CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Myra
I’d gotten cleaned up with time to spare, but the ‘I’ll just rest my head for a bit’ nap I’d taken had turned into a multi-hour coma.
By the time I woke up, I was in the weeds.
I glanced out my apartment window at nine twenty-seven to see a sleek black sedan parked outside, engine running.
I quickly threw on the outfit on loan from the girls and made my way downstairs.
A leggy female with gorgeous brown skin and a smile that beamed like the sun stepped out of the driver’s side and opened the back door.
“You must be Myra,” she said, stepping back to afford me entry.
“Yael is expecting you.” She watched me as I walked to the car and hesitated for a moment before climbing in.
“He told me you might be suspicious.” Her enjoyment of that truth annoyed me.
“He also said that if we were late, he would hold me personally responsible, so if you’d be so kind.
” She gestured to the empty back seat. “I’d prefer not to lose favor over this. ”
“No, we definitely wouldn’t want that.”
I climbed into the posh car and rode in silence through the squalor of my neighborhood, feeling a strange sense of embarrassment.
Yael’s errand girl must be wondering why he’d sent her to the slums of the Playground to pick up some of its trash, and yet there seemed to be no judgment from her as she drove toward our destination without complaint.
I couldn’t help but wonder who she was to Yael and what he’d told her about me.
“What’s your name?” I asked, leaning forward between the seats.
“Arabella,” she replied, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “I’m one of the fae king’s liaisons.”
“That’s a fancy title. So, how did you get stuck with this shit job?”
At that, she laughed. “Yael told me he needed something delivered and I was the only one he trusted with the task.”
“Something delivered?” I muttered under my breath.
“Something very important,” she said in a more serious tone. “Those were his exact words.”
“I’ll bet they were.” I flopped back in the seat as we crossed the trolley tracks into Demon’s Horn, unable to shake the feeling that I was little more than a business transaction to him—and wondering why that bothered me so much.
“Can I speak frankly?” Arabella asked as she peeked back at me over her shoulder.
“Go nuts.”
“I have known Yael since he and his sister arrived in Seattle years ago. In that time, I have seen his loyalty to both her and the king nearly destroy him. I know that his time in the Playground, though brief, was not easy. I also know that he is fiercely protective of those he came to know while here, and that you are the only one I’ve ever heard mentioned by name.
So when he refers to you as ‘very important’, he is not saying that simply to make a point,” she said, daring another look over her shoulder to drive her words home. “He means it.”
Stunned into silence, I sat there and let the weight of her sentiment settle in my mind until we pulled up outside Dreven’s seedy establishment.
Large, red-brick buildings in various stages of decay peppered the waterfront.
What had once been a manufacturing district during the Industrial Revolution was now a haven for brothels and black-market dealings, or so I’d been told.
And at the heart of it all was Dreven’s operation.
From what little I’d been able to scrounge up about him by eavesdropping at the bar, I knew he moved all kinds of questionable items through the Playground, and since our little neighborhood was a neutral zone of sorts for any species of supernatural, it was the perfect place for them to deal in frowned-upon items—and more—without repercussions from the respective hierarchies.
To be at the helm of an operation like that implied an immense amount of power, and I shuddered to think what exactly it was he could do to maintain a position like that.
The fact that Yael had been visibly rattled at the thought of me being alone with him spoke volumes.
My fae collaborator was nowhere in sight when we arrived, which wasn’t at all shocking given his track record of lurking in the shadows, so I opened the door to climb out knowing he’d appear the moment my foot hit the pavement.
“It was nice to meet you, Arabella. And thanks for the safe delivery.”
She smiled at me in the rearview as I stepped out of the car—only two minutes late—and shut the door behind me. “I’ll wait for him to arrive.”
“Oh, he’s already here, knowing his adamance about being on time. He’s just stashed himself away in some dark corner to wait for me. You know how he loves to make a grand entrance.”
“That I do.”
At that moment, I saw a silhouette stir in a nearby alley, and I smiled at how right my assessment had been. “Speak of the devil,” I said, grinning at his timeliness. “He’s coming now. I’ll let him know you did a perfect job.”
The trill of her delicate laughter rang out as she nodded and put the car in gear. “Lovely to meet you, Myra. Give Yael my best.” Without another word, she pulled away.
With my arms wrapped tightly around me to stave off the icy ocean breeze, I leaned against a busted-out lamppost and waited for Yael to emerge from the alley.
“Before you start in on me,” I called to him as he grew nearer, “I feel like arrival times always have an over/under of five minutes, which means I’m not technically late. ”
“Late for what?” a gruff voice replied before the wrong imposing, dark-haired male stepped out into the moonlight.
I’d never wished to see Yael’s smirking face more in my life. “Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” I said as I looked to see if Arabella’s taillights had disappeared from sight. “He should be here any second.”
“The boss wants to see you,” the stranger said in a threatening tone, ignoring my explanation altogether.
“First, I’m not going anywhere with some random I don’t know,” I countered, doing all I could to keep my voice from shaking, “and second, I said I’m waiting for someone.”
His nostrils flared at my lack of compliance, and I glanced over my shoulder, hoping to see Yael appear out of thin air just in time. “Your someone can wait,” he argued as he stepped closer.
I retreated one to match. “No, your boss can. Who the fuck is he, anyway? If he wants to see me so badly, he can walk his ass over here and find me himself instead of sending some second-rate lackey.”
“I won’t tell you again,” he said, reaching for my arm.
I managed to dodge him just in time, using the lamppost as a barrier between us, but I knew that wouldn’t help for very long.
In that second, I had to decide if I wanted to use the Siren’s Song on this hulk of a being, not knowing how it might backfire.
With Yael around, that was a far less risky endeavor; but as I’d recently seen, it could go sideways in epic fashion without him.
“Barclay,” a voice called out from behind him.
The big guy straightened up like his strings had been pulled and stepped aside, revealing the owner of that melodious voice.
“That’s no way to treat a lady.” Sandy-blond hair tousled in the breeze as a man I could only assume was ‘the boss’ walked toward me.
His onyx suit blended in with the night surrounding us, but ice-blue eyes cut right through it and pinned me in place.
Every cell in my body vibrated as he approached, as though his very presence called for their undivided attention.
“Forgive him,” he said with a disarming smile.
“Barclay’s excellent at what he does, but he runs a bit short on manners when they count most.” He stopped just shy of the streetlight and made a show of peeking around it to where I stood stock-still.
“Speaking of manners, where are mine?” he asked as he extended his hand toward me. “Dreven Foxwood.”
Fear at the mention of that name should have spurred me into action, but instead, I smiled back at him as I stepped forward and placed my hand in his. “Myra.”
“Myra,” he said, seeming to roll the name around on his tongue to see if he liked the taste of it.
The way he looked me up and down in the process implied that he did, and a wave of anticipation crashed into me at the thought of him doing other things with that tongue of his.
He emanated sex and the promise of pleasures unimaginable, and every inch of me seemed eager to volunteer.
“Well, Myra, I must admit that I caught sight of you standing out here alone on our surveillance system, and I just needed to come down and see you up close for myself.” He tugged my hand to lead me around the lamppost and into his arms. “I must say, you do not disappoint.”
“I try not to…” My words were a reply and a challenge all in one, and the way his eyes flared when I spoke told me just how interested he was in taking me up on it.
Heat roared up my arm from where he held my hand, sparking a fire between my legs.
I wanted nothing more than for him to reach underneath that miniskirt and tease me until I came undone.
His free hand caught a loose strand of my hair between his fingers and gently slid along the length of it, letting the moonlight reflect the purple and blue undertones. “Would you like to join me inside, Myra?”
My smile widened at the thought even as something niggled at the back of my mind—a warning so sharp and uncomfortable and nagging that not even his touch could fully erase it.
I reached into the inky chasm, hoping to find the annoying sensation and choke it off so it would stop interrupting the glorious arousal building deep inside me.
But I couldn't.
Dreven frowned at my hesitation and stepped closer, releasing my hair so he could cup my cheek. The second his palm touched my cool skin, all I felt were the flames inside stoking higher.
He bent down and whispered against my lips. “Come inside with me, Myra.”