Con eased the ambulance inside—the big rig barely fit, and she thought she heard the scrape of metal at some point. Shade was going to pop his cork at the scratches the vehicle had gotten today.
“Nice ride,” she said, as she trailed a finger along the GTO’s sleek fender. The thing still had dealer plates on it.
Con shrugged. “It’ll do until next year.”
“Next year?”
“I get a new one every spring.”
She peeked through the tinted glass at the leather interior. “Like the new-car smell, huh?”
“Nah,” he said, as he punched the garage door button. “I get tired of driving the same thing over and over.”
“Maybe you should get a plane,” she muttered, and he nodded as if she’d been serious.
“I’m working on it. I already have my pilot’s license.”
Of course he did.
Once the garage door had rolled down, he disarmed the security system and led her into the house, which was a true bachelor pad. The furniture was old but well-kept. There were clothes draped over the chairs and couch, and she wondered if the windows had ever been cleaned. It looked like Lore’s place, only newer. And bigger. Definitely more personal.
His shelves and walls were loaded with stuff that appeared to be ancient—pottery, framed sketches of stone cathedrals, weapons. She drifted toward one magnificent piece, a longbow hanging between a halberd and a Japanese katana.
“Impressive.” She trailed a finger over the smooth yew surface. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a house kind of person, though.”
“Where did you think I’d live?” he asked, amusement in his voice. “A tent?”
Shrugging, she turned back to him. “Most single guys are apartment dwellers. And most single wargs live a little more rustically.”
It was his turn to shrug. “Born wargs prefer the outdoors and wilderness, but a lot of turned wargs are human enough to like living with other humans.”
“Until they realize that humans are food and that chaining yourself up in an apartment gets noisy.”
“True.” He tossed the ambulance keys onto the dining room table.
“What about dhampires? You’re sort of born that way… and then turned.”
His hands went to his shirt buttons as he pinned her with a cool, remote gaze. Man, she wished she could read him better. “What’s your point?”
There was a strange avoidance vibe in his answer, but she couldn’t determine what, exactly, he was skirting. “Where do you fall on the warg scale? What do you do? About the full moon, I mean.”
He peeled out of his paramedic shirt, and her tongue nearly rolled out of her mouth at the sight of his sharply defined muscles and honed, hard flesh. She was used to males who kept themselves in top form—no assassin let himself go flabby—but Con had a lean, powerful runner’s body, the kind that was used well and often. He was made for marathons.
I spend hours on foreplay.
Oh, yeah. Marathons.
“I sure as hell don’t chain myself.” He tossed the shirt over the back of a chair. “I go home. To where I was born.”
She had to force her eyes away from his chest to meet his. “Where’s that?”
“Scotland. It’s where dhampires originated. The Dearghuls—the only clan that’s left—have a sanctuary there. Acres of property where we can hunt during the moon fever.”
Eyes level… eyes level…“How many of you are there?”
“Our numbers are pathetically few. So few that during the mating season, all unmated males and females must participate.”
Sin bit her cheek to keep from moaning at the “mating” word. “So you don’t mate like other wargs? I mean, getting a female pregnant during her heat doesn’t bind you to her forever?”
“No,” he said huskily, and she wondered if the subject had affected him the way it had her. “In fact, the males very rarely take permanent mates.”
His skin was sotan. “Why not?”
“Because we tend to kill the females.”
Ah, well, okay. That wasn’t cool.
She wandered around the living room and down the hall to check out the bedrooms. Yep, she was a Nosy Nellie, but Con didn’t seem to mind. “What do you do with all this space? You have parties and stuff?”
He looked up from checking the answering machine. “Nope. A lot of my friends are human. They’d ask too many questions.”
“Human? You’re tight with humans?”
“Not recently.” He moved to the window and yanked the curtains closed. “Just had to let go of my last group of buds. When they start mentioning how you never get older, it’s time to take a “permanent job” in some remote place with no communications. Right now, I’m studying nematodes in Antarctica.”
“Well, aren’t you a dork.” But seriously… how odd that he hung with humans. He seemed like an underworld-purist kind of guy.
His cell phone rang, and he dug it out of the lower side leg pocket of his BDU pants. “E. Yeah. You’re where?”
Con hung up, strode to the front door, and standing there, still in his scrubs, was Eidolon. Shade was next to him, clad from boot to neck in black leather, from his biker boots to his jacket, sunglasses hiding his dark eyes. He looked like the freaking Terminator.
“How’d you know where we were?” Sin asked.
“I’m a good guesser,” Eidolon said as he and Shade stepped inside. He tossed a duffel bag at Sin. “Clothes. Figured you might need them after getting nailed by the dart.”
Con closed the door, but not before scanning the area outside. “Is Runa doing better?”
“Not good enough.” Shade tucked his sunglasses into his pocket. “She made me leave. Said I was driving her crazy. Besides, I needed to do some grocery shopping.”
Sin nearly laughed at the image of the big, bad leather-clad demon pushing a grocery cart through the vegetable and diaper aisles at a supermarket. “I have a hard time believing you left her alone, not feeling well, with three babies.”
“I didn’t. Gem and Tay are with her.” Tayla, Eidolon’s mate, and her twin sister, Gem, were both half-Soulshredder demon—the worst of the worst—but they were gooey marshmallows when it came to caring for their nephews. Gem was pregnant, and Sin figured it wouldn’t be long before Tayla hopped that crazy train, too.
Shade moved to Sin. “You okay? E said you were hit with a lock-dart.”
“I’ll live.” She dropped the bag and marched back to the kitchen, talking as she went. “Con patched me up before the assassins attacked.”
Both Shade and E focused on her, dark lasers of pissed-off-ness, and she knew she’d made a huge mistake by saying anything. “Assassins?” they both growled.
“Yeah.” Con took a six-pack of beer out of the fridge and tossed a bottle at each of them. Sin fumbled hers. She’d been too busy admiring hissix-pack. “Your sister can’t take a freaking step without causing some sort of disaster.”
Shade popped the cap off his bottle and flung the top into the sink. “Who were they?”
“They were mine. I’m walking around with a bull’s-eye on my ass.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers, where Detharu’s silver ring glinted in the light. “Any assassin who kills me and takes my ring inherits my job. I’m pretty much the underworld’s most wanted right now.”
“Hell’s bells,” Shade muttered. “What kind of defense do you have against them?”
She waggled her brows. “Besides my uber-incredible fighting and self-defense skills?”
“Yeah,” Shade said flatly, and sheesh, the guy had no sense of humor. “Besides those.”