Page 2 of Liar & Champion
“Date a respectable woman from your alma mater for six months. That’s it. For his happiness, not yours.”
She turned a surprised look at me. “A woman?”
“A respectable woman from your school, AHU.”
She laughed, and the beauty of it was as terrifying as the rest of her. “He will refuse.”
“I doubt it. If he complies, you don’t attempt any coercion of him and his for the rest of his life. Your hands, permanently tied. How could he resist that offer?”
“Why would I agree to it?”
“Because you’re tired. He will make your House of Beasts roar like never before. If he decides that it’s necessary. If he has a reason to wage war.”
“And this respectable woman, his Helen of Troy?”
I held out my hand, letting the sunshine play over my fingers, warming them before I finished this gambit. “There are several options at the school that will do, including a few serum daughters. It will be interesting to see how he fares in that kind of fight.”
The greedy look in her eyes was accompanied by the licking of her thin lips. “It will indeed. It will indeed.” She smoothed her fingers over her laptop and raised her brow at me as I stood. “Are you off to do more prophesying?”
“Killing. I have a large roster that I hate hanging over my head. Only a few people call me prophet. The rest call me death.”
Her laughter followed me out of that slender sliver of sunshine and into the darkness.
Chapter One
CHAMPION
Adrunk tourist hit my arm, knocking my coffee out of my hand. It hit the ground hard, splashing my loafers and the bottom of my dark denim jeans. Just as well. I was trying to cut back, but this was my one, precious remaining addiction. I needed my one morning cup of black. It kept me from killing Jezebel. I bared my teeth at the idiot in what probably looked like a smile. She laughed at me, blank eyes glazed with too many substances to have any idea who she’d just run into.
“Watch yourself,” I said, grabbing her shoulders and pointing her in the direction of the elevators.
She tripped off barefoot, having lost her shoes at some point. Living in Las Vegas had gotten old a long time ago, and it wasn’t just the tourists.
I didn’t have time to get another cup. I could make time, but if I left Jezebel Whiskey and Trixie ‘Dragon’ O’Hara alone together, they’d hatch a mad scheme and I’d have no way to talk them down from it. They were dangerous females, and somehow I had to wrangle them, keep them from getting themselves killed and killing everyone else. Not that Trix would ever really murder anyone, but Jezebel…
I stalked out of the Providence Hotel, past the pillars and the fountain, to the parking garage. It wasn’t built like most hotels where you had to go through a maze of casinos to reach your car. It was also the cleanest Hotel in Las Vegas, with the best coffee place, and they had it waiting for you to pick up when you got to the lobby, which is why I put up with the tourists.
My new TRX was waiting for me in my reserved parking space, but it wasn’t alone. Horse was walking around the back, bent sideways to check out my exhaust.
“Back off, she bites,” I said, clicking my key fob so it turned on with a roar of its engine.
Horse leapt away, eyeing the beast before he turned to give me a raised brow that absolutely drove Trixie to distraction. She wasn’t here, so the cocky smirk faded to a look of mild interest. “You didn’t win last season. Are you trying to compensate for that with something so ostentatious, or is it something else?”
“Ostentatious? I’ve seen your private jet. Now that’s compensation. I suppose you have to get something like that if you can’t ride a dragon.”
His eyes went hard and cold for a second before he shrugged and came around the side, fingers trailing over the black lacquer. “That last preliminary race, I thought your team wouldn’t recover from the jump out of Dead Man’s Pike. She was hitting what, seventy-five, eighty? Far be it for me to tell you how to run your team, but?—”
I slammed a hand on Horse’s shoulder, shutting his mouth and bruising him. “Running a team doesn’t mean telling Trix how to run her track. The more concerned I am, the faster she goes. Jezebel isn’t any better. I mean, I’m not complaining, can’t since that stunt won the race, but the heartburn is no joke. If only Trix’d find a nice, overprotective man who could keep her suicidal tendencies in check.” I gripped his shoulder tighter. “Ifonly there were someone willing to step up, to be the alpha male the dragon wouldn’t devour, and give her a curfew.”
He grunted but he didn’t push me off. He wasn’t nearly as macho as he pretended to be for the cameras. Of course, Trix didn’t know that. “There’s no shortage of males interested in tucking Trix into bed at night. She respects you, Nix. If you told her that you were worried about her safety?—”
I released him and headed around the truck. “She’d act even more reckless. The thing is that it is an act. She runs the terrain more than anyone else. She knows it like the back of her hand. She knows her beasties, and she knows what she can do.”
“There’s nothing she can’t do.” He grumbled like it was a bad thing. He had a bad thing for her. He had for as long as I’d been working with her. It was weird the way he acted around her, like the world’s biggest cock, which drove her crazy enough to beat his racer’s vehicle with a two-by-four after a race last season. He drove her crazy intentionally, but that wasn’t how you got a woman. Not that anyone got Trix.
My phone buzzed, Duke’s of Hazzard’s theme. “Speak of the Dragon,” I sighed, and took the call.
“They closed it!” Trixie’s growl was scary. “Wrapped your whole compound like it’s Christmas, lights and everything.”
