Strangers of the Night Read online

  She should’ve been surprised to see him, perhaps even angry at this interference in her life, but instead relief swept over her in a wave so strong she had to put her hand on the bathroom door frame to keep herself from hurtling forward, across the room and into Kane’s arms.

  “Kane,” she said.

  Phoenix’s head went up at once, his eyes narrowed. He took a step back as Kane moved forward, not trying to keep the other man from entering the room. He didn’t have to do that physically. All he had to do was take control. He could only handle one person at a time, though.

  “Persephone,” Kane said without giving her brother so much as a second glance, clearly dismissing the threat. “Are you all right?”

  She was all right, at least so far as she wasn’t being harmed. But was she okay? Not really. Phoenix had forced her to come with him on this trip, and although he hadn’t continued to control her every move, she wasn’t here by choice.

  “Tell him you’re all right, sister mine.”

  “I’m all right,” she said at once. No matter what she might have wanted to answer, her brother’s words came out of her mouth.

  “She’s fine. You can leave now, whoever you are.” Phoenix didn’t say it as a command, which meant he was still bent on controlling Persephone.

  Kane ignored Phoenix. “I went to your apartment. I was worried.”

  A flicker of heat lit inside her, low in her belly but growing upward beneath her heart. She’d known this man for a little over a year. She’d spent hours with him naked, but for all of them she’d been wearing the faces of other women. She’d cold-shouldered him with her own face, but here he was.

  He’d come to save her.

  Then she was stepping forward, one hand out, her mouth open. What she meant to say, she wasn’t sure. She wanted to thank him, maybe. To be grateful that even though she wasn’t in any true danger, he’d been worried enough to come after her and find her.

  “Sister mine, it seems strange to me that this guy would have figured out where you were. You should ask him how he found you.”

  “How did you find me?”

  Phoenix had not said aloud that she ought to stop moving toward Kane, but he didn’t have to speak in order to control her. Her feet wanted to move but would not. She wanted to struggle, actually. To call her brother out and tell Kane what was really going on—but what stopped her from doing that was nothing her brother was doing. She didn’t want to tell Kane that her brother could manipulate other people with his mind. He might think she was crazy.

  Worse, he might believe her.

  She didn’t want to tell Kane that she and Phoenix had been conceived by a pack of insane cultists. She wanted him to keep looking at her the way he was now, as though she was exactly the treasure he’d been hunting. He wouldn’t, if he knew the truth. Not only about her or about Phoenix, but the other truth, that she’d been sleeping with him for months without letting him know it was her.

  “I looked on your computer,” Kane said with a twist of his lips as though he knew the admission should embarrass him, but he was owning it, anyway. “I tracked your phone.”

  Phoenix curled his lip. “That sounds a little creepy.”

  “Yes,” Persephone said because the tickling tendrils of her brother’s control were twitching in her brain. “Super creepy. What the hell? I told you, we’re not friends.”

  I hate you, she thought at Phoenix. He couldn’t read her thoughts exactly, but he would get the feeling of what she was trying to convey.

  “We don’t have to be friends for me to be concerned about you,” Kane said.

  “So you drove almost two hours to find her? My sister’s fine,” Phoenix said. “If you ask me, you going all alpha-male caveman on her isn’t cool. Not at all.”

  Kane flicked a glance toward Phoenix, who was probably more angry that the other man had been ignoring him than by the fact he’d shown up in the first place. “I was concerned.”

  “You need to go,” Persephone said. “I’m fine. I’m taking a road trip.”

  Kane fixed her with a look, then a stare around the room before fixing his gaze back on hers. “A road trip without your computer, without locking the door behind you? Without luggage?”

  “We’re free spirits. Damn you, Phoenix,” she manage to bite out when her brother’s mental puppet strings sagged for a split second. “We don’t need to answer to anyone. I was tired of working in that building—damn it, Phoenix, why do you have to be such a...good...damn it...brother.” Asshole, she thought vehemently even though her face betrayed no hint of her anger.

  “That’s fine,” Kane said mildly. “I didn’t mind the drive. I like road trips, too.”

  Another ripple of heat trickled through her. She knew Phoenix would feel it. He rolled his eyes at her. Truthfully, she felt a little exasperated with herself. After so long fending off even the barest hint of interest Kane directed at her—at Persephone, not when she was in another guise—she didn’t want to start getting all gooey about him now. Hell, the man had not only been concerned that something had happened to her, he’d tracked her down to rescue her. It might’ve made a girl cry, if she’d allowed herself to give in to emotion that way.

  It might’ve made a girl fall in love.

  “You can go. I’m really okay,” she told him without needing any prompting or mental coercion from Phoenix. Kane needed to get the hell out of here before she lost her shit. “I’m sorry if I worried you. My brother came and got me and I just booked out of there because I... I didn’t have anything there I cared enough about to take along.”

  Including you was the unspoken addition to that sentence, and she could see that Kane understood it. His lips pressed together, hard, and he nodded. He took a step backward, putting himself in the doorway again. He did not look at Phoenix. He looked at Persephone. That steely glare, the one that took in everything, that noticed everything, swept her up and down.

  “I wanted to make sure you were safe,” Kane said steadily. “I would do anything to make sure you hadn’t come to harm.”

  Offer or threat, she wasn’t sure and didn’t care. The sentiment was enough to threaten to buckle her knees. The heat beneath her heart flashed upward to paint her cheeks. Her fingers curled, making fists at her sides. She swallowed hard, words fighting to break free but kept inside the prison of her mouth by her brother’s insistence she remain silent.

  “If you need me, all you have to do is call me,” Kane said. “I’ll be there.”

  Phoenix snorted. “How romantic. You can leave now.”

  The way Kane did immediately without so much as a single word more, even closing the door behind him, told Persephone her brother had something to do with it. Before she could move or say anything, though, Phoenix had the lock on her thoughts again. He didn’t let her move.

  “I’ll hold you here until you convince me you’re not going after him,” he said calmly.

  Persephone frowned. “I’m not going after him.”

  “I can smell it on you,” her brother said. “You’re way into him.”

  “I’m not,” she protested.

  The hold on her released. She did not go to the door or even the window next to it. She wanted to run after Kane and tell him to wait for her, but that wasn’t going to do her any good. Besides, as angry as she might be about Phoenix forcing her to go with him, he wasn’t wrong about everything. She did like road trips. She did like adventure. And there really wasn’t anything to keep her in that apartment—except for Kane.

  “Do you want to go after him, Persephone?” Phoenix sounded confused and a little upset. “Oh my God, you... You’re in love with him!”

  “Don’t be stupid. I barely know him!”

  Phoenix shook his head. “That’s not how you feel about him.”

  “You know as well as I do that