Dangerous Games (Riley Jenson Guardian #4)(27)

“Precisely.” He smiled and threw me a set of keys. “Seeing Cole drove you here, take my car. But I want it back in one piece.”
“You give me your keys, you take your chances.” I grinned, tossed them lightly in the air, then headed out.
Night’s curtain had well and truly fallen, and though the air was cold, the night was clear. The moon hung fat and yellow in the sky, not quite full but not far off it. The heat of it sung through my veins, a surging desire that was only going to get worse over the coming nights. It was, I thought grimly, probably the best time to get landed with the job of fucking a bad man.
And when I finished doing him tonight, I was going to ring Kellen. I had a bad feeling I’d need some tender care and gentle loving to wipe the foulness of Jin’s touch from my mind.
I found Jack’s car and headed into the city. It was a Monday night, so the streets were quiet and parking easy to find. I grabbed my bag and headed back up the street toward the club, discovering the number he’d given me was actually that of a multistory building and the club was on the nineteenth floor.
Which was pushing my phobia to the limit.
I took a deep breath and forced a smile on my face as I approached the guard. “Hi,” I said, acting all cheery even though my stomach was doing a rebel dance. “I’m here for the Hunter’s Club.”
“You got a membership pass?”
“No.”
“Can’t get in without a membership pass.”
Obviously, this security guard wasn’t paid to be helpful. Either that, or he was just bored and having himself a little fun. “My name is Riley Jenson. I’m here as a guest of Jin Lu.”
He glanced down at a sheet sitting on his desk, then picked up a book and placed it on the desk. “Need you to sign in there,” he said, pointing to a space. “And write your name after it.”
I did. He took the book, got a pass out of his drawer, writing a number beside my name before handing it to me. “This will work the elevator and get you past the foyer doors. You’ll need to return this pass and sign out when you finish.”
I nodded, grabbed the pass, and headed toward the elevator. The swift journey upward had a tremor running through my limbs, but thankfully my stomach decided to stay where it was. The entrance to the club was all gold-and-white luxury, the carpet plush enough that I had to resist the temptation to rip off my shoes and run barefoot through it. But I couldn’t help a wry smile when I spotted the sign emblazoned over the front doors. Not only did it say “Hunter’s Club” in great big fancy letters, but it had “humans only” underneath it.
Charming.
Humans were still trying to legislate a rule that would outlaw the “no-human” rule in the werewolf clubs, but it was just fine and dandy for them to outlaw us willy-nilly. The sooner we got some nonhuman representation in the government ranks, the better.
The doors swished open as I approached, and in that instant, I saw the sensors lining the doorframe. They really were serious about the club being humans only.
And it meant if I went through, I would be outed as something other than human.
I swore under my breath and glanced at the blonde manning the reception desk. She was one of those sexy athletic types guaranteed to set on edge the teeth of any normally built woman, but more important, she hadn’t appeared to notice that I’d stopped short of the doorway and was just standing there. She wasn’t wearing a nanowire—unless they were now making them in designer earrings—and there didn’t look to be any other psychic deadeners in the room. Not that they could actually stop me anymore.
I blew out a breath, then opened several shields and let my mind sweep into hers, taking control in an instant. I might not be able to “sense” humans, but I sure as hell could control them. I made her turn off the alarm, figuring the club would be safe for the few hours I was here. And just in case someone higher up noticed, I had her pull the plug out of the wall. That was the trouble with sensor units installed after the building had been completed—a careless movement could very easily break their connection. Which is why many of them were now being directly wired into power mains.I released my hold on her, then went through the door and approached the desk. I still had a telepathic finger on the pulse, so to speak, just to hear her thoughts and ensure there were no lingering doubts about what had just happened.
She blinked, like a dreamer waking from a dream, then gave me a bright smile.
“Well, hello there,” she said, her welcoming tone as fake as her tan. “New to the club, are we?”
“We are.” I showed her the pass. “I’m a guest of Jin Lu’s.”
Something flickered in her eyes—an emotion too fast to pin down—though the smile never dimmed. But her thoughts gave away what her eyes only hinted at—that her opinion of Jin was low. Indeed, she thought he was an arrogant pig who got altogether too rough during sex. She’d even had to lie to her boyfriend because the bruises had taken forever to fade.
Obviously, she wasn’t a big believer in monogamy while in a relationship. I restrained my smile and accepted the pen she gave me, signing in a second time.
“I’ll just call him,” she said, handing over a locker key. “If you’d like to wait on the sofa.”
I glanced at the sofa, then at the wall of glass beyond it, noting with some pleasure it looked out over the main gym area. There were lots of men inside, working out on various machines, skin gleaming with sweat and muscles rippling. As views went, it was pretty damn fine, and I walked over to make the most of it.
Jin’s name was announced over the speaker system. Five minutes later, awareness raced across my skin. Though I couldn’t hear any footsteps—probably because of the thick carpet—I knew it was Jin. The heat and scent of him called to the wildness within, even from a distance.
I glanced over my shoulder. He strode toward me, wearing black gym pants and a black tank top. His skin gleamed with sweat and heat, and he looked sexier than any man had a right to. Desire surged, but my gaze caught his and it fled as quickly as it had risen. His dark eyes gleamed with a ferocity I’d never seen before—a ferocity that was both ancient and inhuman. As if, in that one brief moment, I was viewing his soul and it was nothing that belonged in this time.
Nothing that belonged on this earth.
Then he blinked and smiled, and the strangeness was gone, leaving me wondering if communicating with the dead woman had shaken me more than I’d presumed. I mean, Jin mightn’t be human, per se, but he had to be at least a subspecies or some sort of nonhuman. Didn’t he? What else was there?
A comment Quinn had made a few months ago floated through my thoughts. He’d said that while he was raised as a human, technically he was only partially so. That the other half of his being was something that no longer existed. 
If a half-breed from a race that no longer roamed this earth could survive through the ages, then other, darker things surely could.
The chill that raced through my soul this time was one of foreboding. I didn’t want to know about those other darker things. I really didn’t. But I had a bad, bad feeling that not only was I fucking one of them, I was stepping deeper into their world the longer I stayed by Jin’s side.
He stopped and leaned forward to kiss me, and it was all I could do not to recoil. His mouth was cool and quick against mine and, for that, I was grateful. Right then, anything more passionate would have been too much.
“Hi,” he said softly. “Nice to see you again.”
He smelled of musk and man and dark spices—all scents normally guaranteed to set my hormones a-dancing. And admittedly, despite the chills and foreboding, desire did stir. I was a wolf, after all, and danger was an aphrodisiac.
But running underneath his lust-worthy scent was a trace of sex and blood, mixed in with a hint of jasmine. I couldn’t help wondering if his exertion had been more the rough horizontal kind—involving straps, whips, and naked, perfumed flesh—rather than mere gym work.
“Looks like I’ve come here at a bad time.”
He shrugged. “There’s a gym and spa special running at the moment, so we’ve a bigger crowd than normal tonight. I’m afraid I can’t give you that massage I promised, but I’ll get Terri to start you off with the treatments, and I’ll see if I can grab a break in the next twenty minutes or so.”
“Look, if you’d rather I leave and come back—”
“No.”
His grip tightened on my arm and the alien light gleamed briefly, starkly, in his dark eyes.
“I have no idea how long I’ll be,” he continued, “but I’d rather you wait.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
He nodded and pulled me forward, kissing me hard. It was very much a signal of intent and part of me quailed—if only because it suggested that last night was only a teaser. That tonight I’d get a more in-depth introduction to his darker needs and desires.
How far was I willing to go for the sake of the Directorate and tracking down a killer?
I didn’t really know anymore, and that was perhaps the scariest thing of all. If my determination not to do what the Directorate and Jack wanted me to do had slipped so much in a matter of months, what would I be like a year down the track? Would I become the willing fighting and fucking machine Jack wanted me to be? Was it as inevitable as the cycle of the moon?