Kinked (Elder Races, #6)

She picked apart every word he said with her truthsense dialed high. Her eyes narrowed, she asked suspiciously, “Why did you stop?”


His chest heaved as he gave an explosive sigh. “Something bad happened. I tried to do something. I wanted to help out a friend and had good intentions, but I almost got a couple of people killed. After that, I pulled the plug on everything except the bar.”

“So that’s it—that’s everything? That’s all you did?” Everything except the something he had tried to do, at any rate. She asked hopefully, “No espionage?”

He snorted. “No.”

She made a face. “No murder for hire? No spying?”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he snapped. “I made damn good money. That’s it.”

Good gods, he was telling the truth. She tried to disbelieve it anyway, but couldn’t muster any conviction. It was … disappointing. She pressed, “What did you smuggle? Drugs? Human trafficking? Guns?”

He glared at her in exasperation. “Don’t be so goddamn dramatic. Of course I didn’t. I smuggled in liquor for the bar, gold and diamonds, some artwork. High-dollar stuff. I might have dabbled in some magic items from time to time.”

She scowled. At the most he had cost the Wyr demesne some tariff money, and a whole lot of her time. “If that’s all you did, why the fuck didn’t you just say so earlier?”

He sneered. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

She studied him, her mouth twisted with frustration. After all this time, that was it. He lost his temper bad enough to spit out the truth, and she didn’t give a shit about any of it after all. She said, watching him closely, “You really gave it all up. You don’t break the law in any way, anymore.”

“No.” Everything in his hard voice and face radiated the truth. “Not since before I decided to try out for the Games and committed to becoming a sentinel.”

“Bah,” she said in disgust. “How pathetic.”

All that obsession, all that work. For what?

She forced her stiff fingers to open and wiggled them out of the holes her talons had torn into the door. Letting go of his wrists as she backed away, she shook out her aching hands and inspected the cuts on her fingers. They stung, but they weren’t too bad. They would heal soon enough.

Quentin pushed away from the metal door immediately and didn’t stop moving until he was several yards away. All the time he stared at her with narrowed eyes. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s your whole reaction—‘how pathetic’?”

She gestured impatiently. “I don’t care about any of that shit.”

Hands on his hips, he angled his head, the perfect image of a man who had been pushed too far. In a very quiet tone of voice, he said, “You. Don’t. Care.”

Was it something she said? She curled a nostril at him. “No, I don’t.”

He detonated.





SIX


Quentin’s wrath took him outside of his body until he felt as if he hovered in the open area, an invisible spirit looking down at the two figures from above.

He roared, “What the fuck do you mean you don’t care? What have the last two hellish years been for, IF YOU DON’T FUCKING CARE?

Aryal stared at him as if he were a lunatic. “Well, I didn’t know what you’d done, did I? You’re a dangerous man. You proved that when you became a sentinel. I knew you did something, but I didn’t know you did just that.” She threw out her hands as she spoke, making a throwaway gesture. “I can’t believe I wasted all that investigation time on a petty thief.”

He was airborne before she had finished speaking the last words. In one giant leap, he was on her, his hands fastened around her throat again. The flying tackle knocked her flat on her back on a snowy patch of pavement. He sprawled on top of her, instinctively shifting so that he trapped her with the weight of his body.

He had never felt this way before, about anything or anyone. Someone was growling. Belatedly he realized that someone was him. He pounded her head on the pavement. “All. That. Time. All. That. Time.”

He was vaguely aware that she had grabbed him by the throat too, the tips of her talons poised at his jugular. He should probably care about that.

She said in a choked voice, “In retrospect, we should have talked about this while I still had you pinned.”

“You would make a paciflstic saint homicidal,” he panted.

She burst out laughing.

He was strangling her. And she laughed.

Incredulity wormed its way into his rage-soaked brain. He stared down at her.