He spotted a hall toward the back of the building and made for it. There had to be restrooms, an office, something.
Niniane brushed her hair out of her eyes. Blood pounded in her face. His long legs rose like tree trunks in front of her upside-down gaze. She braced herself with a forearm against the small of his back and tried to look around. Her head bobbed. Where were the others? She tried again. “Tiago, it just fell out of my mouth. I didn’t mean it. I’m just sayin’!”
“Shut up.” His voice sounded shredded. He said to someone nearby, “Guard the hall.”
A familiar voice cursed. She looked in the direction from which it came, and finally caught sight of Aryal and Cameron. They were herding the crowd back onto the dance floor, while people stared at them with varying degrees of curiosity, laughter and alarm. By the bar, Duncan shouted for someone to start up the music again.
Niniane thought she saw something odd as Aryal looked back at them. The harpy’s eyes were narrowed, her angular face white with strain. Niniane might have been mistaken. Dangling upside down, everything looked wrong. People moved in weird ways, their smiles all turned down, and liquid spilled from drinks falling up. It was like looking in a carnival hall of mirrors in a dream.
Tiago strode down the hallway. Office, to the right. It was a small, cluttered cubbyhole, piled with yellowed papers. Restrooms. He could hear someone moving around in one and the whine of a small motor as a hand dryer started. Niniane wriggled on his shoulder and almost slid off. He hitched her light little body back into place and kept going. There, toward the emergency back exit, was an open door.
He veered toward it and strode into a shadowed room filled with metal shelves and boxes. One corner of the storeroom had been turned into a break area, with a battered comfortablelooking couch, a sagging armchair and a scarred coffee table with a pile of old magazines. A folded afghan blanket lay on the back of the couch, and a unit against one wall held a clunky thirteen-inch TV with an antenna and a digital converter box. A microwave sat on a middle shelf.
He came to the middle of the floor and stopped. She waited a moment. Nothing happened. Tiago’s massive body stood rigid.
She let go of his ear, and maybe her fingers accidentally brushed along the side of his neck.
“I look pretty,” she whispered. She rested her cheek against his wide, muscled back.
He took a breath. She felt it shudder through his whole frame. He laid one hand against the back of her thigh and stroked her leg. The light rasp of calluses on his broad palm left a trail of goose bumps on her sensitive bare skin.
Then he bent forward. With exquisite gentleness he eased her onto her feet. He kept his hands at her narrow waist until she had her balance back. They looked at each other, her head tilted up, his bent down. She felt absurdly tiny whenever she was this close to him, and warmed in a way that had nothing to do with their physical bodies.
“I am so goddamn old,” he said. His voice was so quiet she almost couldn’t hear him. “And you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
She rested her fingers on his forearms so that she could relish the heat of his skin as she looked up into his half-hidden stranger’s face. The aggression had splintered and left him looking shaken and—vulnerable. He was such a self-contained fortress. In all the years of their acquaintance, she had never seen him look this way. She reached up to take his sunglasses off. His obsidian eyes glittered in the shadowed room.
“If you think I’m beautiful, why didn’t you say so?” she asked. Her breath hiccuped. “Why are you so mad at me?”
Listen to her. She was going to be the queen who stamped her foot and cried because her feelings got hurt. Whole nations would tremble in fear.
He cradled her face with both hands. They were so big they encompassed the graceful curve of her head. He growled, “You drive me out of my mind. You make me so fucking crazy I can’t think straight. Did you even notice? Every male out there, along with several of the women, were undressing you with their eyes—and they didn’t have far to go. You can’t go out in public like this. I mean, Niniane. What. The. Hell.”
He was winding himself tight again by talking about it. His face and body clenched. She blinked as she stared up at him. Light dawned.
He was so jealous and possessive, he was burning up with it.
That could only mean one thing. He still wanted her.
She said, “So you like the dress.”
He glared at her, the picture of startled offense. “That’s not a dress.”
Delight tasted like honey mead and turned her drunk. She started to smile. “Then what is it?”