I wondered if he understood just how true that statement was, but I kept my smile. Maybe it was more relieved than romantic, but it was still a smile. “Moriarty. Yeah, that I can call you and be happy with.”
“You are right. It does roll off your tongue better than Holmes ever did.” He managed to do that thing that men do sometimes when perfectly harmless statements turn into creepy sexual double entendres. But since we were supposed to be romantic in some weird way, I couldn’t call him on it or say something snarky in return. I lost my battle of will with myself and shivered.
His smile changed somehow, or maybe it was just the look in his eyes. He was staring at me like he wondered what I’d taste like, and not in a double-entendre kind of way but just straight-up taking a bite out of someone. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“I am glad that our new closeness has not made you unafraid of me.” He took a step toward me on the tiny porch, sniffing the air above me.
I backed away from him before I could stop myself. I was so close to him that with his new literally catlike reflexes, I’d never get to a weapon in time. I knew with good reason that he wouldn’t hurt me here and now, that if he decided to do it, it wouldn’t be like this, but damn it.
“I like the scent of you when you’re afraid, Adler.”
“I know you do.” I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice as I said, “Moriarty.”
He took another step forward, and this time I made myself step forward to meet him. We stood so close that it was almost more awkward not to touch. I glared up at him, putting all my rage and defiance into my eyes. I would not cower for him.
He bent over me, not like he was moving in for a kiss, but so he could smell my hair. His voice was a low rumbling whisper against my hair. “I am torn with you, Anita, my Irene. You would make a magnificent hunt to end as all my hunts have ended. To take all that rage and power away from you is exciting, but I can have you like that only once, and I do not think I want you only once. You are the first woman that has ever made me think I would want her more than once.”
I think I held my breath. I had no idea what to say to him in that moment, and we were standing too close for me to just pull a gun and shoot him. He’d been fast for a human before, but now he was a werelion, one that was trained in hand-to-hand combat and who outweighed, outreached, out-everythinged me.
My hand found the doorknob behind me. I could still hear the voices inside, so close, but they might as well have been on the moon at that moment.
I found my voice, and it was breathy and shaking. I hated that, too. “And you wonder why I wanted to call you Moriarty.”
“Not anymore,” he whispered, and laid his lips against my hair again.
I turned the doorknob, and he had to move back or risk us both stumbling through the door. I did half-fall through, my hand on the door handle the only thing that saved me from tripping to the floor. Olaf came through the door gracefully like the big predatory cat he was. Oh, hell, he’d always moved like that. I could bitch about a lot of things, but the man knew how to move.
24
“SO, THOUGH THE shapeshifter listed on the warrant by name is in a cell in the next room, he is still alive,” Olaf said from the chair that he’d folded all that height into. He had a cup of coffee in his hands, but he seemed to be holding it more than drinking from it. He hadn’t drunk coffee or tea when we first met, so maybe he was just doing it to be social, the same way he’d decided not to kill me so we could date.
I was drinking mine with my back leaned against the wall near the open door to the cell area. I’d been offered one of the chairs but chose to stand in case I needed to draw a weapon or move quickly. Olaf might try flirting again, and I wanted to be prepared. We didn’t have enough people to guard the prisoners and explain everything to Olaf and argue about what our next move was, so Duke had told Deputy Wagner to yell if Bobby woke up. If Bobby had been plain-vanilla human, I’d have been worried that I’d done more than just knock him out, but since his brain and heart were still in his body, I knew that whatever I’d done to him would heal eventually.
“Yeah,” I said, and took another sip of coffee. It was good coffee, strong but not too strong—right on that edge of wake-me-up bitter and too acrid to sip and enjoy. Bad coffee you drank because it was coffee; this was good enough to drink slowly and savor each mouthful. It was helping settle my nerves as well as yummy and warm. I didn’t like Leduc, but he made a nice pot of coffee.
“Why?” Olaf said.
“Why what?” Newman asked.
“Why is he still alive?”
“That’s what I’ve been asking. Maybe you can talk sense into Win and Blake here or take the warrant over yourself,” Leduc said from his swivel chair behind his big desk.
“Win is Marshal Newman?” Olaf said.
“Short for Winston,” I said.
Newman sighed heavily from where he was perched half sitting, half leaning on the far corner of Leduc’s desk. “But everyone calls me Win.” He gave me a pseudo-hard stare as if giving me grief for sharing the name he disliked, but his heart wasn’t in it. We’d joke for real later when we’d saved a life and figured out who the real murderer was.
“I will call you Newman.”
“That works for me, Jeffries.”
Olaf took a sip of coffee and turned back to Leduc. “I cannot take Newman’s warrant from him, Sheriff Leduc. He has to sign it over to me, or he has to be so badly injured that he cannot complete it.”
“What happens if a marshal that’s serving a warrant dies before it’s complete?” Kaitlin asked from the chair behind the deputy desk.
“That would fall under too injured to complete,” I said, sipping my coffee. I was debating whether I should drink slowly and make it last, or quickly and grab another cup before someone else emptied the pot.