Page 19 of Fae Devoted (Fae Touched #3)

“I ’m ready.” Jo emerged from the bathroom in an orange sweater and a navy skirt that showed a flash of bare thigh with every step.

“You should sleep,” he said, forcing his gaze from the beguiling sight.

“I’m fine, Jacob. We can’t afford the delay if there’s even a chance Jeremiah might still be at the Rivière.”

She moved to the foot of the Detroit motel room’s sole bed and bent at the waist to return her toiletry bag to the suitcase on the floor. Tucker almost groaned when the narrow skirt pulled at her hips and hugged her shapely ass.

Gums tingling, he ran his tongue over his aching teeth, swearing that the sweet orange flavor that was uniquely Jo still lingered in his mouth. How the hell was he supposed to resist now that he’d tasted her, no matter how briefly?

And how was he supposed to sleep in the same bed and not touch her?

“Now, remove your shirt,” she said, still turned away.

His entire body hardened in an instant, tips of his fangs elongating. He clamped his lips shut to hide them while fighting to regain control.

Jo stood and spun, brandishing a bottle of perfume and a nervous smile. “You showered with the soap and shampoo I left in the bathroom?”

Unable to do more than grunt, he nodded.

The soap smelled of anise and musk—of Anwyll and sex. The fragrance wouldn’t fool a shifter’s nose up close, but it’d mask his Clan scent from a vampire as long as Tucker didn’t give them a reason to delve deeper. Any Dádhe crossing his path would assume he was intimate with a witch and move on.

Jo came to his door in the middle of the night, not only armed with a wild idea but prepared to implement every aspect of her strategy. And if he vetoed Plan A, she had an alternative scheme tucked in her pocket.

His she-wolf was a force of nature when an idea got into her head, and Tucker found it hard to deny her anything. Jo had him wrapped around her dainty finger since day one, even if she didn’t know it.

“I um…brought this to reinforce the smell of the soap.” She approached hesitantly, the freckles he loved lost in the rosy blush spreading across her cheeks.

Tucker had trained for combat from the age of fourteen and faced multiple battles for dominance after reaching his majority.

He fought in territory wars before the formation of the nine regions, killed shifters driven feral by a broken bond, and confronted a pureblood Fae with nothing but his fangs and claws, yet it took everything in him not to retreat from one determined female.

“Shirt?” she said again, gaze stuck at the level of his throat.

Tucker stared at the dingy motel wall behind the bed, undid the row of buttons, and tugged his shirttail from his jeans, leaving his chest and abs bare.

The unique scent of Jo overrode the mild licorice aroma already on his skin, and he savored the comforting smell knowing in moments it would be obliterated.

“It’ll be more convincing if the perfume is kept subtle by rubbing it into your skin rather than spraying your clothes.” Jo spritzed a small amount of the fragrance onto her hand and tipped up her chin.

Looking down at the fingers shining with liquid hovering above his breastbone, he nodded his permission and braced against the touch he longed for yet shouldn’t want—couldn’t want. He ground his teeth as the coolness of her damp palm glided across his pecs and collarbone.

“You should smell like you’ve recently had sex with a witch,” she said, then smoothed the strong fragrance over the tense muscles of his stomach; the aroma nothing like the citrus undertones specific to Jo’s complex scent. “And not like you’ve doused yourself in a female’s perfume.”

Her soft touch left him, her warmth with it, and he opened his eyes to watch her spray more of the anise-scented fragrance on her fingertips.

“If we were, um…together,” she pressed trembling fingers against his taut throat, trailing them up the rigid tendon on the side of his neck. “I would have left my scent here.”

Tucker’s heart kicked against his ribs, his canines lengthening to press into his lower lip. He ignored the sting.

“And here.” Her hand stroked his short hair, then slid to his bristled cheek.

Denying the desire—the burning need—to kiss her again, he stiffened and dug the tips of his claws into the heels of his palms before choking out, “If you’re done, we should get going.”

Jo searched his face a moment longer, then dropped her hand. “I just need to wash off this perfume,” she turned away, “then we can leave.”

Tucker opened his fists and watched the puncture wounds start to close. He breathed through his mouth, wanting Jo’s scent in his nose for as long as possible. It felt wrong to smell like another female, no matter how artificial.

The water turned on, and Jo raised her voice. “Might be a little suspicious if I walk around smelling like a witch when I’m supposed to be searching for my Ca’anam.”

His throat vibrated, the growl exploding from his chest as Jo mumbled under her breath, “Especially when it’s only on one hand.”

Tucker pulled his black knit cap low on his forehead and hunched his six-foot-five, two-hundred-and-eighty-pound frame over a watered-down Bloody Mary, trying to remain inconspicuous despite being the lone customer at the casino bar.

Jo was seated at the end of a row of colorful slot machines to his left, her laughter drifting above the discordant rings and pings of the one-armed bandits.

She spoke with a trio of Anwyll males, her long legs crossed and slanted to the side, one hand resting on the old-fashioned lever of a dollar game.

She depressed the bar to spin the wheel, and the bright, wide-necked sweater she wore slipped from her shoulder, the tempting expanse of smooth skin drawing the youngest witch’s avid attention.

He and Jo had been in the city for less than six hours, and the odds of him getting through the trip without shedding another male’s blood were decreasing by the second.

The hairs on his neck rose, and he forced his muscles to relax, opening his mouth and his nostrils wide in an effort to identify the source of the potential threat through the smoke-filled air.

He continued to play the video poker game built into the counter, ignoring the unwelcome scent of witch on his skin.

Avoiding the local shifters wasn’t an issue as most of Remington’s pack were residing with the king in the Upper Peninsula, and he’d made it a point to frequent tables and bars with human employees. The ruse had worked perfectly, until now.

Tucker angled his body toward the nearby Dádhe blackjack dealer who noticed him sipping the same drink for the past hour, the vampire’s assigned table empty of players during the late afternoon lull.

Casinos as a whole were hotspots for the Dádhe race.

The lack of windows, 24/7 entertainment, luxury rooms, and employment opportunities made it a logical destination to visit or take up permanent residence.

The East North Central’s ruling Dádhe House owned the casino complex; the DuPont House patriarch controlled the territory’s vampires from his penthouse suite.

The bored dealer raised an eyebrow, and Tucker feigned a sheepish grin, tipping his chin to indicate Jo and her admirers.

The vampire followed his line of vision and saw what Tucker wanted him to see: a shy, unmated male semi-stalking an unmated female, waiting for his chance to make a move.

Luckily, the Dádhe was too far away to question why he carried the scent of a recent liaison with a witch while pursuing a she-wolf who’d smell it as soon as he came within ten feet of her.

The Dádhe’s lascivious gaze swept over Jo’s face and form, pausing an inordinate amount of time on her sexy, bare legs. Tucker held onto his grin by a hairsbreadth and returned the ensuing thumbs up.

A quartet of gray-haired ladies in matching t-shirts and white sneakers took seats at the Dádhe dealer’s table, and then rudely asked to see his fangs.

The vampire obliged without pause, accustom to providing the tourists with the shorter, non-scary version of his pointy incisors.

The human women gasped, then giggled like schoolgirls.

Pulling cash from the nylon pouches at their waists, they fanned hundred-dollar bills and player cards on the felt surface.

The vampire’s interest in a lovelorn shifter was forgotten, replaced by the prospect of hefty tips.

Refocusing on Jo, Tucker instantly noticed her alert posture and the eagerness in her voice as she removed her hand from the machine’s lever and slid it to the small of her back.

Maintaining the conversation while concealing her fist from the trio of Fae Touched, Jo curled and uncurled her index finger, pointing in Tucker’s general direction and signaling her desire to speak with him.

Had she already gotten a lead on Jeremiah?

Leaving Jo alone with unmated males of any race without his Mark on her shoulder made his fingertips prickle, claws itching to emerge, but waiting in the car where he couldn’t see her for hours on end wasn’t an option. The few minutes at the gas station earlier had been pure hell.

Abandoning his seat at the bar, Tucker kept his eyes downcast and ambled through the thankfully thin crowds toward the prearranged meeting spot, trying not to attract further attention.

The janitor’s closet was at the rear of the currently empty sports lounge, just past the restrooms. He turned down the narrow hallway and ducked into the men’s room.

After ensuring the stalls were empty, he reached into his pocket for the bespelled device created by a battle witch to target the MAC address of a lone security camera.

Instead of taking the camera out of commission and alerting the guards monitoring the system, the device generated a still frame of the last footage recorded, giving him and Jo thirty minutes to get in and get out without being seen on a live feed.