Play of Passion (6 page)

Stepping out of the soap-and-earth-and-warmth of his embrace, she watched him pick up his bags. “No, but you’ve put on some more muscle.” It was a dodge. Because in truth, she’d been thinking something far different—that Riaz, with his jet-black hair and eyes of Spanish gold, was gorgeous and sexy and—very importantly—a dominant only just below her in the hierarchy. The difference wasn’t enough to bother her wolf. And they’d never had a problem with physical chemistry.

All facts to consider.

Riaz’s lips curved into a deeper smile as he hefted one duffel over his shoulder while gripping the other in his free hand. “So you noticed. Want to feel?”

“Sexy you might be; Don Juan you’re not.” Laughing at his affronted look, she led him to the vehicle, and they clambered inside after dumping his bags in the trunk. “How was Europe?”

“It was all pretty girls, flash hotels, five-star food,” he moaned, pushing back his seat as far as possible so he could stretch out those long, powerfully muscled legs. “I thought I’d go mad.”

Smile tugging at her lips, she waved her debit card at the parking gates, and they opened with a quiet swish. “Poor baby.”

Riaz said nothing for several minutes, putting down the window to let the wind ruffle his hair. “God, it’s good to be home, Indigo.” Heartfelt words, the homesickness of his wolf evident in every syllable. “I can’t wait to run through the forests, to walk in the den, to shoot the bull with the rest of you.”

“You’ve been back now and then.”

“I always knew I’d be leaving again,” the other lieutenant said, “so I never really gave myself a chance to settle. But now . . .” He exhaled, long and slow. “Anything I should know?”

“Riley’s gone to meet his mate’s grandparents.”

Riaz shook his head, that black-as-night hair whipping off his face as she accelerated. “I couldn’t believe he’d mated with a cat when I heard, but having met Mercy on my last trip home, I can say the man has excellent taste.” Another comfortable silence, then, “So, what was that at the airport about me being tall, dark, and irresistible?”

“I don’t recall using those words.”

Eyes of beaten gold met hers full-on for a single instant before she returned her gaze to the road, and he moved his hand to the back of her neck, massaging gently. It was a familiar and intimate touch. Unlike with Drew, her wolf allowed this one. Because Riaz had earned the wolf’s trust on that level, been given that right. He hadn’t simply tried to claim it the way Drew had—as if a few kisses gave him the prerogative to demand everything. Her hands clenched on the manual steering wheel.

“I’m not attached, Indigo,” Riaz said with a solemnity that struck her as somehow “wrong,” though she couldn’t put her finger on why. “So if you’re thinking you need someone with whom to work off the tension, I’m more than happy to oblige.”

Shoving away the memory of Drew’s kisses, the infuriating arrogance of his attempt to use her touch-hunger against her, she nodded slowly. “I’m thinking about it.”

 

 

It gutted Andrew,
fucking eviscerated him, to see Indigo laughing with another man, a man who had no concept of the true value of the woman beside him. No, that was unfair. Riaz’s remarkable eyes sparked with intelligence, with respect, when he looked at Indigo. The male lieutenant understood exactly who she was.

Staying in his shadowed spot—in the back of the room where all the senior members of the pack had gathered to throw Riaz an impromptu welcome-home party—Andrew sucked on his beer and forced his attention off the couple on the other side—to something, anything, else.

He saw Hawke speaking with Elias and Yuki, glimpsed Sing-Liu playfully grabbing her mate’s ass, and—He blinked. Walker Lauren was here. That wasn’t a huge surprise, because though quiet, the Psy male had turned out to be a genius when it came to dealing with young hotheads, to the extent that Hawke had assigned him as the go-to man for the ten-to-thirteen-year-old crowd.

What held Andrew’s attention was the fact that Walker was standing very close to Lara, and from the expression on the healer’s fine-boned face, the way she was all but poking the much taller man in the chest, she was well and truly pissed. Walker’s own expression was more difficult to read, but—

Low female laughter. Intimate. Painfully familiar.

Clenching his jaw, he refused to turn, to watch.

“You look like you’ve been gut-punched.” Quiet words from a man who’d once been the shadow in the dark, the assassin you’d never see, never know about, until it was far too late.

Andrew glanced at his sister’s mate as Judd came to stand against the wall beside him. “I feel worse.”

Judd’s eyes were on the other side of the room—on the curious tableau presented by his older brother and Lara—but he spoke to Andrew. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

And that was why—in spite of the fact that the other male dared get into bed with Andrew’s beloved sister on a regular basis—Andrew liked Judd. “No, but I need to get the fuck out of here.”

Judd didn’t say anything, just put down his own drink and melted away in the direction of the door. Andrew followed, leaving his unfinished beer on a table in the corner as he walked out, refusing to torture himself any further. It had always been bad, seeing her interact with other men in a way she simply didn’t interact with him, but never like this—because he knew just how dangerous Riaz was to his own goals.

His senses told him there was nothing sexual between Indigo and Riaz . . . now. That last word was the operative one. Because the way Riaz looked at Indigo, the way she looked at him—they were considering it on some level. And if Andrew wasn’t careful, proximity alone might push them into making a decision that would rip Andrew’s heart into a thousand pieces.

“This way.” Judd nodded at a corridor that led eventually to one of the less utilized exits. Leaving through it, they walked out past the White Zone—the area closest to the den, where their young were free to play—and into the more densely forested area beyond. Sandwiched between the heavily guarded perimeter and the equally well-guarded entrance to the White Zone, it provided a massive range for adult and juvenile wolves to run in, play in, and come to find solitude.

Like now.

Silence was something Judd was good at, but after almost ten minutes of it, the Psy male glanced at Andrew. “If it was me,” he said, “I’d understand the need to walk alone. But you’re a social individual, one of the most popular people in SnowDancer.”

The unspoken question hung in the air between them.

Andrew hadn’t spoken
of his attraction to Indigo to anyone, ever. Because though he loved his pack with every breath in him, he didn’t want them peering over his shoulder while he fought for his right to court her. “God, if Riley could see me now.” He’d hassled his brother endlessly about Mercy.

Judd continued to walk, his stride elegant even along the soaked earth. It was an explicable grace, given that the man most thought a telepath was actually also a viciously powerful telekinetic. Judd had already been in the pack for well over a year before any of them discovered that truth. So Andrew had no doubts about the fact the man could keep secrets—at least from the pack. “You’ll tell Brenna, won’t you?”

The Psy lieutenant turned and simply looked at him.

“Yeah.” Andrew blew out a breath. “Not like that’s a question.” Neither was it reason enough to keep his silence—his sister was loyal to the bone. She might mess with him in private, but she’d keep it close to her chest if he asked.

“You don’t have to say anything.” Judd’s voice was calm and clear in the snow-laced chill of the night. “I’ve seen the way you look at the lieutenant. So has Brenna.”

“Fuck.” The pack, with its loving teasing, could do more harm than good right now, when Indigo was so determined to draw a line in the sand between them. “Is it that bloody obvious?”

“No.” Judd waited until Andrew began to walk again to continue. “However, we are . . . family.” Emotion—being open with it—was still difficult for Judd. But not only had Drew once stood in the path of a bullet that had been aimed at the woman who was Judd’s heart, the wolf male had used his considerable charm to bring a smile to Sienna’s face.

For those two things alone, Judd would’ve owed him. But even before Drew started interacting with Sienna and the other Lauren children, he and Judd had also forged a cautious kind of friendship—built on their shared love for Brenna. “Brenna worries about you.”

Drew gave a startled laugh. “What? I’m not Riley. I don’t take responsibility for the world’s ills.” It was said with open affection for the brother Judd knew had all but raised both Drew and Brenna.

Using a slight amount of Tk, Judd absently braced a water-logged branch that had been about to break off right above their heads. “I think Mercy might be trying to cure him of that.”

A minute . . . two, of silence. Except it wasn’t silent. He’d been an assassin, knew how to move without sending a ripple through the air currents, thought he’d been familiar with the quiet dark of night. But Brenna, his mate, had shown him
her
night,
her
silence, and it was an amazing, beautiful world.

The rustle of a rabbit as it caught their scent and froze.

The dull thud of that branch falling to the earth.

The soft touch of rain-heavy air against his face.

Small things that filled the silence, the dark, until it wasn’t bleak, but a serene wonderland.

“Indigo thinks Riaz—or someone like Riaz,” Drew said at last, his voice taut, strained, “will be right for her. I can see it clear as day.”

“You disagree.”

“None of them know her, not like I do.”

Judd angled his body left, taking them down a slight slope that would lead eventually to one of the lakes that dotted the Sierra. Most in the higher altitudes, especially in the central and southern areas, remained locked in ice, but this one was liquid, its waters rippling under moonlight as the clouds parted. “But do you truly know her, Drew?”

Andrew felt his shoulders go stiff, his wolf baring its teeth in instinctive response, but he respected Judd’s intelligence enough to rein it back. “Are you saying I don’t?”

“I’m saying that from what Brenna’s noted, you’ve had a crush on Indigo since you were a very young man.” Judd held up a hand when Andrew would’ve interrupted. “I’m not questioning what you feel; I’m not telling you that you’re wrong. I’m simply asking you to examine your own emotions,” he said with implacable logic. “Ask yourself if it’s Indigo you want, or a mirage of her you’ve built up in your mind.”

With that, Judd jogged down the final steep part of the incline to the pebbled edge of the lake. Andrew followed with far less grace, for all that he was changeling. His mind was misfiring, his body not quite under his control. It felt as if his world had just been skewed on its axis.

A few feet away, the lake lapped with placid regularity over the smooth water-shaped pebbles, in stark contrast to his own disordered state. Swearing under his breath, he ripped off his sweatshirt and went for his boots.

Judd walked away without a word, taking a path along the curving edge of the dark spread of water.

Stripping down to his skin, Andrew looked up at the moon, his wolf confused, floundering. The bright sphere, its face covered by clouds an instant later, could give him no answers, and the more he thought, the more he tangled himself up in the sticky confusion of a thousand cobwebs. Shrugging off the cutting bite of the wind, he strode in through the shallows and dived.

The shock of it tore the air from his lungs, froze the blood in his veins . . . and returned clarity to his mind.

Indigo teeth-grittingly obstinate as she arrowed toward the man she
thought
was right for her.

Wiping the water from his face, he sucked in a breath of the bracing air and yelled out to the night, “I know every part of her, warts and all! And I still adore her!” He began to head back to shore without waiting for an answer. Even his tough changeling body couldn’t handle water this icy for long.

A towel was waiting for him by his discarded clothes. He grinned. Having a telekinetic as a friend did come in handy sometimes. Wiping himself off with rough strokes that got his blood pumping, he rubbed at his hair then pulled on his clothes. He was sitting on the rocky shore, the towel around his neck, when Judd returned to his side. The other man took a seat beside him, his movements so quiet that if Andrew hadn’t scented him, he’d never have known there was anyone beside him.

“So,” Judd said, “what’re you going to do?”

“What I have been doing,” Andrew said, his wolf growling in feral agreement. “I’m not about to let her ignore me just because I don’t fit neatly into the box she has marked out for the man she’ll take as her own.” He wanted to use the word
mate
, but that had a very specific meaning for changelings.

And though it hurt him to admit it, there was no mating dance between him and Indigo, no compulsion from the wild heart of their natures that would—if nothing else—tug her inexorably to him, make her pay attention. No, all he had was his stubborn determination . . . and his heart.

Judd sighed. “That’s not your strength.”

“
You’re
giving
me
dating advice?” Andrew was dumbfounded.