“Right. Talk to me, not with me. You’d already made up your mind. I’m not your pet. I’m your partner. I have a say.”
“You didn’t give me a chance to bring it up,” she repeated obstinately.
Elijah reined in his temper with effort. “And this morning? When we were working on the composition of the teams? You could have talked about it then. I asked you.”
She glared, her face a mask of righteous fury. “We already had other plans by then.”
“Did we? We never talked about the first plans. I figured we’d be getting around to that after we got the teams dispatched.”
“Wel , you figured wrong.”
“And before?” he countered tightly, having trouble deciding if he should throw her out or throw her on the bed and f**k her. “You want to toss our deal in my face, let’s talk about it. You agreed to stay with me. Then you made plans that reneged on our agreement.”
“I agreed to stay with you while we investigated lycans who might possibly be involved in Char’s death,” she shot back. “Last night, that wasn’t the immediate item on the agenda. The hunt was, and I made a strategic tactical decision.”
“And how were you planning on feeding?”
Her hands fisted. “You can’t feed anyone now. You’re stil recovering.”
“Coward.”
“Fuck you.” She stalked closer.
“Is that why you’re here, Vashti? Wanna get laid? That’s al you want from me, right? And information.”
“Whatever. The reason I’m here is obvious.”
“Not to me. If you wanted to chew me a new one, you could’ve done it on the phone. If you wanted to deal with the business in Huntington, I could’ve met you there tomorrow.”
Her chin lifted and her arms crossed. “I like to deal with things directly.”
He barked out a dry laugh. “Wel , you’ve accomplished that. Now you can go.”
“I’m not done.”
“Oh?” Deliberately baiting her, Elijah pul ed out the chair tucked into the desk and sat down. “Then by al means, go ahead.”
She stared at him for a long moment, a muscle ticcing in her jaw. “Why didn’t you just ask me what was going on?”
“Why didn’t I ask you to talk about something you went out of your way not to talk about?”
She threw up her hands. “For god’s sake, the plans changed. It was a moot point.”
“Not to me it wasn’t. You want to put distance between us. This was a way to do it, until I came up with information that was more valuable than recovering your skewed peace of mind.”
“You’re making this personal when it’s not.”
“The hel it’s not.” He’d had enough. Irritated with himself as much as with her, he hit her with the truth. “You risked your life and a Sentinel war to save me. You flew fourteen hundred miles just to bitch at me. We’ve been f**king each other’s brains out—as you so eloquently put it—for the last few days. Don’t tel me it’s not personal when you decide we’re better off working on opposite sides of the country!”
Her chest heaved with angry breaths. “There are bigger things going on here than whether or not you got your feelings hurt over a reasonable decision. It doesn’t make sense to tie up both of us together. We’re too valuable. We need to spread some of that muscle around.”
“Fine. Done.” He stood. “Get the f**k out of my room.”
“You’re not throwing me out! What about our deal?”
Elijah caught her elbow and dragged her to the door. “I release you from the deal. I’l get your damned information and you’l have it as soon as I do.”
“I want to go with you.”