Line.
“Maybe you or someone else here might be able to help us? We want to take a quick look around, and then we’ll be gone. I promise we don’t want any trouble, we just want to find our friend. ”
Carla nodded sweetly, and I was ready to think Sinker, when she reached out and touched his upper arm. Giving it one firm squeeze, she looked past him like he was a big invisible wall and locked her gaze with mine.
“I like this one. How much?”
“I…”
“I’m not trying to barter, Blondie. Name your price. ”
What the fuck?
Before I had time to answer, Carla set about checking Desmond for defects. Her roaming hands touched his abs, his shoulders, both arms. He pulled his head away when she tried to check his teeth, and she didn’t seem to like his spirit. When she skirted around him and went to grab a handful of his—admittedly glorious—ass, I shook off my stupor and yanked her away.
“Mine,” I growled, and it was more the wolf speaking than me. I didn’t like it when people touched things that belonged to me. And I really didn’t like it when they tried to play grabby hands with my man’s tight buns.
“Greedy,” was her terse reply. “We share here. ”
She tried to pull away, but my hand was locked on her upper arm, and I squeezed. Harder than I normally would have when handling a human. Carla squealed. Maybe I should have felt bad, but I didn’t. There was zero remorse to be had.
“He’s not for sharing,” I said coldly.
Holden snorted.
When I released Carla, I figured she would stay away. The threat of violence is usually enough to keep people from doing stupid things. But I must have underestimated how badly she wanted to have a romp with Desmond. The second she was free of me she turned to him, rose on her toes and planted a firm kiss right on his lips.
I was too dumbfounded to react. For a moment, so was Desmond. His eyes widened, and she must have slipped him the tongue since he sputtered, coughed, and used both hands to push the overeager hostess away from him.
My cheeks flushed with rage, and I could feel the heat of my temper throbbing in my ears. Holden must have been able to sense my anger because he took hold of one of my wrists and gave a small squeeze. I didn’t like to acknowledge he could physically overpower me, but we both knew he could if it came down to it. That knowledge helped center me, and I refocused my anger.
“He tastes funny,” Carla said, wrinkling her pert nose.
“He tastes like werewolf,” I told her. Funny that she could tell what Holden was on sight but hadn’t the faintest fucking clue she was jamming her tongue into a wolf’s mouth.
Carla looked as though I’d slapped her with a fish—dumbfounded and insulted. I thought she might start wiping her tongue off on her sleeve. Disgust was apparent on her face, and it gave me a perverse gratification. Apparently she had no issues dealing with fae, an order that included such creatures as ogres and trolls, but kissing a werewolf was icky.
Fine by me, it meant she could keep her grubby fae-loving hands off my guy.
“Just tell us what we need to know and we’ll go,” I promised her.
Chapter Twenty-One
As luck would have it, Carla didn’t know anything.
It would have been discouraging, but since she was so amped up to get rid of us, she was willing to take us to her fearless leader. She wove through the club a few feet out of our reach, giving us time to have a look at our surroundings. There was no music playing, but the room didn’t feel quiet without it. Something else took the place of the ambient noise, but I couldn’t place my finger on what it was. A white-noise hum making my insides feel warm.
Nothing creepy about that.
Throughout the large space were low velvet couches where twenty-somethings sat together in rapt discussion, totally oblivious to the magic blanketing the entire space. How blind did they have to be not to notice they were elbow-to-elbow with creatures who simply shouldn’t exist? A lot of fae had very convincing glamour in place to make them look human, but they weren’t all experts at it. Here and there were “people” who were too impossibly beautiful to be real.
I spotted a famous television actress at the bar, the star of a popular show about spoiled, rich New York teens. She threw her head back, gold hair glimmering as she laughed, and I didn’t miss the eerie white glint in her eyes.
Yeah, she was totally human.
The three men lavishing drinks and attention upon her were fooled, but I wasn’t. Fae, and a lot of other supernatural creatures, loved the draw of the spotlight. Since they could achieve whatever human appearance they wanted, it gave them an unfair upper hand in the fame game. The main problem was how quickly they got bored of it. The work, not the attention. A lot of famous overdoses and unexplained deaths were the result of a fae getting tired of playing a certain role.
I hadn’t thought much about it until I’d met Calliope. The first time you come face-to-face with Marilyn Monroe and have the mystery of her death spelled out, you are suddenly willing to believe anything is possible.