Page 3 of Taken By Raider Kings
The beast at the floor of his mind stirred restlessly.Instinct blossomed into certainty.Something’s gonna happen.
“I don’t like this,” he murmured.Kyle paused as the others preceded—slim dark Julia, Brenn trailing in her wake as usual, Eric hunching his shoulders and glancing warily from side to side.“It smells odd.”
Kyle agreed silently, his chin dipping in a facsimile of a nod.“Wish we had a shaman.”
You and me both.We could settle down.And Zach wouldn’t be half so tempted to do something drastic.
But resisting temptation was getting to be his middle name.“I’ll keep an eye on Julia.”I’m such a diplomat.
The animal part of him raised its head, interested in a thread of scent.Brunette, young, tantalizing in its evanescence.Hmm.Wonder who that is.Smells interesting.
“Good.We can blow town if we get enough tonight.”Kyle glanced up at his eldest sibling, as if Zach was the alpha.“South, I’m thinking.”
Nice and warm.Easy pickings, too, if we just stay under the radar.“Sounds like a good idea,” Zach allowed.Except we’re traveling blind, without a shaman.Nobody to throw the bones, and Julia’s unstable.She should marry into another Tribe, if we can find a male strong enough.
But good luck finding a mate for her.Good luck findinganythingat all, really.None of the other Tribes would so much as give them the time of day without a shaman of their own.Not even the Tanuki would talk to them, and those were some of the most gregarious around.
He sighed, a cloud of breath hanging in cold air, and Kyle gave him another one of those odd sidelong glances.Quit looking at me that way.You’re the alpha, I’m the second—that’s the way it’s going to stay.God, I wish Dad was here.
“You’ve got the quickest fingers,” Kyle finally said.An order, or a peace offering?Not that it mattered.“You take point tonight.”
Zach nodded, shelving all but the most immediate considerations.“By this time tomorrow we’ll be driving toward orange groves and white-sand beaches.”
And still running one step ahead of disaster.
He pushed the thought away, rubbed his fingertips together, and braced himself for the night’s work.
three
Sophie meant to have fun.Really, she did.But the gin-and-tonic was watered down, the dance floor was so crowded she’d gotten elbowed and damn near molested in the five minutes she’d spent swaying to the beat, and the pumping, throbbing music was going straight through her head with glass spikes.
Great.All I need is a migraine.Why can’t I just enjoy myself like everyone else?
Lucy was apparently having a fine time, shaking her thang on the dance floor with a guy who looked the epitome of a Latin Lover stereotype, right down to the poufy white ruffled shirt.Luce looked downright amazing, as usual, and the guy was leaning in, talking in her ear or nibbling.They were rubbing hips just short of truly illegal fashion; Lucy had her hands up, abandoned to the dance in a way Sophie couldn’t even dream of.
I was like that once, though.Wasn’t I?She couldn’t remember.Instead, the image of copper-bottomed pans hanging over a kitchen island rose in memory, bright round shapes twitching, and an icy rill of fear slid up her back.
A half-guilty glance around showed nothing out of the ordinary.As usual.
Still jumping at shadows.She couldn’t even remember what it felt like to dance without being afraid.And her nerves tingled, whether it was from weak gin or the infrequent pins-and-needles feeling which meant something truly bad was about to happen.
Those pinprick-waves had even saved her from a car crash once.Or at least Sophie firmly believed, no matter what anyone else would say.The feeling had made her sit at a four-way stop, foot firmly on the brake, until another car zoomed through the intersection, not even pausing.Whether the driver was drunk or just careless didn’t matter—the point was, she’d avoided being T-boned.
Still, the feeling hadn’t piped up when she was, say, about to marry a man who thought “wife” meant “slave.”Or, sometimes, “punching bag.”
Sophie sighed.She could have left her glasses in the car, rendering the world a soft fuzz much easier to deal with, but then she’d be half-blind.She probablyshouldhave left them, this was just the sort of crowd fit to accidentally knock them off her face plus step on them, and there went a few hundred bucks’ worth of frames she couldn’t afford to lose.
They were cute, too.And they didn’t require the care and expense contacts did.
I’m all new now.Except the inside, where I’m the same old Sophie.Scared of my own shadow.She took another gulp of watery gin, then someone bumped into her from behind.The drink slopped, splashing, and cold liquid landed on her cleavage.The pinpricks swept over her skin, retreated.
Sophie sucked in a breath, nearly choked, and looked up as the person bumping her settled against the bar less than a foot away.
Oh, wow.
He was tall, dark, and rough-looking, stubble crawling on his cheeks under high arched cheekbones.The man’s mouth was a little too thin, as was his nose, but his eyes—so dark pupil blended into iris, especially in uncertain light—were nice enough.And the shelf of dark hair falling stubbornly across them was just waiting for fingers to smooth it back.A streak of almost-blond winging back from his temple should have looked ridiculous, but didn’t.
Hello, stranger.Sophie quickly looked back down at her drink.Lucy would have grinned at him and said something witty.Jeez.I’m such an idiot.
