Page 35 of The Silent
“Your puppy dog eyes,” Ginny said. “Alyah, am Iright?”
Leo looked over his shoulder. Alyah looked like she was very deliberately keeping hermouthshut.
“What do you two know about being lonely?” Leo said. “Irina have never been prohibited from socializing with human men. It’s notthesame.”
“True,” Ginny said. “But we’re crap at relationships with them. AskAlyah.”
“Don’t bring me into this,” Alyah muttered from the back seat. “If you want to torment the scribe, do it onyourown.”
Leo was leaving that one alone. Alyah had made it very clear from the beginning that she was a warrior uninterested in a mate. They were colleagues, notfriends.
“So…” Ginny wasn’t letting up. “Give us the details, man. When did you meet her? What’s her favorite color? Dogs or cats? Are you planning on marking her and making tiny, adorable babies?” She glanced at Leo. “Come to think of it, between the two of you, they’d probably be Amazonian babies. There are some very good genes happening with bothofyou.”
“I don’t…” How did one respond to an Irina with these wild ideas? She couldn’t be serious. And yet, Leo sensed she was genuinely curious. “I don’t know Kyra… intimately.”I’ve simply obsessed over her for three years and hope she is mysoulmate.
“Really?” Alyah spoke up from the back. “I didn’t get thatsense.”
“Me either,”Ginnysaid.
“We met in Vienna before the battle. Her brother has known my cousin for many years, but none of us knew about the Grigori sisters. Kostas, Kyra’s brother, brought her to Vienna to stay with my watcher’s mate, Ava. They became friends, and that is how ImetKyra.”
Not that it was the whole story. He didn’t tell them how Kyra’s eyes had glowed the first time he touched her hand. How his body went electric at a single brush of her finger. He didn’t tell them how he’d held her during the battle, felt her body jerk and wilt when her father died. He didn’t tell them about their whispered conversations and long embraces in Rekaves or the kiss in the nightmarket.
Just the memory of that kiss was enough to wake his body from its centuries-long fast. Leo had quashed sensual hunger for over a century with a strict regime of discipline and resignation to a mateless life.But if she was hisreshon…
Kyra had changed everything. His soul and his body were hungry now. They’d tasted her delicacy and wanted tofeast.
“So you’ve only metheronce?”
“I saw her again last year when I went to the Czech Republic to fight one of the Fallen and she was there with her brother.”I held her before the battle, and she embraced me on thereturn.
“Wow,” Ginny said. “Soundsepic.”
Leo stared at the road. “I’m not here toentertainyou.”
Alyah said, “It sounds like the two of you only meet when there are problems. It doesn’t sound like you’ve had any timealone.”
“We definitely have not,” he said under hisbreath.
“Aha!” Ginny said. “So we have our mission,Alyah.”
Alyah leaned forward between the two front seats. “I am here to assist in the instruction of these women and make sure they are protected. I’m here to gather information for my watcher on the workings of the free Grigori. I am not here to playmatchmaker.”
“Fine,” Ginny said. “I don’t answer to a watcher, and I think we need to hook the brother up. I think Leo needs togetlaid.”
Leo thought he needed to disappear. Flinging himself out of the car sounded like a not-horrible-at-all possibility. If this was what it was like to have sisters, he preferred the scribehouse.
“Isn’t that the turn?” he said, trying to ignore Ginny andAlyah.
“Oh yeah.” Ginny swerved and flung the car into a U-turn. “So Leo, how do we get you and Kyra alone? Kidnapping seems the obviouschoice.”
“Seriously?” he asked. “That seems like the ‘obvious choice’ to you? I don’t see that goingoverwell.”
“But the direct approach might work better with her protection detail. Sura was awfully possessiveofher.”
“It’s not Sura he needs to worry about,” Alyah said. “It’s the aggressive one at the market I told you about. He also is attractedtoKyra.”
“Niran?” Leoasked.
