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“Your concern is sweet, Max. Really, it is. But I’m going to need you to back out of this one.”
Max couldn’t form words, so he grunted instead. There was wine on the table, thank the Star. He reached for it and poured himself a glass, filling it to the brim. Grasping the stem so hard he was surprised it didn’t snap, he drank the whole thing, not giving a rat’s ass when three witches glanced his way with matching frowns.
Dinner passed quickly, the food as bland as the attendants. The tables seated twelve each, and with Roark and Taega in their company, the other guests within the vicinity vying for their attention, Max didn’t need to say much. People eyed him with curiosity, but luckily no one seemed to recognize him. Everyone here was likely too wealthy and sheltered to have ever seen him before, and he was glad for it. Dallas was careful to keep any conversations that drifted their way centered around the Bright family and Angelthene’s Aerial Fleet, allowing him to sit in silence and not have to remember the fake backstory she’d made up for him on the way here. Something about an Aura Healer visiting from the oceanside community of Carmel farther up the coast… Or was it Glasslight? Shit, he couldn’t remember the details. Good thing he didn’t need to.
The high energy permeating the building had mellowed out by the time their dessert plates were being cleared away, the clink of dishes and the din of tipsy conversations filling the banquet hall.
Finally freed of idle chatter, not a single pair of eyes on them, Dallas slid her chair closer to his. The rosy heat from her aura had Max leaning her way, slinging an arm around the back of her chair. She rested her hand on his knee, squeezing it lightly.
He tensed when he felt that hand slide higher up his muscled thigh, the evocative gesture sending a drip of heat down his spine.
“Don’t,” he snapped quietly.
“Don’t what?”
“If you keep touching me like that, we’re going to have to find someplace to disappear.” He wouldn’t mind; he loved getting intimate with Dallas, always jumping at the opportunity to do so.
Another squeeze of that naughty hand had every muscle in his body hardening—and something else, too.
“Dallas,” he warned, snatching her wrist. He held her hand below the table, taking care not to draw unwanted attention. He managed to stop himself from getting a full-blown erection right in the nick of time, but it was a close one.
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Dallas’s face was flushed from all the wine she’d tossed back.
“Anywhere other than in front of the Red Baron.” The asshole was still seated at their table, his wife at his right, which was precisely the reason why Max hadn’t pulled Dallas to her feet and whisked her away.
“Is it really because he’s the Red Baron?” she crooned, eyes hooded, dark lashes fluttering. “Or is it because he’s my dad?”
Max fidgeted. “Both.”
She snaked a finger along the buttons in his shirt. “I had no idea it was so easy to get under Maximus Reacher’s skin.”
“It usually isn’t. You’re the only one.”
A red shade that had nothing to do with the wine crept through her cheeks. “Let’s not get all mushy right now,” she said, ducking her head.
“You’re never willing to get mushy. Let that wall down, Dal.”
“I’ve spent too long building it.” The statement was nearly inaudible. When he opened his mouth to reply, desperate to get her to confide in him, she shushed him before he could get one word out. “I think they’re moving onto the speeches now.”
“Oh goodie,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Civil,” she hissed, straightening in her seat.
He nodded. “Civil.”
Being as discreet as possible, he tipped his head down and slanted his left wrist, eyeing the watch he was wearing. An hour of speeches and a bit more mingling, and they would be free to go.
Lacing his fingers with Dallas’s, he set their twined hands on his knee and pretended to listen to the speeches, all of which had praise to toss at Roark and Taega Bright. Max was still getting to know Dallas, still trying to breach the wall she insisted on keeping up twenty-four-seven, but there was something about the set of her jaw that told him she thought this place and the people in it were full of shit.
That made two of them.
—
Max blew a stream of velvet smoke at the starry sky, using his Sight to study the forcefield bubbled over the city. He was sitting on a bench near the front doors of the Emerald Bay Resort, feeling grateful for the quiet and the solitude. With his Sight, he could see the ancient runes that made up the spells of the forcefield, a whole shitload of letters belonging to languages as old as time itself.
There were expensive spells over the resort that kept Darkslayers from seeing the auras inside the building, completely concealed by dense layers of colors that reminded him of the inside of a kaleidoscope.
Once he’d had enough of the forcefield and the spells on the resort, the undulating symbols dizzying him, he blinked his Sight away and watched the revolving glass doors instead. The lights inside spilled out onto the pavement, making it sparkle with whatever material the people who’d built this place had used to give it that effect.
