Breath of Winter, A (30 page)

I shoved at him. “
I don’t have one
.”

His lips parted, and I waited for his next accusation.

None came. His grip tightened as he dragged me closer. “Damn you.” His head lowered, and his mouth covered mine. His lips were hard, his kiss angry. One arm circled my back and flattened me to him while his other hand tangled his fingers in my hair. Most of it had fallen loose, and he wound the thick strands around his fist and tore our mouths apart. Panting hard, he scowled down at me as if this were all somehow my fault. He was tense, and his fury vibrated along his skin. I pushed at his chest in an effort to put space between us, but he wasn’t having any of it. He molded me to him until his heartbeat pounded on my chest. His eyes were mirror-bright and full silver. It was a small crack in his glamour, his second today. What did that mean?

“Let me go, please.” I shoved at him again. “I’ll answer what questions I can, I promise.”

“I don’t think I can.” Burying his face in my neck, he inhaled. His tongue slipped out to lick the sweat from my skin, and my lungs deflated on a sigh that coaxed a pained groan from Dillon.

He shivered in my arms, and I held him, stroking across his shoulder and down his back as my mind churned with possibilities. “How are you feeling?” The cut to his neck might explain his fevered skin and racing heart. I had a theory that his time on Earth had lowered his resistance to bacteria native to Askara. Exposure to a new strain could make his old ailments flair, I thought.

“Just…give me…a minute.” Heavy panting dampened my neck, but his grip loosened and he managed to pull back and glare down at me. “Don’t move.” He stumbled from me. “I need air.” He pointed to the bench. “Sit your ass down.” He cupped the back of his neck as he turned.

“Wait.” I ran forward and touched his elbow. “Let me help you.”

“I don’t need your help.” His growl froze me in my tracks. “Don’t touch me.”

I would have said he was the one having trouble keeping his hands to himself, but I could use the reprieve. He could get his air and clear his head while I used his absence to clear mine. I watched him stalk to the mouth of the cave. If I so much as took a step, he would hear me. Even with his leg still on the mend, he wasn’t a male I wanted to cross. I wasn’t going to go anywhere.

Time for a new plan
. I sat on the bench and rested my head against the wall of the mine. He had brought me down here rather than turn me in for a reason. Whether it was his sickness or something else, I couldn’t say. Tucking my locket into my top, I brushed skin instead of pointed edges or salt cubes. My breasts were nicked and scratched. I readjusted the fabric to cover them.

Across the tunnel, I spied a battered crate near where I’d awakened. Leaning forward as far as I dared, I made out several cubes of salt stacked neatly inside. Balanced on the topmost square sat the broken horse carving I’d stolen from Dillon’s tent. Balled in the bottom was the handkerchief stained with his blood. I knew I should snatch my prize, but after what I’d done to Mason…I had lost my appetite. While Dillon’s back was turned, I crept toward the box and snitched the horse.

Why the attachment? I supposed I wanted something of his to hold on to once this ended.

Rock crunched under a heavy boot. I froze, then rushed back to my seat. When no reprimand came, I glanced his way. He shifted his weight and massaged his neck as he stared at the desert.

His fever-addled mind was dangerous, but it might also prove my best hope for escape.

The healer in me longed to examine him, but I doubted he would trust me near him now. He knew I’d hurt Mason and the legionnaire whose horse I’d stolen. That blasted horse. I had to catch her. If I told Dillon his salt was strapped to her back, he would mount a recovery effort. Bringing me along would be foolhardy. Why give a dangerous prisoner freedom? No. He’d leave me behind. It made the most sense. Perhaps if I were lucky my new jailer would be less attentive.

Break free, await Dillon’s return, steal the salt and then
…hope I made it farther this time.

Air at the edge of the mine was stifling, but Dillon would rather face the midday sun than the demoness waiting for his return. So much for asking the hard questions. Her accomplice, and she must have one, remained a mystery. Now that his mind was clearing, he noticed she hadn’t said the father of her child wasn’t involved.
Father of her child
. A growl pumped through his chest. He didn’t like that idea. Not one bit. So she had a daughter but not a mate. Or had she lied again?

Frowning, he massaged his nape while gathering his wits about him.

Isabeau as a mother… He admitted it wasn’t a far stretch to imagine her in the role. Even her lack of a mate was easily explained. Slaves birthed their owners’ bastards all the time. Most were sold once they reached a self-sufficient age. The girl in the portrait had the same roundness in her cheeks that Galvin had had until this last year. Based on that, he’d peg her at four or five years old. Old enough she must belong to Isabeau’s former master, whoever the bastard was. His hands balled.

Focus. The past can’t be changed. Accept it, deal with it and move on.

Accept it
. She had a child. Between females aided by the freeborn legion and the consulate, so did one out of every four rescued, and his estimation wasn’t generous. Accepting she might be protecting the girl’s father was harder. It hinted at a relationship she had denied.
Deal with it
. She wasn’t his, and he didn’t want a mate.
Move on
. Claiming meant surrendering freedom he had fought too hard and lost too much achieving. No female deserved that level of control over him.

With his resolve fortified, he turned and made his way back to his prisoner.

The darkest secrets are the hardest to unearth.

Secret Unleashed

© 2013 Sierra Dean

Secret McQueen, Book 6

After her last mission tested the limits of her humanity and took her out of this world, Secret’s friends, determined to keep her safe from her old nemesis Alexandre Peyton, keep ushering her from one babysitter to the next.

Couch surfing would be a lot more fun if Alexandre would let up on her long enough to allow her to get in some alone time with her lovers. Including Holden, her self-appointed shadow.

As if living out of coffin isn’t bad enough, Secret literally brings down the house while hunting a rogue, causing the council to exile her from New York—for her own safety, of course.

With her list of people to trust getting shorter and shorter, Secret ends up embroiled in a mystery to find a vampire warden gone AWOL and a missing artifact. Things go from bad to worse when she falls into the hands of a man who will prove that humans can be the worst monsters of them all.

Warning:
Contains a cross-country journey, an unexpected family reunion, heated lovers’ embraces and a hell of a lot of trouble.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Secret Unleashed:

Holden was a fish out of water in the dilapidated interior of the abandoned complex. The former
GQ
editor was wearing a gray Hugo Boss suit worth about a thousand bucks—he’d narrow down the price range for me if it was damaged somehow—and looked peeved.

His dark brown hair was brushed back from his face, curling slightly behind his ears and long enough to tease his nape. Brown eyes managed to convey his absolute disdain in a way words never could.

But it was the faint turn of a smile on his lips that hooked me. Holden had a way of taking the most terrifying situations and twisting them on their heads to distract me from the danger. Either by annoying me so intensely I wanted to murder him, or making me forget there was any risk by charming the pants off me.

Sometimes literally.

Even when he was being a snob, he made me feel safe.

It was one of the things I loved about him.

There was no shortage of those, unfortunately. It made
not
loving him almost impossible.

“What have you gotten us into now?” he asked. “And who are these civilian casualties?”

“
Dude,
” Shane responded, “we’ve
met
.”

“Ah yes. Secret two-point-oh. And you, tiny Irish?”

“Siobhan,” she said.

“Siobhan’s a druid,” I told him.

Holden wrinkled his nose, trying to keep from outright sneering at her. I admired his version of restraint. “How lovely.” He drew out the word
lovely
, making it as sarcastic as possible.

“I’m sorry,
why is he here
?” Shane was clearly exasperated by the way the hunt was spiraling out of his control.

“I called him.”

“For the love of—”

“Now, now, children. If you don’t want me here, I can just take my toy and go home.” With a burst of vampiric speed he was across the room with his hands possessively around my waist, pulling me towards him. I guess in this scenario
I
was the toy.

“Who’s acting like a kid now?” I smacked his hands away. He might have handled my assets in every conceivable way, but it didn’t mean he had permission to act as if he owned me. “Look, if we’re waltzing into a vampire nest, we’d be much better off having some real strength on our side. No offense to either of you, but you’re both human.”

Siobhan opened her mouth to protest, but I raised a finger. “And even a skilled human can’t face off against Grendel alone.”

Holden was still touching me, running his fingers up and down my spine, and even through the leather jacket I was tingling with awareness from his lingering presence. I didn’t tell him to stop. The last thing I needed to worry about right then was my lover getting handsy with me in front of people.

Just thinking of him in conjunction with the word
lover
was more of a problem than I was willing to deal with at the moment.

“So what’s the plan?” Holden looked past me to Shane. I could have hugged the vampire for giving the hunter his dues as the leader of this expedition. Maybe the blood veneer made Shane seem more respectable to everyone.

“The elevator is out of the question, obviously,” Shane said.

Siobhan raised her bloody hands as evidence. Holden’s nostrils flared as the smell of the girl’s blood fanned through the air. He sucked in a ragged breath, and since breathing wasn’t necessary for vampires, I knew he was taking a good whiff of her.

“Has anyone checked for the stairs?” Holden asked, his voice strained.

“It’s at the back, but a section in the middle is rotted through. Not passable.”

“A few stairs missing? That’s nothing.” Holden stepped clear of us and bounded across the patchwork floor with the ease of an alley cat prowling the city streets. His confidence was contagious because the three of us followed after him, less nimble, but still able to track his route.

Holden was waiting at the top of the emergency stairwell, which must have been constructed in a bygone era before concrete was the norm, and we all assessed the rot damage.

The stairwell wrapped around the wall, with a broken railing along the outer edge. Where the railings gave way there was a central column open all the way to the ground floor. Since we were ten flights up, I didn’t think jumping to the main level would be feasible for anyone but Holden, and even he couldn’t guarantee making it without a broken ankle. He was still a man, not a cat.

Each section was missing six or seven steps—about half of the stairs—and the remaining bits looked worse for wear. I wouldn’t have trusted Siobhan’s lithe figure on the steps, let alone Shane or Holden. The weight of a full-grown man would fracture the threadbare wood.

“So, genius, you were saying?” I turned my attention from the stairs up to Holden.

He sneered at me and jumped to the next riser. Holden landed smoothly, avoiding the center section of the steps, and gave me a haughty
I told you so
look.

“Throw me the tiny one,” he said.

Shane and I stared at Siobhan, who was shaking her head emphatically and backing away from us. “No. Nope. I have no intention of being tossed into the waiting arms of a vampire.”

“It’s okay, he won’t bite you,” I told her.

“It doesn’t escape my notice you said he won’t bite
me
instead of
he doesn’t bite
.”

“He’s still a vampire,” I reminded her, rolling my eyes.

“Yeah, and we came here to
kill
vampires.”

“Vampires pay your boyfriend’s rent.
I’m
a vampire.” My tone clearly conveyed I wasn’t in the mood to argue about the shades of gray when it came to the badness of vampires.

I grabbed Siobhan, and before she could wriggle free I shoved her off the top step. I was careful not to just knock her off the edge, but instead gave my push a little oomph so she went flying into Holden’s arms. He, in turn, carried the momentum a step further and tossed her down to the next riser.

Siobhan was flustered but still a warrior at heart. She landed in a crouch, her back to the wall, and scowled up at us.

We continued the system, ensuring there was never more than one person standing on any riser longer than a few seconds, lest we push the wood’s limits and send us on the express route to the ground floor.