Strangers of the Night Read online

  Vadim had offered her a job. The first time around he’d found her and Phoenix at age sixteen, living on the streets. He’d offered them shelter and training then. This time he’d simply asked her if she’d like to work for him. She could keep her life here if she wanted. She didn’t have to give up her other activities, as he’d called them, but for the first time in a long time, Persephone thought she might like to. The grifting was getting old. The petty thievery less profitable. And the sex work...she thought again of Werner, and how even though their arrangement had been meant to be only business, in the end she’d hurt him, anyway.

  Also, there was Kane.

  It wouldn’t be long before he figured out she didn’t make her living in any honest way, if he hadn’t already. Once he did, even if he didn’t arrest her, there’d be no way for her to keep living here. Not seeing him every day and knowing that he thought she was a criminal...well, she totally was a criminal, Persephone reminded herself as she gave Interflix the go-ahead to keep playing episodes of a ’90s sitcom she’d never seen the first time around.

  Thinking of Kane now made her shift and squirm a little on the couch. It had been over a week since she’d tried to seduce him and been summarily turned away without so much as an inch of him inside her. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about his mouth on her, though. How his tongue had lapped, slow and steady, pushing her closer and closer to the edge.

  Damn, she needed him. She wanted him, anyway, and for Persephone that had to count as the same thing. Didn’t it? Leaning back against the couch, the mindless TV show blaring in the background, she closed her eyes. Her hands drifted over her body. Her fingers slipped beneath the waistband of her jeans, the fit tight and not giving her much room to maneuver. She was already slick and hot, and she let out a small sigh of pleasure as she found her clit.

  * * *

  Kane is above her, his gaze intense. He moves his hands over her body, finding all the places that make her respond. When he dips his mouth to taste her flesh, Persephone arches into the embrace. His lips find her nipples, one and then the other, tugging each until they stand up in tight points that ache to be caressed further.

  Lower, lower, he moves, tongue tracing wet patterns on her skin as he pauses for a moment to nibble her hip. She laughs at the tickle and his hot breath puffs out on skin dampened by his mouth. When he moves between her legs, she lets out a long, low moan of pleasure that he echoes, and his hum against her pushes her higher.

  Higher.

  * * *

  With a gasp, Persephone paused in her self-love, listening for the sound of the knock she was sure she’d just heard. Shit, it was someone at the door. Quickly she pulled her hand out of her jeans and got off the couch, running her fingers through her hair and trying to shake off the swell of arousal still surging through her. She absolutely did not want to answer the door to find Mrs. Cohen in 3B needed her toilet unclogged while she looked like she’d been happily getting herself off to fantasies of Kane.

  Mrs. Cohen was not on the other side of the door.

  It was Phoenix.

  “You’re being an asshole,” Persephone said through gritted teeth even as she kept walking.

  Her brother laughed, which only made her angrier. “Keep moving.”

  “You didn’t even let me pack a bag!” Or grab her book full of cash, and that was the real shame. But every time she thought about stopping, she took another step.

  That was Phoenix’s talent. Persephone could make other people see what she wanted them to see, but her brother could make them do things he wanted them to do. As with her talent, it was limited. He couldn’t command an army, for example, but then, he didn’t really have to. Not when he could focus his will on one person who was helpless not to resist.

  “You’re being—”

  “An asshole. You said so. Come on. I have a car.”

  Persephone chortled. “Oh, yeah? Where did you get a car?”

  “I made a woman give it to me,” her brother said with a cat-eating-the-cream grin that Persephone refused to admit she’d missed. Once in the passenger seat, she made sure to buckle up. Phoenix was a terrible driver. They both were. No parents to teach them. She didn’t even have her license. He probably didn’t, either, but he wouldn’t care. There wasn’t much to worry about if you got pulled over when you could tell the cop to simply walk away and let you go.

  “Where are we going?” Persephone asked. “If you tell me to rob a bank, I’m going to punch you in the junk.”

  “I’ll stop you.”

  “I’ll do it so fast you won’t have time,” she countered. “And I notice you didn’t say we weren’t going to rob a bank.”

  Phoenix shot her an amused look as he put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking spot without bothering to look. “We’re not going to rob a bank. We’re going to save Leila.”

  Persephone groaned. “Phoenix, no. Why? What on earth do you want to do that for?”

  “Because she’s our friend, and I think she’s in danger!”

  For a moment she considered not telling him that Vadim had approached her about taking a job. She wasn’t in the habit of keeping secrets from her brother, not exactly, even though there’d been plenty of times when she hadn’t told him the entire truth. He always sensed it, though, and all he had to do was tell her to give up the story, and she would.

  “Vadim came to see me. He said he had a job for me.”

  Phoenix didn’t look surprised. “Yeah. Me too.”

  “Then why are we doing some kind of, what, secret mission? Leila said she was fine. Vadim approached both of us... Holy shit, Phoenix! Look out!” Persephone screamed hoarsely as her brother nearly got in a head-on collision with a delivery truck because their car was lumbering down the wrong side of a one-way street.

  With a laugh just short of maniacal, Phoenix swerved to avoid the truck, which let out a long, angry bleat of its horn. He took the corner too fast. Persephone closed her eyes.

  “This is not how I want to die, Phoenix!”

  Another laugh. “Oh, come on. It’s going to fine.”

  She risked a peek, relieved to see that he was at least going down the street the right way now. They drove in relative silence for the next half an hour, with Phoenix changing the radio station every few minutes and singing along, badly, with all the songs. No conversation beyond that. Frankly, Persephone didn’t have anything to say.

  When they pulled up in front of a truly disgusting-looking roadside motel that looked like something out of a horror movie, she finally found her voice. “No. Oh my god, I’m getting hives just thinking about the bedbug bites.”

  “We’re not living here. We’re just staying here to meet someone on the inside.”

  “The inside of what?” Persephone twisted in her seat. “Damn it, Phoenix, since when did you turn into, what, an international spy? What the hell is going on? Who are we meeting here?”

  “Her name is Samantha. She’s got information I want about the Crew.”

  “And how did you figure this out?”

  “Met her on Connex,” he said easily with a wave of his hand before he turned off the ignition and gave her a smug grin. “She tries to beat me at WordPals, but she hasn’t yet.”

  “What makes you think she’s going to give you some kind of secret information about the Crew so that you can bust in and ‘save’—” Persephone used air quotes “—Leila?”

  “I didn’t tell her that’s what I wanted.” Without waiting for her, Phoenix got out of the car.

  Of course, Persephone followed, because he was manipulating her like a marionette. It showed when she stumbled on the cracked piece of concrete that kept cars from driving straight through the window of the craptastic motel. She didn’t fall, but she did let out a muttered curse that had him laughing at her as she managed to keep h