Night Beyond The Night (24 page)

“Shall I be flattered that it didn’t take you long to come searching for me?” he said, looking for her in the shadows. A pack of wolves howled in the distance, the wild sound lifting prickles at the back of his neck.

“Took you long enough to leave and come outside.” Her voice still sounded scratchy, as if it weren’t often used.

He couldn’t see her, though he examined every shadow from the direction of her voice. Then he looked up. And there she was, perched on a window ledge two floors above him.

Though it was dark, he felt the connection when their eyes met, and then after a moment, he could make out the pale hue of her shirt, so much lighter than her skin. Narrow shoulders, wings of choppy hair darker than night, the arrows spiking from the quiver on her back.

“Want to come down here?” Quent asked, realizing his heart was pounding.

Bugger it
. What was it about her that drew him? There was nothing. They’d had a single conversation, he hadn’t even seen her clearly—couldn’t see her clearly now. And she was prickly, scruffy, and obviously a social misfit.

It was the way she had touched him. His face. He swore it still warmed there when he remembered that gentle, hesitant caress. As though doing so was foreign to her. Touching someone.

She had saved his life, which he supposed must count for at least part of his fascination. She’d done so and then disappeared. And now she seemed to have no bloody interest in him but to get her arrow back.

Quent had to admit, that wasn’t something he normally experienced. Young, ridiculously rich, handsome, and an adventurer . . . he found that women were always interested in him. Too many of them.

Although . . . none of that was true any longer, was it? The realization slammed him like a cricket ball to the gut. He was no longer the heir to a vast fortune. He was no one but a blond man, in a world where blondes were abducted by monstrous creatures.

“Do you have my arrow?” Her impatience was growing.

“At least tell me your name first.”

Silence for a long moment. Then, softly, quietly from the shadows . . . “Zoë.”

“Zoë,” he repeated. “I’m Quent.”

“I know.”

“And I find talking to shadows quite annoying.”

“Then stop talking and give me my damn arrow.”

“I don’t have it with me.” Purposely. “Won’t you come down here?”

She made a disgusted tsking sound that clearly said, “Are you daft?”

He looked up at her, thought perhaps he could make out the lift of a chin, and the tip of a nose. “Are you afraid of me?”

This time, a derisive snort carried down to him, and Quent couldn’t hold back a smile. “Then I’ll come up.”

And he began to climb, lodging the toe of his boot inside an old broken window, grabbing onto a vine that appeared to be sturdy. The vine gave way. Quent slid, making much more of the tumble than it actually was. And then he lay still.

Her curse carried to his ears, but then she called his name, low and urgent. He didn’t reply. Then with a “fuck” and a few “damns,” she clambered down, lithe and quick, landing lightly on two steady feet. When she knelt next to him, her knees brushed against his.

She laid her hand against his cheek as she had before, and he smelled the same earthy, organic scent and something else.
A little spicy. Cinnamon? How?

Warm fingers.

He opened his eyes. Shadowed by the light behind her and the uneven edges of hair falling in her face, spiking out from around her neck, her expression was unreadable. But then their eyes met and she reeled back. He lashed out, closing around her slender wrist. It was warm, and banded with what felt like a loose leather strip.

“You faked it,” she said in disgust that was clearly directed at herself. She tried to pull away, but he held tightly . . . not so much that she would be alarmed or injured, but enough that she understood he wanted her to stay.

“Sorry,” he said, sitting up and releasing her hand. To his relief, she didn’t move away. And now they were crouched next to each other on the ground, face-to-face, toe brushing toe. “You must really want that arrow, to come all the way down here. Next to me.” He smiled, surprising himself.

“So where the fuck is it?”

Later, Quent would never be able to explain what made him do it, what made him reach for her, cupping his hand at the back of her skull and holding her there as he moved forward in what felt like slow motion. Maybe it was still that lingering warmth on his cheek, the sense that she’d needed to touch him as much as he’d wanted her to.

But he did it, rising up on his knees, steadying her warm head, feeling the tickle of her wild hair over his cheek as he found her lips with his.

Prepared to release his skittish cat the moment she made a move to twist away, he balanced on one flat palm that levered him closer. A bit of grass softened the rough ground beneath knees and hand, his fingers curled into the moist dirt.

He slid his lips up against hers, parting them enough to close over her top one with a gentle caress, then away, and then back again, to do the same to her full bottom one. And then she shocked him when, instead of pulling away, she merged into him, into the kiss, opening her mouth to close over his, tipping her head to the side and matching the sudden ferocity of his movements with her own.

Hell . . . oh, bloody hell
. Just like that, he was lost.

Warm, slender, lean . . . and she tasted, smelled, sweet-spicy. Quent needed more, delved deeper, now holding her head with both hands, still gentle, but steady, near, his eyes sinking closed and the moment overwhelming. He couldn’t draw in a breath. His world became heat and slick lips and tongue, and cinnamon, and warmth . . . the warmth of her up against him.

She freed herself then, and at last he could see her. Her skin was rich, the color of the cinnamon he smelled around her, and she looked like a Bollywood star with a frightful haircut. A white beam played over her face, making it exotic and mysterious with huge almond-shaped eyes, wide lips, and shadowy slashes from the uneven illumination. Elegant cheekbones and an aristocratic nose that seemed at odds with the glossy hair that went every which way, one strand catching at the corner of an eye.

“So . . .” he said when he could find his voice. “I have your arrow.”

“I want it.” Now her voice was even rougher than before.

“Is that all you want?”

She looked at him now, and the slant of her eyes, steady and knowing, made his bloody palms go damp. “No.”

“Then I do believe I might be able to accommodate you after all.”

He stood and she rose too, with spare, sleek movements, tall and slender next to him, arrows clunking quietly. Quent brushed close to her, and then before he realized it, had his hands on her slender shoulders, her backed against the wall, his mouth devouring hers once again.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Quent was shocked, bewildered by his ferocity. But for now, he registered only the crazy response of her lips, open and warm and sleek, the urgent wildness growing in him. The feel of her breasts, now, under his hands, the deep pleasure of a soft woman to press against, the smooth skin under his fingers. Blood rushed down, making him hard and uncomfortable, ready as hell . . . and the pressure of her grinding against him merely made Quent want to drive deep.

She pulled her face away, gasping for breath, holding his hips against hers. “Is that my arrow in your pocket . . . ?”

He laughed against her mouth, a little breathlessly, feeling her lips curve. “It’s not yours . . . but you can certainly have it.”

Fuck compartmentalization. Fuck stoicism. Fuck it all.

Elliott felt the tightness in his face, the tension in his shoulders, the gathering of temper deep inside him. The dull throb of weariness, the ache of gnawing grief, the fog of disbelief.

There was too much. Too damn much, and he couldn’t keep it all tamped down, packed away any longer.

He had only to look at the stage here in The Pub to know part of the reason. The breaking of the last straw. The final nail in the coffin of his control.

For, up there, Jade sat on a stool under warm lights, cradling an acoustic guitar. Strumming easily, she turned an old rock song about night moves into a sexy ballad. Her voice, low and dusky, beckoned like an invitation.

Problem was, the invitation didn’t seem to be for him.

Despite all that had happened last night—their conversation, their connection, that mind-blistering kiss—once they’d arrived back in Envy, she’d erected some sort of rigid wall. During the hours in Lou’s computer room, Jade had remained aloof and apart from him. At the time, Elliott had accepted that as discretion, and maybe a little bit of shyness.

Plus, she’d done something to her lips that made them all lush and sexy, and it had distracted the hell out of him even though they were talking about mind-boggling, far-reaching consequences like the possibility of Atlantis, and seeing the proof that the world was indeed gone.

So he’d assumed that after they left Lou’s there’d be a moment of privacy between him and Jade.

But, no. Jade had disappeared without a glance, and Elliott had learned on his own that she had to prepare for this gig tonight. And now here they were: Jade onstage, her voice, those heavy-lidded eyes, the tumble-down hair . . . feeding the imagination of every male in the room, and Elliott watching, unacknowledged, removed, and on the verge of erupting.

The balance of his control was tipping.

He slammed his beer, allowing the banter from Wyatt, Simon, and Fence (none of them knew where Quent was) around him to slip into the background and leave him with his thoughts.

Setting his empty glass on the table, he gestured for the waitress to bring another. Not surprisingly, she was the same one they’d had the other night. Trixie.

She met his eyes and gave him a long, slow smile, even as she moved efficiently to serve another table. He smiled back like he meant it, settled, slouching, in his seat, and glanced around the club, even as the low, mellow words of Jade’s song wove into his consciousness.

He turned so that he didn’t have to watch her onstage, giving a low, slow smile or a bit of a wave to people—well, hell, be precise; she nodded and waved to the
men
in the audience. She was a performer. She got off on the attention.

She was a control freak. She had to call the shots. She had to be stroked.

Lysney had been the same way. High-powered women who commanded interest and desire fed on it. Played the game.

Elliott didn’t go for that. So he turned in his seat so that he wasn’t
quite
facing the stage, but he could still watch . . . if he wanted to.

The place had been decorated by what looked like
DVD
or CD inserts, taken out of their cases and plastered all over the walls in a . . . what was it? His cousins used to always make them with pictures of teen heartthrobs . . . a collage. But someone with an artistic eye had seen to the arrangement, for all the images that, from a distance, appeared black or blue were on one wall, the red and orange ones were on another, and so on.

And as he looked around, as the slur of the beer settled over him, Elliott felt almost normal. Almost as if this were just another bar in Chicago, and he was hanging with the guys after a game of basketball or gone out to see a band play the blues. And the way that waitress Trixie was giving him the eye, he might not be going home alone tonight.

But the moment evaporated. He would never have normal again.

The song ended and Jade lifted the guitar and its strap up and over her head, resting it in a stand next to the microphone. She stood under the warm lights, wearing some slim-fitting trousers and a low-cut halter that tied behind her neck, lifting her breasts, showing off the deep, dark shadow between them. The material sparkled and glinted as she gave a brief bow, tossed a few kisses into the crowd, then stepped back from the stage and turned to walk off.

She’d not looked in Elliott’s direction once. Not that he’d really noticed, because he’d stopped watching her. Mostly.

Trixie brought his beer, taking her time, giving him a lingering smile. As Elliott took it, he met her sloe eyes, holding her gaze for longer than necessary. A familiar step in the ritual of attraction and pursuit.

The message couldn’t have been clearer, but Trixie was also a master at the game. She didn’t slather, didn’t come on too strong. The invitation was there, but it was one of equality, not desperation. Elliott generally liked that in a woman. Confidence. Good self-esteem.

And when she turned and hurried off to fill another order, he watched her go. Noticed the way her ass filled out her low-slung jeans. For about two seconds . . . until his attention was drawn yet again, inexorably, to the empty stage.

Someone had turned on a different sound system, and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” began to filter just above the conversations that had erupted with Jade’s exit.

Several other audience members had also risen to leave, now that the show was over. Elliott couldn’t help but notice that a few of them—none happened to be the cowboy wannabe, which only slightly mollified him—headed, not for the main exit of The Pub, but toward the stage, walking around and to the back of it.

Where Jade had gone.

Elliott’s deep-seeded antagonism and general pissed-offness bubbled to the surface. He put his beer down, stood, and before he knew it, was striding away.

Toward the stage.

Around the back of the platform. Into the narrow hallway that led to what were presumably dressing rooms.

He knew it was irrational. He knew it was out of line, that he didn’t want to play this game.

But he kept going.

He heard her dusky laugh before he saw her, which wasn’t a surprise because she was surrounded in the little passageway by a small cluster of people—yes, men—all of whom were taller than she was.

Elliott hardly realized what he was doing. He felt as though he were moving underwater, but he pushed through until he found her, shouldering the others out of his way.

“Elliott?” Her green eyes flashed wide and surprised when she saw him, and later he wondered what sort of expression he must have had on his face—for hers wasn’t necessarily a welcoming response.