A Shade of Midnight Read online

  His leiol pheromones once again overrode any other feeling Mina could sense, but the disappointment was clear in his expression. “Can I, at least, call you a cab?”

  “Yes,” Mina said, as she suppressed the urge to sprint toward the elevator. “Tell him I’ll be out by the curb.”

  Chapter 7

  When Mina arrived home, barefoot and in the crumpled red dress, she stepped into the condo’s elevator as Gav was stepping out. Damn it!

  He held the doors open with one hand. Sniffing the air, he shifted closer. “Just getting home?” His face was blank, carefully guarded.

  She blinked, trying to concentrate through the overwhelming waves of jealousy and possession. “No, early morning. Just got back from a run.”

  He looked down at her bare feet. “In the same dress you wore last night and without your shoes?”

  She shrugged, too tired to come up with a really good lie. “Anything new on Wilson’s death?”

  “You know I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation.”

  “Eric didn’t do it.”

  “Your belief in your boyfriend isn’t hard evidence, you know that right?”

  “He’s not my—”

  Gav raised his hand and leaned in close. He breathed her in. “I can smell him on you, Mina,” he growled, his words rough and dangerous.

  She couldn’t think of anything to say—at least not anything plausible. She’d only kissed Eric, but wow, it had been amazingly hot. Even so, she’d stopped herself before things went too far. Regardless, she didn’t have to justify herself to Gav Doyle. He was the one who’d made it perfectly clear they were O-V-E-R. Instead, she smiled. “Good to see you, Gavriil.”

  Gav frowned, eyebrows arching together in annoyance—much better than rip-your-throat-out anger. She wished he wasn’t so damned gorgeous and irresistible. It would make the whole “clean break” from him a lot easier. Mina blew him a kiss as the elevator closed between them.

  * * * *

  Gav slammed the car door shut. He fantasized about slamming his fist into Eric Bishop’s face, but the door was more productive and would get him in less trouble. He wanted to arrest the man on principle alone, but despite what he’d said to Mina, he agreed with her that he wasn’t a killer. While the body hadn’t been skinned like the one discovered on the Plaza, it bore the same crisscrossing mark on the back of the head. This crime had to be other worlder, but he couldn’t tell the species. It was a scent he’d never smelled before. And unfortunately, it didn’t smell like Eric Fucking Bishop.

  He hated to call Myron Gray, but he needed an expert in other worlder genesis to find out what he was dealing with. He assumed the OW was human passing, or HP, since nobody noticed a monster at the party. But there were more than a hundred different varieties of OWs, and that didn’t include the intermixed breeds. One murder, he might hold off on calling the shadow warriors, but two was the beginning of a dangerous pattern. Twice now the killer had left a victim in a public area without anyone noticing, and the maniac hadn’t left a single stitch of evidence behind. Gav couldn’t wait for a fourth victim to pop up, especially now that Mina was nosing around. They might not be together, but he still cared. More than he thought healthy for either of them.

  He pulled out his phone and pulled up Boogey Man in his contacts. A man picked up after the third ring.

  “You’ve reached the bat-phone. Whatcha need?”

  He’d spoke to Myron Gray only twice before, and this wasn’t him. Did he have the wrong number in his contacts? “Who is this?”

  “Hold on.” He could hear some beeps in the background as he waited for a few seconds before the man returned. “You’re Detective Gavriil Matthew Doyle of the Kansas City PD, leogenus, full-blood, son of Gabriel and Aspasia Doyle, next in line to lead the Lincoln Pride since your older brother’s shunning—”

  “Enough,” Gav said. “I get it.” The fact that Gray’s shadow warriors knew about his brother’s shunning from the Pride startled him.

  The man chuckled. “I’m just fucking with you. This is Destan Gray. What’s the trouble?”

  “I have a couple of murders. A weird pattern on the back of each victim’s neck ties them together. I suspect an unidentifiable OW. I’ve never encountered the species before. At least not that I’m aware of. I think they may fall into your purview.”

  “I’ll head your way tomorrow.”

  “Can’t I just give you the information over the phone?”

  “Gav. Can I call you Gav? I see in your file it’s your preference.” He didn’t wait for Gav to answer. “You have a bigger problem than a potential serial killer. We’ve been tracking some rebel activity in your area, and it sounds like they may have escalated, and we need to know why.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we. All other worlders who don’t want to be thrust into the spotlight if the bad guys are able to get a real foothold. They think because Queen Benoica isn’t cray-cray like her daddy that they can shit all over her regime. We’re going to show them just how wrong they are. I’ll be sending one of our agents your way tomorrow. He’ll text when he’s in the city, and you can arrange to meet.” Destan Gray ended the conversation by hanging up the phone.

  “Well, shit.” Looked like Gav was getting personalized help from the shadow warriors whether he wanted it or not.

  * * * *

  Mina agreed to meet Eric for lunch at Taco Jalisco’s Mexican Restaurant, and she arrived sporting her favorite pair of black, low-rise jeans and a fitted dark green V-neck tee shirt. Not quite rested, but feeling much more alert, and a lot guiltier since she’d had a couple hours of sleep. Ugh, Charlie’s kid brother. How could she have considered having sex with him?

  Eric arrived before her. He wore a tailored charcoal gray suit, hugging his body in all the right places, making him even more handsome—which answered her previous question about the “how.” Three waitresses fawned over him at the table. Even the older gal who worked as a hostess gave Eric the hoochie-eye.

  Looking around the room, Mina noticed that nearly all the women in the restaurant were gazing at him like they were diabetics and he was the last candy bar on earth. Joining him at the table, Mina felt the animosity roll off the waitresses as two of them left and the remaining woman reluctantly took her order. She focused on blocking her abilities and the emotions subsided. After the waitress had walked away, Mina turned to the mouth-watering young man. “You need to shut down the ju-ju unless you want a riot on your hands. Every woman in this restaurant wants to have sex with you.”

  “Even you.” The right side of his mouth turned up in a partial smile.

  Everything about him made Mina’s lower parts go tight and wet. She licked her lips. “Well…” She cleared her throat. “No, I don’t.” Translation—yes, I do.

  “If you say so,” he said. But he gave her that infuriatingly sexy smile.

  “Cut that out,” Mina chided him as the food arrived. “What did your lawyer say this morning?”

  “He keeps telling me not to worry, everything they have is circumstantial, but naturally, I’m worried,” Eric said while slicing his burrito. Mina took note that he hadn’t taken one bite of food since the waiter had brought out the meals. He just played with it—cutting, moving, picking, piling. There was a small stack of diced onions and green peppers off to one side of his plate.

  She had to ask. “Why don’t you just ask them not to put onions and peppers on your food?”

  He pushed another onion piece aside. “I had a friend in college who used to work as a cook. He said that whenever a customer would special order a dish or return food for adjustments, it would piss him off so much that he would spit in the food. It’s always haunted me.” He finally took a small bite, chewed then swallowed. “So unless I’m in a five-star restaurant, I just settle for whatever’s on the menu and adjust the meal on the plate.”

  Her mouth dropped. “Taco Jalisco is a classy place! I can’t even believe you would suggest something like that would
happen here. And as for your friend… let me just say, eww!” There! How was that for righteous indignation? The problem was, she’d ordered a tamale—hold the chili sauce, hold the cheese—and now his story made her suspicious of her own food.

  He took another bite of his burrito. “Mmm,” he said. “This is pretty good.”

  One of the waitresses, a young woman with pulled back brown hair, large breasts, and a little waist, sauntered over to the table. She’d undone the top two buttons on her blouse. Leaning toward Eric, she asked, “Can I get you anything?”

  Mina’s emotional block held, but she didn’t need it open to know what the waitress felt. “I didn’t know double-Ds were on the menu. Why don’t you just throw your panties at him, for Christ’s sake?” She clenched her fists to stave off the jealousy. Her sudden need to make all the other women in the room disappear bordered on homicidal. What is wrong with me?

  The waitress snapped up straight and walked off in a huff.

  “For someone who claims to have no designs on me, you’re surprisingly possessive.”

  “Am not.” Mina pushed her plate away. “So what exactly did the lawyer say?”

  “I told you. He said not to worry.” He scratched his chin. “Mr. Albright says the note that came to our table wasn’t from him. I think your theory about someone being out to get me might be correct.”

  The note! She suddenly felt like an idiot. Some investigator she was turning out to be. Slapping her forehead in frustration, she asked, “What did you do with the note?”

  “I threw it away.”

  “Threw it away! How could you throw it away?”

  “I threw it away before I went into the bathroom,” he said, getting agitated. “I’m not a psychic. I didn’t know that when I walked in the bathroom, there’d be a dead body. Jesus.”

  Mina took a deep breath. Okay, calm down. Maybe there was still a way to retrieve the note. “It’s fine,” she said. “Are you going to be all right today?”

  “Sure. You got plans?”

  She did now. Mina envisioned an entire afternoon digging around in a giant garbage bin. It wasn’t going to be pretty, but the note could be the key to finding out who was trying so hard to frame Eric. “Yeah. I need to take care of a few things.”

  They both stood up at the same time and grabbed the check. “I’ll get it,” she told him.

  He shook his head. “No, my treat.”

  She could have argued—women’s lib, feminism, and all that—but decided she’d put it on his tab. After all, if she was going to investigate, she was going to bill him. “Okay.”

  He winked then grinned. “Next time…your treat?” he asked mischievously.

  Yeah, right. It wasn’t food on his mind. “In your dreams,” she said, brushing past him toward the exit.

  “In yours,” she heard him say. He wasn’t wrong.

  She went straight out of the restaurant without looking back and rounded the nearest alley to catch her breath. Her flushed skin and rapid pulse felt as if she were wearing someone else’s body. She’d been trained to be calm, cool, and level-headed. So why was she losing it over this guy like a schoolgirl in heat? It wasn’t just his lineage. They had a connection, a bond. The strength of which stunned her. She punched her thigh. Hard. The pain helped her to gather her wits. Gav. Eric. The two of them had been constantly on her mind, and they were distractions she didn’t want or need.

  “Are you okay?”

  The voice startled Mina. She turned, pulling her gun from her hip holster.

  Eric raised his hands. “I’m unarmed.”

  “Why did you follow me?”

  “I didn’t. I just happened to see you down here when I walked past.”

  He moved closer. Mina’s adrenaline spiked, never a good thing, and she forgot she was holding a weapon until Eric pushed it aside. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, tucking her hair behind her ear.

  “We can’t do this.” Her mild protest was a whisper. “Charlie.”

  “Loves you,” he said. “She loves us both. She’d want us to be happy.”

  “She’ll never—” Eric silenced her with a kiss.

  Ten minutes later, they were groping their way into his loft.

  They fell into the living room. Eric tugged her shirt up and her jeans down as he pressed her body against the wall just inside. His hands slid down her thighs as he moved a knee between her legs parting them. A finger looped the side of her panties and gave them a sharp tug, the strap breaking under the strain. Mina moaned her excitement.

  His lips left her mouth, trailing kisses down her neck, breasts, and abdomen. Firm hands grasped her buttocks as his mouth found her slick heat, his tongue flickering against her throbbing clit, licking and sucking the swollen bud sweetly between his lips. Mina’s legs buckled, but Eric held her upright, a feat that impressed her and fueled her desire even more.

  Tight tension coiled itself within her—the burning edges of an orgasm on the horizon. His tongue was doing incredible things, long, impossibly long it seemed, as it made its way into her, sliding in and out, flicking to her clit then back in, sucking her while his teeth grazed her sensitive flesh. “Oh, shit, I’m going to come.”

  He paused, one hand moving to her breast, pinching her taut nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “Come for me, Mina. I want to taste you explode in my mouth.”

  She nearly sang her compliance. Impossibly, she felt his hands everywhere, stroking her, caressing, as his tongue dove in and out and over, blood rushing away from her head and down to her groin. She shuddered as a bell rang out in her mind, her sex contracting in spasms around his tongue. She flung her head back, it whacked against the wall, but even that minor pain didn’t stop the rapture as he kept taking her, all of her, into him.

  When the vibrations of the last of her orgasm subsided, Eric kissed her aching clit. Kneeling between her legs he eased her down onto his lap, his shaft pressing hard against her. “That was a delicious appetizer.” He licked his glistening lips, wet with her own lubricant. He breathed his desire across her neck. “Now for the main course.”

  He easily lifted her off the floor, his strength surprising Mina. Yes, he was half-other, but until this feat of strength, she’d considered him mostly human. He dropped her onto the bed then dropped his slacks. The silk boxers were off, and Mina wet her lips. He was long and thickly erect. From his bedside stand, he pulled out a condom. He tore open the foil and sheathed himself. The act of which, Mina found sexy as hell.

  When he spread her thighs and settled his body between her legs, Mina groaned. “Oh, my.”

  He entered her, his length filling her slow and deep as he kissed her. The languid sensuality made her breath hitch. Eric’s lovemaking was slow, methodical, with deliberate strokes, those magical hands touching her everywhere. She couldn’t think, only feel. His cock seemed to vibrate inside of her, resonating throughout her system. A mass of pleasure and flesh, raw passion. “Faster,” she panted. “Take me faster.”

  Needing him, wanting more, wanting all he had to give, she dug her fingernails into the firm muscles of his buttocks, urging him, as he wrapped his arm around her waist and rolled her back to the floor. “I want this to be wonderful for you.”

  “It is,” she nearly shouted, her body crying for him to take her hard and fast. “It is.” She bit her lip until she tasted blood. “Now, faster.”

  His thrusts quickened, matching the rocking of her hips, grinding her clit against his groin, the coiling tightness building, and she wanted him to come, come with her.

  “You’re so hot, hot and tight. I can feel you clenching my cock. It feels so good,” he murmured. “So good.”

  “Yes. Yes.” The rocking motion became more aggressive, his thrusting more insistent, his rigid cock bottoming out inside her, painfully, pleasurably. His mouth took her breast. He sucked hard, teeth grinding around the tight nipple.

  “Ahhh!” she cried out as another orgasm burst from her. She screamed as ripples of ecstasy c
rashed through her body, shaking her to the core. Eric’s moans of pleasure joined with hers as his hips bucked forward and held her tight in place as he finished.

  “I knew it would be that good.” Eric smiled, his green eyes translucent in the afterglow. Mina couldn’t disagree. It had been fucking mind blowing.

  Guilt punched with a stone fist, and her stomach clenched

  “Get up.” She patted him. “Eric, get up.” What had she done? Exactly what she’d told herself she wouldn’t. Shit, shit! “I have to go.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Damn, there was that look again. Disappointment. Betrayal. The same type of look Gav had given her. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I just have to go.” She scrambled to her feet and quickly gathered her clothes.

  * * * *

  “Goddamnit!” Eric shouted after Mina left. The woman frustrated the hell out of him. Since their first encounter two days ago, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He felt almost obsessive, the way most women seemed to feel about him. Why was it that the one women he truly wanted was immune to his charm? His phone beeped, a welcome distraction. A message from Jennifer Wilson popped up.

  Fuck. What could he even say to her? Sorry, your husband is dead. Even more sorry I’m a suspect. Yeah, probably not. Why was she calling? They’d had a one-night stand when he’d first started with the company two years ago, but she’d barely looked his way since then. Not that he’d minded. Jennifer Wilson, after some interesting sex, left him feeling cold, as if her presence sapped the heat from his flesh. He shivered at the memory.

  The message read: Dinner tomorrow? 7:00 p. Want to talk. Our place.

  First, he thought, they didn’t have a place, but he knew she was talking about Finnegan’s, a bar off the Plaza. Second, he wasn’t sure meeting up with her was a good plan. After all, she was the grieving widow. His lawyer had told him to stay far away from her and anyone else closely connected to Samuel Wilson.

  Will let you know, he texted back. He’d talk to Mina and Barnes about it first. Jennifer might have some information on the real killer, and the only way to find out would be to sit down with her and talk. Though, the idea of meeting her filled him with dread. He pulled up Mina’s number and sent her a text, I want you.