Page 163 of Golden Eagle

And Nikita didn’t, did he?

A flash of memory: dance hall, band playing, watered-down punch in cups. An uncomfortable suit, tight, shiny shoes, and enough pomade in his hair to make his head feel heavy. A woman beside him, pressing her breasts into his arm, saying something low and suggestive in his ear, wanting to dance again, to “feel his hands” on her.

Across the table, Sasha staring miserably down into his punch, both hands around the cup, his severely pomaded hair highlighting the sharp-boned fragility of his face. He looked up at Nikita through his lashes, a flash of blue that would always make Nikita think of winter in Siberia, of an untamable wilderness, and knew now what he’d, in truth, always known, but tried to label as something else out of self-preservation. Sasha had been jealous. Had wanted to be the one whispering into Nikita’s ear – or maybe being whispered to by him.

Nikita felt that same jealousy now. Was choked by it.

What if he hadn’t confessed to Sasha when he had? What if he’d suppressed everything some more – hadn’t kissed him, touched him, changed things irrevocably between them. What if Val hadn’t found Mia, and he’d shown up alone, and he and Sasha were free to–

“Nikita,” Mia said beside him, and he just barely refrained from jerking. When he turned to her, he found her studying him with something like pity, and he hated it. “I trust Val.” That was all she said, like he was supposed to find some sort of comfort in those three words. Like he was supposed tobelieveher.

He faced the dance floor again.

Val and Sasha had shifted closer. Face-to-face. Val slung an arm – easy, casual – around Sasha’s shoulders and reeled him in even closer, so that when he ducked his face, he brought their foreheads together. Blond and blonder. Beautiful and perfect. The light glinted off them, like the sun on new coins, over glittering fields of fresh snow. A dazzle of something precious and rare.

Nikita realized he’d bared his fangs, and he turned away. Stalked a few, blind steps breathing harshly through his mouth, skin prickling, heat pulsing through him in dizzying waves. He closed his eyes and could envision them in awful detail: what they would look like away from the club, in soft lamplight, without an audience.

He thought of Sasha’s grief after Virginia, his intense regret that they hadn’t been able to save Val.He helped me save your life, he’d said. But was that all? Was it just gratitude, or–

A hand touched his arm, turned him, and Val’s scent filled his nose on his next inhale.

When Nikita opened his eyes, the prince was studying him with something like sympathy, hair glued to his temples and throat with sweat, chest heaving slightly as he breathed. His voice was calm, though. “Oh, darling,” he murmured. “Where can we go to talk? Just you and me.”

Yes, alone would be good. That way Sasha wouldn’t have to watch when Nikita gutted his would-be lover. He wasn’t even sure such a thing was possible – delicate though he looked, Val was Dracula’s brother; he had to possess some of that freakish strength, those vicious instincts.

Still, as he led the way out the back door of the club – pointedly not looking toward Sasha, though he could feel the weight of his gaze, and sense his surge of distress – he imagined all sorts of violence. Throttling Val; biting his throat, tasting the hot iron of blood, watching it spill down all the skin he was flashing, staining his clothes, his face losing color until he dropped. He thought of throwing his fists, kicking, grappling on the ground like animals.

By the time they got to the roof, he was shaking, and only then thought he’d led Val up here for the petty satisfaction of kicking him off it300style. He stalked across the flat, graveled surface, wanting to put distance between them, but Val’s footfalls followed him. He finally stopped, and whirled, the wind tugging at his clothes, sending a chill skittering down his back.

Val was only an arm span away, hair waving like a pennant over his shoulder. He smelled like Sasha.

It took an effort to form words, and to not just snarl. “You’re here for him,” he said, and knew it the moment he said it, the bottom dropping out of his stomach, a dread worse than anything he’d ever known in war. “That’s why you came here: to get Sasha.”

Val tipped his head to the side, brows knitting, expression unexpectedly sober. “Do you think that I could?”

Yes. He didn’t say it – couldn’t. Ground his jaw, and tightened his hands into fists until his knuckles cracked, hating the blue of Val’s eyes, and the lean, sculpted torso his tank top flaunted so unselfconsciously. Hating how Val was all the things that Nikita wasn’t.

Val let out a slow breath. “You poor fool.”

He bristled. “What?”

“Sasha is lovely. He is sweet, and kind-hearted. He is precious, and he is beautiful.”

Nikita growled like he hadn’t inside; a low, threatening rumble.

“And he’s completely in love with you,” Val continued, unperturbed.

He knew that. Of course he did. Sasha had told him so – with words, lately, but with hundreds of little gestures across all the time they’d known one another, too. Every time he’d wanted to lie bundled together; the warm press of his face in Nik’s neck; every gentle, forceful moment he’d insisted that Nikita feed from him, or eat a sandwich, or get some sleep.

He knew Sasha loved him, but it sent a little shiver down his back to hear someone else say it aloud. Say it like a simple fact.

It was chased by a different kind of shiver, though, and that momentary soaring sensation in Nikita’s belly dropped and went sour.

He swallowed, and his throat ached. “I’m not like you.” He’d meant it as an insult, but it came out desperate, full of longing.I wish I was like you, so I could be what he needs. So I could make him happy.

Val smiled. A sharp, wicked smile, his chin tucked, and his eyes sparking. One brow lifted. “Really? You don’t think so?”

Nikita looked him up and down, from the shining crown of his head, to his frankly indecent tank top, to the obnoxious number of buckles on his boots. (A small, pushed-down inward voice acutely aware of his own usual wardrobe laughed uproariously at the hypocrisy.) He sneered. He attempted to, at least, but whatever his face did only made Val chuckle, and stalk toward him slowly: smooth, prowling steps, his eyes glowing.

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