He shrugged, his peripheral vision catching yet another car on approach. “All the time,” he told her. “But I don’t fear the doubt.”
Failure was another story. He could sell her nightmares about failure.
“You know,” she said, “you’re right. You knew it, didn’t you? Meeting. Liking. Wanting more. Yes, I’d love to go on a hike with you while I’m here. Yes, I feel...and I want to follow it.”
This grin came along with a slow burn of warmth—a spot inside himself that made itself quiet long enough for him to feel the simple pleasure of the moment.
But damn, it didn’t do a thing for his ability to hop back on that bike.
The approaching car slowed enough so he thought it might stop, then moved on. Gawkers, he decided, fully aware of the moment they’d interrupted.
At least, he thought it right up until he felt the unmistakable taint of a Core working. He turned sharply from Ana, eyes narrowing, body readying—for attack, for defense, for the challenge of identifying the working just as quickly as he could even if he had very little means to protect from it. His shields were only moderate and, without laboratory conditions and warding to enhance them, of only minimal use against a direct working.
Ana whirled to follow his attention, cuing from his body language—shrinking back, but also readying herself—a shift of balance, a grab for the jacket pocket where he’d be damned if she hadn’t probably stashed that pepper spray. “What—?”
Late model midsize SUV, a dark metallic green. Driver, passenger and enough tint to the windows so he couldn’t say anything else of them.
And then it was gone, and the car accelerated away just as any other sightseer might have done.
“Ian?”
He tried to stand down; he tried to convince himself he hadn’t felt the working—a thing that had passed too quickly to identify it as anything other than a detection amulet. His fingers drummed a pattern against the side of his leg. He hadn’t quite found the right words, his mind too full of their vulnerable position here on the mountainside, the ramifications of Core presence, the phone calls he should be making—when she rested a hand on his arm.
Silence.
He turned to her, startled by it—not quite able to respond to it.
“Are you all right?” Nothing uncertain in those brown eyes now, just concern, her arching eyebrows raised in question.
“I’m—” he said, and shook his head. “It’s nothing.” And maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just as simple as sightseeing posse members with an alert working—one that would warn against Sentinel presence simply because some Core members were no more prepared to deal with Sentinels than a light-blood support tech wanted to deal directly with Core.
No wonder they had sped away, if that had been the case.
“Nothing,” he told her again. “And I’ve got an idea. You, me, takeout of your choice and a movie at your place tonight.” Not that he wouldn’t gladly spend the whole day with her, hitting the Railyard artisans or Old Town or even the O’Keeffe museum—but he had the sudden impulse to check in with the lab and see if they’d made any progress without him, and to check in on Fernie, who in spite of her cheerful send-off, hadn’t seemed quite herself today.
“Me, you, takeout and a movie at my place,” she agreed. “And then... I guess we see.”
Dammit. It was going to take forever before he could get on that motorcycle again.
Ana closed the door behind Ian Scott and leaned against it with a sigh, still fully feeling the movement of his mouth over hers and the way it woke everything inside her. Pounding heart, warmth pooling in intimate places, the frisson of those faintly pointed canine teeth on her skin, her breath coming just a little bit fast.
Until reality hit, a blow that momentarily took her breath away altogether.
She wasn’t here to feel. She was here to plant two amulets and gather information. Tonight, when he came back with takeout and his unsuspecting, habitually wry hint of a smile.
He is snow leopard, Ana Dikau. He is beast.
She slipped a hand into her front pocket, running her fingers over the tiny listening amulet she hadn’t yet planted.
Because I’m doing well so far. Because I don’t want to risk blowing the operation if he finds it. Because he’s more sensitive to such things than his dossier indicated he would be. The amulet-tainted car along the overlook road had told her that much.
It was all true. But she didn’t know if such reasons would convince Hollender Lerche, a man with little patience for underperformance. And she did know that this was her one and only chance to prove herself to the organization that had never quite found her of value. Certainly never treated her as though she was of value.
If she could just do this one thing for them...
“Ana.”
She jerked her hand out of her pocket with a guilty start. “Mr. Lerche! What are you doing here? Ian might have come inside—”
He emerged not from the great room of this modest vacation rental, but from her bedroom—dressed in his usual suit, heavy silver flashing at his ear and wrist and fingers, his skin a darker shade than hers and his features heavier. She flushed, a furious heat on her cheeks, but the look on his face silenced her, and then so did his words. “Surely not into the bedroom, Ana. Woo him, dearest. Don’t fuck him.”
She knew better than to respond. He didn’t want her; he wanted only to claim and control her. To distress her, because it made him feel more than he was.
The problem was, knowing those things didn’t change his status with regard to hers—and it didn’t change his effect on her. The dread in her stomach, cold and hard and a little bit sick. The way she felt smaller and weaker. And the way just once, she wanted to feel as though she belonged in this society to which she’d been born.
Maybe if she tried harder. Maybe if she was stronger. Maybe if she didn’t let her sentimental tendencies get in the way, as they always had. Then again, few women rose in the ranks, preferring the anonymity and protection of an early marriage. No man in the Atrum Core would touch another’s spouse.
Now and then it occurred to Ana that it should be enough that a woman simply didn’t want to be touched. But experience proved otherwise.
Certainly Hollender Lerche felt free enough to touch her—as he did now, grasping her jaw in a hard grip and then tightening his blunt fingers even further, bringing a sting of involuntary tears to Ana’s eyes. “We need to talk, Ana.”
“He’ll be back in this evening for dinner.” Desperate words, barely intelligible. And that’s all she said, because suggesting that he not leave a mark would only invite him to hurt her in ways that wouldn’t.
His
