Call of the Siren(10)

Ronin moved to follow Lina to the door, but at the last second, he pierced Dagan with his gaze, ripe with menace and warning.

Point taken, Dagan silently noted. He’d do best to forget all about Lina, with her tight little curves and her smart-ass temper. Even if everything in his nature rebelled against it.

“We should all get some rest,” Keegan said once Ronin and Lina had gone.

Dagan took the hint. He finished off his whiskey and nodded at his eldest brother. “See ya tomorrow.”

As he took the elevator down to the apartment he shared with Ronin, he couldn’t help but think about Lina. They’d learned so little about her in the few short months she’d been back in Ronin’s life. All they really knew was that she was a walking conundrum—a full-blooded angel who worked as a mercenary. Since angels were peaceful by nature, the fact that she made her living kicking ass said a lot. She’d suffered some major trauma in her life.

Just like me.

Lina was like a luscious puzzle that needed to be solved.

Too bad she was the one person who was completely off-limits.

…

A car horn honked outside Lina’s bedroom window, waking Lina from her crazed, disturbing dreams. She groaned and drew her arm over her eyes to block the sunlight.

Desire was a bitch. It snuck up behind you and knocked you on your ass, and just when you were thinking of getting back up again, it crippled you with recurring images of the object of your forbidden lust getting a hand job from another woman.

“Damn it.”

Get over it, girl. Dagan is nothing to you, other than Ronin’s brother.

Yet much as she’d tried to convince herself of that, much as she’d done all she could to stay away from him these past few months, at times she found she couldn’t get the gorgeous demon out of her mind. Especially when she dreamt.

It was all his fault, of course. He was too damn funny. Too sexy. Too Dagan.

And because of that fact alone, not to mention the whole overprotective-Ronin-thing, he was unequivocally off-limits.

Lina abandoned her attempt at trying to remain asleep and rolled over to peek at the alarm clock. A quarter after two in the afternoon. She’d gotten over seven hours sleep, but it sure as hell didn’t feel like it. She threw her pillow across her room with a low growl then dragged her ass out of bed and into the shower. Today’s gig consisted of shaking down a local bar owner for his unpaid cut to the demon boss who controlled this part of town. Might as well get it over with.

After hopping out of the shower, Lina headed to her tiny closet, which in fact wasn’t so small, considering the rest of her cramped West Village apartment. She pulled out a pair of worn, ripped jeans and a black tank top with crisscrossing straps that would accommodate the growth of her wings. The spot where they grew out of her back felt itchy and tight, which meant she would need to fit in a flight tonight. The biggest negative about living in a big city like this was that the sheer number of people made it more difficult to let her wings out as often as she needed to. Thank goodness for her apartment on the top floor of her four-story building. The attached roof deck not only provided a nice view of the neighborhood, but also made the small space bearable.

Lina threw on her clothes and topped them with her leather jacket. Overkill considering it was June, but there was no better way to hide her collection of knives. Just then her cell phone rang.

She read Ronin’s name on the screen and, muttering a curse, hit the ignore button. Their relationship was complicated, to say the least. Ever since they’d found each other again, he kept pressing to renew their former brother-sisterly bond, especially after his father Mammon had broken out of prison and disappeared from the Council’s radar. He acted as if Mammon would go after her, just to spite him.

While Lina couldn’t deny that some part of her was secretly happy Ronin was so eager to reconnect with her, as the saying went: once burned, twice shy. It had killed her when he’d disappeared from her life at the age of five.

Just one more person on the long list of loved ones who’d abandoned her, in one way or another.

Lina headed for her door and threw it open…right as a man on the other side raised his hand to knock. He drew back, startled, and they blinked at each other.

She examined the stranger’s face. There was something familiar about it, about his eyes and the stark lines and angles of his lower face. But no, she couldn’t quite place it.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

His piercing gaze searched her face before he gave her a slow smile. “What’s the matter, Lina? Don’t remember me?”

Her throat closed at the sound of his familiar, scratchy voice. There was no mistaking that.