Page 29 of Mystic Justice (The Other Detective #2)

Ruben was tired, grumpy and not supposed to be there.

Closing the bar had been Gideon’s job, but as usual the vampyr had vanished with Betty before the second wave of customers.

The vampyr was an ass , he thought, rubbing his eyes as the tills refused to balance.

The amounts weren’t matching. He was too knackered.

Just give an estimate, his wolf suggested.

That’s not how it works, Brogue. Ruben sighed. It has to be right.

It took two more counts until he reconciled the figures: someone had given a refund but hadn’t put it through properly. Bloody incompetent idiots.

He was yawning and Brogue was complaining as he unlocked the doors to slink out. He locked up again and set the alarm. He waited until it sounded twice to confirm it was on before he walked away from the building.

Go for a hunt? Brogue suggested enthusiastically, his tail wagging in Ruben’s head.

He considered it for a moment but tiredness won out. Soon, he promised. Rest first.

He rolled his shoulders as he walked down the street, trying to work out the knots of tension that had been bothering him all day. It was time to move on from Botany. He was tired of Gideon taking him for granted, tired of Sandra’s high-handed ways, and now the place held too many memories.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Moss when he saw all the beautiful plants she’d once tended. He’d planned on asking her out for a drink but had always chickened out. Regret pricked at him. Life was too short: next time, next girl, he’d damn well ask.

When she pulled up in her car so soon afterwards, it felt like a sign from the universe.

‘Hey,’ she said through the open window.

‘Wanna come back to mine and get really drunk? We’re not in tomorrow.

’ She was smiling more warmly than she’d ever done at work and he couldn’t help noticing she’d undone her shirt button, allowing a little white lace to show.

He jerked his eyes up to her face in case she’d seen his gaze linger for too long, but when he met her eyes he saw satisfaction in them. She’d wanted him to look.

Mating is better than hunting, Brogue suggested, sending him a wolfish grin.

He wasn’t wrong.

Well, why the fuck not? Ruben reached for the passenger side door. ‘Sure.’ He slid in and belted up.

She passed him an open beer. ‘I started one for the road,’ she admitted. ‘But you can have it. Better not to drink and drive. I’ll catch up at home.’

He took the can and had a long slug. ‘Nice,’ he commented.

‘It sure is,’ she agreed. ‘I love a pale ale.’

‘Me too. It’s my favourite.’

‘I know.’ She smiled flirtatiously, reached out and rested her hand on his thigh.

She wasn’t his favourite person, but what the hell. She was pretty – and she was definitely willing. Besides, he’d already decided to move on from Botany. He took her hand and slid it higher.

She flashed him a grin and started to rub him in earnest as she drove. He took another long pull from the beer, almost draining it, then set it down in the cup holder and rested his head against the headrest. He closed his eyes to better enjoy the sensation of her warm hand on his crotch.

God, but he was exhausted; even with her enthusiastic touches, he was spiralling towards sleep. It would be embarrassing if he couldn’t get it up. She’d be the type to spread it around. She’d fucking tell everyone.

He tried to open his eyes, tried to sit up, and alarm bells rang when he could do neither.

Something is wrong, Brogue said urgently.

I know, buddy. I can’t move. He tried to hand the reins to Brogue, to let them shift, but nothing happened. Fear spiked through them both. He tried again to open his eyes, to look at her, but all he could do was let out a vague moan.

Next to him, she laughed.

My alarm screamed me awake at the god-awful hour of 6am. My eyes were gritty and sore, and everything in me wanted to hit snooze, but I pushed back the covers and stumbled into my en-suite bathroom to shower away the cobwebs.

I was pleasantly surprised not to have been woken with news of another dead body. Maybe Elvira and Bland’s visible presence in the bar had been enough to deter our killers.

Clean, warm and feeling sharper, I tied my dressing gown around me and started for the kitchen. I wasn’t a coffee girl, but this was definitely a coffee morning.

I walked into my open plan living-room kitchen-diner and stopped abruptly as I found Krieg stretched out on my sofa. I stared at all seven feet of him curled up uncomfortably on the beige cushions. One arm was slung over his eyes, blocking out the lights I’d turned on for Loki.

He was wearing the same white T-shirt from the day before and he had my blanket slung low over his hips, though the legs that were sticking out told me that at least he’d shucked off his leather trousers.

I tried not to ogle him, but this was my first glance at some of his actual skin.

His legs were lightly covered with hair that was as dark as that on his head, and even in sleep his quads and calves were clearly defined.

His feet, as he’d once promised, showed no signs of having had a pedicure but still looked neat and tidy.

As I stepped forward for a closer look a floorboard creaked and he instantly went from being relaxed to wholly alert.

His eyes flicked open and immediately locked on mine.

There was no trace of tiredness in them despite the shitty hour.

‘Good morning, Inspector,’ he said, unruffled. ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘What are you doing here?’

His smile softened the hard lines of his face.

I tried not to notice how nice his dark hair looked when it was tousled by sleep.

‘I thought it likely you would awake early and it would save us both some time if I just crashed on your sofa.’ He hesitated.

‘Besides, Loki was still restless. I used some of my piping skills to settle him.’

Krieg was half-ogre, half-piper: the latter meant that he could speak to and control any creature he chose – which included ogres.

If his people found out he could control them like that, his head would be on a spike quicker than you could say ‘coup’.

That he had entrusted me with his secret still felt like a big deal, and I was grateful that he’d told me.

He’d done so in order to balance the scales between us when he’d found out that I was an unregistered subterfuge wizard: I kept his secret and he kept mine.

We both had the power to destroy each other, but I was finding that was a little less terrifying the more I saw of him, the more I trusted him.

‘Thanks for helping Loki,’ I said finally.

‘You’re welcome.’ He paused. ‘Your ghost was unhappy with me staying, but once I explained why I was here it stopped trying to pull the blanket off me.’

The matter-of-fact way he accepted the ghost’s existence told me he’d encountered one before. Since this was my first ghost, that intrigued me no end but at that moment I had bigger mysteries to contemplate.

‘May I use your shower?’ Krieg asked politely.

His question reminded me that I was completely starkers beneath my dressing gown. ‘Sure,’ I managed. ‘Have you got clean clothes with you?’

He sat up and gestured at the duffle bag resting at the end of the sofa. ‘I have.’ Of course he had. He was a boy scout, always prepared.

‘Great. Well. Help yourself.’

‘Thank you.’ As he stood, he revealed his tight, navy boxers. He folded my blanket neatly and laid it over the back of the sofa precisely as he’d found it.

He peeled off his T-shirt to reveal a torso that demanded sculptures be made of it.

Most men I’d been with had slim frames and maybe a little light muscle tone; Sam had a small beer belly, thanks to his love of real ale.

Those men were all normal but Krieg was not: every visible inch of him was pure muscle.

He had to have some fat, but I was damned if I knew where he was storing it.

His chest looked as if it had been carved rather than made; it was the kind of chest you could bounce coins off and turn them into small projectile weapons.

He had thick shoulders, pronounced traps and huge arms. His right arm was larger than the left – all ogres had something asymmetrical about them – but it wasn’t overly different; in fact it was barely noticeable and about as suspicious as an average bloke having one more muscular arm from ‘private cardio’.

Krieg’s biceps flexed subtly as he folded the T-shirt and laid it alongside his other discarded clothes, which were neatly folded at the other end of the sofa on top of his steel-toed boots.

He straightened – and there were his abs: eight of them, defined, tight, the stuff of film screens.

I’d never seen anything like that in the flesh.

But it was the V muscles that truly got to me, those sculpted lines that dipped low, bracketing his hips like an arrow pointing straight down into the waistband of the dark boxers that rode low on his hips. Too low. Not low enough.

My mouth went dry and my brain issued a quiet blue screen of death.

It stuttered back to life when I realised he was standing there, patiently letting me ogle every inch of his body. I dragged my eyes up to his. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, as my cheeks warmed. ‘I didn’t mean to stare. I’ve never seen a man quite like you.’

‘Do you like it?’ he asked softly. ‘A lot of women get intimidated – not everyone is a fan of the muscular look, the veins on the biceps, that kind of thing.’

‘I— Yes, I like it.’ Too much, way too much.

All I had to do was unfasten my robe and we could be skin to skin in seconds.

The temptation to undo that belt and to slide my eyes lower past those pretty V muscles was so strong that I closed my eyes.

‘Please go and shower before I pounce on you.’ My voice was strangled.

I heard a soft laugh. ‘I’m very glad to hear that. But to be clear, I do welcome pouncing in the future. When you’re ready.’

I was so ready. I opened my eyes to tell him that but, to my disappointment, he’d already gone. Moments later I heard the sound of running water and realised he had shut neither the bedroom nor the bathroom door. He was temptation personified. I groaned aloud.

My fridge door opened and a cold bottle of water floated into my hand. ‘Thanks,’ I said to the ghost. I opened the bottle and tried to water the Sahara that was my throat. ‘Fuck,’ I said when the bottle was drained because the liquid seemed to have gone directly to my nether regions.

I hadn’t expected to have such a strong, visceral reaction to him – and it was to him, I realised.

If another man with the same physique had been standing before me, I could have brushed it aside.

But when Krieg was standing before me, this powerful man who was a deadly king and yet kind and caring, who came to my family dinners and stocked his cars with Dr Pepper just for me, when he’d been in front of me with his scent swirling on the air my lust was unparalleled.

Oh man, I was so screwed.

It wasn’t just lust; I was falling for him big time.