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“Did you lose your dog?” Holden asked.
I bristled. “What do you want?”
“I’m standing on your landing looking at a lovely bouquet of roses that are on the verge of wilting in the cold. Why don’t you let us in?”
I went to the door and jerked it open. Holden was holding out the vase containing two-dozen long-stemmed red roses and a card. I didn’t need to open it; I recognized Lucas’s handwriting. Taking the vase from Holden, I brushed past him and out onto the street in my bare feet, where I threw the vase and the flowers into the garbage bin in front of my building, then returned to the apartment as if nothing had happened.
“What do you want?” I asked again.
“I’m here to help you find Lucy.”
Incredulity must have shown on my face, because he shrugged. “Rebecca asked me to.”
“Rebecca ordered you to.”
“Semantics.”
“You know I could just as easily order you to go away.”
“You could. But you won’t.” He wasn’t paying much attention to me and was wandering the apartment instead, looking in every room. “Where is your wolf?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Trouble in paradise?” Holden smiled, and there was something menacing about it. He was a little too happy to discover I was on the outs with my live-in lover.
“It’s none of your business.”
He stepped closer. Too close. My breath hitched, and I ducked away from him.
“I think it is my business,” he whispered. “Even if you don’t want to admit it.”
“Now isn’t the time.” I pulled my jacket on and slipped a pair of old Converse sneakers on.
Holden stopped in front of me. In a movement faster than a heartbeat, his head dipped to my neck, and I could feel his breath cool and even over the mark on my neck. His tongue slid out, and the moment it touched my skin I shuddered violently. He pulled back and cupped my chin in his hand, his coffee-colored gaze boring into me.
“You let someone mark you.”
I tried to smack his hand away, but he held firm, reminding me he was stronger than I was. “I didn’t let anyone do anything.”
“And yet.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Good thing we have a long walk to Columbia then, isn’t it?”
Chapter Thirteen
Over the next half hour I did nothing to improve Holden’s opinion of werewolves.
“You should have him killed. Sig would do it.”
“I don’t want to have him killed, you idiot. He thought he was doing the right thing.”
“By forcing you into a union you didn’t want?”
“God, Holden, it’s not like he tricked me into marrying him.”
“No, marriage can be ended in divorce. This is metaphysical. Those kinds of bonds are not so easy to break.” He sounded so aggrieved by Lucas’s actions he seemed to forget he wasn’t so innocent himself when it came to this sort of thing.
