“I have someone I want you to meet.”
That request snapped her out of her daze. Shifters weren’t the raping and pillaging type, but she had a job to do. Interruptions weren’t tolerable. And she’d dallied overmuch.
“No.” A moment later, she intentionally lost her visibility and side stepped his attempt to snag her. “Better luck next time, shifter.”
She swiped a fingertip along his chin, and static tingled on her flesh. Snatching her hand back, she peered at him. What the fuck had just happened? Nothing good. In the next second, self-preservation kicked in and she fled.
Chapter Three
Gabriel sipped whiskey straight from the miniature bottle he’d snagged from the hotel mini-bar. He pushed the balcony doors open and stepped out into the humid, New Orleans, Louisiana heat. Past midnight, the revelry on Bourbon Street kicked into overdrive. Tourists swilled liquor like a cheap whore sucked cock. Fast and hard.
He hated this city with its overpowering stench of rotting garbage. The corpses buried in mausoleums irritated his oversensitive sense of smell, and the human congestion increased their risk of exposure and they couldn’t chance being discovered.
No self-respecting shifter would reside in this cesspool of iniquity. Following their quarry wherever she went, left them with no other choice but to venture within the territory lines. Being a tracker had landed him in many unsavory locales over the years. Who was he to complain over a little inconvenience when the profits were enormous? Not that Sameya would gross them a single dime after the way they ended things with Tyron Gryphon. When he’d mentioned Gryphon’s name, there hadn’t been an ounce of recognition on her features.
She did not know the man. Curious that Tyron Gryphon claimed they were more than acquaintances. Were nefarious schemes afoot? No other prospect came to mind. Griffins were known charlatans, willing to do anything to gain what they desired. If Gryphon knew how to collar a siren, then he and Maximus needed to proceed cautiously.
Sirens were known among the mystic community as ‘reapers’ because by the time mankind or fey realized they peered at a siren, it was too late, they were a goner. They could enthrall almost all species, leading to a willing demise. Sirens had been known to eradicate an entire fey breed. Or so the myth went. He’d never actually met one until tonight. And watching her do her thing to the elf…fuck it’d been hot. Only for a moment had he pondered what the fey had done to deserve his demise. In the end, he simply hadn’t cared enough to intercede.
Only a vampyr was immune to a siren’s song. That afforded Maximus a safety net, but not himself. As a tiger shifter, she could lull him as easily as another. He could track her now that he had her scent in his nostrils…and goddamn what a scent it was. But what would hunting her down gain him if she could serenade him?
If he wasn’t mistaken, she was the third part to his and Maximus’s triune. The way his body reacted to her tonight, the tiger pressing against his skin, roaring in his head to get free and claim her. He’d damn near lost control in the pub. His feline responded to her the same way it had when he’d met Maximus…with the irrational need to claim, dominate and mate.
Gabriel slammed his fingers through his hair. What a fucking nightmare. Her red streaked black hair and flawless skin were exquisite. Eyes like violets, a deep purple no one would mistake for human. And her body in those skin-fucking-tight pants—what had they been crafted from anyway?—was made to give men pleasure. Petite, but curvaceous, her hips were rounded enough he could envision holding them tight as he bent her over and fucked her.
This unexpected outcome complicated their lives further. A shifter and vampyr mating was as unheard of as a siren mating outside her species. Gabriel loved Maximus, would die for him, but Maximus had lost everything to be with him. After almost a millennium together, he still carried guilt for his lover’s loss. With the siren as a potential mate, he worried she’d mess things up rather than improve their relationship.
They’d spent six months hunting the elusive siren, wanting to catch her before Gryphon accomplished the feat. They caught small leads and followed them until the trail grew cold. A few weeks later new information would emerge, and they’d chase another lead for a couple of weeks. After it’d become obvious she didn’t know Gryphon, Gabriel wondered who’d been planting the leads. Had they really been following Sameya’s clues or following one of Gryphon’s goose chases? That the griffin might be yanking their chain pissed him off and made his tiger edgy.
To bump into her tonight by accident—or had it been a chance coincidence? His gut said Gryphon knew where she was at any given time, so why involve them? None of the turn of events made sense.