Iron Kissed

Ben sniffed. "Aftershave? Good enough. Someone had time to run some sheets through the wash, and I put them on the bed. So the sheets are clean."

I realized I was looking up into his face and dropped my gaze and tucked my tail.

"Like that, eh?" he said. "Mercy…" He sighed. "Never mind. Come on, then. Get back to bed."

I didn't need to sleep, but I curled up in the clean sheets and waited for Ben to leave so I could go…somewhere. I couldn't go home because Samuel was there and he knew.

Everyone knew and Tim was right: I was going to be alone.

I should go swimming…but that wasn't right. My foster father had done that. No, I would never kill myself, never do to someone else what he had done to me.

After a while the door opened and Adam came in. He must not have had time to wash properly, because he still smelled faintly of Tim's blood and the stuff Tim had made me drink. I'd thrown up on him, I remembered with regrettable clarity.

"Zee's being released as soon as they can get the paperwork through," Adam said. He must have been talking to Ben because I was pretending very hard to be asleep. He didn't say anything more for a minute, as if he were waiting for some response. Then he sighed. "I'm going to shower. When I come out, you can take a break."

Ben waited for the shower to start before he began talking. "I don't know how much you remember. That fae, Nemane, was going to take her fairy things and leave before the police got there, but Adam thought that her part of the story was necessary to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the gremlin was i

I pulled my tail tighter over my face. I hadn't fought, not until the very last. I'd let Tim…I'd wanted him. For a moment I felt the pull of his beauty, just as I had then.

"Shh," Ben said with a nervous look at the bathroom. "You have to be quiet. He's on edge right now and we don't want to send him over."

I didn't want to hear any more. Zee was free. Tomorrow I'd be very happy for it. He could take the shop back in lieu of my payment. I'd find somewhere else to go. Mexico, maybe. They had lots of Volkswagens in Mexico. Lots of coyotes, too. Maybe I'd just stay a coyote.

Unaffected by my attitude, Ben continued. "Turns out your Tim killed his best buddy yesterday before you went to his house. At least that's what we think." Even in my current state I realized that his speech was missing its usual heavy dosing of foul language. Maybe he was worried about Adam, who disapproved of swearing in front of women. I lost my curiosity about it, though, when I understood what he was saying. "Austin Summers walked into the river and drowned himself. Some old man saw him do it and said he was smiling. He tried to save him, but Austin just kept swimming and then dove. Never came up. They found his body a few miles downstream. No one knew why until the fae showed them how the cup worked and they watched the video. It was nice of Timmy-boy to confess."

Austin knew too much, I thought. He must have known something about the artifacts, and once Tim learned that I knew about them, and might have told other people, Austin was too much of a liability. It hadn't been all my fault, though.

Tim was jealous of Austin and hated him for being so good at everything. He would have killed Austin sooner or later. It wasn't my fault. Not completely.

Ben pulled the edge of the blanket over me and sat on the edge of the mattress. "We showed the cops the video, too. Don't worry, your change was off camera. No one knows you're a coyote. Adam also picked the camera shots that didn't show any of us werewolves except for him. He's pretty fast with that computer of his." I heard professional approval in his voice: Ben was employed as a hotshot computer geek and he was apparently good at his job.

"Adam was going to go with the police anyway," he continued. "He had to since Nemane put him in charge of the artifacts—but the police were kinda freaked out about the condition of old Tim's body. There was no danger they'd keep him—not with the clear evidence that you killed him. But Adam didn't fuss. Truth to tell, I think that Adam was freaked, too. They, ah" — a sudden, satisfied smile was in his voice—"requested very nicely that he come with them to the police station with the video. Warren went, too, just in case the police decided to give Adam a bad time. All in all, it's a good thing that Tim was already dead when we happened on the scene, or Adam might have been kept more than a few hours."

"Not so," Adam said from the bathroom. He turned off the shower. "I'd rather have gotten there a lot sooner and taken the consequences with the police."

Ben stilled on the bed, but when Adam didn't say any more, he relaxed a little.

I shouldn't have taken Tim to my garage. Surely I could have figured out some other way. I'd been ru

If Adam had been closer to my shop when I used my birthday on the keypad to call for help, if he'd killed Tim…I hadn't even considered the risks. I'd just known that Adam would come and save me from my own stupidity. Again.

Adam came out of the bathroom dressed in clean jeans and nothing else, rubbing his short-cropped hair with a towel. He dropped it on the floor and knelt beside the bed. Ben slipped off and went to stand by the window.

Adam's face was drawn with worry and weariness.

"I'm sorry," he said tiredly. "I'm so sorry that I forced you. I told you I'd try not to do that and I broke my word."

He reached out to touch me and I couldn't bear it. Couldn't bear that he'd apologize to me when I'd endangered him. When I'd betrayed him.

I slid out from under his hand before he could touch me and cowered on the far side of the bed. His face was very still as he let his hand drop to his side.

"I see," he said. "I'm sorry, Ben, you'll have to stay here a few more minutes. I'll find Warren and send him up."

"Don't be stupid, Adam."

Adam came to his feet and took two long strides to the door. "She's afraid of me. I'll send someone else up."

He shut the door very quietly behind him.

Ben stood in the middle of the room and used all the words he'd left out when he'd been speaking to me earlier. With a jerky motion, he pulled his cell phone out of the front pocket of his jeans and hit a button.

"Warren," he said, his voice tight, "would you tell our lord and master to get his arse back up here? I have a few things to tell him."

He closed his phone without waiting for an answer and began to pace restlessly back and forth muttering swearwords to himself. He'd begun to sweat and it smelled of anxiety and anger.

The door swung open and Adam loomed in the open doorway. He was so angry I came to my feet.

"Come in and shut the door," Ben said harshly, in a voice he really shouldn't have used to his Alpha.

Without glancing in my direction, Adam came in and shut the door with awful precision that was a strong indication of how close he was to losing control—if the way the brass doorknob deformed in his hand hadn't already been a clue.

As Adam walked to the middle of the room, I sank on the bed, not so much lying down as gathering my feet underneath me in preparation for ru

Ben didn't seem to notice how much trouble he was in. Or maybe he didn't care. "How much do you want her?" Unable to meet Adam's hot glare, he turned and stared out the window. "Do you want her enough to put aside your worries and hurt?"