Play Of Passion Part 21

"What the-" Staring, startled, she realized her locker was stuffed to the brim with roses.

Red, red roses.

Behind her, Sing-Liu whistled as she closed up her own locker. "Now that's what I call an apology. Man's got style."

"You can have them." Indigo scowled, scooping out the roses and putting them on the bench between the lockers. "Here."

Sing-Liu took one perfect bloom and stuck it behind her ear, the color shockingly bright against the shimmering jet of her hair. "Hey, come on," the soldier said with a small smile, "I know he was an a.s.s, but he should get some credit for creativity. Most men just snarl and growl and try to s.e.x their lovers into a good mood." A sensual smile. "Not that I mind being s.e.xed until my toes curl. You should try it."

Indigo snarled at the soldier. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

"I guess I do." Lips still curved in that provocative smile, the small, lean human woman who was more lethal than a large number of the wolves in the den, disappeared around the corner.

Locker cleared, Indigo shut the door and turned to leave.

Her feet hesitated.

She stared at the dark red spill of roses, felt the vulnerable heart of her soften. But she built fences around that softening as soon as it occurred. If she accepted this apology, if she allowed their relationship to progress again, then what she'd said would come to pa.s.s. Drew would attempt to dominate her wolf in unacceptable ways again, would force her to the point where her wolf would strike out. Over and over and over again.

Such a relationship would destroy them both, until the love that bound them was twisted and broken. Adria and Martin almost hated each other now. Not enough to separate, but any remaining love was tainted and pitted. Indigo didn't know why they continued to stay together-they never laughed with each other, and there was so much dead air between them that Indigo's wolf was hurt by the piercing silence.

She wouldn't allow that to happen to her and Drew.

Her hand reached out, touched the petals of a rose. Snapping it back before the velvety softness could seduce her into dropping her guard, she stalked down the corridor. No one stopped her, though there were a few interested glances thrown her way. In no mood to gossip, she slammed into her room . . . and came to a complete halt.

The d.a.m.n wolf had drowned the room in silver-foiled chocolate kisses.

Thousands of them.

She growled.

And then she opened the closet door.

The treats started showing up the next day. A bowl of decadent champagne-soaked berries on the desk of her small office, pa.s.sion fruit cheesecake with white chocolate swirls mysteriously in her fridge, crystallized fruit in the pocket of her jacket. And always, always kisses. Chocolate kisses. Everywhere she turned.

By contrast, she never saw Drew, though she caught his scent every place she went. His shadowy presence served to ratchet up her frustration, even as it fed her ever-growing hunger for him. She'd thought distance would lessen the need. Instead, it only seemed to be making it stronger-until the ache was a constant pulse in her body, and she was starting to look for those d.a.m.n chocolate kisses.

"I swear," she muttered under her breath as another packmate grinned at her as she strode to a meeting with Hawke, "I'm going to wring his neck." Because the demon had gotten the pack on his side now.

"He just lost his temper, Indigo," Yuki had said to her a couple of nights ago. "Can happen to anyone."

"If you don't give him a chance," Jem had offered, all the way from Los Angeles-knowing everything, thanks to the pack rumor mill-"how will he ever learn?"

"Mi amigo is hurting," Tomas had said not much later, all long face and soulful dark eyes that she didn't trust an inch. "How can you be so cruel to someone who adores you so much?"

"Cut him a break," Lara had said only yesterday. "He looks so depressed it's breaking my heart."

"Depressed, my foot," Indigo muttered. She knew him far too well. He was using that charm of his to fool everyo-"d.a.m.n." Realizing she'd forgotten the little notepad on which she'd jotted down a few things she needed to discuss with Hawke, she turned on her heel and headed back to her room.

The grins should've warned her, but she just figured on another rose. And maybe her heart skipped a beat at the thought, but she was determined not to give in to this relentless pursuit. Andrew Liam Kincaid was not going to wear her down.

Then she came within sight of her door. And froze.

It was a soft toy. A wolf, to be precise. A wolf with lush silver fur and blue, blue eyes. It was carrying an envelope in its mouth.

Glancing around the suspiciously empty corridor-hah!-her packmates were likely stacked up five deep around the corner-she stared down at the furry thing. She should ignore it.

Opening her door, she walked inside and picked up the notepad, sticking it in a pocket. But as she went to walk back out, the wolf looked so adorably sweet that she couldn't leave it abandoned in the corridor. Growling, she picked up the toy and brought it inside, shutting the door behind her.

Now that she had the cuddly thing in her hand, she couldn't stop from reaching for the envelope. Holding the toy by her side, she slit open the flap and withdrew a card embossed with a rose that someone had embellished with hand-drawn thorns-big ones. "Cute," she said, her wolf flexing its claws inside her mind.

Opening the flap, she found herself looking at fine handwriting that couldn't be Drew's. Written in gold ink, it was an invitation to dinner that night at one of San Francisco's sw.a.n.kiest restaurants, for the occasion of . . . Indigo blinked, read the line again.

. . . for the occasion of Andrew Kincaid's good-bye party. Indigo narrowed her eyes, her wolf motionless with suspicion. What was he up to now? Because no way did she believe that he was giving up. Predatory changeling men didn't have the word "surrender" in their vocabularies.

Or maybe, part of her whispered, she just didn't want to believe that. Because if he gave up, then this was it. Over and done with. Forever. Her wolf would never in a million years accept a quitter.

"Argh!" she said, shaking her head. He'd done it again, got her thinking as if they were still courting. When, in spite of his persistence, they were not. But, she thought, glaring at the th.o.r.n.y rose, she would be accepting the invitation.

It was time she and Drew had this out face-to-face.

CHAPTER 35.

Andrew gave a sigh of relief when the pack rumor mill informed him that Indigo had taken the toy inside, and not only that, she'd looked p.i.s.sed. "Good," he said to Brenna as he sat bothering her while she tried to work. Putting his feet up on the table opposite him, he leaned his back against the console next to his sister's.

She glanced up from where she was doing something on the touch screen. "Good? You're happy because the strongest, most lethal woman in the den wants to turn you into a shish kebab?"

"She does the ice thing," he said to his sister, his wolf growling at the mere thought of it. "I hate the ice thing."

Brenna paused, threw him a startled glance. "Yeah, me, too." Stopping in her task for a second, she rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Judd can't get away with the ice thing anymore."

Andrew remembered how cold the Psy male had been before his mating to Brenna. "How'd you manage that?" Maybe he could learn something.

"Nothing I'd like to share with my brother," Brenna said with a saucy smile.

"Brat."

"Thank you."

Her smirk made his wolf laugh. "How're you doing with Judd still away?"

"He came back a few nights ago." She scowled. "I swore I'd strip his hide if he did it again. Teleporting that far really wipes him out, even if he does it in stages. He was all but unconscious for hours."

Andrew knew without asking that Judd had left as quietly as he'd arrived. The Psy male had sent them dispatches from various South American countries where he was following the scent of a Pure Psy operation. He was now certain that the group, with Henry's backing, was behind the transmitters on SnowDancer land.

"You know," Andrew said, turning his mind away from that situation for now, "that you can come to me for anything while he's away, right?"

"As if I'd have to," she muttered, "when somebody in the pack would rat me out to you the instant I even vaguely looked like I might be in trouble." But she leaned over and brushed a kiss on his jaw before beginning to work on the screen again, erasing and redrawing points of what appeared to be parts of a complex computronic design.

"Is that your teleportation machine?" The FAST project was, he knew, her most important long-term undertaking. If she could one day invent a way to send anyone-not just Tks-place to place with such speed, it would change the world.

"Uh-huh." Tiny frown lines between her brows. "Now that you've got the lieutenant's attention," she said, returning to their earlier subject, "what're you planning on doing next?"

"Never you mind." Shooting her a smug look when she gave a disgruntled scowl, he swung his legs off the table. "I need to go have a comm-conference with my team, make sure there's nothing that needs to be brought to Hawke's attention around the territory."

"You can use the room through there," Brenna said, pointing to her right. "No one's booked it for now." A pause, laughing eyes looking up at him. "And it'll let you hide from Indigo until you're ready to spring the ambush."

Leaning down, Andrew kissed the top of his sister's head. "I love you." It was a smiling statement, but no less true for it.

"I love you, too," Brenna said, "even if you are driving Indigo so insane, she's starting to snap at everyone in the den. Did you really steal her phone and record your voice howling her name as the ringtone?"

"Maybe." Deeply satisfied by the current state of affairs, Andrew strolled into the conference room, shut the door, and initiated the calls. He trusted Bren, but other techs could come in at any moment, and the information his team gathered was quite often sensitive. Having brought them all into the call, he sat back and listened, making notes as necessary.

Thankfully, things were very steady at present, partly as a result of Riley and Mercy's mating. A strong mated couple wasn't essential at the top of the hierarchy, but it did help steady the pack as a whole. "What about that group of old ones?" he asked one of the women on his team. "The ones you were worried were stewing over something?"

"I've come to the conclusion that they're just being grumpy old men."

Laughter, then a few more snippets of information before they wrapped up the meeting early and Andrew snuck through the corridors to update Hawke on some of the smaller matters. His alpha liked to keep his finger on the pulse of his pack.

"We're in good shape," Hawke said after Andrew finished, neither of them having elected to sit for the short briefing. "Except for these games the Psy are playing."

"Pure Psy seems to have accepted defeat in its proselytizing efforts at least," Andrew said, having monitored the situation. "No new reports within the pack or in the city."

"And we've had no more detected incursions onto our land." Hawke folded his arms, staring at the territorial map on the wall. "But something tells me that's not over yet."

"No," Andrew agreed, "there was too much planning there for them to give up their aim-whatever it is-so easily."

"We might, at some stage, have to give Councilor Henry Scott a little warning tap to let him know he's not welcome here."

Since SnowDancer, together with DarkRiver, had already taken down one Councilor, Andrew knew that "warning tap" was a real possibility. "Are you thinking sometime soon?"

"No. We need more intel on the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He's smart." Turning from the map, Hawke raised an eyebrow. "As of right now, you're off shift for the next forty-eight hours. Go play your favorite game."

Feeling the hum of antic.i.p.ation in his belly, Andrew gave his alpha an innocent smile. "I have no idea what you mean."

Hawke pointed a finger at him. "I want my calm, collected lieutenant back by the end of the week, or I'm packing you in a box and shipping you to f.u.c.king Siberia."

Andrew grinned. "I hear it's nice there this time of year."

Indigo knew she looked good in the strapless little black dress that came to midthigh and skimmed over her body like a lover's caress. Feet encased in three-inch heels, hair cascading down to the dip of her spine, and lips plump and red, she intended to make Andrew Kincaid's eyes pop out in revenge for the relentless pressure she was under to "forgive him." It didn't matter how many times she explained that it wasn't about forgiveness, but about the health of the pack; no one listened.

She'd had enough.

Several men waiting at the bar went stock-still as she entered the restaurant. "Andrew Kincaid," she said to the hostess, ignoring everyone else.

The pet.i.te brunette checked her sleek computronic organizer. "This way, Ms. Riviere."

Indigo narrowed her eyes, but said nothing as she followed the woman through the carpeted center of the restaurant and up the small flight of stairs at the back. She heard several men suck in a breath as she pa.s.sed, while one audibly moaned, "Oh, G.o.d, those are what I call legs," but none of it eased her temper.

Instead of showing her to a table on the upper level, the hostess took her to the door of a small private room. "I hope you enjoy your meal, Ms. Riviere," the woman said, opening the door and waiting for Indigo to enter.

"Thank you." She heard the door close behind her, but her eyes were on the man who stood beside the table dressed in a tuxedo that turned him from gorgeous and deliciously s.e.xy to devastatingly handsome-but with the wicked still in his eye.

"Wow." He ran his eyes down her body, back up, then down again. Slowly. Very, very slowly.

Every inch of her skin felt hypersensitive by the time those playful blue eyes met hers again. "I'm officially slayed," he said, placing a hand on his heart.

She would not smile. "I thought this was a party."

"Of two." Pulling out her chair, he inclined his head. "Won't you take a seat, Indigo?"

It felt strange to hear him use her full name. But deciding to take him up on his offer since the whole point of tonight was to talk to him face-to-face, she closed the distance between them and, placing her purse on the table, sat down. He eased the chair in behind her, his arms on either side of her body. "You smell . . ." A long, slow breath, as if he was savoring the scent of her.

She didn't reply, overwhelmed by the sensory impact of him. The warmth of his body lapped against her skin even as the wild male scent of him wrapped around her like an invisible caress. She almost expected him to bend his head and kiss her nape, so much so that her body tightened in antic.i.p.ation, but he released his hold on the arms of the chair and moved around to sit across from her.

"You still carry my scent in your skin."

She closed her hands hard on the chair arms to get herself under control. "It'll fade." Pain and an untamed, unnamed emotion flared within her even as she spoke.

"I've got you in my skin, too," he said in a tone that she couldn't read, before pushing a code on the little touch pad sitting to the side. "I hope you don't mind, but I placed an order for both of us earlier. I wanted to be able to talk to you without interruptions."

Unsure how to read his behavior, she said, "That's fine," and watched as the door opened to admit an attendant dressed in a smart black suit. Rolling in the serving cart, the slender man placed it quietly by the side of the table. "You're certain you do not wish for me to stay, sir?"

"No, we'll manage."

The man left with a nod to both Drew and Indigo.

Rising, Drew lifted off a cover to place a plate of delicacies in front of her. "I thought you'd like a choice of starters."

Starting to feel an odd p.r.i.c.kling at the back of her neck-as if she'd walked unawares into a trap-Indigo nonetheless picked up an artwork of a pastry and popped it into her mouth as he retrieved his own plate. The flavors exploded on her tongue in a burst of sweetness and spice. "Delicious."

Drew's smile was sharp, satisfied . . . and something else, something she couldn't quite put her finger on but that made her wolf growl in warning as he murmured, "Good."

Deciding to take the bull by the horns, she allowed him to pour the wine before saying, "So, what's this about?"

"I'm leaving the pack."

Her heart skipped a beat before she narrowed her eyes. "Uh-huh."

He gave her a crooked smile. "No joke. I spoke to WinterFire in North Dakota. They're willing to welcome me into the fold."

WinterFire was a strong, but much, much smaller pack. "And what will you do in WinterFire?" She wasn't buying it, not for an instant.