Shadow's Edge (5 page)

It began with the whisper of her name in her ear.

The voice was both familiar and alien, and strangely comforting. She turned toward it, reaching out with a sigh.
Her fingertips met soft skin over a strong jaw, traced the outline of full lips, but her lids were so heavy she was unable to open her eyes to see the face under her hand. The lips moved to her face, brushed her forehead, temple, cheek, then pressed softly against the corner of her mouth. She shivered with pleasure. The barest musk of spice and smoke and summer heat teased her nose.

“Yes,” Jenna murmured into the darkness. Then she felt the hands.

A hand with strong, cool fingers curled around the back of her neck, cradling her head. Another softly stroked the slope of her cheek, then moved down the line of her throat to where her pulse beat hot and strong beneath the skin. She felt the lips touch her there, heard her name whispered again.

She arched her back, made a small sound deep in her throat, and whispered, “Yes, please.”

The fingers tightened in her hair, pulled her head gently back, exposing her bare throat. A feather-light kiss on her neck turned to a deeper, insistent suck as a warm mouth opened over the column of her throat. Jenna moaned, a sharp ache of longing between her legs.

“Tell me you want me,” the voice murmured, husky-sweet, teasing, lips moving over her skin.

“Yes, yes,” she said, heartbeat accelerating, breath coming shorter.

“
Say it
,” the voice softly commanded, and she trembled under the current of desire that scorched through her. Goosebumps formed over every inch of her skin, hardening her nipples into raw nerves that longed for the lap of his tongue, the gentle tug of his teeth.

“I want you, I want you, I want—”

But her whispered chant was cut off by the lips crushing down on hers. The fingers dug into the flesh at her hips. Her hands reached out, pulled the face down harder. She twined her fingers into locks of thick, silken hair.

She pressed her body up against a hard chest, wanting more, so much more, but suddenly the kiss was over, the hands were gone, and nothing more remained but a low, throaty laugh that drifted into silence as she jerked upward out of bed, waking, and sat trembling and gasping in the dark room.

It was hours before she fell back to sleep.

When she opened her eyes in the morning, she was lying on her side, knees drawn up, hands folded beneath her cheek, the bed sheets in disarray around her waist. Sunlight slanted through the slit in the heavy blackout shades and fell into a pool of gold on the beige carpet.

A lone seagull cried out somewhere in the distance and the sharp tang of hot espresso reached her nose from the neighbor’s kitchen. The alarm clock swam into view, the small bedside table with its reading lamp, framed photo of her mother in a rare smile, her desk with computer and telephone beyond.

The book she was reading before bed lay open upon the nightstand, though she remembered distinctly closing it before setting it down and turning off the light.

She frowned and stared at it for a moment before pushing herself up from the pillow to a sitting position. She
had
closed it, she knew—she remembered thinking at the time that she shouldn’t be dog-earing a library book. She picked the book up and looked at it, then decided she’d probably been too tired to remember anything clearly. With a
shrug, she set it back down on the nightstand, yawned, and stretched.

She stumbled out of bed, feeling soft carpet then cool tile beneath her feet as she entered the bathroom. Her reflection in the mirror showed evidence of the night: hair knotted and wild from tossing, red, bleary eyes with puffy lids, deep shadows beneath.

She made a face in the mirror, turned on the shower, then bent down under the sink to get her brush, thinking she would try to get some of the knots out of her hair while she waited for the water to get hot.

When she opened the cabinet under the sink, she saw her makeup bag had been moved from its spot in the wire pull-out basket. The lotions and perfumes stored next to it were in slight disarray.

She stood so quickly she almost banged her head against the countertop.

She was fastidiously neat. She had to be, the miniscule size of her apartment dictated it. Everything had its place, every space was utilized and arranged for maximum efficiency. Her cosmetics were always in perfect order.

And now they were not.

She tried not to panic. This was, after all, practically nothing. She must have forgotten to tidy this area yesterday, she’d been too tired, had felt unwell. Yes, that was it. She’d felt unwell and was mixing things up in her mind. She let the cabinet door swing shut and stepped into the shower.

After she dressed, Jenna went to make herself a cup of coffee. As she stood in the kitchen spooning coffee grounds into the filter, she noticed that one of her leather-bound photo albums, kept in a bookshelf in the living room, stood
a few inches out from the others, as if it had been returned hurriedly to its place but had not been fully pushed back in.

A serpentine flash of premonition crawled up her spine.

She went to the front door and checked the lock, but it was latched securely, as were all the windows and the patio door.

Jenna stood silent in the living room for a long time, staring out toward the navy strip of ocean shimmering beyond the sand, lost in thought as the mug of coffee in her hand grew cold.

Getting into her locked apartment had been the easy part.

Leander had merely pushed himself through the hairline crack in the upper corner of her bathroom window, the one she would finally notice when it widened enough to be seen by the naked eye.

It was watching her sleep that proved difficult.

She slept with the innocent abandon of a child. Breathing deeply, body slanted across the middle of the queen-sized bed, arms flung wide, hair spilling silken, honeyed gold over the pillows. Moonlight burned white fire over the slope of her throat and bare shoulders.

He watched from the corner of the dark bedroom as her chest slowly rose and fell, her nude body outlined beneath the sheets.

He’d been through her apartment, trying to find clues. Trying to find anything that would lead him to believe she possessed any of the powers of their kind.

So far, he’d found nothing.

She loved art and music, loved to read, this was plain from the things she kept. Her books, her eclectic CD
collection, the ticket stubs to the Molière exhibition at the Getty Museum. Paystubs from a French restaurant, unopened mail stacked neatly in a wicker basket by the kitchen phone, takeout menus in a drawer.

There was no sign of a lover, no photos of friends, no indication she was close to anyone at all. Her photo album contained only old pictures of her mother, of herself as a child, mementos of places she’d visited, postcards.

Her orderly and sterile apartment illustrated the life of someone utterly alone.

He’d had no thought of coming here when he Shifted, had no destination in mind as he allowed himself to be caught in the updraft of heated night air that lifted him from his veranda at the Four Seasons. The lights and noise of the city grew distant as he melded into the atmosphere, rolling and spinning through thin sapphire clouds, free upon the wind.

He knew her name, he knew her address. He had a picture, though it was a few years outdated and slightly blurry.

But he didn’t know
her
, this creature of gilt and satin and feminine curves, skin like roses and cream and sunlight on water where the rest of his kind were dark, with hair as dark as the forest floor at midnight, skin tones of café au lait and buttered rum.

He didn’t know that the force of his desire would make him sink to his knees, crouching naked in the dark with his heart in his throat and the scent of her flaming hot in his nose.

He hadn’t expected this.

His eyes drank her in and he wondered that she possessed the Gift of beauty all the
Ikati
shared. She was half human, after all, an inferior race evolved from mud, prone
to violence, greed, and all manner of disease. He’d never found a single one of them attractive.

But her father had. He’d done the unthinkable and
mated
with a human.

He’d also exacted a promise from his successor that his half-Blood offspring would not be brought back to Sommerley to live a life of confinement until the time of her first Shift as the Law decreed for the circumstance. She would be allowed to grow and live as a creature free from the shackles of protection, duty, and constraint that defined life within the colony.

And for a female, there was more constraint than some could bear.

They’d had deserters in their history as well. Those were dealt with as swiftly and mercilessly as the colony dealt with any other threat.

He watched her until the muscles in his thighs began to ache with inactivity, then stood and walked silently over to her bedside. In human form, he was as silent as a cat. He saw through the darkness as if it were high noon, he retained all the heightened senses of his animal side.

Normally this was a blessing. Now...it was closer to torture.

A book lay on her bedside table. He flipped it open with one finger, read a single paragraph.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself
.

Leander’s lips curled into an amused smile.
Animal Farm
by George Orwell.

Ah, the exquisite irony.

He slanted her a look, his gaze lingering over the arc of her lips, her smooth brow, the soft planes of her cheek. Was she more than just this surfeit of sensuality so pleasing to the eye? What of her sense of humor, her intelligence, her passion? Would she fight for her freedom?

But no, one way or another, her time of freedom was coming to an end. If she could Shift, if she was fully one of their kind, he would take her back to Sommerley. Force her, if necessary. She would join their colony, she would learn their ways, she might even one day be his...

It came unbidden into his mind, startled him into stillness with his hand hovering over her open book.

Mine.

He crouched down next to her bed. A long, curling lock of golden hair hung free over the pillow. He picked it up and pressed it to his nose.

And if she cannot Shift, if she is Giftless
, he thought, staring hard at her carmine lips half-parted in sleep,
it will fall to the Alpha to kill her. It will fall to me.

“Jenna,” he whispered, an almost noiseless exhalation of sound from his lips.

She shifted on the mattress, made a pretty, feminine sound in her throat. Her back arched beneath the sheets, a drowsy, languid movement that pressed her body taut against the fabric.

The dip of her waist. Her flat belly. Those full, perfect breasts.

“Yes, please,” she murmured, then settled back down against the mattress with a sigh.

With a stab of desire so acute it made his mouth water, he realized she was dreaming.

He felt the ground disappear beneath him, his foundation of law and order and tribe, his entire lifetime of duty and sacrifice, safety and silence. She became—with an abrupt alteration of priority that made all else fall away—the only thing and everything he wanted.

But he was the Alpha and she was an unproven half-Blood, daughter of an outlaw, her future hanging on the scales of fate, her very existence uncertain.

She was not his to have.

The strand of her hair slipped between his fingers and he rose, heart pounding, and turned away.

When Jenna first interviewed for the coveted job of sommelier at Mélisse, she was twenty-two years old, had no college degree, no special training, and no relevant experience.

What she had was raw talent.

Her sense of smell was so keen it picked out the single note of lavender, the merest hint of graphite, the faintest rumor of black truffle hidden deep within the aromatic spice and fruit bouquet of a fine wine.

Though Mélisse was renowned for its wine program—one which had been overseen since their inception by a quick succession of middle-aged, snobbish men and contained over six thousand bottles of the best wine produced throughout the world—they hired Jenna before the conclusion
of her first interview, based on her rather remarkable demonstration of this talent.

The owner of the restaurant, a trim, elderly gentleman named Francois Moreau, set out ten bottles of wine wrapped in plain brown paper bags on the long oak table in the glass-walled private dining room, then poured a single ounce from each into ten unlabeled crystal Riedel wine glasses.

“Tell me,” he said in a pronounced French accent as he gestured toward the preposterous lineup, “what is the wine in each glass?”

He adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles, folded his blue-veined hands over the second button of his camel pinstripe blazer, and smiled at her, serene and sharp.