Chapter Two
ChapteR
tWO
THE POLICE TOOK three hours to decide that the sword fragment was not a sword fragment.
According to the exhausted officer holding an evidence bag, it was a piece of "special-effects debris.
" According to me, special-effects debris didn't punch through four inches of oak.
According to my coordinator, the throne was pine veneer and still cost twelve hundred dollars a day, so I needed to stop calling it oak where the producer could hear.
Nobody had heard of Guardian Risk.
The company name had disappeared from the safety packet on my phone as if Marta Velez and her convenient local number had never existed. I checked the document history twice while the officer photographed the crack in the floor.
"You all right?" Danny asked.
My fight coordinator had pulled sweatpants over his pajamas and arrived with his hair pointing in six directions. He looked ready to arrest someone personally if he could find his glasses.
I held up my palm. The red line had faded to pink. "I've had worse rope burns."
"I meant the man who threw you behind a bench and vanished with an alleged weapon."
"He didn't throw me."
Danny found his glasses on top of his head. "That's your objection?"
Security footage showed me entering the hall alone.
At 11:42, the nearest camera fuzzed into gray snow.
At 11:49, it came back to reveal a cracked floor, a ruined throne, and me standing in the middle of both with a rubber dagger.
The footage showed no sword, no Thore, and no bench flying at his knees.
The officer watched the clip, then watched me.
I smiled. "I do my own stunts."
He wrote something down.
By two in the morning, production settled on an electrical fault, malicious prop tampering, and temporary suspension of anyone who posted about the incident. I signed my statement, refused an ambulance, and drove home with both hands on the wheel.
My apartment was quiet, ordinary, and free of armed Vikings. I locked the door anyway.
Hot water struck my shoulders, bringing back the heat under Thore's coat and the hard line of his body over mine.
He'd caught a bench one-handed.
Pine, my ass.
I dried off, checked the lock again, and crawled into bed. The room smelled like fabric softener, with no smoke or glowing metal or enormous blond man telling me what to do in a voice that made disobedience sound like foreplay.
My hand slipped under the waistband of my shorts. The first touch made my hips lift. I closed my eyes and saw red flash around hazel eyes.
I'd worked with contact lenses under every kind of film light. They reflected. They didn't burn from the inside.
I pressed two fingers over my clit and rubbed slow circles. Thore's hand closed around my wrist again, hot and careful. In my mind, he didn't let go. He pinned my arm over my head and used that calm voice to ask whether I planned to keep arguing.
Of course I did.
His mouth curved. Then he lowered his head between my thighs and discovered exactly how difficult I could be.
I pushed my underwear down and spread my legs beneath the sheet. My fingers slid through my already wet pussy. One went inside, then two, but I wanted his broad chest over me, his powerful thighs between mine, and that scarred mouth against my skin.
Thore on his knees because I'd put him there.
A man who could stop furniture with one hand looked up at me and waited for permission. I rocked against my palm. The mattress creaked under the faster rhythm, and my breath turned ragged. In my head, his hands locked around my hips while his tongue worked.
My orgasm tightened low and broke fast. I bit the edge of the sheet to keep from waking the woman downstairs, then lay there with my fingers wet and my heart trying to leave through my ribs.
The bedside lamp flickered.
I sat up. Nothing moved. The digital clock glowed 2:47. A car passed outside, headlights sliding across the ceiling.
I reached for the lamp. The pink line across my palm flashed gold and vanished before I could focus on it.
"I need sleep," I told my hand. It offered no useful feedback.
At nine, someone knocked on my door.
I woke with one leg outside the blankets and the strong conviction that murder should be legal before coffee. The knock came again. By the time I reached the entrance, the hallway was empty except for a black square envelope on the mat.
The paper stock was thick and expensive-looking enough for a wedding announcement. Gold wax closed the square flap, and someone had written ARIANA STEELE across the front with a gold ink pen.
I checked both ends of the hall before picking it up. The envelope was warm.
Inside was a single sheet of thick, creamy paper.
Nocturne Arcana
You are cordially invited to a night of unforgettable indulgence.
Join us at the club for an evening where your deepest desires and most enigmatic fantasies come to life. Embrace the mystery and explore the shadows. Promptly at eight pm on the night of the next full moon, immerse yourself in an experience like no other.
This invitation for a complimentary experience is good for one night only.
A smaller card supplied an address outside the city and tomorrow's date.
I read the invitation again.
It could have been an obscene marketing campaign. An expensive private club had bought my information, timed delivery after a traumatic night, and promised to rummage around in my deepest desires. The sensible response involved police, fire, and several consumer-protection agencies.
I turned the card over. One handwritten line crossed the back.
Wear something you can move in.
My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter with a message from an unknown number.
If a black envelope arrived, don't open it.
I looked down at the broken gold seal, then sent back:
Who is this?
Three dots appeared.
Thore.