“When?” I asked.
“Two in the afternoon,” he said.
If Zee didn’t mind working in the shop again, it would be no trouble. “I can do that, I think. Where?”
He turned out the light in the bathroom and pulled back the covers. He looked at me. “I’ll pick you up,” he said absently.
And then ripped the covers all the way off.
I squeaked and ran. He caught me without much effort because he was my Adam, and I didn’t really want to run away from him. I was laughing when he dragged me (not ungently) by one leg to the bed.
He picked me up and set me on the mattress.
“You are so beautiful,” he told me.
He was wrong, but he wasn’t lying. I can hit pretty, but beautiful was a long way off. Christy, his ex-wife, was beautiful. Honey was beautiful. But if Adam thought I was beautiful, I wasn’t going to argue with him.
“Back atcha,” I said—and he snorted.
But he was intent on other things than words. And it didn’t take long before I was, too. I bathed myself in him, the silken skin of his shoulders and the rougher skin of his hands, his distinctive smell, the weight of his body.
After the first time, I was in the mood to play. I tortured the both of us (in the best sense of the word) until sweat gathered on his forehead and his wolf looked out from his eyes. His hands dug into my hips harder than he’d be happy with, but he didn’t force me to stop teasing. Adam would never use his strength against me.
I ratcheted us both up until we hung on that edge, like being on the top of the first hill on a wooden roller coaster. I held us both suspended, hearts pounding but bodies still. The muscles stood out on his flat belly and I put one hand there. He shuddered and our eyes met. I felt butterflies take flight in my veins as he smiled, a wolf’s smile, joyous and hungry.
We fell together. And it was glorious.
Adam fell asleep afterward. But energized by good sex, I thought about motivation. After a few minutes, I poked him.
“I have a theory,” I said when he grunted.
“This is going to be one of those nights when all I want to do is sleep, and you’re wound up like a spinning top, isn’t it?” he said.
I ignored him. “There are two possibilities to explain the witches’ arrival. The first is that they found out that Sherwood is here—we’ve been getting a lot of press and Sherwood was in at least one of the pictures that hit the AP.”
“Sleep, that blessed state . . .” intoned Adam, but he was listening to me.
“Sherwood is witchborn, I think, though his magic feels a little more wild than theirs. Still, they used him as a power source for who knows how long.” No one had actually told me that, but what else would they have been doing with him? “Maybe they want him back. That would explain most of the rest.”
“I listened to your messages,” Adam said. “Thank you for doing that, by the way. I find it reassuring that after you escape near death, I can always expect a phone message from you. That way I only panic if I don’t hear from you.”
I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Probably because he wasn’t sure, either.
“You’re welcome,” I said with dignity. “The witch last night very kindly informed us that the witches are staging a takeover. And we—Marsilia included—are expected to sit quietly and take it. But she also mentioned that she expects us to remove ourselves from helping with the meeting between the fae and the humans.”
“Yes,” said Adam.
“So maybe today”—I glanced at the clock, which read two A.M.—“yesterday, I mean, had more to do with that.”
“Okay,” Adam said. “Can I go to sleep now?”
I thought about it a minute. “Nudge,” I said.
He growled and lunged.
* * *
• • •
Meetings are boring.
Meetings in which my whole job was to show up and let everyone get a good look at me, then sit down and shut up while they talked, were more than boring. Okay, first they told me it would be my job to find a venue for the big meeting. But they didn’t actually ask me anything or give me a chance to talk.
We met in a hotel boardroom that looked a lot like a lot of other hotel boardrooms I’d been in. Maybe I’d have been more impressed by the people—all men—who represented so much governmental power if the last boardroom I’d been in hadn’t held five Gray Lords of the fae.
The only person who made an impression on me was Tory Abbot, the assistant of the Senate majority whip, Jake Campbell, a Republican from Minnesota. Tory was a sharp-faced man about ten years older than I was and had a decisive manner that demanded people listen when he spoke. Which he did—quite a lot. And he said not very much, which has always seemed to me to be a quality much prized in a politician.
Most of the reason he was interesting had nothing to do with the man himself. I’d been informed (by him) that he would be my liaison with the government. And the man he worked for, Senator Campbell, was the senator that the rogue Cantrip agents had tried to force Adam to assassinate.
About forty minutes into the meeting, which was mostly an endless debate about where to hold the meeting, I started playing solitaire on my phone. The other pack members—Adam, Paul, Kelly, and Luke (the latter three all clad in Hauptman Security shirts)—were more disciplined. They simply waited, seated around the conference table, while no one talked to them.
Finally, Tory Abbot looked at me. “Do you have any suggestions about where to hold this meeting?”
I looked over my shoulder as if there might be someone there whom he was talking to.
“Smart aleck,” murmured Kelly in a voice too soft for the humans to hear. Kelly’s day job was working at a plant nursery, but like a lot of the wolves, he moonlighted for Adam when needed. His bright blue eyes were looking away from me, so no one would see that he was talking to me. He was a sneaky hunter.
“Ms. Hauptman,” Abbot said, a little impatiently, though he was careful to stay on the far side of the room from me.
“None of the places you talked about will do,” I said. “The fae won’t come to the city and sit in iron and cement walls to discuss peace with the enemy.”
“We’re sure as fuck not going to go out to the reservation and talk with them,” said Abbot.
“That’s my wife you’re swearing at,” growled Adam, and the whole room came to a silent stillness. “Don’t do that again.” There was a lot more threat in his voice than there had been when he’d said the same thing to Sherwood yesterday.
“I wouldn’t suggest going to the reservation,” I said, as smoothly as if Adam hadn’t spoken. “I doubt they’d let you in anyway. Or out, if they did let you in. What you need is a place big enough to hold everyone and their entourages as well as the fae delegation, one that also has a small room nearby where the principals can talk. Somewhere in our territory, but not actually in town, where the fae feel at a disadvantage.”
I had been listening and thinking. I can do all that and play solitaire at the same time—it’s a gift.
“Okay,” said Abbot warily. “Where do you suggest?”
“How about one of the Red Mountain wineries? They are still in our territory.” With a sweeping hand I included Adam and the other wolves. “They are built to hold company meetings and retreats—and they are situated among growing things.”
I stopped speaking before I could tell them about the connections between the fae and alcoholic beverages—beer and mead more than wine, to be sure. But the wine would be something that would make the fae feel more at home.
“Security-wise that might be a good choice,” said a man. I was pretty sure he was Secret Service or something like that because they hadn’t told me what he did—and he’d been sitting on the sidelines like the rest of us while the others talked. “The wineries are pretty isolated, so we can keep nonparticipants away. I can go scout some out tonight and bring back suggestions.”
And the talks resumed.
I looked at the time on my phone for the third time in five minutes and Adam said, breaking easily into a heated argument about the appropriateness of holding a governmental meeting at a winery, “Gentlemen. We should excuse my wife, who needs to get back to her work.” He took the SUV key off his key ring (it was a diesel; diesels still had keys rather than fobs) and tossed it. “Paul, take my rig. I’ll catch a ride back with Luke and Kelly.”
Paul grabbed the key out of the air and saluted Adam. He opened the door for me to precede him.
I would have preferred either Kelly or Luke. Paul was one of the wolves who would rather I were not his Alpha’s mate. When Adam had told the pack he would no longer tolerate anyone dissing me, Paul had been very quiet around me. Paul had gotten a divorce a couple of months ago—and that hadn’t sweetened his temperament even a little bit. I wasn’t afraid of Paul, but he wasn’t someone I wanted to hang out with, either. That was probably why Adam had sent him with me, to force us to deal with each other.
“At least you didn’t suggest Uncle Mike’s,” Paul said acerbically when we were far enough down the hall that Adam wouldn’t hear him.
Before I could respond, we turned a corner and found ourselves in the middle of a wild rumpus of the first order. A tourist bus had evidently arrived while we’d been twiddling our toes in the boardroom. The check-in desk and the surrounding room were full of dozens of well-to-do retirees, a pizza delivery guy with a big box, and four people from a local flower shop pushing in carts of bright-colored mini-bouquets in small clear vases.
I dropped back to let Paul take point. He was a big man and people moved to let him through. I trailed in his wake through the crowd and out the revolving door into the fresh air.
“Don’t worry,” said Paul as we cleared the hotel, “I won’t attack you or anything.”
I rolled my eyes. “As if you could.”