Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads by authors_sort Read Free Book Online

Caine, had burned me a little more than I’d let on to Owen or anyone else. Donovan had just never been able to accept my past as the Spider and all the bad things that I’d done over the years, all the people that I’d killed for money, survival, or something else. No matter how much he might have wanted to be with me.
    I didn’t want to look into Owen’s violet eyes one day and see the things that I’d seen in Donovan’s golden gaze. I didn’t want to look at Owen and realize that my bloody past and sharp skills disturbed him the way they had Donovan.
    I didn’t want Owen to hate me like Donovan had.
    Owen murmured something in his sleep and rolled over onto his back. I hesitated, then bent forward and traced my fingers down the side of his face. A hint of dark stubble pricked my skin, but not in an unpleasant way. Owen leaned into my touch and sighed, as though it comforted him.
    I quickly withdrew my hand, not wanting to wake him or think too much about the warm softness that flared in my chest whenever I was near him. A dodged,determined, creeping sort of softness that I was struggling more and more to squash—or at least contain before it infected what little was left of my cold, black heart.
    Donovan had hurt me when he’d left Ashland. But losing Owen the same way? For the same reasons? I was beginning to think that might just break me completely.
    Still, I stared at Owen a moment more before turning and slipping out of the bedroom.
    I spent the day cooking at the Pork Pit, the barbecue restaurant that I operated in downtown Ashland. Then I went home to change and get ready for my evening with Vinnie Volga, the Ice elemental who seemed to be part of whatever trap Mab was baiting for me, for the Spider. Just after nine that night, I pulled my Benz into the parking lot of Northern Aggression.
    As its name suggested, the nightclub was located in the heart of Northtown, where it catered to some of Ashland’s wealthiest citizens—or anyone who had enough cash or plastic to pay for the hedonistic delights offered inside. Blood, drugs, sex, smokes, alcohol, and everything in between. You could get it all at Northern Aggression, in whatever quantities or combinations that you wanted, for the right price.
    The outside of the club wasn’t much to look at, just another ordinary, warehouse-like building with a sign over the front door, that grayed out and faded into the rest of the immaculate Northtown landscape. If you’d driven by Northern Aggression during the day, you might have thought that the club was some anonymous office full ofcorporate drones sitting in their tiny cubicles and talking on their headsets.
    But at night the place and the people inside it came alive in all sorts of ways.
    I parked my Benz in one of the side lots that flanked the building, got out, and headed for the front door. An enormous neon sign hung over the entrance—a giant heart with an arrow through it. Roslyn Phillips’s personal rune and the symbol for her decadent nightclub. The sign glowed red, then yellow, then orange in the night, bathing the dozens of people waiting in line below it in its bright, suggestive light.
    Xavier, the guy who was Roslyn’s main squeeze, stood outside the door, deciding who got into the club and who was left standing out in the cold. The giant bouncer stood roughly seven feet tall, with a strong, muscled body to match. His black eyes and shaved head both gleamed like polished onyx underneath the glare of the neon heart-and-arrow sign. Xavier held a large clipboard in his hands, checking off names on his list and taking the occasional C-note bribe to lift the red velvet rope and allow people to go inside the club.
    I strolled to the front of the line, past all the men sporting sharp suits and the women wearing as little as they could bear given the chill in the December air. A few of the women gave me pointed, dirty looks, especially since I wasn’t dressed for a night of clubbing.
    Instead of a