Page 32 of Edge of Oblivion (Night Prowler 2)
They’d finished breakfast quickly, and she’d showered and changed at the hotel. He wanted to get an early start, picking up where he’d left off yesterday, and she’d insisted on joining him. Two heads are better than one, she’d said, only with her scent in his nose and the sight of that body displayed so spectacularly in a simple black skirt, a fitted red blouse, and those sky-high heels she favored, only one of his heads was working. And it wasn’t the one on top of his neck.
He really needed to get some sleep.
“But—but—how can that be?” she was saying, leaning forward.
By chance, Xander glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the taxi driver gaping in slack-
jawed admiration at the reflection of her cleavage, peeking out in all its creamy, rounded perfection from the undone top button of her red blouse. He bared his teeth, and the man blanched and snapped his eyes forward.
“Aren’t the Expurgari associated with the church? Why would one of us go anywhere near the Vatican? Does he not know?” Morgan leaned even closer, so close he could smell exactly where she’d dabbed perfume at the hollow of her throat. To his great horror, his mouth began to water.
“Sit back,” he snapped, glaring at her, “and stop asking so many damn questions!”
She stared back at him, cool, with her eyebrows raised in twin dark quirks, not one iota impressed with his display of anger.
Wonderful. She wasn’t even scared of him. He’d told her exactly how he was going to kill her, and even that had failed to frighten her. If anything, it made her happy.
Of all the deserters and criminals and threats to the tribe he’d tracked in his lifetime, he had to get stuck in Rome for two weeks sharing a hotel room with a headstrong, sexy, intelligent, fearless woman who also happened to be so beautiful it stopped men dead in their tracks in the street.
Shit.
She eased back into the seat, crossed her legs, and calmly said, “Well. I suppose if you’re not interested in my input, I probably shouldn’t tell you that our new friend is a telepath.”
The cab bounced along the road. American rock music played on the taxi’s tinny radio.
Sunshine streamed through the windows, lighting her hair to a blaze of shining, coppery brown. And his blood ceased to circulate throughout
his veins.
Telepaths were unheard of in the tribe. Of all their Gifts—Vapor and Suggestion and Foresight and Passage and many, many others—he’d never encountered a telepath. Even their new Queen’s Gift of Sight was limited to touch. His mind raced with the possibilities.
“And you know this because...?”
Inexplicably, she flushed red. She dropped her lashes and began to inspect her flawless manicure with great interest.
“Morgan,” he said, an imperative. She looked up at him from beneath her lashes.
“Tell me what he said.”
But he could guess. From the flush on her cheeks to the way she squirmed under his penetrating stare, he could guess.
“He didn’t threaten you—”
“No,” she said, too loud, then cleared her throat and looked away. Her voice dropped. “No, he did not threaten me.”
His voice came flat and accusing. “He knows you’re unmated.”
Her flush deepened, spreading down her neck. She nodded, once, and he wanted to break something.
It was the scent that gave it away. Unmated females exuded a different scent—wilder, more primal—than their mated counterparts. The bonding scent was subtle but distinctive and softened the sultry siren’s perfume of an unmated female Ikati.
An Ikati like Morgan.
He’d trained for years to become immune to it, in the same way he’d trained to become immune to pain or fear or Gifts like Suggestion. A soldier can’t afford distractions , his capoeira master had told him as a very young man, over and over, even as he was becoming ensnared by the most dangerous distraction of them all, one that no one thought to train him to resist because no one thought it was possible.
“This is too dangerous for you. You’re going back to the hotel,” he said through clenched teeth, but she sat up ramrod straight and caught his arm just as he was about to lean onto the sliding plastic window that separated the front seat from the back and bark instructions to the driver. Her fingers clenched so hard into his bicep he thought he felt a bruise form.
“This is my life we’re talking about,” she snapped, eyes blazing a hot, brilliant green. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be tracking the Expurgari, I’m the one with everything to lose, so I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you boss me around and decide what’s best for me just because you’re bigger and carry a bunch of knives!”
