Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder
22
Fuck it all to hell. Someone else was after them. Not a surprise, really. They’d made a lot of enemies in their time. What it was, though, was a needless complication. Something to split their focus and exploit their vulnerabilities. Elijah didn’t like it. He didn’t trust it. And from the look of Jack when the room cleared, neither did he.
“Dammit,” he cried, tossing a chair across the room with a violent thrust of magic. “I really liked that property. And now I have to sell it off.”
Right. So much for being on the same page.It was a cold-slap reminder of just how much Jack had in assets, in ready cash. Of just how different their worlds were no matter how united they were in running Third Shift. Jack was old money. Silver cuff links for every suit. Real estate in four major cities. “You can buy another,” Elijah pointed out, tacking on a caustic “your lordship” for good measure.
“Sorry.” His old friend flinched, the power still crackling from his fingertips. “I deserved that,” he acknowledged.
That and more. But they’d have to put a pin in the ongoing discussion of Jack’s white privilege. There were much bigger fish to fry. Probably sodding Jaws or one of those kaiju from Pacific Rim. Elijah tapped the tablet in front of him, pulling up the schematics for the riding school, already scrubbed of any evidence that the hit squad had been there. And already sanitized of 3S’s presence, too. “What are we going to do about the breach, mate?”
“You are going to this auction.” Jackson grimaced, dragging both hands through his absurdly well-groomed hair. “I will worry about the breach on Safe House 13. How the hell did it get compromised? Are you sure you weren’t followed?”
There was no way to be one hundred percent sure of that. Between hackable surveillance drones and skyborne shape-shifters. But Elijah was reasonably certain he and Meghna had done the job of covering their tracks on the way from Connecticut to South Brooklyn. Meghna. “Speaking of compromised…” It was his turn to wince.
The tension drained from Jack’s shoulders at that. He tipped back his head and laughed, all bright eyes and deep dimples. Showing off why they’d all nicknamed him “Pretty Boy” in the desert. “She’s got you good, huh?”
“Up to my neck,” Elijah confessed all too readily. He felt no shame in admitting it. There were worse things a man could say he’d done than fall too hard for a beautiful woman.
They didn’t have time to dissect his love life any more than they had time to go over the advantages of Jack’s whiteness. But Elijah appreciated the breath. The pause. Even the laugh at his expense. Outside the windows, conveniently unfrosted after the briefing, he could see Meghna on the floor. Speaking to Finn and Grace and Joaquin. Charming them, no doubt. Like she charmed everyone. The gorgeous girl at the party. He’d followed her into the closet at the Manhattan Grand thinking he’d hooked her, but she’d hooked him.
“This too much for you, Lije?” Jack grinned at him. Smug bastard. He had a lively public social life dating actresses and pop stars that landed him in the gossip columns every other week, but no one he’d ever felt seriously about. He could cast stones from his glass house.
“No, it’s not too much for me. And she’s no threat to us,” he assured Jackson of the question he knew better than to even ask. As reckless as he’d been, as stupid as lust and other things he couldn’t name had made him, Elijah was wise enough not to bring a powerful enemy right into the heart of Third Shift. He’d given Finn the same benefit of the doubt when it came to bringing in Tavi Estrada. Maybe they led with their hearts along with their heads, but their hearts seldom steered them wrong. “She’s a good person. Even though she doesn’t want to be.”
Because that was Meg, wasn’t it? His ruthless assassin, his single-minded seductress. She thought fighting for justice meant she didn’t have to fight for herself, for her integrity. But it was there anyway. Shining so brightly. She was brilliant and strong and kind. Sharp edges and soft curves. He had only just begun to know her, and he wasn’t done learning. What made her laugh? What made her sing? How did she look beneath a man when she trusted him completely? He might die during this mission—as he could during any mission—and if he didn’t find out, he would be dying in vain.
“Christ.” Jackson exhaled loudly, shaking his head. “You’re a mess, Lije. I hope I’m never where you are.” And wasn’t that a surefire way to ensure that he’d be exactly where Elijah was soon enough?
He knew better than to point that out. Whenever Jack’s number came up, he’d learn for himself. How swift and hard the descent was. How bloody beautiful the view was. How once you were in it, you never wanted to leave. It was paradise. Like the islands. And just as susceptible to natural disasters. To supernatural disasters. He’d have to be prepared to lose Meghna and prepared to fight for her. And he was more than ready for it.
Elijah swiped through the mission files on his tablet until he reached the coordinates for their next destination. The building layout, already marked for entry and exit points thanks to Joaquin’s speedy work. No hotels this time. No research facilities. This was one of Mirko’s holdings through a shell corporation. A private hunting lodge and event center in the Finger Lakes region. One road in. Surrounded by woods. Wired for electric but not internet or Wi-Fi. Minimal cell towers in the area. It screamed “horror movie.” Even came with its own vampire, if you factored in Estrada. Anyone willing to go out there with a bunch of other criminal types had to be off their rocker. Or just that desperate for what the serum could do.
Neither option worked in Third Shift’s favor. Which fell in line with their run of rotten luck so far. Normally, their ops ran like a well-oiled machine. Both stateside and overseas. They’d sent JP on several short-burst missions abroad while his case dominated the news, and he and his teammates had reported no hiccups, no deviations from SOP. So why now? Why so many fuckups so close to home? Elijah couldn’t help but think their unknown quantity—whoever had sent the gunmen to take out him and Meg—had something to do with it.
“Someone doesn’t want us going after Mirko and his lot,” he concluded aloud. Someone with even more power than an international arms dealer who had a small cache of missiles and chemical weapons at his disposal. Someone for whom the best possible outcome was that shape-shifter serum going to the highest bidder. “I think yesterday was their way of letting us know it.”
A grunt of displeasure sounded from the other side of the conference table, where Jack had been busying himself righting the furniture his little sorcery fit had upturned. He popped around to Elijah’s seat, frowning down at the blueprints still displayed on his screen. “So there’s a bigger predator in this food chain. First the local bosses and vors like Vasiliev. Then Aston. Then…who? How far up does this go?” His brows winged together as he cursed under his breath. For all that he was high society, he had a mouth like he’d grown up in a gutter. “I can’t even go to my DoD contacts with this. It’s too sensitive.”
“The call might be coming from inside the house,” Lije agreed. “Or the Senate.” It would’ve been a joke but for the fact that Congress was loaded with duplicitous arseholes who wanted nothing more than to finish the destruction they’d put into motion in 2016. And when you tossed in Homeland Security, the CIA, and the Supernatural Regulation Bureau? No matter the secret committee Jackson himself reported to, it was entirely too dangerous to let on to anyone that Third Shift was under attack. They had to proceed with extreme caution.
* * *
It felt almost anticlimactic to return to Finn’s underground quarters when the meeting broke up. Or maybe it just felt natural—normal—for the three of them to go home. Grace couldn’t explain why the inanity of it bothered her. Watching first Finn, then Nate cross the threshold, then take off their shoes in concert and set them in the rack in the entryway. Maybe because Finn had been gone with Estrada and then gone to Safe House 13. And Nate had been avoiding them for more than twice that amount of time. This was like picking up a conversation they’d started weeks ago after a long interruption. Only none of them spoke.
They hadn’t said a word to each other after Meghna broke off from the group and went back to the conference room. As they took the elevator together, each processing their respective thoughts. A wonder, truly, considering how rarely Finn was silent. But he hadn’t been himself for a few days now, had he? She was used to making diagnoses, to making assumptions, but that one felt a bit convenient. A bit selfish. Because there was another, equally reasonable explanation. This was just a side of him she’d never seen. A side he’d kept hidden for decades.
And he was sharing it with her and Nate now. As he stripped off his jacket and then his shirt. As he went for the tie Nate had loosened at some point in the past twenty-four hours—the buttons he’d undone while keeping Grace company in the med bay—and finished the job. Finn was as talented and efficient at undressing other people as he was at dressing himself. Though he did pause to press one kiss to the bared column of Nate’s throat. And another to the inside of his wrist. When the men were both as naked as the days they’d been born, Finn finally broke the awkwardly comfortable silence. “Who’s up for a shower? The hotter the better.”
Grace didn’t have to be told twice. She’d been on her feet for what felt like a week. Her fingers still felt stiff from wielding the scalpel and tweezers to take the bullets out of Meghna. Her shoulders ached. Maybe her heart ached, too. She whipped her clothes off, left her bra and underwear on the floor alongside Finn’s silk boxers and Nate’s more practical briefs. She didn’t wait for them to precede her this time. She took the lead, heading down the hall to the bedroom and the en suite, putting up her hair as she walked. Finn kept silk wraps and shower caps for her visits, and she helped herself to the latter from the drawers beneath the dual sinks before continuing deeper into the master bath.
Once in the open-plan shower that could easily fit six people—should Finn ever feel so ambitious—she turned the taps, stepped under one of three rainfall showerheads, and let the steam rise up the tiles. God, that feels good. Her muscles nearly wept from the relief of the deliciously hot water and the perfectly pressured spray. And then they did cry…from the sweet, sharp, sensation of Finn’s lips on the back of her neck. Her shoulder. The meaty flesh of her upper arm.
“Love bites.” He chuckled as shivers of pleasure danced along her skin, at odds with the temperature of the water.
“Do you need to feed?” she murmured, tipped her head back, offering her neck.
“No. I just need you, Grace of my heart,” he said, pulling her back against him. “You and this other one here.”
“Can’t scrub your back without help, huh?” Nate drawled, leaning against the dark-tiled wall, beneath the second showerhead. His prematurely gray hair darkened under the water, matching the dark whorls of hair on his chest and between his legs. And he looked to Grace like some sort of lean, long-limbed water spirit. He’d let Finn take off his clothes readily enough, but now he was holding him accountable. See us. Hear us. Acknowledge us, he seemed to be saying without actually using those words.
“Can’t do anything without help,” Finn bantered back as he stroked her hips and the tops of her thighs. As if he was reacquainting himself with her body. His touch was as exploratory as it was sensual. “Can’t do anything without you. Without either of you,” he added, mouth hot—hotter than the water—along the shell of her ear.
Grace wanted nothing more than to surrender to that mouth. To that seductive whisper. But she couldn’t shake off the unease from earlier—the idea that they’d skipped things, fast-forwarded past the problem points in a movie. “Is that your guilty conscience talking?”
“I don’t have a conscience,” Finn lied cheerfully.
“Objection, Your Honor,” Nate said, crossing the few feet between them. Coming close, so he stood just a breath away. “Witness is perjuring himself.”
“I am not.” She felt the outraged huff on her skin. More for effect than any actual release of air. “I’m not that flexible, for one.”
Oh, there was the Finn they both recognized. Shaking with mirth at his own joke. Blue eyes bright when she twisted to meet them. Grace scowled at him. “Be serious first,” she said. “Be honest. Then we’ll let you play.”
“Ah, Grace. I told you before. I’m always honest with you. Tav doesn’t have a hold on me. Not like you think. Not like this.” He squeezed her in a half hug, their wet, naked skin slicking together. “And spending time with him didn’t bring anything back but regret that I chose to change but he didn’t.”
“What about me, Conlan? Where do I fit in?” Nate demanded, as was his right.
“Right here, I hope.” Finn reached out with his other arm, obliterating that tiny but pivotal inch that held Nate apart, pulling him flush against them both. So she felt his erection hard along her side. “If that’s where you want to be.”
“Grace?” Nate tilted her chin toward him with two fingers. “What about you? Don’t let him steamroll you into this just because he always does. Do you want this?”
He was so sweet. So gallant. Looking out for her even after their talk on the way back from Queensboro. Even after she’d assured him she knew what she had with Finn. Grace had half a mind to bite his fingertips. She licked them instead. “What is it that you said to me? I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” Maybe not the exact words, but the same sentiment.
They were enough. For now at least. For Nate’s mouth on hers and on Finn’s. For too many soap suds and a few bumped noses. For hands and dicks and gasps and moans. If none of them managed to say “I love you”…well, that was all right. That was for a different day in front of the judge. A different day in what she was coming to see as their lives from here on out.
The conversation they’d begun all those weeks ago wasn’t over. It was just beginning.