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Fun fact: vampires can smell sex.
I had always known it was the case, but seeing the look on Holden’s face when I met him back at the bar was a harsh reminder. The disgust that flashed in his eyes was enough to make my stomach churn with guilt.
“Hope you had a good time, Mrs. Rain.” His gaze darted to the flawless six-carat diamond and platinum ring Lucas had insisted I put on after we’d gotten dressed. The damned thing was so absurd I wanted to ask him to take it back and trade it for something more subtle, but I suspected male ego and diamond size were closely related.
“It’s complicated.” The excuse sounded weak even to my ears. Was I really going to try using werewolf politics to justify running off to have sex in the middle of a party? I frowned and stayed silent when he glared at me.
“And someday you’ll explain to me why it’s okay for you to sleep with two werewolves, yet it’s out of the question to cross the line with me. But I couldn’t give a damn about that right now. You brought me here tonight to help find Lucy, and that’s why I’m here. So unless you feel like flaunting your lovers in my face a little more, let’s get our job done.”
A slap would have hurt less than his cold tone.
The walk from the Rain School of Business to the English department offices wasn’t long, but it might as well have taken ten years given how uncomfortable it was. Holden walked four feet ahead of me the whole way and didn’t say another word after we left the party. Before we ventured out I made my final round of official handshaking and apologized to our visiting guests for leaving so soon. Lucas wasn’t thrilled, but he didn’t argue.
It was impossible for me to ignore that the smell of my coupling with Lucas would be obvious to every werewolf in the room. Dominick and Morgan had both looked disappointed—for different reasons—but our Southern envoy seemed to take me seriously for the first time that evening.
Guess I really was Lucas’s mate now.
I didn’t know how to feel about the upgrade, and I was already having misgivings about our carnal display in the student lounge. It wasn’t that I felt sleeping with him had been wrong, per se, but something about it didn’t sit well.
Holden’s reaction didn’t make me feel any better about it.
The cranky vampire burst into the English building and let the solid wood door close in my face. Yup, he wasn’t handling it like an adult.
Since it was late in the evening on a Friday, there were no classes in session. The halls had an empty, echoey feel to them, making the whole building seem haunted. Without the bustle of students giving the walls life, all that remained was a musty, unsettling gloom. I matched Holden’s pace, then overtook him. This was my hunt, and he didn’t know where we were going.
In the basement I led us through a labyrinth of halls until we were standing outside Oliver Mayhew’s locked office door.
Holden sniffed the air. “Doesn’t smell sinister.” The tone of his voice implied I might be wrong in my assessment that Mayhew was the villain. I’d had plenty of opportunity to doubt myself in the past week, but this wasn’t something I was uncertain of.
I pulled out the bobby pin I’d used to keep my bangs pinned back, and they thanked me by tumbling into my eyes. “He’s involved.”
“Whatever you say.”
The bobby pin slipped into the lock, and I twisted it several times until a satisfying click shouted into the silence of the hall.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” Curiosity overtook his default surliness.
“Keaty 101. He locked me in a closet with no light and nothing but a box of toothpicks. Told me if I made it out, he’d train me.”
“And if you didn’t?”
“Keaty has plenty of skeletons in his closet already. I don’t think another one would make much difference to him.” I was matter-of-fact about it, but the truth was the memory of being trapped in that closet gave me the creeps. I didn’t do well with cramped spaces, and in seven years I don’t think I’d totally forgiven Keaty for doing that to me.
“He and Sig would get along swimmingly.” Holden opened the door, and the dark interior grinned like an open mouth.
When I stood, I brushed against his chest. We both froze. He broke away first, choosing to slip into the foreign room instead of staying in contact with me.
“What are you looking for, exactly?”
I let out a breath before following him into the office. “Anything that proves Mayhew met with the girls alone. With the exception of Lucy, all the girls were carrying on relationships with Gabriel, and from what I gather they had a bit of a time-share system.” Mayhew’s desk chair squeaked when I sat down.
“Your Gabriel?”
“He’s no one’s Gabriel now.” I hit the power button on the desktop computer and waited as the fan kicked in and the familiar Windows chimes bonged. By some stroke of idiot’s luck, the computer wasn’t password protected. That also probably meant I wasn’t going to find anything juicy or useful.
Holden picked up the professor’s Day-Timer and started paging through it. “What were their names?”
“Trish, Angie and Misty.”
