Burning Up by Nalini Singh
Ivy smiled and lay her head on his shoulder. "Would you have let me return to Fool's Cove?"
"No. When courting fails, the next step is abduction."
She laughed into the night--until she caught a glimpse of his face. His expression was serious. Her mouth fell open. "Weren't you joking?"
His sudden grin didn't make her any more or less certain. Alright. She'd let him have that one.
"Do you know," she told him, gently touching the almost-healed cut on his lip, "that I've never once held a gun before today?"
His grin remained only until he glanced at her features. He came to a stop. "Now you're not serious. That glass you shot was an inch from my head."
"But it's true." She wiggled her fingers, silvery in the moonlight. "I knew my aim would be perfect. And it was, don't you agree?"
He studied her face a moment longer, before starting toward Vesuvius again, a smile deepening the corners of his mouth. "God help me," he said.
Once again, she took that as a "yes."
KEEP READING FOR A PREVIEW OF
VIRGINIA KANTRA'S NEXT
CHILDREN OF THE SEA NOVEL
IMMORTAL SEA
COMING SEPTEMBER 2010FROM BERKLEY SENSATION!
Morgan looked down, arrested, at the woman clinging to his arm. Was she aware what she invited? His kind did not touch. Only to fight or to mate.
His blood rushed like water under ice. Perhaps tonight he would do both.
He had not come ashore to rut. He was not as abstemious as his prince, Conn, but he had standards. Unlike his sister Morwenna and others among the mer, he did not often waste his seed on humankind.
The woman's throat moved as she swallowed. "Sorry," she said, and dropped his arm.
She was very young, he observed. Attractive, with healthy skin and glossy brown hair. Her face was a strong oval, her jaw slightly squared, her unfettered breasts high and pleasing. There was even a gleam that might be intelligence in those brown eyes.
It would be no great privation to indulge her and himself.
"Do not apologize." Grasping her hand, he replaced it on his sleeve. Her nails were clean and unpolished, her fingers tapered.
He imagined those short nails pressing into his flesh, and the rush in his blood became a roar. No privation at all.
He glanced around the narrow buildings fronting the street. He would not take her here, in this filthy human warren. But there were other places less noxious, and nearby. Adjusting his stride to hers, he led her away, seeking green ways and open water.
The lights and noise of the city at night eddied and ebbed around them, the amber pool of a streetlight, the green glow of a bar sign, a lamp in a second-floor window.
At the next intersection, she hesitated, her gaze darting down the street toward a cafe where trees strung with tiny lights canopied a cluster of empty tables. "Don't we want to go that way?"
She did possess intelligence, then. Or at least a sense of direction.
"If you like." Morgan shrugged. "It is quieter toward the harbor."
Her brow pleated. Her eyes were big and dark. He watched the silent battle between feminine caution and female desire, felt the moment of acquiescence when her hand relaxed on his forearm. He fought to keep his flare of triumph from his face.
"Quieter," she repeated.
"More . . . scenic," he said, searching for a word that might appeal to her.
"Oh." Her tongue touched her lower lip in doubt or invitation. "I haven't seen the harbor yet. This is my first visit to Copenhagen."
"Indeed." Warmth radiated from her hand up his arm. Anticipation flowed thick and urgent through his veins. She was not part of his purpose here. But she was a respite, a recompense of a sort, for long years of trial and frustration.
Her bare shoulders gleamed in the moonlight, sweetly curved as the curl of a shell. The night swirled around them like seaweed caught in the tide, the smell of beer and piss and car exhaust, a waft from a flower box, a breeze from the sea.
"I almost didn't come," she continued, as if he had expressed an interest. "Not part of The Plan, you know?"
He did not know and cared even less. But her voice was low pitched and pleasant. To hear it again, he asked, "There is a plan?"
She nodded, touching the ends of her hair where it brushed her smooth shoulders. He observed the small, betraying gesture with satisfaction. Consciously or not, she was signaling her awareness of him as a male.
"I start med school in the fall," she said. "My dad wanted me to stay home and do a post-bacc program, get a leg up on the competition. And my mother wanted one more summer of tennis and Junior League before I slip from her grasp forever."
He had no idea what she was talking about. "And what do you want?"
Her eyes crinkled. "A break," she said with such rueful honesty that he almost smiled back. "Everything always revolves around school. Like I don't live my own life, I just prepare for it. I wanted . . . something different. An adventure, I guess."
He could give her something different, he thought. He would even make sure she enjoyed it.
The barred storefronts ceded ground to cobblestone streets and narrow houses with cramped garden plots. The scent of standing water and of lilies carried on the breeze. Not much farther now, he thought.
"What about you?" she asked with friendly interest.
He glanced down in surprise.
"What brings you here?"
His purpose was bitter as brine in his mouth, deep and cold as the sea.
For Morgan was warden of the northern deeps, charged by a lost king to fight a losing battle.
For a thousand years he had served the sea king's son, battling demons in the deep, defending his desmesne from the sly encroachments of the sidhe. But his powers had proved useless against the depredations of humankind. For more than a century, the overflow from this city's streets and canals had polluted the sound and the sea, turning the port into a shit house. Only now, when the humans had finally learned to curb their waste, could Morgan begin the slow process of repair. Recovery of the seabed would take centuries.
He did not blame this girl--much--for what her kind had done. She was here and female and willing. Under the circumstances, he was prepared to overlook a great deal.
"Business," he said.
Her deep brown eyes assessed him. "You don't dress like a businessman."
He wore the black and silver of the finfolk, subtly altered so he could pass for a man of this place and time. "No?"
"No."
He did not respond. The sky was thick with moisture, glowing with the lights of the city and the promise of dawn. The moon wore golden vapor like a veil.
"You don't want to talk about it," she guessed.
He smiled, showing the edge of his teeth. "You did not seek my company for my conversation."
She stopped on the sidewalk, her chin tilted at a challenging angle. Despite her earlier signals, he had been too blunt. Women, human women, required some preliminaries. Or perhaps her female pride was offended. "Really? What is it you think I want from you?"
Her cheeks were flushed. Her scent filled his nostrils. Beneath the sharp notes of her annoyance, he could smell the sweetness of her body readying itself for his. His shaft went hard as stone.
"My protection," he offered.
She nodded once, her eyes big and wary. "Yeah," she admitted. "Okay."
He stepped closer, watching her face carefully. "And perhaps . . . an adventure?"
He heard the betraying intake of her breath. Her small, round breasts rose. And suddenly he wanted this, wanted her, beyond habit or reason, instinct or expedience. The intensity of his lust surprised him.
She was only human, after all.
KEEP READING FOR A PREVIEW OF
MELJEAN BROOK'S NEXT NOVEL
THE IRON DUKE
COMING OCTOBER 2010FROM BERKLEY SENSATION!
By the time Mina and Newberry reached the Isle of Dogs, the nip of the evening air had become a bite.
The high wrought-iron fence that surrounded his gardens had earned him the nickname The Iron Duke--the iron kept the rest of London out, and whatever riches he hid inside, in. The spikes at the top of the fence guaranteed that no one in the surrounding slums would scale it, and no one was invited in. At least, no one in Mina's circle, or her mother's.
She was never certain if their circle was too high, or too low.
Newberry stopped in front of the gate. When a face appeared at the small gatehouse window, he shouted, "Detective Inspector Wentworth, on Crown business! Open her up!"
The gatekeeper appeared, a grizzled man with a long gray beard and the heavy step that marked a metal leg. A former pirate, Mina guessed. Though the Crown insisted that Trahaearn and his men had all been privateers, acting with the permission of the king, only a few children who didn't know any better believed the story. The rest of them knew he'd been a pirate all along, and the story was just designed to bolster faith in the king and his ministers after the revolution. That story and bestowing a title on Trahaearn had been two of King Edward's last cogent acts. The crew had been given naval ranks, and Marco's Terror pressed into the service of the Navy . . . where she'd supposedly been all along.
The Iron Duke had traded the Terror and the seas for a title and a fortress in the middle of a slum. She wondered if he felt that exchange had been worth it.
The gatekeeper glanced at her. "And the jade?"
At Mina's side, Newberry bristled. "She is the detective inspector, Lady Wilhelmina Wentworth."
Oh, Newberry. In Manhattan City, titles still meant more than escaping the modification that the British lower classes had suffered under the Horde. And when the gatekeeper looked at her again, she knew what he saw--and it wasn't a lady. Nor was it the epaulettes declaring her rank, or the red band sewed into her sleeve, boasting that she'd spilled Horde blood in the revolution.
No, he saw her face, calculated her age, and understood that she'd been conceived during a Frenzy. And that, because of her family's status, her mother and father had been allowed to keep her rather than being taken by the Horde to be raised in a creche.
The gatekeeper looked at her assistant. "And you?"
"Constable Newberry."
Scratching his beard, the old man shuffled back toward the gatehouse. "All right. I'll be sending a gram up to the captain, then."
He still called the Iron Duke "captain?" Mina could not decide if that said more about Trahaearn or the gatekeeper. At least one of them did not put much stock in titles, but she could not determine if it was the gatekeeper alone.
The gatekeeper didn't return--and former pirate or not, he must be literate if he could write a gram and read the answer from the main house. That answer came quickly. She and Newberry hadn't waited more than a minute before the gates opened on well-oiled hinges.
The park was enormous, with green lawns stretching out into the dark. Dogs sniffed along the fence, their handlers bundled up against the cold. If someone had invaded the property, he wouldn't find many places to hide outside the buildings. All of the shrubs and trees were still young, planted after Trahaearn had purchased the estate.
The house rivaled Chesterfield before that great building had fallen into disrepair and been demolished. Made of yellow stone, two rectangular wings jutted forward to form a large courtyard. Unadorned casements decorated the many windows, and the blocky stone front was relieved only by the window glass, and the balustrade along the top of the roof. A fountain tinkled at the center of the courtyard. Behind it, the main steps created semicircles leading to the entrance.
On the center of the steps, a white sheet concealed a body-shaped lump. No blood soaked through the sheet. A man waited on the top step, his slight form in a poker-straight posture that Mina couldn't place for a moment. Then it struck her: Navy. Probably another pirate, though this one had been a sailor--or an officer--first.
A house of this size would require a small army of staff, and she and Newberry would have to question each one. Soon, she'd know how many of Trahaearn's pirates had come to dry land with him.
As they reached the fountain, she turned to Newberry. "Stop here. Set up your camera by the body. I want photographs of everything before we move it."
Newberry parked and climbed out. Mina didn't wait for him to gather his equipment from the bonnet. She strode toward the house. The man descended the steps to greet her, and she was forced to revise her opinion. His posture wasn't rigid discipline, but a cover for wiry, contained energy. His dark hair slicked back from a narrow face. Unlike the man at the gate, he was neat, and almost bursting with the need to help.
"Inspector Wentworth." With ink-stained fingers, he gestured to the body, inviting her to look.
She was not in a rush, however. The body would not be going anywhere. "Mr.--?"
"St. John." He said it like a bounder, rather than the two abbreviated syllables of someone born in England. "Steward to his grace's estate."
"This estate or his property in Wales?" Which, as far as Mina was aware, Trahaearn didn't often visit.
"Anglesey, Inspector."
Newberry passed them, easily carrying the heavy photographic equipment. St. John half turned, as if to offer his assistance, then glanced back as Mina asked, "When did you arrive here from Wales, Mr. St. John?"
"Yesterday."
"Did you witness what happened here?"
He shook his head. "I was in the study when I heard the footman--Chesley--inform the housekeeper that someone had fallen. Mrs. Lavery then told his grace."
Mina frowned. She hadn't been called out here because someone had been a clumsy oaf, had they? "Someone tripped on the stairs?"
"No, inspector. Fallen." His hand made a sharp dive from his shoulder to his hip.
Mina glanced at the body again, then at the balustrade lining the roof. "Do you know who it was?"
"No."
She was not surprised. If he managed the Welsh estate, he wouldn't likely know the London staff well. "Who covered him with the sheet?"
"I did, after his grace sent the staff back into the house."
So they'd all come out to gawk. "Did anyone identify him while they were outside?"
"No."
Or maybe they just hadn't spoken up. "Where is the staff now?"
"They are gathered in the main parlor."
Where they would all pass the story around until they were each convinced they'd witnessed it personally. Blast. Mina firmed her lips.
As if understanding her frustration, St. John added, "The footman is alone in the study, however. His grace told him to stay there. He hasn't spoken with anyone else since Mrs. Lavery told his grace."
The footman had been taken into the study and asked nothing? "But he has talked to the duke?"
The answer came from behind her, from a voice that could carry his commands across a ship, without shouting. "He has, Inspector."
She turned to find a man as big as his voice. Oh, damn the news sheets. They hadn't been kind to him--they'd been kind to their readers, protecting them from the effect of this man. He was just as hard and as handsome as they'd portrayed. Altogether dark and forbidding, his gaze was as pointed and as guarded as the fence that was his namesake. The Iron Duke wasn't as tall as his statue, but still taller than any man had a right to be--and as broad through the shoulders as Newberry, but without the spare flesh.
The news sheets had shown all of that, but they hadn't conveyed his power. But it was not just size, Mina immediately recognized. Not just his looks. She'd seen handsome before. She'd seen rich and influential. Yet this man had a presence beyond looks and money. For the first
He was terrifying.
Disturbed by her reaction, Mina glanced at the man standing beside him: tall, brown-haired, his expression bored. Mina did not recognize him. Perhaps a bounder and, if so, probably an aristocrat--and he likely expected to be treated as one.
Bully for him.
She looked to the duke again. Like his companion, he wore a long black overcoat, breeches, and boots. A waistcoat buckled like armor over a white shirt with a simple collar reminiscent of the Horde's tunic collar. Fashionable clothes, but almost invisible--as if overpowered by the man wearing them.
Something, Mina suspected, that he did not just to his clothes, but the people around him. She could not afford to be one of them.
She'd never been introduced to someone of his standing before, but she'd seen Superintendent Hale meet the prime minister without a single gesture to acknowledge that he ranked above her. Mina followed that example and offered the short nod of an equal. "Your Grace. I understand that you did not witness this man die."
"No."
She looked beyond him. "And your companion . . . ?"
"Also saw nothing," the other man answered.
She'd been right; his accent marked him as a bounder. Yet she had to revise her opinion of him. He wasn't bored by the death--just too familiar with it to be excited by yet another. She couldn't understand that. The more death she saw, the more the injustice of each one touched her. "Your name, sir?"
His smile seemed just at the edge of a laugh. "Mr. Smith."
A joker. How fun.
She thought a flicker of irritation crossed the duke's expression. But when he didn't offer his companion's true name, she let it go. One of the staff would know.
"Mr. St. John has told me that no one has identified the body, and only your footman saw his fall."
"Yes."
"Did your footman relate anything else to you?"
"Only that his landing sounded just like a man falling from the topsail yard to the deck below. Except this one didn't scream."
No scream? Either the man had been drunk, asleep, or already dead. She would soon find out which it was.