Where Winter Finds You (Black Dagger Brotherhood #18)- J.R Ward Page 0,34

black? And I’m Therese. Nice to meet you.”

She put out her hand and met that stare head-on. Undoubtedly tensions were high because of the shooting and the female must work at the club in some capacity. But dayum. And no, Therese wasn’t going to be intimidated.

“Xhex,” the female announced. “Good to meet you.”

As the female accepted the palm that had been offered, the shake was curt and very strong. And still those eyes did not budge. Yet there was no hostility, exactly. No possessiveness over Trez, either. But still.

“Is there a problem?” Therese said. “And I don’t mean that in an obnoxious way. It’s just this feels…” She motioned between them. “A little intense.”

“I apologize. Let’s go see if we can find your purse.”

At which point… absolutely nothing happened. The female just stood there, those eyes remaining fixated.

“Xhex, can I talk to you a minute,” Trez said tightly. “Privately—”

He took the female’s arm in a grip, but she shook her head. “You don’t need to tell me a thing. I get it.”

As Therese frowned, the hard-ass female smiled a little. “This way to Lost ’n’ Found.”

Trez said something under his breath as they all started walking, but there was no reason to get involved in whatever was going on between the pair of them. Maybe they were exes? Or… maybe they were lovers?

A lance of pain went through Therese’s chest at that idea, but come on. In spite of the fact that she and Trez had just had sex—and she was convinced he was her shadow lover—his actual, in-person, non-lunatic love life was none of her business. And as a wave of exhaustion rolled through her, she decided she just needed to get her purse back and go home. It had been a very, very long night—

No.

The resounding negative came through so loud and clear, it was like getting tapped on the shoulder, and Therese even looked behind herself. At first, she wondered why some inner part of her was disagreeing about the fact that the combination of worrying about losing the only job she had, getting a thousand-dollar tip, setting boundaries with a coworker, getting in the middle of a shooting, having sex with her boss’s incredible brother, and losing a thousand dollars was enough to qualify for a long frickin’ night.

Except then she looked at Trez’s profile. His expression was tense, his brows down, his lips thin. He was staring at the back of the other female’s nearly shaved head, and Therese had the sense he was having some kind of conversation with her in his own mind.

One that maybe had a lot of cursing in it—

No, the voice repeated.

And that was when the meaning became clear. Somehow, he and this powerful female with the short hair and the dark gray eyes were not lovers. Never had been lovers. Never would be lovers.

The conviction was as rock-solid as it was incomprehensible—and, arguably, irrelevant. That Therese and he had just had sex, sharing what to her was an intimate act she did not take lightly, did not change the reality that they were nothing but acquaintances. Sure, their bodies had fused for a short, intense time. Yes, she was convinced for some crazy reason that she had dreamed of him. But in the cold light of—she glanced up at the ceiling… well, in the cold light of these fluorescent fixtures, none of that meant that their lives were any closer than they had been at the start of the night.

With a quick shift, the female—Xhex was the name, if she got it right—glanced over her shoulder as she led the way across the dance floor, staying far from the medics, the cops, and the groups of humans giving statements.

“The recovered stuff is back here,” she announced. “In one of my workrooms. The cops wanted to seal off everything. Treat this as a crime scene. Take evidence and pictures. But we are not going to allow that, of course.”

“Oh,” Therese said. Because she felt like she should say something, and the only thing occurring to her was, Holy shit, you people work here every night?

Trez shook his head as if he’d read her mind. Or maybe her expression wasn’t as composed as she thought it was.

“Like I said,” he muttered, “it doesn’t happen all that often.”

Once is enough for me, Therese thought.

“In here,” Xhex said as she opened a door.

Therese went inside and was surprised to find herself in what looked like an interrogation room: There was a broad metal