Darkness Hunts (Dark Angels 4)

Perhaps.

And perhaps he was just incapable of seeing the forest for the trees where Lucian was concerned.

That is an incongruous statement.

But true.

Possibly.

As I drew closer, Lucian swung around and gave me a wide grin of greeting. Any sign of anger had completely disappeared. My gaze flicked briefly from his face to Lauren’s. She looked regal and composed—a woman certain of her place and power rather than one who’d seemed ready to tear eyeballs out just moments ago.

“You’re late,” Lucian said, the amusement in his eyes at odds with the rebuke in his words. “I was beginning to think you’d had second thoughts.”

“Just because I’m here doesn’t mean I don’t.”

“Of course.”

He dropped an overly polite kiss on my cheek, and again I had to wonder if the argument I’d witnessed had been about sex. The only time he’d ever been so frugal with his kisses was when she’d been witness to them.

And while I was aware that he had a stable of bed partners, I certainly hadn’t expected one of them to be a dark practitioner. Nor was I entirely sure how I felt about it.

But at least it did explain the heady scent of sex and blood I’d smelled when I’d entered the room at Maxwell’s—it had come from their activities rather than from those on the main dance floor.

“Would you like something to drink?” he asked.

“A Coke would be good.”

He tsked. “And I had my best champagne on ice, too.”

“Save it for when we’ve got something to celebrate.”

“Later, then.”

“Perhaps.”

My reply was somewhat absent as movement caught my gaze. Lauren folded gracefully onto a chair and crossed her legs. The bright lights gave her dark hair a purple sheen but shadowed her face, softening her stern, somewhat matronly features. Once again I had that odd sense of familiarity, but I still couldn’t place who she reminded me of. Although she did remind me somewhat of a spider. A big black one, sitting in the middle of her nest and contemplating the world around her as she waited for her prey to fall into her web.

“Take a seat,” Lucian directed. “I’ll grab your drink.”

I claimed the chair nearest to Lucian’s, and Lauren gave me a thin smile. “And still you distrust me.”

“It’s not so much you as your profession.”

She raised one thin eyebrow. “Which is not saying much given my profession is who and what I am.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to take that statement, so I didn’t say anything. Lucian returned and handed me a can of Coke, then sat down between us.

“So,” he said, picking up his glass of wine from the floor. “As I said on the phone, Lauren believes she has come up with a possible answer.”

My gaze flicked to hers. Those icy depths watched me closely, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. Not because of the intensity of her gaze, but rather the hatred so very evident in it.

Why the hell would someone I’d barely even met hate me so much? Or was it not so much me, but the fact that she considered me a sexual rival?

If she thought that, then she didn’t understand Lucian. But maybe she hadn’t even known he was Aedh until he’d told her about the device in my heart. She might be knowledgeable about the dark arts and the denizens of hell, but that didn’t mean she had any expertise when it came to the beings who inhabited the gray fields.

“I’m not committing to anything until I know exactly what we’re talking about.”

“Of course.”