PLAY OF PASSION

“Depends who’s asking.” A lazy smile in those eyes that were such a pale brown as to be beaten gold. Unusual. And for most females, fascinating. He raised an eyebrow when she continued to stare. “Did I grow a second nose or something?”


Stepping out of the soap-and-earth-and-warmth of his embrace, she watched him pick up his bags. “No, but you’ve put on some more muscle.” It was a dodge. Because in truth, she’d been thinking something far different—that Riaz, with his jet-black hair and eyes of Spanish gold, was gorgeous and sexy and—very importantly—a dominant only just below her in the hierarchy. The difference wasn’t enough to bother her wolf. And they’d never had a problem with physical chemistry.

All facts to consider.

Riaz’s lips curved into a deeper smile as he hefted one duffel over his shoulder while gripping the other in his free hand. “So you noticed. Want to feel?”

“Sexy you might be; Don Juan you’re not.” Laughing at his affronted look, she led him to the vehicle, and they clambered inside after dumping his bags in the trunk. “How was Europe?”

“It was all pretty girls, flash hotels, five-star food,” he moaned, pushing back his seat as far as possible so he could stretch out those long, powerfully muscled legs. “I thought I’d go mad.”

Smile tugging at her lips, she waved her debit card at the parking gates, and they opened with a quiet swish. “Poor baby.”

Riaz said nothing for several minutes, putting down the window to let the wind ruffle his hair. “God, it’s good to be home, Indigo.” Heartfelt words, the homesickness of his wolf evident in every syllable. “I can’t wait to run through the forests, to walk in the den, to shoot the bull with the rest of you.”

“You’ve been back now and then.”

“I always knew I’d be leaving again,” the other lieutenant said, “so I never really gave myself a chance to settle. But now …” He exhaled, long and slow. “Anything I should know?”

“Riley’s gone to meet his mate’s grandparents.”

Riaz shook his head, that black-as-night hair whipping off his face as she accelerated. “I couldn’t believe he’d mated with a cat when I heard, but having met Mercy on my last trip home, I can say the man has excellent taste.” Another comfortable silence, then, “So, what was that at the airport about me being tall, dark, and irresistible?”

“I don’t recall using those words.”

Eyes of beaten gold met hers full-on for a single instant before she returned her gaze to the road, and he moved his hand to the back of her neck, massaging gently. It was a familiar and intimate touch. Unlike with Drew, her wolf allowed this one. Because Riaz had earned the wolf’s trust on that level, been given that right. He hadn’t simply tried to claim it the way Drew had—as if a few kisses gave him the prerogative to demand everything. Her hands clenched on the manual steering wheel.

“I’m not attached, Indigo,” Riaz said with a solemnity that struck her as somehow “wrong,” though she couldn’t put her finger on why. “So if you’re thinking you need someone with whom to work off the tension, I’m more than happy to oblige.”

Shoving away the memory of Drew’s kisses, the infuriating arrogance of his attempt to use her touch-hunger against her, she nodded slowly. “I’m thinking about it.”

It gutted Andrew, fucking eviscerated him, to see Indigo laughing with another man, a man who had no concept of the true value of the woman beside him. No, that was unfair. Riaz’s remarkable eyes sparked with intelligence, with respect, when he looked at Indigo. The male lieutenant understood exactly who she was.

Staying in his shadowed spot—in the back of the room where all the senior members of the pack had gathered to throw Riaz an impromptu welcome-home party—Andrew sucked on his beer and forced his attention off the couple on the other side—to something, anything, else.

He saw Hawke speaking with Elias and Yuki, glimpsed Sing-Liu playfully grabbing her mate’s ass, and—He blinked. Walker Lauren was here. That wasn’t a huge surprise, because though quiet, the Psy male had turned out to be a genius when it came to dealing with young hotheads, to the extent that Hawke had assigned him as the go-to man for the ten-to-thirteen-year-old crowd.

What held Andrew’s attention was the fact that Walker was standing very close to Lara, and from the expression on the healer’s fine-boned face, the way she was all but poking the much taller man in the chest, she was well and truly pissed. Walker’s own expression was more difficult to read, but—

Low female laughter. Intimate. Painfully familiar.

Clenching his jaw, he refused to turn, to watch.

“You look like you’ve been gut-punched.” Quiet words from a man who’d once been the shadow in the dark, the assassin you’d never see, never know about, until it was far too late.

Andrew glanced at his sister’s mate as Judd came to stand against the wall beside him. “I feel worse.”