Shadowfae (2 page)

I stepped closer. He stepped closer. He dropped the soultrap bottle with a soft thud and ran his fingers into my hair, twisting, sliding in deeper. My breasts brushed his chest, my nipples so hard, the pleasure hurt. I slid my hands over his hips to his gorgeous firm ass and pulled him against me. He was hard, pulsing, so ready, and wetness slid from me, staining my skirt, painting the insides of my thighs with hot need.

We both groaned, the air around us shimmering. Already his burning fingers sought my skirt hem, dragging it upward. He nuzzled my throat, his lips firm and insistent, his clever tongue making me shiver. “Jade,” he breathed, his voice thick with lust, “I never knew you were so damn beautiful.”

Cold humiliation washed over me, spoiling his glorious caress. He’d never noticed me before. What was I thinking? He was Rajahni Seth, the hottest incubus in Melbourne, who had any woman he wanted with a single sultry glance from those bedroom eyes. And I was me.

Stick-thin, mousy-haired, tongue-tied me. Certainly not beautiful or engaging. It wasn’t like we could have a relationship, not in our line of work, even if I wasn’t the world’s most boring woman and so far below his standards that even a glance from him was charity. So we’d have sex in a cloud of drunken rapture, it’d be magnificent, and I’d be miserable for the next six hundred years, pining for him. And he’d forget about me, we’d meet in the street or a bar and smile uneasily and look away, and he’d laugh with his friends about how he was once so desperate, he had to fuck me.

“This is a bad idea,” I whispered, trying to push him away though my body still ached for him to give me release, my treacherous hands still wanting to explore him, pleasure him. “I don’t even know you.”

He stilled, his lips wet on my throat. “Are you serious? Most girls don’t want to.”

Now I did shove him away, my hands trembling more with fury than with desire. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Just get out of here before—”

Fists thudded on the apartment door. “Police, open up!”

Before anyone finds us here.

Too late.

For a few pulse-rippling seconds, Rajah’s lips bruised mine, shocking, arousing, our teeth clashing in a feral kiss. “Some other time, princess,” he breathed, and vanished.

I stumbled into the space where he’d been, the spicy taste of cardamom still stinging my mouth.

Jesus. He’d disappeared. I couldn’t do that. How did he do that?

I cursed, and scrabbled on the carpet, but his soultrap bottle was gone. He’d taken it with him. Leaving me with the cops and a dead Valenti body in a room that reeked of sex, and a most unflattering wet patch on my skirt.

O
n the rooftop, Rajahni Seth leans over, hooking his elbow into the wrought-iron trimming, and watches the uniforms bundle Jade into the back of the blue-and-white Holden double-parked in the street below. Other drivers slow down as they pass, rubbernecking, and a gleaming silver tram rattles up the middle of the street, wires sparking, bright lights pouring from square windows advertising broadband Internet.

Warm summer breeze whispers through Rajah’s dark hair, drenched with the smell of thunder, tracing teasing fingers over his hot skin. A million city lights from skyscrapers and neon signs block out the stars, their reflection glowing orange in scudding storm clouds. The brass bottle burns his hand, the fresh soul energy within bubbling angrily in its new confinement, and Rajah’s cock tightens even more as he thinks about what it means. One down, three to go, and Rajah will be free of Kane’s thrall forever. The legend is true. He knows it. He can taste it. He senses it in the soul’s mad struggles in his bottle. He feels it searing through his blood.

It was sickeningly easy to get. He’d seen the burning green aura that identified Nino as his target days ago, and he’d bided his time, contained his excitement, weighed up his chances. Nino wanted so desperately to be straight, it was painful, and to have another man get his cock hard made him glow with shame and sick hatred. Once they’d made it to the apartment tonight after a few solid hours of watching Nino drink and eye him off, Rajah made the moves, and Nino’s face darkened, he pulled his .45, yelled that he wasn’t fucking gay, that Seth could get the fuck away from him or he’d blow his girly faggot ass to hell.

But a fragrant shimmer of rapture changed all that, dragging the poor kid kicking and cursing exactly where he wanted to go. Nino had beautiful, grabbable hair and a professionally sculpted body, even if he was a self-hating homophobe and Neanderthal dumb, and Rajah relished the thought of claiming that rock-hard far-from-virgin ass, working inside into the heat, and stroking Nino into orgasm that way. But Nino couldn’t wait; he’d started to come before Rajah had more than a finger inside him and then it was too late.

But it didn’t matter. Rajah had figured aching balls were a small price to pay for this first special soul. Perhaps he’d head down to

Unseelie Court

on

King Street

and tease a blow job from one of those willowy blue-haired banshees who were forever giving him the eye, just to silence his rampant rapture.

And then Jade showed up. Slender, slate-eyed Jade, with her sexy mouth, gorgeous little breasts, and narrow, perfect ass. No makeup, short plain nails, simple clothes, gently brushed dark hair falling in her face like she couldn’t be bothered with it.

He’s seen her before, she’s Ange Valenti’s trophy girl, but she’d always dropped her gaze or scowled or pretended not to see him. Suspicious of his good looks, wary of his reputation. A woman of class like that probably thought him a slut and a pickup artist. He’d never imagined he’d be lucky enough to have her lithe body straining beneath him, her wet little cleft hot and tempting against his bursting cock even through his jeans. Yeah, baby. It made him want to fill her, stretch her, hear her scream his name.

He watches the cop car drive away down the tree-lined street toward the river and St.

Kilda Road

, still staring long after it’s gone. She didn’t want him. Not really. It was just the rapture, right? No way she’d ever want a party boy.

Sure, he gets his share of women who aren’t business, men too. Most are easy airheads looking for a good time or a dark taste of danger. Not like her.

I don’t even know you
, she said. Like she might one day want to.

He wonders what that would be like, and something diamond-cold in his heart softens.

But he can’t let anything distract him, not now. He’s waited centuries for this chance, and he won’t throw it away because a sexy little waif gets his cock hard. Really hard. Can’t-walk-properly hard. Maybe he’ll find that banshee after all. But first, to hide this soul away where not even he can get at it, just in case.

Rajah turns away with a stretch and a sigh, his fingers tightening around the quivering soultrap. Just the rapture. Just a sweet little succubus, embarrassed by her lust.

Imagine that.

2

T
his is bullshit.” I glanced at the photographs again, dragging on my cigarette. Minty smoke burned my throat, and I coughed. I don’t smoke, not anymore, but something about the

St. Kilda Road

cop shop makes me nervous.

My reflection in the one-way glass along one side of the interview room showed me hunched over on the steel chair, my hair tousled, dark sweat patches staining my tight gray tank top, my flimsy white skirt smeared. My skin gleamed sickly, my lips dry, the hand holding the cigarette shaking. The circles under my eyes stood out like stage makeup, making my eyes look darker blue than they were. I’d calmed down an hour ago, but all that unrequited rapture was taking its toll. I needed energy, and I looked like a junkie denied a fix. Not a class act.

Fluorescent lights glared too bright, and the air-conditioning hummed like a pissed-off insect, maddening. I shivered. It was too cold in here, and my clammy skin wore goose bumps, the stink of rapture-suppressant spray stinging my eyes.

“Look at the damn pictures, Jade.” The man sitting opposite me across the aluminum table drew on his own cigarette, golden links shining amid dark hair on his heavy wrist. He flicked ash onto the floor, brushing an imaginary fleck off the sleeve of his expensive gray suit. Detective Sergeant Killian Quinn, Melbourne Homicide’s paranormal expert. Black shirt, no tie, sweat gleaming in brown curls, golden chains tangled around his thick throat. Pale brown eyes, blank and hard like an animal’s. Cunning, handsome, madder than a cut snake.

He’s also the crookedest crooked cop in town. Unfortunately, he’s on DiLuca’s payroll, not Valenti’s, and he looks at me with the leering, sexual hatred of a man who never goes out with the same girl twice. If one thing in particular makes my nerves seethe about

St. Kilda Road

, it’s being alone in a cold white room with Quinn.

“This has nothing to do with me,” I said again, shoving the pictures away, my stomach turning. I didn’t know why he showed them to me, other than to weird me out. A dead fire sprite in close-up, gnarled limbs awry on some back-alley floor, his delicate crimson wings limp and trampled, dirty ice crystals in his flowing white hair. A banshee, lifeless, her lissome head thrown back, skin drained pale, blue blood trickling from the corner of her dead mouth. No one I knew . . . hang on. That pale green hair and sharp nose did look familiar. Maybe I’d seen her at Kane’s house parties once or twice, one of those demon groupies who flirt and flutter their rainbow lashes at him, and learn too late what they’re letting themselves in for.

I knew the fire sprite, too, now that I thought about it. The other night, at the pub across from Valentino’s. Sylvain, Silver, something like that, one of Ange’s couriers. He’d slipped golden fairy sparkle into my drink for a sly joke, and I’d spent the next few hours giggling and blowing bubbles in my champagne. Harmless enough. I didn’t know why anyone would want to kill him.

There were more pictures, but discomfort twinged my pulse, and I didn’t want to look. Detective Quinn was just poking me to see if I’d squeal. I finished the cigarette and tossed the butt away. “You’re wasting my time, Quinn. Ask me about Nino Valenti. That’s what you pulled me in for. Not to look at your porn collection.”

The blue-uniformed constable standing at ease by the door—presumably to make sure Quinn didn’t beat the tripe out of me, or maybe to help him—hid a grin. Most other cops think Quinn’s delusional, with his tales of fairy drug dealers and bloodsucking gangsters and soul-stealing succubi. Lucky for us, they don’t take him seriously.

Quinn leaned forward, his elbows on the table, and I smelled tobacco and metallic sweat. He offered another photo, this one of dead Nino naked on the bed. “Let’s look at yours, then. Does that one get you off?” A twang of Irish accent stretched his vowels.

Second rule of soultrapping: Don’t tell the cops anything. If Kane wanted Nino dead, that was Kane’s business. And embarrassment still burned me when I thought about Rajahni Seth. No way was I mentioning him. “I told you, he was dead when I got there. I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t even touch him. What are you going to book me for, attempted fuckup?”

“No wounds, no drugs except alcohol. Evidence of intercourse. Eyes drained of color. Ringing any bells?” Quinn sniffed, dragged on his cigarette, and blew the smoke upward, tense. His shiny gaze flickered, his tight fingers drumming on the table’s edge.

He was a speed-addicted fruitcake, but he wasn’t dumb. He knew how the rapture worked. “It wasn’t me. I told you. Jesus, do I look like I’ve had much hot action tonight?” I pointed to my wan face and peeling lips.

“Don’t look like you’ve ever had any to me, you cold skanky whore.” He said it with studied insolence, relishing it.

I didn’t know why Quinn hated me. Right now, I didn’t care. He’d hit on me once, months ago, and I’d laughed at him. Maybe he just wasn’t getting enough. “Hear that, Constable? Detective Quinn just propositioned me. Isn’t that illegal?”

Quinn didn’t turn around, didn’t shift his hungry gaze from mine. “Leave us.”

The constable shifted. “Boss, perhaps you should—”

“I said piss off.” Quinn’s thick fingers crunched around the cigarette pack, crumpling it. Longing and disgust swirled together in his eyes. A tiny smear of blood escaped from his nose. Sweat trickled on his temple, his jaw quivering. The constable made a hasty exit, and the steel door banged shut.

Fuck.

Was it too much to hope anyone watched from behind that one-way glass? “Look, Detective, I’m sorry I can’t help you. I really don’t know anything—”

“Shut up.” He jerked to his feet and moved swiftly behind me. I tried to turn, to follow him, but he clamped his huge hand on my shoulder and shoved me down in my seat, the metal edge digging into my back.

“Get your grubby hand off me.” I tried to skid away, my heels slipping on the smooth floor.

He held on, bruising my collarbone. “You’re disgusting. You and your whole weird-ass crew. How long did he stay hard after you drank him up? Enough for you to get off?”