Nightbred(47)

He bowed. “As you say, my lady.” When he straightened, he drew the short sheath containing his sgian dubh from his boot. “I would ask you to ease my mind and carry this.” He offered it to her. “Pistols require bullets,” he explained. “A blade does not.”

Sam curled her fingers around the Celtic knots carved into the stag-horn handle, and drew out the blade. It had been honed to razor sharpness, and forged from folded bands of copper and steel, which would make it effective against mortal or Kyn. “Thank you, Aldan.”

“My lady.” He nodded and went back to the cleanup.

Sam resheathed the small dagger and tucked it into her own boot before she headed for the lift, which she took to the first floor. As soon as the doors opened, music blasted in her face and red lights danced before her eyes. She wove through the milling patrons, wishing as she did that she could pull a giant plug and shut the whole place down.

Burke’s office adjoined Lucan’s, but she found it empty. Then she heard a low moaning sound on the other side of the door between the two, and kicked it open.

The love of her immortal life sat in his custom-made executive chair. On his lap sat a pretty twentysomething with a killer tan, a tiny black dress, a white silk bandeau around a messy beehive of raven hair.

Lucan lifted his face and had the incredible balls to look relieved. “Samantha.” The girl slid to the floor with another low moan as he stood. “You are—”

“Pissed off.” She went to the girl and helped her up. “Look at me.” After she checked her pupils, Sam removed the bandeau, folded it over, and pressed it against her throat. “Did you have sex with her?”

“No. I had no desire to—”

“You can shut up now.” Sam shed enough scent to blot out Lucan’s, and told the girl, “Ask the doorman to get you a taxi, and take it home. Forget everything that happened here.”

“Doorman. Home. Forget.” Like a sleepwalker, the girl drifted out of the office.

Sam looked down to see she stood in the exact spot where Lucan had kissed her for the first time. Or at least she assumed she did; after he’d felt her up, he’d wiped the memory of it from her then-mortal mind.

“Our blood stores have been destroyed,” Lucan said. “I haven’t fed in three nights.”

She stared at the little bulge Aldan’s blade made in the side of her trouser leg. “I know.”

“Samantha.” He came up behind her. “Why won’t you look at me?”

He had such a beautiful, seductive voice. Even before she’d fallen in love with him, Sam had been entranced by it. He had a huge vocabulary, which he loved to use, and could converse better than anyone she’d ever known, including Herbert Burke and Ernesto Garcia, two of the most educated men she knew.

Sometimes, after they made love, Lucan would tell her stories about some of the places he’d seen during his travels, and she enjoyed that almost as much as the sex.

Burke came through from his office. “My lady.” His voice chilled a few degrees when he added, “My lord.”

Sam made herself look at the lying bastard she loved. “All right, start talking.”

“Herbert.” Lucan watched Samantha’s face. “Tell my sygkenis what I intended to do when I left the stronghold tonight, and what time I departed.”

My lady.

“You left at seven so you might intercept the man who sent flowers to her office,” Burke said stiffly. “I believe you also intended to kill him.”

“That is the last thing I remember,” Lucan said. “When I came back to consciousness, it was midnight and I was in Palm Beach. My Ferrari had been driven into the sand and left to sink in it, hardly something I would do to my favorite vehicle. But I could not remember driving there or anything that may have occurred after I left the stronghold.”

“That’s convenient.” She should have been angry with his bullshit excuse, but it added another piece to the puzzle. “So you’re suffering from amnesia.”

“I haven’t forgotten a thing. What I lost was time.” He stretched out the fingers of one hand. “Five hours, gone.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that.”

Something about his voice. It had started to chew on her nerves, this feeling. About his words. About what he called me.

“My lord,” Burke said tentatively, “when you awoke in the Ferrari, were you injured?”

Lucan opened his jacket. “It appears someone slashed my chest.

“Jamys did that,” Sam murmured, distracted by the two words that were bouncing back and forth in her head. My lady. Why were they so important?