he was every bit as gorgeous up close as I remembered from all the glimpses I had stolen of him through a curtained window in that other life.
Sun-streaked blond hair fell in waves to his broad shoulders and framed a face so beautiful in its austerity that I wanted to reach out and touch it, see if he was real. His jaw was hard, and muscle twitched in his cheek. His mouth was full, perfect. Soft, I bet. But his eyes. That’s what captured and held my attention. The sorrow in them tugged on my heartstrings, and I understood in that soul-bearing moment when our gazes clashed that he was dangerous to me on levels I hadn’t conceived of before meeting him in the flesh.
The one thing I had been warned against doing—instigating a staring match—was exactly what I did while Bishop and Ford looked on in horror.
Clearly, they expected Midas to strike me down for the offense. I did too. And yet, I kept breathing.
“I have exceptional control,” he rumbled, “but you’re testing it.”
Bishop stomped on my instep, and the jolt of pain yanked my attention to him and away from Midas.
“Fire ant.” Bishop made a production of searching for more on the sidewalk. “Little bastards.”
“Bastard is right,” I groused at him before redirecting my focus to Midas’s chest to avoid another standoff. “Mr. Kinase, I’m sorry for your loss. I respect your right to be present, but I have a job to do. I would appreciate it if you stepped aside and let me do it.”
Midas yielded no ground but let me ease around him. If he figured my willingness to do so proved his dominance, well, bless his heart.
Ditching him and Ford at the barricade, I continued on with Bishop. “That went well.”
“Yeah,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “It did.” He crouched over the body, what remained of it. “The pack isn’t required to cooperate with us. Not when the victim is one of theirs. They could throw their weight around and block us from investigating. Their alpha prefers to handle these matters internally.”
“There’s no guarantee the person who did this is gwyllgi. That puts the ball back in our court.”
Though I couldn’t afford to let assumptions cloud my judgment this early in the investigation. I had to get this right, or I lost points with the POA, who would not want to cut his trip short to play pack politics.
“That’s why I like you.” Bishop chuckled under his breath. “You’re so gosh darn optimistic.”
“Har har.” I flicked my fingers at the shadow nosing the corpse. “Make yourself useful.”
The vague outline of me snapped out a salute then made a production of diving in headfirst.
“Showoff,” I grumbled then caught Bishop staring. “What?”
“I’m never going to get used to that.”
“All potentates have wraiths.”
“That is not a wraith.” His gimlet eyes dared me to lie to him. “It’s so…Peter Pan. Do you remember the part in the cartoon where Wendy captures his shadow one night then sews it back on him the next?”
“No?”
“You never watched Peter Pan?” He clucked his tongue. “What kind of childhood did you have?”
A dull throb spread beneath my left eye, a distant memory of pain, and when I ran my tongue along my teeth, I almost tasted blood in my cheek. I would have spit to clear my mouth if it wouldn’t have contaminated the scene.
Some girls learned makeup to entice, some learned it to claim their spot in the girl hierarchy, but others learned it for more practical purposes. Makeup had never been armor for me, it had been camouflage. I learned how to apply concealer, how to set a proper foundation, so no one, not even my siblings, saw what happened to the family’s spare when the heir misbehaved.
Goddess forbid we got a speck of dirt on the precious family name.
Thinking about how thoroughly I raked that name through the mud before discarding it once and for all, I almost laughed, but freedom from that life had cost me everything.
Every-frakking-thing.
Most of them, I didn’t miss. Some things, two in particular, I missed a whole heck of a lot.
“A long one,” I rasped, drawing on the good times to erase the bad.
Motion caught my eye as darkness seeped from the body, giving no warning before it leapt into mine.
Cold plunged into my chest, wrapping my heart in an icy fist, squeezing a gasp out of me.
“Play nice, Ambrose,” I snarled under my breath. “Or I’ll put you in time-out.”
Warmth returned to my torso