High Voltage (Fever #10)(54)

“He doesn’t stand a chance,” Shazam rumbled.

“He, who?”

“The one I smelled on our mattress. He’s back. I smelled him on you before. He makes you smell different when he’s around.”

Okay, that was disturbing. “Different how?”

“Like Pallas cat makes me smell.”

Okay THAT was disturbing. “I don’t think so,” I growled.

He shrugged. “We deny at our own peril…”

“What? What do we deny at our own peril?”

“The cry of the flesh for the Dionysiac experience.”

Eyes narrowed, I peered suspiciously at him. “Where did you even hear that? Is that from some documentary you watched on theatre or history or something?”

    He shrugged again. “It’s why I eat. My flesh cries a lot.”

“As in Dionysus. The God of Bacchae. Wine and orgy,” I said stiffly.

“I chose one of your gods, not mine, better not to bofflescate you.”

Good grief. “Do Hel-Cats have gods?”

“Most things do. Look suspiciously like themselves.”

I wanted to have this conversation. Shazam was in an unusually lucid mood. Gods were a hot topic on my plate. And it was 8:01.

I did not want Ryodan in my flat. He’d have more time to look around, copy something else. “Please be here when I get back,” I told Shazam. “I miss our cuddles.”

His smile was instant, enormous, and swallowed his head, all fangs and thin black lips, and there was that elusive, nagging reminder of something I couldn’t place again. Shazam smiling made me think of something else, something I’d once seen but apparently hadn’t considered important enough to file away with a neat label. “Me, too.” He bounded off the counter, stalked to the mattress, turned around three brisk times, and plopped heavily to the bed. “Can we put the mattress back up high soon? I like it there.”

“Soon as I get back. I see you, Shaz-ma-taz.”

“I see you, too, Yi-yi.”

I tugged on opera-length black silk gloves studded with diamonds, which ended where my sleeves began, grabbed my sword, slid it across my back, tucked three blades in a thigh sheath, and stalked out the door.





    You drive me crazy like no one else





I WENT SLOWLY DOWN FOUR flights of stairs, not because of my heels but because I was abruptly off-kilter the moment I closed the door of Sanctuary and locked it behind me.

Ryodan was picking me up. I was wearing a dress. I had no bloody idea where we were going or what we were doing.

Out of control on all counts.

For two long years I’d been mistress of the empty Mega-pod, dominatrix of every detail. There’d been no surprises. I’d not once lost hold on my emotions. Not even when I killed Bridget. I hadn’t slumped into a puddle of grief and self-abasement—and I’d wanted to. That’d been one of my tougher things to box. I’d killed yet another innocent. But, no matter what happened, I went on, steady and committed, doing what needed to be done, being what people needed me to be, and I dealt with however it fractured me. I was proud of myself for that. I considered it a sign of my maturity.

    Yet a few thoughts about him on the way to his club had whipped me into a frenzy of uncontrolled emotion and I’d become a tornado, whirling dizzyingly about, dizzying even to me.

I stopped, centered myself with a breathing kata, and only when I was composed did I resume descending. I wasn’t about to repeat my earlier volatility. If he brought up the kiss, I’d shrug it off as PMS. Men use it against us all the time. If that didn’t shut him up, I’d employ the “hangry” excuse. He knows how often I need to eat to function at peak performance, has seen me shaky and feverish.

I rounded the final stairwell, expecting to find him parked outside in the Hummer.

He was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, hand on the newel post, looking up. Looking incredible. Tall, dark, and the precise flavor of the danger I find so addictive. Standing there like we were going on a date or something. I was instantly assaulted by conflicting emotions.

I’d dreamed of seeing him standing there, somewhere, anywhere in my world again. And I was so damned angry, I couldn’t process the complexity of it. I’m smart enough to know I can also be as emotionally myopic as Mr. Magoo is nearsighted. The more something matters to me, the less I understand how I feel about it. Mac used to help me with that. For the hundredth time I wished she were here to talk to. I missed her so much. “You could have waited in the car,” I said tonelessly.

    “I bloody well know what I can and can’t do, and don’t pull Jada-voice on me. I came to see Dani tonight.”

Ryodan is beautiful. Not like Barrons, who’s beautiful in a perfectly imperfect way, far more animalistic than man. You see the beast first in Barrons. You have to hunt for it in Ryodan, who pours a flawlessly human skin over his animal form, meticulously aware of precisely where each atom of his being is in relation to the world around him. He has a heightened, absolute awareness I covet and emulate. He’s liquid grace when he moves. I’m damned close to it. I’ve admired him since the day I met him. Used to study him when he wasn’t watching me. I once spent eight infernal hours trapped in his office, watching his dark head bent over paperwork, absorbing every detail of his profile, trying to figure out some way to shatter that infernal calm and grace, make that controlled face explode into uncontrolled emotion. Make him act like I always felt around him.