Chapter Twenty-Two
I didn’t know which make of Mercedes it was. I just knew that it was sex on four wheels.
And I didn’t even like cars.
Cars were simply a way to get from here to there without getting caught in the rain or melting in the humidity. The Mercedes, with its sleek curves and low-slung body, idling curbside at Canal Place made me rethink that. It wasn’t like the comfortable sedan that had toted me through New Orleans in its spacious back seat what now felt like a lifetime ago. This was as predatory and graceful as the fae next to me. I couldn’t help but notice two things as Lachlan guided me toward it. One, the car was the same color as his hair—ink black with a hint of midnight blue when the light hit it just right. The other was that he was still holding my hand.
It was a completely normal thing for two people to do when one was leading the other someplace. Lots of friends, family, even strangers, held hands. It probably meant nothing. But that did not detract from how solid and warm his fingers felt clutching mine. Was this the ritual fuckery he’d warned me would happen before I moved into the Avalon? Because it was really screwing with my head.
I wasn’t sure when I’d transplanted a bag of hormones where my brain was supposed to be, but clearly I was under the influence of factors outside my control. Yes, I’d found Lachlan attractive from the moment I first saw him. The trouble had been when he’d opened his mouth—and the fact that ever since that moment he said one thing and did another. Hadn’t I learned the hard way about romanticizing dangerous men? He was the very definition of dangerous. I’d witnessed it. I knew that behind his polished hotel and limitless platinum card was a body count centuries in the making. I should not find any of it hot. The fact that I did meant I was either suffering from Stockholm syndrome or I was beginning to like him. Or there was a third option: Ciara’s comment about fae ripping off panties had chased off any sense I had. I had never had a pair of panties ripped off me, though I’d read about it. I’d just never met a guy who seemed like the panty-ripping type.
Lachlan released me to open the car door, stepping smoothly to one side and offering his hand again. The car, his smirk, and those sinful jeans he was wearing told me he was definitely the panty-ripping type. A car horn blasted across the street, and his eyes strayed to the sound, giving me the chance to gulp down some air as I slipped into the passenger seat. His hand tightened around mine, his other bracing against the car as he leaned in close enough that I caught a whiff of wood and cinnamon. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. It was hard enough to resist his scent.
“Didn’t you get the drink I left you?” he asked.
I kept my eyes pinned to the dash like the air vent was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen. “I did. Thank you.”
“You seem a little off.” His thumb stroked the back of my hand, and I thought I might spontaneously climax.
There were eight slots on the air vent, and they were pointed toward the window. “I’m fine. Just a little tired, I guess.”
He bent down, finally releasing my hand only to place his on my forehead.
I mustered a voice approximately as dry as a bag of sand. “Am I dying?”
“Maybe you should go back to bed.”
“No!” My eyes shot to him. “I’m fine, really.” The only thing worse than being trapped in a car with Lachlan for the rest of the day was thinking of him in the same breath as a bed.
He chewed on his lip for a moment, which was completely and unnecessarily erotic, before he relented. I couldn’t stop myself from staring as he circled the front of the car. Last night he’d been annoyed with me, and now he was treating me like glass. I wasn’t sure which one was better. He slid into the driver’s seat, and his elbow casually brushed my arm, alerting my entire body that he was within reach. I tucked my hands under my thighs, keeping my arms from the console’s danger zone. Was the car a more dangerous option than letting him take me back to the Avalon?
As soon as he pulled away from the curb and into traffic, I discovered it was.
One thing was immediately clear to me: Lachlan had absolutely no fear of death. This was evident in the way that he drove, which could best be described as a bat out of hell attacking Vin Diesel. I had never wanted to google a vehicle’s crash-test rating more, but I didn’t dare pry my fingers from the seatbelt I was now clutching for added security. I yelped as he zipped around a bus and into a lane of oncoming traffic, narrowly avoiding a pedestrian and earning an impressive array of vulgar gestures from every human in a one-block radius.
“Do you even have a driver’s license?” I demanded, clenching my eyes shut, even though one kept darting open to see if we were dead yet.
He only laughed, which I took to mean no.
“I’m a little old for a driver’s license.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.” I whimpered as one of his wheels bumped the curb and sent half a dozen tourists scrambling in pure terror. Maybe I should throw myself from the car now before we hit a pole and physics did its thing. I choked down another little yelp of fear. “And how old is that, exactly?”
He grinned at me. “If you’re trying to ask what I want for my birthday, princess—”
“Watch the road!”
Maybe now was not the time to have this conversation.
Lachlan drifted back into our lane with a dutiful sigh. “In human years, I’m about 244 years old, give or take a decade.” He shook his head and added, “And fae can drive blindfolded. No one—and certainly not you—is in danger, princess.”
I barely processed the streetlamp we nearly hit as his age sank in. Whatever part of me had hoped finding out he was centuries older than me might be a turnoff did not materialize. Maybe it would when I was not in imminent peril. Somehow, I doubted it. My brain seemed to be out of office where he was concerned.
“Two hundred and forty-four?” I swallowed hard.
“And now you’re freaked out,” he said, tapping the steering wheel.
“What? No.” Now I was reassuring him? Which was something he should be doing, given that he had taken my life in his hands the moment he got behind the steering wheel. “But on that topic, now might be a good time to remind you that one of us is immortal and one of us will be killed if you hit that taxi.”
He jerked the wheel and avoided it. “Do you want to drive?”
“Can I?” I’d never driven a stick before. I didn’t like the idea of this being the first time, but I liked the idea of dying even less. I sincerely doubted fae magic would protect us from a head-on collision.
He didn’t pull over.
I twisted in my seat. “Are you worried I’ll wreck your fancy car?”
“So, you think my car is fancy?”
I tapped the dash. “I think your car would be better on the right side of the road.”
He rolled his eyes and pulled back into our lane.
“What happened to if I die I’ll get out of this bargain?” He imitated a high-pitched voice.
“Is that supposed to be me?” I snapped, shifting my attention from the road to glower at him. “I’m sorry that I don’t want to die splattered like modern art on the side of a bar.”
He groaned and slowed the car, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he began driving at a normal, non-life-endangering speed, all four wheels within the confines of the painted lines.
I punched him on the shoulder. “Dick! You scared the shit out of me.”
My heart flipped a little when he smirked, the car not so much as drifting even with his eyes on me. “Last night, you seemed like you were looking for trouble.”
And there it was. The elephant in the room. Or, rather, the car. The car, which left me nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I suddenly wished I was still being distracted by my imminent death.
“I had a lot to drink.” It was a flimsy excuse, but it was all I had.
“I think there was more ambrosia than blood in your veins,” he said flatly, his focus back on the road.
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Hang out with Shaw and stay out of trouble.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Stay out of trouble. Get in trouble. Make up your mind. Besides, your brother wanted to get in trouble. He’s cute and all, but somehow, I doubt you’d be okay with me entertaining him.”
He scowled and jerked the wheel, sending us down a back alley.
Oh, he didn’t like that.
The buildings on either side of us loomed overhead, cutting off the sun. I squinted around nervously. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be here.”
“This is my city. I can go wherever I want.” Lachlan stopped the car and reached behind his back. A second later, he tossed a gun in the cupholder. “I don’t mind if you get in trouble, princess, but I would strongly prefer you save it for when I’m around. Not my brother.”
“Why? So you can mock me? Tease me?” Drive me absolutely out of my mind?
The shadows clouding his eyes had nothing to do with the darkness of the alley. He leaned closer, the scent of him making me ache, his breath warm and laced with sweet cinnamon. “No,” he rumbled. “So I can protect you.”
I shuddered as heat danced across my skin. He’d said it last night, but the gun reinforced just how much he’d meant it. I forced myself to swallow, to wet the tongue that had dried up in my mouth, to not look away from the emerald intensity of his gaze. “I don’t need you to protect me.”
Because letting him do that was more than letting him buy me gifts or agreeing to a bargain. It was more than indebting myself to him. It was depending on him.
For a moment, his eyes glazed and the human glamour he’d worn to walk the streets of New Orleans slipped to reveal the feral fae staring back at me. “Sooner or later, you’re going to realize the only person your stubbornness is hurting is yourself.”
“Better me than someone else.” That was what he didn’t understand. It was better this way. It was easier to protect myself and the few people I’d chosen to care about if I kept myself apart. I’d been doing it for as long as I could remember. The key was to keep the list nice and short. Ciara had already wormed her way onto it, but something told me that if I let him on, too, Lach wouldn’t occupy a single spot. He would fill up the whole thing.
“You can spend your entire life shutting everyone out, Cate, but don’t be surprised when you die alone,” he said bitterly.
“That might be profound if you weren’t immortal.”
A tattoo flared along his temple, flickering in and out of sight until his human glamour settled again. Lachlan pulled back onto the road, carefully signaling and proving once again that I was not in true danger. But as he turned toward a bridge that crossed the Mississippi, he muttered so low that I almost thought I imagined it. “Even immortals bleed.”