Where Winter Finds You (Black Dagger Brotherhood #18)- J.R Ward Page 0,49

and took her hand, giving it a squeeze. “You like quiet spaces.”

“Well, quieter places than a club, for sure.” She let her head fall back on the rest and smiled at him. “And…”

“And what.”

She just shook her head. Then she brought his hand up and kissed his knuckles. “What about your night? How’s things at your work?”

“No one got shot, as far as I know.”

“So you weren’t at the club?” Abruptly, she sat up and twisted toward him. “Not that I’m checking up on you. Just to make that perfectly clear—”

“You can put a tracking chip in my head if you want. It doesn’t bother me. But nah, I just had some things to arrange outside of there.”

As they continued along, they passed by strip malls of shops. An office park. A supermarket, gas station, DMV facility, and a real estate developer’s complex. After that, the zoning turned residential, and the neighborhoods were modest but tidy, the houses cheerfully lit for the season with lots of light strings on eaves, and blow-up Santas in yards, and Christmas trees in bay windows.

“This is a beautiful car,” she commented.

“I bought it on a whim.” He rubbed his thumb on the inside of her wrist. “I had a different one that was much more practical. But I really like to drive, you know? It calms my mind. I realize I could dematerialize places a lot quicker, but sometimes, it’s good to take the roads.”

“I couldn’t agree more. Do you mind if play with the radio?”

“Help yourself.”

As she went through his favorites, his brows popped when she just kept going, skipping the R&B and hip-hop stations he’d saved and going into ’70s on 7.

“Do you like Led Zeppelin?” she asked him.

“Is that who this is?”

“ ‘Ten Years Gone.’ It’s one of their best.” She increased the volume. “I love this song.”

The words rebounded around the interior, and as he listened to them, something rippled through the center of his chest. Meanwhile, she sang along, every lyric something she knew by heart, and her pitch was perfect.

The sense of being stretched in uncomfortable ways made him squirm in his seat, his muscles tightening up to the point where he had to consciously loosen things or he wasn’t going to be able to drive right.

As soon as the song was over, he toggled back on the volume. “I didn’t know you could sing.” He also thought she was into his kind of music. From when he’d taken her to Storytown. “Did you take lessons?”

She laughed. “Oh, I don’t have that kind of voice. Wait, like voice lessons, right?”

“Yes. When did you learn to sing?”

“I guess I’ve always known how to. It’s natural. But I’m a shower singer, not anyone who belongs onstage. Can you imagine?”

Trez forced a laugh as he found himself internally arguing with her statements. She had never sung, and certainly not to Robert Plant, and of course she had never taken lessons. Before Phury had become the Primale, she hadn’t been allowed outside of the Sanctuary, and afterward, all of the Chosen had been busy enough just getting used to life on this side. Voice lessons were waaaaay down on that list of things to do.

Although she had played the piano, he supposed.

Still, as for knowing all the words to that song? Maybe she had recently listened to it. Maybe she was just really quick about learning lyrics—as opposed to having heard it since the thing had first been released. In the seventies.

Trez moved around in his seat—and this time, it wasn’t because of any arousal issue.

Meanwhile, his female glanced through the car windows. “You know, I’ve never seen this part of town before.”

“It’s really nice. Really safe.”

“Then again, I haven’t been most places in Caldwell.”

Yes, he thought as he took a deep breath. That jibed with her past. See?

Abruptly, he had an image of a tennis court, versions of himself on opposite sides of the net, the proverbial ball the statements she made about her past.

Keeping his curses to himself, he made a turn. Then another. Then one more. As they went deeper into a neighborhood, he saw that not all the houses were done up for Christmas. There were Hanukkah displays, the menorahs showing two candles, and also homes that were displaying Kwanzaa symbols in preparation for the last seven days of the year.

Tracking the different expressions of the season, it made him feel a little better about the human race, that so many spiritual traditions could exist together and celebrate according