on the issue. If they couldn’t even leave the bloody city in tune with each other, what were the odds that they could accomplish their quest?
“You can flame over there and be back here again before anyone even sees you,” she pointed out.
Their eyes met and clashed, will to will. He might have argued against her wishes if he hadn’t seen a quick flare of hope in her eyes. This was important to her—more so than she was ready to admit.
“We leave afterward. No arguments.”
“None,” she promised—too easily, Rune thought, but he would hold her to her word.
Was he being foolish, giving in to her desire to see her pet to safety? Possibly. But it was more expedient to do as she asked than to stand here arguing with her. He could, of course, simply grab her and flash her out of Sedona. But they were to be mates, this hardheaded woman and him. Was he really willing to begin their time together with a war that could readily be avoided?
Rune would do whatever he had to do to make sure his witch was safe and their quest successful.
“Fine,” he muttered. “Wait here.”
He called on the flames, let them sweep over him in a cascading, living blanket of blues and reds and yellows. He looked at her through the fire, then vanished.
Chapter 13
“She was here, yes?”
“Who?” There was only one person this man could have been interested in, but she wouldn’t let him know she knew that.
He was so big, she thought wildly. He took up so much space that his very presence in the room with her felt like a direct threat. Just by breathing, he seemed to ooze menace, until Elena felt the cold chill of fear sliding into her bones.
Well over six feet tall, he had a thick, muscular build that would have made him popular on a football field. His hair was long, past his shoulders, and the color of new wheat. But it was his eyes that held her attention. Shades of pewter swirled in their depths as he stared at her, and for a moment she thought she saw flames licking at their centers.
When he smiled, it was a mere curve of his lips, as if he was mimicking something he’d seen once but didn’t completely understand.
She had no idea who he was, but clearly he was after Teresa. Elena had never seen him before and his appearance minutes after her best friend left was a bit too coincidental. But if he was after Teresa, he wouldn’t get any help from Elena. She would never betray her friend.
“Teresa Santiago,” he said. “Where is she?”
Suspicions confirmed, Elena hid her fear behind a blank mask. “I have no idea.”
“Is that right,” the man mused, running one hand across the receptionist’s desk.
Elena’s breath caught as she noticed the trail of flames following in the wake of his hand’s movement. “How—”
He shot her a look and those gray eyes of his went cold, dispassionate. Like a winter sky about to spit snow on unsuspecting people.
“You know how,” he said, walking back to her, leaving behind him a line of flames that swept across the desk to devour the paperwork stacked there.
The crackle and hiss of the spreading fire shot ribbons of sheer panic through Elena. Magic. And not the Mother-Nature-protect-the-earth kind that Teresa had been born to wield. This was the kind of threatening power that had people terrified of the supernatural. And right at that moment Elena totally understood.
She was alone with someone who could set her on fire at his whim and she had no defense. But she was still safer than her friend. This man knew that Elena was no threat to him. If, on the other hand, he caught up to Teresa, there was no telling what he would do to her. So it was up to Elena to keep that from happening. She wasn’t a witch. She wasn’t in trouble with the MPs or the Bureau of Witchcraft. But she had the distinct feeling that this man had nothing to do with the feds.
He was clearly magical himself, so whatever his reason for looking for Teresa, it wasn’t to lock her away in prison. There was something else going on here. Elena wondered if Teresa even knew that she had more to worry about than the federal agents assigned to track her down.
Once she got out of this, Elena promised herself, she’d find a way to warn Teresa about the newest danger. And