Obsidian eyes glittered. “Tricks, what the hell? Seriously.”

“I’m gonna be Queen, you know,” she said. “You gotta stop calling me Tricks. It makes me sound like a circus clown. And I don’t think I’ll be a highness for long, so you should practice calling me your majesty.” She hiccupped and waved a hand in the air. “You may begin.”

“I notice how you’re ignoring the important part of what I said,” Tiago told her. He squatted and suddenly his upside-down face was in front of hers. “So I’ll repeat: what the hell?”

She tried to track where that mouthwatering bulge in his crotch had gone, couldn’t and focused instead on his face. Brown skin, strong hawkish features and a sensually shaped mouth that more often than not looked like it could cut through concrete. She had always thought he was a proud, aloof man with the longest legs and the sexiest moves she had ever seen. He walked everywhere with a quick ground-eating, lean-hipped stride.

She asked, “Has anybody ever told you, you look a lot like Dwayne Johnson?”

He scowled. “Who the hell is Dwayne Johnson?”

He tried to take the vodka bottle away from her. She clung to it.

“You know, The Rock? Hot, sexy football player–wrestling guy turned movie actor? Only . . . you’re a whole lot meaner.” She concentrated very hard, tongue between her teeth, and touched the tip of her forefinger to his scowl. The vodka bottle bumped his nose. He jerked his head out of the way.

His eyes narrowed on her. Was that male interest in his dark, glittering gaze? She didn’t trust her powers of observation at the moment.

“Hot se—” he stopped dead. When he spoke again, his normal growl had dropped to a husky murmur. “You’re comparing me to a movie actor? Fuck yeah, of course I’m a whole lot meaner.”

Huh. Wasn’t he the c**k of the walk?

“Whatever, don’t let it go to your head,” she said with scorn. “You’re not as sexy as I think you are.” She squinted. Wait. That hadn’t come out right. She tried to sort it all out in her vodka-befuddled head. It didn’t help that he gave her a swift white grin that scrambled her brain even further.

All too soon that grin disappeared. Then Dr. Death was back and scowling again.

Ooh. Sexy. No, scary. No, sexy. Oh phooey.

He grabbed her hand. He could feel how delicately formed the bones were. He could crush her so easily. Any one of those Dark Fae males could have snapped her neck effortlessly if they had gotten her in the right hold. He took care to keep his touch gentle, even as he said, “Goddammit, faerie, you’d better start answering some questions.”

“Or what?” She pointed the remote at him and pushed the mute button. “Pleh. I’m gonna get someone to make me a magical mute that really works.”

A kind of desperation came over his harsh features. He snatched the vodka bottle from her and took a swig. She watched with acute interest as shock shot across his face. He gagged and spat the mouthful out on the carpet. He glared at the bottle. “Bubble gum–flavored vodka? Bubble gum?”

“What? It’s good.” She reached for the bottle.

He held it out of her reach. “No way.”

She scowled. “That’s my dinner. You give it back.”

“Oh no, young lady. You’ve had more than enough.”

Only a gazillion-thousand-year-old Wyr could get away with calling a two-hundred-year-old faerie “young lady.” Holy cow, he was one devastatingly good-looking barbarian, upside down or not. But so preachy! She remembered the vodka. She reached for it again.

He stood, grabbed the ashtray and strode for the bathroom. She could just barely see what happened in the corner of the bathroom mirror as he turned the bottle upside down in the sink. There went the rest of her hot date.

“Screw you,” she called after him. There was a thought. She scoped out his lean, tight ass with interest. Bow chica wow wow.

Tiago ignored her and dumped the ashtray in the bathroom trash. He paused, looking down in the trashcan. If anything, he looked even angrier than he had before. He looked fit to murder somebody. The strong, proud bones of his face clenched like a fist.

Her eyelids closed in a slow blink as she tried to process. If he was that mad at her, she should give some serious thought to running. And she would too, just as soon as she found her feet again.

A shiver rippled down her spine. She rolled onto her side, tucked her knees against her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She didn’t want him that mad at her. She didn’t want anybody that mad at her.

Tiago walked back to the bed. She could have sworn she heard a rumble of thunder in the distance. He squatted by the bed and rubbed her shoulder with a giant calloused hand. “Where are you hurt, faerie?”

His gentleness was so unexpected, coming as it did from such a wrathful clenched-fist face, that it almost did her in. Her eyes filled with tears. She gestured to her side.

Icy shock ran over his skin, followed by a blast of heat. Tiago didn’t know where to put his rage. That bastard Fae hadn’t punched her in the alley. He had knifed her.

“Let me have a look.” He tried to raise her T-shirt.

She resisted. “I already cleaned and bandaged it.”

He exploded. “Goddammit, woman! I said let me have a f**king look!”

Her eyes went wide and she froze. The force of his anger was palpable. It beat against her skin. Thunder rolled, this time closer. It was almost overhead.

She had heard the stories about Tiago. The thunder and lightning came when he really lost it. Cautiously she uncurled. She made herself lie passive as she stared up at him. Sometimes with dominant Wyr warriors the best thing you could do was stay quiet and get out of their way—or in this case, acquiesce. Sooner or later their rampaging always ground to a halt, and then they could listen to reason again.

He put one knee on the bed and leaned his weight on it as he lifted up her T-shirt. The bandage covered her ribs under her left breast. She winced as he peeled back the bandage to look at what was underneath.

“Do you know how irritating you are?” she said. “Because if you don’t, I’ve got time.”

“This looks deep,” he said in a quiet voice. Lightning flashed outside. Thunder exploded with a boom. She jumped and shivered. He put his hand briefly against her narrow waist. “Shh now, be easy. The dressing is soaked. I’ll change the bandage.”

She knuckled her eyes. Damn it. She hadn’t slept in two days. She was starting to come down from the singing part of the drunk. He was acting far too serious and concerned, a storm was brewing outside, and all the fun was packing its bags and ditching the party. She tried to hold on to it.

“You know, technology in the twenty-first century is pretty cool,” she told him. “I’m going to DVR my own meltdown and email it to my therapist.”

He didn’t so much as crack a smile.

She drooped. She uncurled as he urged her to lie flat. He removed the soiled bandage, and with a careful, velvet-light touch he cleaned the wound and covered it with cotton padding again. At one point he bent down close to her skin and sniffed the wound. Okay, so that looked a little weird, but she knew what he was doing; he was checking with his Wyr sense of smell to see if he could detect poison. He caught her eye afterward and gave her a tight, quick smile that was probably meant to be reassuring, but he didn’t speak. He seemed busy with his own internal issues. Lightning struck the parking lot. Her shivering deepened. That was just downright sexy. No, spooky. No, sexy. DAMN IT!

“All right, I’m all done for now,” he said. His soft, even voice was somehow so much worse than his yelling voice. He taped the bandage in place. Then he looked at her, and the fury in his dark eyes stabbed her. “We know everything that matters.”

She rubbed the pointed tip of one ear, which was burning in embarrassment. “Apparently the whole world does,” she muttered. “I never even saw the guy with the cell phone.”

“That ass**le is going to be lucky to live out the week if I have anything to say about it. I can’t f**king believe he didn’t call 911 soon as he realized someone was being attacked.” He took her hand and held it. “Now I want you to tell me, why didn’t you call, and why do you want me to go home?”

She pulled her hand away and tucked it against her chest. “Don’t be nice to me.”

“I’ll be whatever the hell I want to be,” he snapped. “Why didn’t you call?”

She muttered, “I’m supposed to do this on my own. No Wyr allowed.”

“That’s old news,” Tiago said. “Plans have changed.”

Just like that? Plans have changed? She scowled at him. “Hey, cowboy, remember what I said. I’m gonna be Queen. I don’t think you get to boss me around like that.”

He rubbed the back of his head and raised his eyebrows at her. “How are you going to stop me?”

“Screw you,” she said.

“You’ve said that already,” he pointed out. “I’m getting bored now.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the only thing I can think of at the moment,” she muttered. With a Herculean effort she managed to keep from looking at his crotch again.

“The game’s changed. Deal with it.”

Her gaze bounced around his dark saturnine features. The force of his presence was such that the tiny hairs on her arms rose. It cremated the numb state she had managed to achieve with the alcohol. He had the extreme physicality of an apex predator, his body tempered by years of fighting, the thick muscles corded with sinew and veins. His Power was a heavy, sulfurous force that pressed her into the mattress.

She struggled to sit up. Suddenly he was bending over her. He eased one huge arm underneath her shoulders to help her upright. She scowled and glared at him. “Look, you can’t stay, and that’s all there is to it. I’m all right. I handled everything.”

He snapped, “You have a knife wound between your ribs!”

“You should have a look at the other guys,” she told him.

Her words hit a stone wall. “We’re done discussing this,” he said. He walked over to the other bed. “What do you want to take with you?”

She pressed a hand to her side. “Get back over here so I can smack you.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

“I mean it. Get your ass over here.” There she was, back to what was fast becoming her favorite subject.

“I’m so motivated to do that since it’s clearly in my best interest. I’m just going to assume you want all of this.” He stuffed things back into the bags.

His back was turned to her. She stared at his ass again. Really, it was the sexiest ass she had ever seen. First she got a close-up of his front, and now she got treated to the back view. Tight, taut and clothed in black like it had been gift wrapped just for her.

She patted him on the butt and told him, “Nice buns, cowboy.”

She started to pull his wallet out of the back pocket, and he grabbed her hand. Spoilsport. She sighed, opening her fingers, and he patted her as he let her go. “I’m taking the bags out to the car,” he told her. “Be right back.”

He walked out, and just like that she lost what little control she’d had over her life. She tobogganed right out of the fun bit of the drunk and plunged into the snowdrift labeled the sorry stage.

He came back and scooped her into his arms. He was such a mean barbarian, and he was being so careful with her, so gentle and nice. And she couldn’t let herself rely on him. She couldn’t let herself totally rely on anyone ever again.

THREE

Tiago tried to figure out how he could have wrecked his life so completely in just a day. One day. Twenty-four hours. Yesterday he had been merely irritated with cooling his heels in New York and doing unimportant stuff that could have been handled by someone—almost anyone—else.

Tonight in Chicago, he had lost all sense of irritation and had become downright desperate.

He paced in the parking lot of another motel, a Red Roof Inn, as he called Dragos, who answered on the first ring. Tiago said, “Got her.”

The dragon let loose a long exhale. “Good.”

“She was wounded. She’s okay, but she needs to see a doctor soon.” He explained what happened, or at least what he had found and what he had surmised, while his long stride ate up the distance of the parking lot.

Glowing streetlamps were surrounded with blurred yellow halos. A light rain had started to fall, miniscule silver meteors streaking through the illumination. Tendrils of fog rose from the sun-warmed asphalt. The tendrils twisted and curled around his steel-toed boots as though he stood in a Gorgon’s nest of transparent snakes.

He stood several feet away from the building and scanned it and the surrounding area with a hypervigilant gaze. The motel building had a couple of floors, rows of identical doors stacked on top of each other. He had secured a ground-floor room that opened directly onto the parking lot, so they could leave in a hurry if they had to. It was late enough that the motel was quiet, and the cars that dotted the parking lot were cool to the touch. He pivoted at the curb to start another lap.

“What do you need?” Dragos asked.

“You should send a cleanup crew to the Motel 6 where she was hiding. Oh, and she said she left a stolen car in a Wal-Mart parking lot. She said she wiped her prints off the steering wheel and car door handle, but she admits she’s been pretty rattled since the attack and hasn’t been thinking very clearly. The car needs to be cleaned and returned to its owner.”

“I’ll get Tucker on it. Hold on.”