Page 62

We are the Quatro Cartel. Here for each other forever! No matter what, we promise to always answer when one of us needs help.

Bram had done everything he could when it came to the Sandman case in Raintree.

He’d spent much of the past day with Senior Detective Tim Xiao going over documents they’d found at Hendricks’s place, and pulling information out of the memories he’d scraped from Hendricks in order to answer outstanding questions.

Many of his answers had led to physical or forensic finds that could become part of the investigative file, adding more weight to the case against Hendricks.

He’d worried it would push Xiao’s boundaries when Bram told him he now had Hendricks’s memories, but though the detective had obviously been torn, he was also an experienced officer who’d seen far too much grief caused by killers like Hendricks.

“Just make sure his remains are eventually discovered in a condition where they can be ID’d,” he’d said to Bram. “I promised the families that closure.”

“It’ll be done,” Bram had said, certain he could trust Adam’s word on that.

Unofficially, the case was already over, all other loose ends tied up.

The falcon team on former Sandman suspect Dae Park had even answered the question of Dae’s lies, nocturnal movements, and disturbing presence: Mi-ja’s son owned a small house in an isolated corner of Raintree that he’d turned into a manufacturing lab for a potent illegal substance.

He was too smart to sell in Raintree, but he had a regular rota of customers in the nearest big cities.

He had also, it became clear, been tasting his own merchandise. That particular drug was known to incite its users to bursts of brutal violence after long-term usage—and Dae’s blood had shown high concentrations.

Needless to say, Dae Park was no longer a free man.

As for Yúzé and Saffron, they’d left the previous night to go visit Eleri.

Getting into his vehicle, Bram knew he should follow the two out of town, get back to his personal mission of gathering as much data as possible when it came to devolving Js.

It was important, might help the Corps come up with a system for helping future Js who were facing the same end as the entirety of Bram’s tiny family of four.

And yet…he stopped his vehicle at the side of an isolated section of the road surrounded by verdant green. He’d already passed the Canyon, passed the road that would’ve led him up to the falcons’ home base and the woman named Dahlia who’d offered to work out his tension with sex.

Bram hadn’t been Silent for one hell of a long time—like all senior Js, he’d found it impossible to maintain adherence to the Protocol after close contact with mind after degenerate mind.

Which had led to multiple reconditionings.

But where Eleri had gone numb as a result, he’d become haunted by wakefulness.

He felt everything and could process none of it, and it was slowly driving him mad.

He didn’t need to further strain his already overloaded brain by initiating physical contact with a woman who had made his cock hard with a single heated whisper.

Yet he started the car with the intent to turn it.

Eleri was dying, despite all of Adam Garrett’s ferocious belief in her and in them. There would be no second chance for any of the Cartel. Why shouldn’t he go down in a scorching torrent of sexual pleasure?

Wings gliding down in front of his windscreen before he could start the turn, a huge bird with a snowy underside flying over his vehicle to come to a graceful landing on the deserted road in front of his SUV.

Not a peregrine.

A gyrfalcon .

A fracture of light even as he got out of the vehicle, the falcon no longer there even as the aftershock from the burst of light sparked behind his eyelids. Instead, a tall and voluptuous woman with dark hair marked by a single streak of white, and dangerous eyes, was walking naked toward him.

He’d seen other changelings naked in situations where they’d had to shift without clothing nearby, and none of them had affected him like this.

It wasn’t just because it was Dahlia—it was because she was making it a point to walk slow and easy while she ran a finger between the heavy weight of her breasts.

Bram had never seen so many curves, never wanted to grip all of them tight, never wanted to bite.

Until her.

Sweat broke out along his neck, his white shirt suddenly too heavy, too tight.

“Looks like you were about to blow town without saying good-bye,” she said on a purr of sound as she came to a halt in front of him. “That hurts my feelings, Mr. J.”

Fuck it.

Thrusting both hands into her hair, he bent his lips to her own…and felt the prick of talons on his sides. “You need permission for that, gorgeous.”

Bram didn’t know how to play games. “You already gave it,” he said bluntly.

Husky laughter. “So I did.”

Her hand on the back of his head, hauling him close.

Unleashed from the last of his inhibitions, Bram did what he’d wanted to from the first—he ran his hand down the curve of her waist and, cupping her ass, hauled her up onto his hips. She was luxuriantly soft under his hands, but beneath that was a layer of taut muscle.

This woman was a raptor, was dangerous.

But today, she was aroused and, for whatever reason, had decided she wanted him. He wasn’t going to question her decision.

She rubbed against him, her kiss as fierce as her hold in his hair. “You an exhibitionist, big guy?”

They were on a public road.

Bram had completely forgotten that. But he didn’t want to stop. So he just walked with her around the car and into the trees until they were hidden from view. She laughed, her hair trailing down her back to brush against his hands as she threw back her head. “Eager, I like it.”

There was a delight in her…and also an edge. A broken shard. Bram recognized it because he had more than a few shards of his own. He was fine with Dahlia using him for reasons of her own—after all, wasn’t he doing the same? Whatever happened, he wouldn’t be around to pick up the pieces.

He could already feel it, the beginnings of a critical sensory overload.

Pulling her further up his body, he leaned her back over his arm and bit at her breast. Not painfully, but so he could get the taste of her inside him.

“Damn, you’re strong.” Real surprise this time, her thighs going tight around him. “No desk Psy, huh?” Teasing words, but her tone was breathless and he could scent a musk in the air that his primitive hindbrain told him was good, very good.

He bent her even further back, so he could kiss more of her, and it wasn’t enough. Making a deep sound in his throat that no one who’d seen him in court would ever believe he could make, he looked around.

The ground looked hard and rough everywhere, and he couldn’t bear to subject her delicate skin to that even if he wanted to devour her.

So he slid her back down his body and took her mouth—but he was more than willing to follow when she seized control, her hands on his face and her tongue lashing his.

Lights flickered behind his eyes, his cock an aching rod in his pants.

Squeezing her ass, he broke the kiss only so he could bend down and taste her nipples, after once more pulling her up his body. She made a rough sound in her throat, her talons raking lines up his back that he felt on his skin.

She’d sliced through his shirt.

He didn’t care. Leaning down, he sucked her nipple into his mouth.

A short, sharp cry before she hauled him up with a hand in his hair and kissed him with a fury that made him stagger. His knees threatened to crumple.

Then she said, “Down,” and he went to his knees.

She’d unbuttoned and pushed his shirt off his body before he was even aware of it. When she shoved at his bare chest, he fell onto his back on the forest debris, his legs stretched out in front while she straddled his waist. Her breasts were marked by his bites and kisses, the nipples wet and ripe.

“I want to taste you,” he said, and hauled her up his body.

She slammed her palms flat on his chest to stop him, talons pricking. “Why the hell are you so strong?” Her eyes weren’t human anymore, a ring of yellow glowing in the muted forest light.

“I don’t sleep much,” he said. “I had to expend my energy somehow.” He ran, lifted weights, swam, did anything and everything to exhaust his body so his mind could rest.

None of it had worked, but today, he was glad for all of it.

Because the next time he pulled her, she came, and made sweet, wild sounds as he took her taste right from her core. He wanted to inhale her, absorb her, wear her in his skin.

Giving a sudden high shout, Dahlia arched her back.

He stopped, looked up, unsure if he’d hurt her in his madness.

She shoved his head back down.

Guess not.

A minute later, however, she’d had enough and pushed him off to shimmy down his body and stare at him with changeling eyes, her chest heaving and her hair sweat-damp at the temples. “Where the fuck did you learn to do that?”

Bram, desperate to taste all of her before it was too late, had no time for questions and answers. “You’re the softest creature I’ve ever touched. I want to sink into you, devour you.”

Her breath went even more rapid, and then before he knew it, she was sitting up and had her hands on his belt. He willed her to hurry, and it seemed she was over the playing, too, because she ripped off the belt, then began to pull down his pants. “Shit, your boots.”

He toed them off. “Gone.”

Dahlia had his pants and briefs off him in three seconds, her hand around the jutting thickness of his erection in the next. A single downward stroke and his back arched. “Not yet,” she ordered. “Not until I have you inside me.”

Bram felt as if his entire skin was about to explode off his body.