At Blade's Edge (9 page)

That she’d give him her blood brought him to his metaphorical and physical knees. Water pelted them both as he sped. She tightened around him in response. Close, so close.

Slow seduction would have to come later, because right at that moment he had to have her. Her blood, so damned powerful it spiced the taste, seemed to arc through his system, connecting with him on even deeper levels.

She’d given him access to her emotions on a level he was certain she’d never done willingly before. Letting him take her blood made his link to her far stronger, even in just tiny sips.

He slipped a hand between them, finding her clit, stroking it just the way he knew she needed. Her pleasure seemed to wend through him in little flights of sensation and he realized she probably took in some of his emotion as they had sex too because his blood had kept her from dying more than once.

Deeper connection, indeed. This was his present and his future. Nothing was going to stand in the way. He knew they could be something amazing together and that was that.

“Go on then, Hunter. Take your pleasure,” he told her.

She groaned as her inner muscles fluttered around his cock, her pussy going superheated. Even centuries of practice couldn’t prevent his tipping into climax after her, unable to resist the lure of her body.

* * *

They took their meal in the small table in the kitchen. Bloodwine waited for Clive, while Rowan had a hot cup of tea.

“I told David to go to sleep, but he said he’ll be here in five minutes,” Rowan said as she put her phone down. Naturally he just did whatever he wanted too. Men.

“Dare I ask what happened to Chester?” Clive asked.

Elisabeth pulled the cover from Rowan’s plate, which held the chicken salad she’d planned to eat before Antonia burst in and dragged her out to an art gallery.

“Don’t tell David, but I don’t know what I’m going to do without you when I go back to the United States.” It wasn’t fancy, but it was what Rowan wanted and Elisabeth managed that with a nearly psychic accuracy.

“You need someone to cook for you, Ms. Summerwaite. Otherwise you’d waste away or eat too much junk. We’ll go wherever Scion Stewart needs us to be.”

“I’m not that bad. I know how to cook, I just don’t take the time to do it as much as I should. I make a mean sandwich and David keeps after me to eat fruits and vegetables so my teeth won’t all fall out or whatever he says to keep me in line.”

Clive had half a roasted chicken with some fancy sauce and a vegetable side with a French name. The sort of thing he loved.

“Why don’t you have a cook in Las Vegas?” Rowan asked him.

“Or, we could discuss Chester? The gentleman you brought home earlier?”

“Oh yeah, him.”

David walked in, heading straight for the table. He’d gone for the roasted chicken too.

Clive said, “Elisabeth, please do head to bed. We’ll clean up when we’re done, but there’s no use you staying awake.”

She thanked them, told them to leave their dishes in the sink and headed off.

Rowan approved of the Clive he was in their home. Especially when it came to getting nailed in the shower. Though to be fair, he really liked shower sex, so she got nailed in a lot of showers.

“Whatever are you smiling about?” Clive asked.

“Sex. Okay so Chester is really Edgar Fitzwilliam. You can’t even make this shit up. He’s been in the employ of some sorcerers for a few years. Mainly petty stuff. Not very smart.”

David interrupted. “He hates women with a zeal I’ve rarely seen.”

Rowan shrugged. When they were extra horrible, it wasn’t nearly as hard to hurt them to get them talking.

“The woman-hating thing seems to be the thread that got him the assignment to tail me. His contact doesn’t like meddling bitches either. I had to explain I didn’t meddle.” She sighed. “He doesn’t know much. I think that’s why they sent him out. If I catch him and he talks, what’s he really going to give up?”

“Is Edgar still among the living or shall I have him disposed of?”

Rowan beamed at him. “You’re so totally handy. He was still alive when I handed him off.”

“Handed him off?”

“I have a friend who might be able to get more information out of him than I can at this point. She took him less than five minutes before you got back.” Rowan realized it had been easy to call Genevieve her friend.

“More than you can? More than I could by snatching the thoughts from his head?”

“She’s a powerful magic wielder and a member of the Conclave Senate. If he’s used magic, she might be able to help identify it. I can make him tell me all sorts of things, but that knowledge is valuable too.”

“You have so many tricks up your sleeve, Hunter.” Clive gave her a mild look, pride at the edges, before he went back to his wine.

“It’s nice when the person from my past isn’t trying to kill me but instead feeds me breakfast and helps me try to crack my case. Anyway, she’ll let me know what she finds out and whatever she does with Edgar/Chester I don’t care. It’s his bosses we need. I need that connection between these magic users and Roth.”

Chapter Eight

When Clive opened his eyes the following sunset, the first thing he saw was Rowan. Tucked into the corner, she’d been perched on a chair, her laptop set aside as she rose to join him.

He smiled, made drunk by love. “Centuries I’ve awoken each day and never are the moments sweeter than when you’re what I see before anything else.”

Shyly, she placed a large, wrapped box on the bed between them. “So it’s not a house with a butler and a cook. We already talked about you being better than me at the present thing.”

“Primarily, you’re not supposed to start lowering expectations the moment the gift comes into view.” He sat, reaching out to pull her to him. “Stay there while I open it.”

She was so warm. He loved that about her too. His circulation would never be like hers. A Vampire’s system was far slower—which was one of the reasons they aged so slowly—and so their core temperatures were lower.

He basked in the heat flowing from her skin, knowing it would mark this room, liking that a great deal.

“I didn’t wrap it. The dude at the store did it.” She pointed and he took her hand, kissing it.

“Hush now so I can open it.”

Once he’d tugged the ribbon free and peeled the paper back, he found a box he knew very well.

On top lay an envelope and inside were tickets to a piano concerto featuring Beethoven.

She smiled and fought a blush. “New York City in the fall is pretty romantic if you like that sort of thing.”

“As it happens, I do, yes, like that sort of thing.” He wanted to kiss her slow, but he knew she was anxious over the present so he let her keep her space as he began to pull back the layers of tissue paper neatly folded around what appeared to be several custom cravats.

“I think they’ll go with a lot of your shirts. If you wanted to do that. Or not. It’s fine.”

“Rowan, stop. This is.” He stopped, indicating the opened box. Carefully now, so as not to scare her away. “Perfect. How did you decide on cravats?”

“So, the thing is. I was going to give you some as a joke, but then I started to look around and realized you’d look pretty sexy in one. They’re making a comeback, I guess. I asked Alice where you shopped in London for things like cravats and she got me in contact with your tailor.” She rolled her eyes. “Naturally the place has a name that sounds like two butlers. Said they’d made clothes for generations of Stewart men. And then when I went to pick up the cravats I ended up with the ties and some more of your shirts, but that’s not a present really because I like to wear those too.”

He put everything aside and settled across from her, knees to knees on the bed. “Thank you. The present is fantastic.”

“I got us reservations at some swanktastic place you Vamps salivate over. The one with the celebrity chef who’s really one of you. Whatever it’s called. We’ll eat there before the piano thing.”

“I know a secret, Rowan Summerwaite.”

“I bet!”

“You listen to people you care about.”

She screwed up her features. “That’s a secret?”

“You listen to me enough to know I love Beethoven. The cravats, ties, shirts, all of it designed to please me. And it does.
You
please me very much.”

She ducked her chin. “Oh. Well. Good. I mean. That’s the point and all.”

He didn’t bother to hide his amusement. “It is the point, indeed. I’m glad we’re in accord.”

“Your mother sent over some basket of crap with an invitation to their house for dinner.”

“I know you have work to do. You only need to go for an hour or so,” Clive told her.

She rolled her eyes. “It’s a Vampire social event thing. It’s going to take hours upon hours and if I left early, I’d offend your parents. So. Back to reality. I already did some work as I’ve been up for hours. Dinner at your parents’ isn’t until ten so I plan to stop in and have a pint on the way.”

“Why do I get the distinct feeling this pint is also work related?”

She shrugged. “You’re very suspicious.”

“I am when it comes to you. How much time do we have before leaving for this pub where you’re going to terrorize someone or make someone cry?”

“It might be some rich guy dumbass pub Roth Wesslyian goes to after work on Thursdays. Naturally, I’d like to shake him up a little more. Nervous people make mistakes.”

“We know it’s Roth then? Who sent last night’s guest?”

“I think it’s him. The signs point to him being involved on some level. Even if all he did was give someone a heads up that I was in town. It’s an awfully big coincidence that this all happened after I revealed myself across the street from the Motherhouse. Genevieve is going to meet us at the pub in an hour. She tells me she’s got news so I guess we’ll see what she found out then.”

“Give me fifteen minutes, then we’ll rush to get out the door.” He whipped her shirt off and took her to the bed with his body on hers.

“You can have twenty. Make some magic with those extra five minutes.”

And he did.

* * *

“Stop looking at me like that,” Rowan muttered under her breath. Clive had
that
look in his eyes. Like he wanted to bend her over something and give it to her.

Usually she’d be amenable to such a thing but it wasn’t the time.

“You don’t mean that.” He gave her the sex voice, the cad.

“You just had it less than an hour ago. What have you been doing since we’ve been apart?”

“Nothing, which is why I want you so much.”

Hmpf. Well, it wasn’t like you could complain about a man like Clive saying something like that.

“Rein it in, thundercock.”

He nearly choked and she considered it a job well done.

“This is not a pub. It’s like cosplay of what people who’ve never been to a pub think a pub is. You think they’d have caught a few episodes of
EastEnders
to know better. Anyway, the music in here is okay and they know how to pull a pint. I’d set half the people in here on fire after an hour, though. Of course Roth drinks here. Look at these assholes. Halfway across the world and douchebags are still douchebags. I hope they tip well.”

Genevieve walked in like a cloud of boho perfection. Dark hair caught back, away from her face, some flowy dress thing that managed to look effortlessly elegant, she stopped at the table to sit after a tip of her chin in Clive’s direction.

“Vampire,” she said.

“Witch,” Clive replied.

“Oh for fuck’s sake. We don’t have time for this stuff.” Rowan had zero plans to play referee in this little game.

“You’re very gruff.” Genevieve winked and everyone relaxed.

“I hate dick measuring and posturing. It’s boring and a time waster. This is Clive Stewart, Scion of North America. Clive, this is Genevieve Aubert, magic wielder and member of the Conclave Senate.”

Once that was out of the way and Genevieve got her vodka lemon, they got down to business. “So tell me what you found, if anything,”

“The magic on him had a very distinct signature. Like a fingerprint. I’ve seen it before, though I can’t elaborate on how or why,” Genevieve said.

Rowan sighed heavily. More fucking secrets meant more complications. It also meant the conspiracy thing was for sure and big and would really gulp up huge swaths of her life.

“Can you at least tell me if it’s connected to the magical black market? Or tell me who did it so I can find them myself?”

“This doesn’t come from anywhere good. Or sanctioned.”

“You did one of your cone of silence things right?” Rowan asked Genevieve.

“Yes, speak freely.”

“You’re telling me you have your own bullshit mess with factions trying to stir shit up to break the Treaty, yes or no.”

Genevieve didn’t speak. But she nodded.

“Roth bought his way into the black market. Question is—one of them anyway—did he know in advance and get involved with this little revolution on purpose? Is the black market a front for this group?” Rowan asked her.

“Mainly the black market is like all such things. It’s a shadow economy that’s most usually not about politics at all, but profit. However, another common factor with guerilla politics and the shadow economy is both thrive on secrets.”

“So you don’t know how deep the rot is. There’s a connection, but not a unified conspiracy.”

“I can’t give you names. But if you had names, I could steer you away from dead ends.” Considering how powerful and connected the Auberts were in the Conclave, what she offered meant some of this stuff went very high up there as well as within the Nation and Hunter Corp.

“Fair enough. Thank you.” Rowan lifted her pint in Genevieve’s direction.

David texted her that Roth and his girlfriend got out of a car out front.

“I think it’s time to turn the heat up under Roth’s ass,” Rowan muttered. “He’s on the way in. He won’t see me at first. He’ll come in and
be seen
. He’ll choose that high top over there instead of a booth. Again, needs the attention.”

Clive’s eyelids went half mast a moment as he watched her. She knew he found her sexy when she did her job. She let him hear the change in her heartbeat, knowing that made him hot too.

Roth walked in with Julia Porter, his girlfriend and the mother of a total moron Rowan had removed from Hunter Corp.

Julia had been talking shit, Rowan knew. Not that she cared. Everyone talked shit. That’s how the world worked on a certain level. But her shit talking had contained threats to Rowan and those she protected.

That Rowan
did
care about a great deal. Especially when she was banging the dude who paid people to make those threats a reality.

They preened around until settling just where Rowan knew they would. In the center of the room where everyone would see. Backs to the doors like amateurs.

They chatted while Rowan waited, knowing it wouldn’t be too long now before Roth’s social climbing beady little gaze got to where they sat.

And when it did, he physically reared back, jumping to his feet.

Rowan smiled at him, showing teeth. Clive hissed at her side, having seen her very threatening—and Vampiric—gesture.

She waved, but kept her seat. Julia looked around and when she recognized Rowan, she began to rush over, probably to squawk about her stupid kid losing her job. But Roth reached out, grabbing her wrist to halt her progress.

Smart of him.

“He’s not reacting like an innocent man,” Clive muttered. “I can smell the panic on him from here.”

Of course he could. She’d laid out all the groundwork for it. He was panicked because he must be figuring out the sorcerers he’d been dealing with had no plans to protect him. Or at the very least he suspected it.

“I like him panicked.”

“Like candy, all that emotion.” Genevieve watched as they tried to decide if they should come over or not. It wasn’t as if they were friends. But a wave, even if they were co-workers who didn’t really like one another, would be appropriate. Or even a head tip.

Certainly not a fevered, whispered discussion Rowan was sure Clive could hear from where he sat.

“The end is near, Roth,” Rowan said. “Run, rabbit run.”

He rushed out after tossing some money onto the table, pushing Julia in front of him as they went.

Rowan texted David, who was waiting to tail them, along with Susan’s valet.

“Thank you for your help, Genevieve. This connection is important and it would have taken me a lot longer—if I even could have pulled it off—without you.”

Genevieve said, “I spoke to your friend in Venice. She was a lot of help. I may have convinced her to be more active in Conclave politics. We could use more voices like hers. I reassured her there was no problem that she’d given you the information she did about the type of magics used by your common enemy.”

Donna Goldoni would be an excellent person to have on the Conclave, but she had little patience for nonsense. And politics was all about nonsense.

“I appreciate that. I’d hate to get them into trouble when they went out of their way for me,” Rowan told her.

“Pieces to a puzzle. We each have our own, but we can’t solve it unless we share. My cab driver said that to me on the way over.”

Rowan narrowed her gaze a moment. “Was he a kooky old man with stuffed dead animals in the cab?”

Genevieve’s eyes widened a moment. “Uh. No. This is something I’d generally avoid. Someone you know?”

As well as anyone could know a sage, Rowan supposed. “I see him from time to time. He gives good advice that I don’t always understand until after things have happened.”

“Sages.” Genevieve rolled her eyes.

Carl probably wasn’t even in Europe. Rowan was sure he had sage stuff to do and cabbies liked to toss out bits of wisdom so it was just a coincidence.

Probably.

They said their goodbyes outside the front doors with Rowan and Clive headed one way and Genevieve the other.