Play of Passion (18 page)

A smile full of sunshine.

“Come on, Benny,” Ava called. “Let’s get you to bed, my sweet boy.”

Leaving with a wave, Andrew put the little action figure in a side pocket of his pack. Ben had seen. Hawke had seen. Andrew didn’t want anyone else to see. So he made sure he wasn’t stopped again as he headed out and away from this den where Indigo would return on the arm of another man. The rest of what might happen . . . he couldn’t think about it without unleashing the wolf’s tormented rage.

 

 

Indigo sat across
from Riaz on the open patio of a roof-top restaurant you usually had to book weeks in advance, the glittering lights of the city spread out in shimmering ropes far below. And beyond that, the dark lap of the bay. It was a stunning view, and the man across from her was undeniably handsome, but she couldn’t focus, her entire body tense as if for battle. As for her wolf—it was agitated, unable to sit still.

Riaz stirred across from her. “So?”

It was an effort to smile, to pretend everything was as it should be. “I’m impressed,” she said, turning her gaze from the view to him. “How did you get reservations so fast?”

“I called in a favor. Wouldn’t do to disappoint you.” A slow smile that should’ve made her senses leap. “Did you notice how civilized I’m being?”

It was a reference to their past, when Riaz had been a wild, wild young male and she’d been coming into herself as a dominant female. “I almost don’t recognize you.” She tipped her wineglass toward him in a salute, though part of her missed the wild boy he’d been. He was almost too mature these days.

Riaz’s smile deepened at her comment, but she thought she glimpsed something hidden behind it, a sharp echo of her own confusion. However, when he spoke, his voice was steady. “You ready to order?”

“You do it.”

Riaz raised an eyebrow. “Testing how well I know you?”

“Maybe.” She took a sip of the excellent wine and watched him over the top of her glass.

Amazing dark gold eyes, the eyes of a man who’d seen the world and knew exactly what he wanted. But since his return from Europe, those eyes were more often shuttered and introspective than laughing, and the only time she’d really seen him playful was when they’d done the run. Even when he’d been young, he’d been . . . intense.

Not that it mattered, she told herself. Play was for boys and children. Riaz was a strong male in the prime of his life. Both sides of her nature found him more than acceptable . . . except, the wolf thought wistfully, a little more playfulness would’ve been nice. After all, he was a wolf, too. Play was part of their life. Shouldn’t he
want
to play with a female who attracted him?

As she listened, he placed their order. All perfect. Until he said, “No dessert. We’ll go for coffee instead.”

Her wolf sniffed.
No dessert?
Drew would’ve never made that mistake.

She caught that thought as soon as it rose, nipped it before it could take root. Drew wasn’t only too young; he wasn’t dominant enough to be able to handle her wolf, despite what he thought. And as she’d seen up close and personal, such an imbalanced relationship couldn’t work—the emotional devastation would destroy them both, obliterating what friendship remained. There might even come a time when he’d look at her with barely concealed hate.

Shoving aside the painful images evoked by those thoughts, she turned her attention very deliberately to Riaz. “Tell me more about what you did while you were away.”

The other lieutenant began to speak, his voice low, deep, smooth as caramel. As he spoke, she let herself truly look at him. His skin glowed a burnished brown in the light from the candles, his near black hair sparking with auburn highlights. The stunning blonde three tables over was giving him the eye when she thought Indigo wasn’t watching, while the two gorgeous black women one table to the right didn’t even try to hide their admiration.

Meeting Indigo’s gaze, they gave her a discreet thumbs-up. Indigo smiled back at the friendly appreciation, returning her focus to Riaz’s strong jawline, those beautifully shaped lips she’d once felt on her own. They’d been good as lovers, very good. But they’d parted as the best of friends. No broken hearts. No torn souls.

It made her wolf halt in its thoughts, consider.

Changeling wolves mated for life.

Her parents’ relationship might not make sense to Indigo, but there wasn’t a shred of doubt in her mind that they loved each other to the core of their beings. More, that they fit together like two pieces of a separated whole—as if without one, there would be no other.

She wanted that, she realized as she sat across from this incredible man who ticked all the right boxes, who’d make a good partner, but who would never be her heartbeat. She wanted the agony and the ecstasy, craved the ferocity of the bond that tied male to female in the most visceral way. Fear bloomed at the idea of the vulnerability that would accompany such a relationship, but it wasn’t enough to overwhelm the hunger in her soul.

“Hey.”

Blinking, she found Riaz watching her with a disconcertingly intent look. “Sorry,” she said, her cheeks burning with cold heat. “My mind drifted away for a second.”

Riaz didn’t let her off the hook. “We’ve known each other too long to play games, Indigo.” Lifting his wineglass, he took a sip of the golden liquid. “We know this isn’t going to work—but we’re trying to pretend that it will because it’s easier, safer.”

Hearing the echo of pain in his words, she reached out to touch his free hand—no matter what, he was her friend. He was Pack. “Who?”

“My mate.”

Indigo’s hand clenched on his. “You found her?”

“Too late.” It was torn out of him, eyes gleaming amber in the flickering candlelight. “She’s another man’s wife, a good man.” Raw hurt in those words. “Not touching her, not simply taking her, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done—but she would’ve despised herself for cheating.”

So he’d walked away, Indigo thought, though it was clear doing so had savaged him. “I’m sorry, Riaz.” She couldn’t imagine the nightmare he was living, knowing his mate belonged to someone else. Predatory male changelings were possessive beyond belief—it had to be torture to know that another man had the right to touch his mate, to build a life with her.

“I wasn’t playing games with you, Indigo,” he said, turning his hand over so their fingers intertwined, his tone raw. “I thought—”

“I know,” she interrupted with all the gentleness she had in her. Hurting and broken, he’d needed Pack, and she was someone he loved as a friend. It would’ve been instinct to turn to her, to try to find some kind of hope. “There’s no need for apologies between us.”

“It would’ve been so much easier if it was you.” He gave a small smile, the pain in his eyes filmed over by the fist of control. “Drew’s the one, isn’t he?”

She went to tug back her hand but he held it. “Yes,” she admitted. “It confuses me, confuses my wolf, what he makes me feel.” Exhilaration and joy . . . and utter, utter terror. Because what if she was right? What if being with Drew would eventually mean a corrosive pain that would destroy them both, drop by slow drop?

Riaz leaned forward and lifted her fingers to his mouth, brushing a tender caress across her knuckles. “You know what I’m going to say.” In his gaze, she saw a fierce want, a hunger that told her he’d give anything to have the right to court, to claim the woman who sang to his heart. The woman, Indigo thought with an insight born of her own turmoil, for whom he might just play.

“Take me home, Riaz.” There was no use in pretending she wasn’t aching to return to tangle with a wolf who shouldn’t have made her feel this way. But he did. And she’d been a coward long enough.

It was time to come face-to-face with what might very well be her destiny.

Indigo kicked off
her heels, shimmied out of her dress, and washed the makeup off her face. Brushing her hair out of its fancy knot and into her more usual ponytail, she pulled on some jeans, topped them with a sleek black turtleneck, stuffed her feet into boots . . . then took a deep breath.

Butterflies flitted here and there in her stomach, while her blood pumped jagged and erratic through her veins. Lifting her hands to her face, she rubbed. Her skin flushed hot, then cold, before the cycle repeated. “Stop stalling,” she ordered herself and wrenched open the door.

The corridors were quiet, most of the den having bedded down for the night. Only those on night shift were up—they waved hello to her as she passed by. Waving back, she carried on. Drew’s quarters were near the end of the passage, and she was raising a hand to knock when the soldier next door poked out his head. “Hey, Indigo. Thought I scented you. You looking for Drew?”

She nodded.

“He left a couple of hours ago,” the other male told her.

“Do you know where he was going?”

“Had a backpack,” was the response. “I figured he was heading out on one of his trips.”

Her stomach dropped. Had he left? Had he finally given up and left? Her wolf went quiet, unsure, even as anger spiked. That wasn’t how the game was played—the male didn’t
leave
. He chased and he tangled and he fought. Except . . . she’d chosen someone else
in front of him.
She might as well have taken a buzz saw to his pride, the one vulnerable spot in a predatory changeling male’s armor. “Thanks.”

Nodding, the other soldier ducked back inside. Indigo forced herself to walk down the corridor and away from the quarters used by the single dominants in the pack. She didn’t even realize she was heading for Hawke’s office until she got there and found it empty. Frustration churned, but she turned back around and arrowed toward the training rooms. Their alpha slept very few hours a night, haunted by things that had marked him since childhood—and perhaps, right this moment, more than a little sexual frustration.

She tracked him down in the weight room, where he was sitting on a bench doing arm curls with free weights while reading what looked like stock-market reports on a transparent comm screen on the wall.

“There goes your image as all brawn, no brain,” she said, turning her back to the reports.

Grunting, he put down the weight he’d been using. “Don’t tell anyone. It’s my secret weapon.”

She passed him a towel when he nodded at where it was slung over another machine. Waiting until he’d wiped off his face and put down the towel, she took a seat on the bench opposite. It gave her a good view of his naked chest, and yes, gleaming with sweat and lightly furred with pale silver-gold, it was a damn nice view, the kind of view that would have made most women drool and beg for a chance to stroke him until he growled and took over.

“Ouch,” Hawke muttered, but the wolf’s laughter was apparent in his gaze. “Here I sit in all my glory, and she’s comparing me to another man.”

Blowing out a breath, Indigo fell back on the bench, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“The first step toward recovery is admitting that.”

She showed him the middle finger of her left hand for that pithy statement. “Am I a stubborn fool?” As evidenced by the fact that she might just have driven away the only man who’d ever threatened to breach her defenses . . . who’d made her feel vulnerable enough that she’d struck out in self-protective panic.

“Your determination is part of what makes you a good lieutenant.”

Sitting back up, she stared at him as he began to do curls again, the muscles of his upper arm bunching and flexing in all sorts of interesting ways. It was nice eye candy—but she still didn’t want to bite. “Dominant female, equally dominant or more dominant male, that’s the equation. That’s how it always goes.”

Ice blue eyes, shimmering with flickers of color from the screen opposite, met hers. “You already know that’s not how it always works so why are you wasting time repeating the same argument? Just go find Drew and sort it out.”

“It’s annoying, you know, that habit you have of knowing everything.”

“Good thing I’m bigger than you and you can’t beat me to a pulp.” Placing the weight on a rack, he got up and moved to an exercise mat. “Stand on my feet,” he said, lying on his back.

“I’m wearing boots.” But she walked over and pressed down with her palms on his raised knees as he did sit-up after sit-up without so much as his breathing altering. “You know about Adria.”

Hawke curled his lip. “For a smart woman, you’re being amazingly dense.” When she glared, he deigned to explain himself. “You’re not Adria, Indigo.”

No, she thought, she wasn’t. She’d never let a man treat her the way Martin treated Adria—had always treated her. Drew, by contrast . . . no, he wasn’t Martin.

“Why are you still thinking?” Hawke asked, abdomen muscles crunching as he continued to exercise while they spoke. “You need to work this out face-to-face with Drew.”

“Damn it, Hawke. I think I might’ve really messed up.” Tangling with each other, fighting with each other, that was all fine. But she’d crossed a line when she’d brought a third player into the equation—it had been done in that same self-protective panic, but it had changed the equilibrium between them in a sickening way.

“Yeah, I think you might have, too.” Brutally honest words. “But he’s only got about three hours’ head start, so you can catch him if you leave now.”

She looked down into his face as he stopped doing the sit-ups to watch her with those eerily piercing eyes. “Will he welcome me?”

“Nope.” Flowing up into a standing position when she released his knees, he picked up the remote to change the channel from stock reports to a roundup of the day’s sports news. “But you’re not the giving-up type. Of course,” he added as she turned to leave, “that’s your biggest weakness, too.”

 

 

Indigo tested the
straps of the pack on her back as she stepped out of the den and into the cool night air. She could’ve run up in wolf form, hunted to keep herself fed, but she was already going to be plenty emotionally exposed when she reached Drew. No use being naked on top of that.