meal anyway.

Her gaze settled back on the envelope, and her heart kicked up a beat of its own accord. For some reason, she dreaded opening it, she realized, and not because of work. Her heart did a faster flutter. Yep. Dread. She felt dread.
 

She reprimanded herself and grabbed it, ripped it open and removed the contents. Stared at what she held in her hands – shock rendered her utterly still as she recognized the book from Cullen’s library. The book with the Knights' emblem.
 
She’d been eating an éclair while this sat on her desk? What had she been thinking?
 

Her gaze caught on a note card stuck inside the front cover. Tentatively, she removed it, flipping the top panel open, and read: Next time, ask. Cullen.

She dropped the note, stared down at it. Why she was so shocked, she didn’t know. Of course, he knew she’d been nosing around in his office. Nick would have told him. Of course. Right. It was expected. Her finger traced the lines of the Knights' emblem engraved on the cover of the velvet book, baffled that he knew the exact book she’d been looking at. He wanted her to know he knew, too. Was he teaching her a lesson about snooping or was there more to this? Surely, this was a sign the book held no big secret. Would he give it to her if it had something important inside? Curiosity sent her hand to the cover, flipping it open. She thumbed through pages, but couldn’t understand a word of the text. Okay, maybe he would.
 

Leaning back in her chair, she decided Cullen Moore was playing a game with her, and she didn’t know the rules. Not a fun way to play any game. In this case, not a safe way to play a game. Especially not when two of the players wielded the power of fire. But there was one thing in her favor, she reminded herself. She knew about the ring and his ability to create fire. He had no idea that she, too, could create fire. Which meant she had an advantage and one she wasn’t afraid to use if she had to.
 

 
***

Lucan exited the elevator of the Embassy Suites Battery Park Hotel an hour after the call from Kresley, every nerve ending he owned standing on end, his head splintering with sharp pulses that radiated along his skull and seemed to come and go. His arms throbbed where the bracelets grabbed his wrists with excruciating tightness. These new afflictions appeared to strike every time he left Kresley’s presence. From what he could tell, these were symptoms created when the Guardians were battling his beast for control
 
– letting it free when Kresley was near, hoping he would mark her. Reining it in during her absence. It appeared they underestimated the will of his beast, because it wasn’t submitting without a battle. One Lucan was paying the price for.
 

And the beast wanted her, wanted her badly. Ironically, the beast that threatened to destroy the man, could be bound eternally, destroyed, by the woman it craved, by the mate of the man. Kresley was that woman to him.
 

He’d taken the absence of his inner beast for granted until it had returned. The need to tame that beast, and the need to find a form of exertion to feed the primal energy it created, had returned. It was a burden that all unmated Knights felt, a need to feed the beast within so it would not consume their souls. He’d learned the hard way, that not even a lab and an intriguing scientific equation could quell the beast within him. No. Control came from feeding the beast in one of two ways – with sex or the exertion of battle. Unfortunately, sex wasn’t on the agenda, no matter how much he burned for Kresley, and anyone else wouldn’t do, not anymore. Sex with Kresley would lead to mating, and mating, to her being bound to the Guardians. Unfortunately, his other option, a good fight, wasn’t exactly going to go over well in the middle of a hotel lobby; he was pretty much screwed.
 

Lucan cut to his left and stepped onto the up escalator headed toward the connected movie theater, aware he was being followed; in fact, he’d made sure of it. Everything he had done thus far, from stopping by Kresley’s apartment, to checking into a room, had been a façade of caution, intentionally leading the enemy to a room he had no intention of staying in. At the top of the incline, he stepped off the ramp and quickened his pace, thankful for an excuse to use some of his excess energy, an attempt to mislead his pursuers into thinking he was in a hurry and careless. To his left, a cluster of restaurants was already busy with a lunch crowd, people milling around tables chatting. A few more steps led to yet another escalator and the ground level, which he walked down – again the impression of urgency leading his prey forward. And then doing the unexpected. He stopped at the ticket booth. It was Friday and the new Indian Jones film was making its first showing.
 

Once through the rather long line, with ticket in hand, Lucan rode the escalator up several floors to the highest level theatre. By now, he imagined his pursuers were scratching their heads and assuming he was up to something. His reputation, after all, was for death, not entertainment.
 

Lucan smiled to himself, amused despite the pulsing in his head, the tension of his body. He might not be able to kill his enemies right now, but he damn sure was going to enjoy fucking with their heads. That was something. Not a lot but he’d take what he could get.

 
He exited the second escalator, didn’t glance toward the lower one, but could feel a presence there, knew his pursuer to be that close. He was, at least, mildly amused by this cat-and-mouse game, and the splintering in his head was a bit more bearable. Lingering at the end of the ramp, he feigned interest in a movie poster, forcing his pursuer, a male wolf in human form, to pass him.
 

The wolf lingered at the concession stand to Lucan’s left, and Lucan cast him a discreet sideways inspection, cataloging his appearance: red shirt, black jeans, dark hair pulled back at the neck that did nothing to hide the oversized head. Ugly bastard, he was. Easy for security to spot. Good.
 

Several people filed into the line behind the wolf, a welcome obstacle between Lucan and his pursuer. Lucan removed the spare cell phone he’d bought at the store – he’d bought two – and punched a speed dial he’d set up in his room. The front desk of the hotel answered and Lucan asked for the manager.
 

A moment later, a female was on the line, “This is the manager, Marie Carr,” the voice said. “Can I help you?”

“I’m in the movie theater,” he said, his voice low, muffled, “and I just overheard a man saying he’d planted two bombs in the building. He said he’s wearing the detonator.” He added urgency. “Please. You have to get everyone out of here. There are kids here.”

“Sir. If this is a joke –"

“Are you listening?!” he demanded in a hissed whisper. "He planted bombs. He’s on the third floor.” He gave them a description.” Then, “Please hurry!”
 

He hit end, walked to the fire alarm several steps away and pulled. A loud siren went off, screeching through the air with eardrum-bursting force.
 

Lucan smiled as the crowd seemed to cluster around the wolf at the concession stand. The wolf was on his toes, trying to see over several heads. Lucan lifted a hand and waved, receiving a grimace in return. With a laugh, Lucan sauntered to the escalator, didn’t rush at all. He knew humans. They’d rule out the reality of true danger, linger too long, and then rush out together in a mad frenzy.
 

Several security people were running up the opposite escalator and one of them pointed above Lucan’s head, to where Lucan was certain the wolf was. “That’s him,” a security person whispered far too loudly since Lucan easily heard the exclamation. “That’s him!”

A panicked frenzy of voices above echoed through the high ceilings as people began to recognize there was real trouble brewing.
 

Lucan cut back to an emergency exit and took several flights of stairs down to the street. And this time he made sure no one saw him; he disappeared, sidestepped several wolves without being noticed. Lucan wouldn’t be found if he didn’t want to be found. He might not live the life of a Knight any longer, but he still possessed the skills of a Knight, the ability to sense Demons – too bad he was also possessed by Demons.
 

A grim thought that he shoved aside, losing himself easily in the back streets of Manhattan he’d come to know so well. He walked ten minutes and entered the financial district, and made his way to the Ritz Carlton, located directly across from the Wolf Leader’s corporate office. Relief loosened the vise on his chest as he drew nearer to Kresley's location.

Lucan entered the hotel through the "staff only" entrance but didn’t make it far. One of the “staff” apparently noticed he wasn’t one of them. “Excuse me, sir, but you can’t come through here,” an indignant staffer said, his spine stiff, his tux perfectly pressed.
 

Lucan raised two fingers, several crisp Benjamin Franklins between them. The man quickly scooped them up, newfound respect glowing in his eyes.
 

“Can I help you?” he asked, making it clear that he was Lucan’s new best friend. The best money could buy. And Lucan had plenty of it. He’d taken the trust fund that he’d received from the Knights to survive in the human world, and invested well in the medical research that he believed in. He’d cashed in big and hardly touched a dime – a security blanket for times like these–because no one had to tell him the power money wielded in the human world. He despised that reality,
 
preferred the low-key life of the ranch, but nonetheless, understood this world.
 
Lucan cast his best friend a direct look. “Discreetly, you may, indeed, help me,” he replied. “I need a room on the highest floor available – a suite preferably.” Lucan pulled out his American Express card and ticked off a list of supplies he required, including an Apple notebook, internet ready. The internet was packed with myths and legends, and somewhere online that ring had to be referenced and he would find it.