Chapter 4
Ten minutes later Flynn was sitting on a hard wooden stool in Kira’s safe house, with her surgical kit spread out on the rickety excuse for a dining table.
Safe “house” was a stretch. It was a shabby room with a kitchenette, in a seedy hotel that seemed to cater to long-term renters who had very little money and probably lived on the wrong side of the law.
Not that there was anything wrong with that. Flynn had been on the wrong side of the law most of his life, and he’d lived in worse places than this.
It was almost a cliché: sagging double bed with a stained, threadbare coverlet on it; ancient wallpaper with water stains, peeling in the corner; harsh overhead light with a cracked glass bowl fixture.
Tiny bathroom where even if you bothered to scrub, you’d never get the rust stains out of the sink or the bathtub.
He watched Kira, her face taut with concentration as she worked on his wound. Blood ran down his arm, and she wiped it away with practiced hands.
He wondered if she lived here all the time. If she did, she had very few possessions and no damn life. There was nothing personal in the room; nothing decorative or even entertaining. No books, no photos, no TV.
Maybe it was just a bolt hole—someplace to go when she needed to hide out for a bit.
From all the things chasing her?
He clenched his jaw as she made an incision in his shoulder with a razor-sharp scalpel. Now she was spreading the edges with some kind of stainless steel torture device while probing the wound for the bullet still lodged in there. Nobody could say she wasn’t prepared for any eventuality, even impromptu surgery.
He admired that in a woman.
She dug deeper into his flesh and he flinched, air hissing through his teeth. “Shit,” he muttered. “Mother Teresa, you ain’t.”
She just rolled her eyes. “Stop whining. Who knew a great big lion like you would be such a pansy?”
He just muttered “fuck, fuck, fuck” under his breath while she dug for the bullet. Only because he was pretty sure saying “fuck you” to a woman holding a scalpel was a bad plan.
“What makes you think I’m a lion?” he said instead.
She gave a faint snort. “All the shifters in Nashville know about the mighty Flynn and his Bad Blood Crew.”
He didn’t like that. He liked being under the radar, nobody knowing who he was. Ghosting through life.
But too much had happened to the Bad Bloods, and too many people had been involved. The Nashville wolf pack, and the Silverlake wolves, who lived in Idaho but were known all over the country for their Enforcement work.
Hell, his crew had fought the Nashville wolves in a battle that split the pack and ended with half of it moving to Idaho to live next door to the Silverlakes.
Everybody had heard about that shit. But he didn’t care about that right now. He wanted to know about her.
“Yeah?” he countered. “Does everybody know about you, too?”
“Nobody knows about me, Lion,” she said. “I like to keep it that way.”
She wiped away more blood, inadvertently touching the wound with her bare fingers. Flynn felt a jolt, and blue sparks flew into the air.
He jerked away. “What the fuck was that?” he asked, instantly suspicious. “That was magic.”
“Healing magic,” she said. She closed her fist, looking upset. “I usually don’t have any trouble controlling it. Sorry.”
That was a lie; he could hear it in her voice.
“Didn’t anybody ever tell you not to magic people without their consent?”
“I said I was sorry,” she said tightly. “Sheesh, pansy lion. It can’t hurt you.”
“Lie,” he said softly. She raised her eyes, meeting his gaze.
“Do you want me to take that bullet out of your shoulder or not?”
He was tempted to just leave it in there. Tank or Jasmin could dig it out when he got home. But there was something compelling in her eyes.
Something that made him want to trust her.
He should be trusting his paranoia, and the instincts that had kept him alive for almost twenty years with no one at his back. Instead, he was filled with feelings—desire, the urge to protect, the need to learn everything about her.
The need to make her happy. Fuck.
That had to be some kind of spell. But somehow he didn’t care. Slowly, he turned his shoulder so she could work on him again.
He still felt twitchy, like all his nerve endings were misfiring. It wasn’t the bullet; he’d been shot more times than he could count.
It was the adrenalin, he kept telling himself. And his attraction to her.
To distract himself, he talked. “Are you sure those hellhounds can’t track us here?”
“No one’s found this place so far. But there’s no such thing as completely safe. You should know that.”
He sure as hell did.
Finally, after gouging around with forceps like a Roto-Rooter technician cleaning a drain, she pulled the bullet out and dropped it in a small stainless steel bowl with a “plink.” He felt the flow of blood increase again, running down his back and soaking into the waistband of his cargo pants.
This was why he usually wore black, when he wasn’t wearing jeans. No worries about getting the bloodstains all the way out.
She caught most of the blood with a wad of gauze and wiped it away. “This needs a couple of stitches,” she said.
“Nah, it’ll be fine.” He was twitching all over now. He had to get away from this woman, and the effect she had on him. “Just give me a band-aid.”
The problem was, he didn’t want to get away. Before he could stop himself, he added, “Or you can kiss it and make it better, if you want.”
He shouldn’t have said that. The thought of her lips on his skin made his dick jump. Shit.
She said, “I still have all my weapons on me. Many of them are sharp. And yet here you are, making inappropriate sexual advances.”
“Am I?” He turned and raised his eyes to hers. He wanted her to feel the craziness he was feeling. His nerves were buzzing, and his blood pounded in his temples.
They stared at each other for a timeless moment.
Then, suddenly, he was on his feet, his lips crashing into hers. The momentum backed them up a couple of steps, until her back was against the wall.
Inside him, his lion roared.
He half-expected her to stab him in the neck with the scalpel—hell, he was itching for another fight. Something. He wanted to rage at her; he wanted to force her to tell him what the fuck she was doing to him.
He wanted to plunder her body and make her scream his name.
After one shocked moment, her mouth opened to his, both surrendering and demanding. She pressed herself against him hungrily, meeting his strength and passion with their equal match.
He could feel the heat coming off her body, feel her buzz of adrenalin as if it were his own. He could feel each of her breaths, every heartbeat, the blood pulsing through her veins.
His lion wanted to close its jaws around her neck, bite down and feel the blood.
He wanted to fight, and kill, and protect—and he wanted to throw her down on the bed and rip his claws through the leather on her body, exposing her naked before him.
He wanted to ravish her and worship her all at the same time. The sensations, her scent, almost made him dizzy. He pressed his mouth frantically against hers, pulling her to him, possessing and begging at the same time.
Fuck. He was shaking.
Flynn broke the kiss and stepped back, staring at her. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, almost expecting there to be blood there.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing to me?”
She licked her lips, staring into his eyes. There were whole universes in hers, begging for him to explore them.
The silence stretched out. Finally, she said the last thing he could have possibly imagined.
“I’m Princess Kiraset Lael of the Draken House of Al-Maddeiri.” She placed her closed fist over her heart and inclined her head formally. “Your promised mate.”
The room went dead silent.
Oh, hell fucking no.
Just. No.
Flynn snarled, “I don’t know who the hell you really are, but your research sucks. The entire Draken House of Al-Maddeiri was wiped out almost twenty years ago.”
She shook her head. “I survived.”
“You’re a fucking liar. The princess is dead. I have no destined mate. And if I did, I wouldn’t fucking care. I left that world behind a long damn time ago, and I’m never going back. So you can sell your story to somebody, else, sweetheart. I’m not buying. I’m out of here.”
He backed away, infuriated, and turned to gather up his vest and his weapons.
She put a hand out. “Flynn—”
Before he could say, “Get the hell away from me,” his phone started beeping. Not a call or a text. The alert tone that told him when he was in range of some kind of signal transmitter.
Like a hidden wireless camera. Or a bug.
He yanked the phone out of his pocket and stared at it. In seconds, he had her back against the wall—but this time her arms were pinned over her head, and his forearm was at her throat.
“Where’s the transmitter? And who’s it transmitting to?” he snarled.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He could see the genuine surprise in her face. “Now let me go.”
He gazed into her eyes, then let her go and backed off. He made a circuit of the room, scanning for the signal. The alert intensified when he got to the table—and the medical supplies.
Oh, fuck. He held the scanner over the stainless steel bowl that held the bullet. “It’s a tracer bullet,” he said. “It’s transmitting our location. We’re blown.”
Her eyes snapped wide. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now.”
Too late.
There were heavy footsteps in the hallway, and then the door splintered inward.
Hellhounds.