Chapter 7

Thrifty budgeting be damned, I picked up a mid-shelf bottle of Scotch on my way home, parked myself on my dilapidated couch, and settled in to brood. From my sprawled position, I had a view through the living room window of the tall sign for the gas station next door, with its blue glare illuminating the top of a scraggly palm tree.

Somewhere out there, through that window and a few miles across town to the more expensive parts of Vegas's environs, Cunningham had his own no-doubt luxurious lair. A view of the whole Strip. Much better Scotch. A hundred comfortable rooms. And in one of them, a beautiful, deceitful little fairy, who probably took all of the opulent trappings of his lifestyle for granted.

The hotel room last night had been more of a slumming-it experience for him than I'd realized at the time, I guessed.

Maybe so had I.

He might be spreading his legs for Cunningham in a plush, silk-sheeted, king-sized bed right at that moment.

The Scotch went down pretty quick. I poured another.

One drink became maybe-six-or-more, and at last I slumped all the way into the corner of the couch, some of the tension in my body draining away. It took a lot of alcohol to get an alpha relaxed, what with our incredibly fast metabolisms and high muscle mass, but it felt fucking incredible when I could afford enough booze to accomplish it.

Especially right now, when every time I closed my eyes I pictured my lover from the night before, either under me—or under Cunningham.

At least this way my blood pressure didn't spike every single damn time.

My cock had perked up, though. I ignored it, because sitting there half-drunk and getting myself off thinking about the guy who'd tricked and lied to me was simply too pathetic, even if no one would ever know about it but me.

Why had he tricked and lied to me, though? It didn't make any sense. Half of me wished Declan had been available to talk it over, but I was mostly glad he'd been too busy to keep plumbing the depths of my humiliation with me, useful as his perspective might have been.

Arnold Cunningham had all the money in the world, probably even more than Declan, but at that point only super rich guys showing off for other super rich guys cared about the difference. I certainly didn't. And that car the fairy had been driving cost over a hundred grand, so apparently Cunningham extended his showing-off-his-wealth to showering it on his…companion. If Declan had seen them together at events, that meant Cunningham didn't keep him hidden away as a dirty little secret, either.

Which meant…well, it meant the fairy hadn't needed to cheat me. The bit about not wanting to use any traceable form of payment made sense, if he had a jealous sugar daddy, but why take back the coin when money had to be the least of his problems?

And of course, his explanation about the bet had obviously been total bullshit. Now that I thought about it, he hadn't been very specific about the terms, had he? And his unstated and therefore not-an-actual-lie implication, that he'd lost a bet with a friend about taking an alpha knot, didn't make any sense, either. He hadn't needed my knot; his boyfriend had one, which he probably put in him on the regular.

I took a shot of Scotch, but it didn't quite banish that image. Fuck me.

All right, so what, then? No matter how I turned it around in my mind, I couldn't come up with any theory that fit.

Declan might be right that trying to get to the bottom of the mystery, get what I was owed, and get revenge would end in disaster—because all of those would require seeing the fairy again.

Seeing him again. And possibly more than seeing him.

No, dammit. That would be too stupid even for me.

I poured another drink and tried to convince myself that I was smarter than that, and hoped I'd manage it before I passed out.

***

Declan delivered on his promise. I woke up on the couch the next morning to several texts from him. He'd sent me three addresses: Cunningham's main office downtown, his mansion in the hills, and info about a penthouse he maintained at one of the Strip's most upscale casino hotels, in which he apparently owned the majority stake.

While I scrolled through those, I rolled off the couch, wincing at the excessive amount of sunlight pouring through the blinds I'd forgotten to close the night before, and wandered into the tiny kitchen to start some coffee.

Shifters didn't get hangovers, so I couldn't understand why I had this heavy, not-quite-right feeling. Coffee would help. It might be mostly psychosomatic, given that caffeine didn't affect me much more than liquor did, but the smell always reminded me of my father in the kitchen in the morning, brewing his little pot of tar on the stove in his copper cezve . The aroma and the bitter flavor always helped me focus and prepare for whatever came next.

Although I used a coffeemaker instead of doing it the old-fashioned way, much to my dad's disgust.

As I clicked the machine on, my screen lit up again. Declan had sent an attachment, and it had only started downloading onto my crappy outdated phone when I opened up the message thread.

The attachment popped up. The mug I'd been pulling out of the cabinet slipped from my hand, and I cursed and flailed and fumbled, barely catching it.

That was the fairy's face looking up at me from the screen in a photo very obviously taken for his driver's license, and even with the gruesome lighting and the DMV's best attempt at making him look drunk, dead, and angry, his skin glowed and his eyes and hair gleamed and his lips pouted kissably…and my cock twitched.

All of a sudden I was all the way awake, even though the coffee machine had barely begun to hiss and spit.

Declan hadn't only sent me the fairy's photo. He'd somehow gotten hold of the entire driver's license application, photo included. A lot of the little boxes had been filled in with a code the State of Nevada used on paperwork when the answer to a question didn't apply to a supernatural or non-human entity. The fairy hadn't provided a birthdate, place of birth, or his mother's maiden name, just for example. He'd also declined to register to vote and to be an organ donor, probably luckily for democracy and also the health of anyone in need of a kidney.

But he had put down a name, because apparently even fae skittishness about the magical power inherent in names wasn't enough to defeat the Nevada bureaucracy.

Despite everything, I couldn't help starting to laugh.

Tyler Tania. Really? I mean… really ?

Of course, the same clerk who hadn't quibbled over Ty Tania the fairy also hadn't disputed his absurd claim to be five foot six, so maybe it'd been a don't-give-a-fuck kind of day at the DMV.

Tyler. All right. I'd call him Tyler. I'd call him whatever, but mostly, I'd just call him.

Because right below an address that I was pretty sure matched that hotel Declan had texted me about was a phone number.

And fuck it. Seriously, fuck it. Maybe Cunningham would answer. Maybe it'd be the concierge of the Audacity Casino and Hotel. Maybe my number would be tracked and recorded and a hit squad of pissed-off werecoyote goons would be breaking down my door before I'd finished my pot of coffee.

Whatever. I had a phone number, and my gums itched as my fangs descended, my blood pumping faster in my veins.

Mine. He was—he owed me.

The coin, damn it. The coin was mine.

I punched in the number, hit send, and waited, holding my breath.

One ring. Two. Three. And right as my heart sank, and I'd braced myself for an impersonal recorded voice telling me to leave a voicemail that I obviously wouldn't, the call connected.

"Hello?" His voice, clear and sweet despite the tone of annoyance. It struck into my chest like a knife and rang in my ribs like a bell. "Hello? Yes?"

He sounded a bit distracted, too, maybe by whatever was making all that background noise. Not a casino, though I did hear something electronic. A store's cash register? He'd picked me up at the club, spread his legs, cried, and stolen that coin, sneaking out like the thief he was. And then shrugged and gone shopping. I swallowed hard. I really hadn't expected him to pick up the phone at all, but somehow the shopping pushed me over the edge.

I bared my teeth at the phone, wishing he could see. "It's me."

The horrified pause that followed, half-filled with a soft, startled gasp that my alpha ears couldn't miss, thrilled me all the way down to the tips of my…claws, which had started to come out without my even noticing.

His voice shook a little, probably imperceptibly to anyone else who might be listening, as he said, "I'm sorry, I think you must have the—"

"You know exactly who I am and if you hang up my next call's to Cunningham," I snarled, cutting him off.

Because yeah, no. Fuck that. Rage welled up, rage so sudden and violent that my phone creaked in my grip. He thought he'd what, simply hang up? And then disappear again?

He sucked in another quick, hissing breath. I could picture him, his cheeks reddening, his long lashes fluttering, that sharp, pearly canine tooth digging into his lip in frustration.

"That would be worse for you than for me," he said, and—he was lying again.

Shifters couldn't necessarily hear a lie, unless we were close enough to detect the skipping of a heartbeat. But I knew. He was afraid. And not for me, because he didn't give a fuck about me.

Another fae half-truth, then. He wanted to believe it, and so he was able to say it with a straight face.

"Maybe it would, but I don't really give a flying fuck," I shot back. And I had the advantage of telling the real, unvarnished truth. "At this point, it's scorched earth, Tyler . You'll—"

Fuck, fuck, shit, what would he what? I should've taken the time to think it through before I called. Drunk a cup of that coffee. Every second that I talked to him on the phone, more of my brain cells seemed to commit some kind of ritual suicide, and all I could think about was seeing him, touching him, breathing the same air as him, or I was going to crawl out of my own skin.

That was it.

"—meet me tonight," I finished, barely missing a beat.

Not the same hotel, we were probably on wanted posters behind the desk after the way I'd left the room all pulled apart and with half the ceiling on the floor. But my buddy worked night audit at a way, way off-Strip casino hotel where no one would ever expect to find Arnold Cunningham's pretty boy. And he could get me a room and make sure no names or credit cards were necessary.

"At the Silver Lode. Midnight. I'll text you the room number, and you'd better fucking show. At twelve-oh-one, I'm making another phone call."

"I can't," he protested, and his voice had lowered to a frantic whisper. "I can't . This is absurd. You don't want to—"

"Midnight," I repeated ruthlessly. Good. He should be squirming. A thief and a manipulator who magically whammied people without warning. He deserved it, and more. "The Silver Lode. Don't fuck with me." Again remained unspoken.

I gave myself the satisfaction of pulling the phone away from my ear and ending the call before he could say another word. And then, of course, I immediately regretted it, staring down at the flashing screen and wondering if I should've let him, what, argue with me? Make excuses? Could he enchant me again over the phone somehow? I couldn't imagine that he'd be able to hit me with his fae magic at a distance, but giving him the opportunity to prove me wrong would probably have been a terrible idea.

Still. Even though I'd cut him off, I couldn't seem to resettle in my own skin. And now I had, fuck, fourteen hours until the time I'd set.

Why had I chosen midnight? Because it sounded cool? Yeah, basically. Jesus Christ alive, I needed help.

Instead, I poured the coffee and texted the scheduler at the club, letting her know I'd be coming in for a mid shift if that worked. I got an enthusiastic thumbs up before I'd even drunk half my cup. No one really wanted to work the less lucrative afternoon and early evening on a January Thursday. No one who didn't desperately need a distraction, anyway.

Not that any of it worked. I spent the rest of the day unable to focus on anything but counting down the minutes until midnight. Showering, getting my stage clothes together, packing my gym bag, driving to the club…all of it faded into a background for my obsessive speculations about what I'd say to him, what he might say to me, what possible explanation he could give, what he might be doing in the meantime while I danced and smiled and rubbed glitter all over my pecs.

On one of my breaks, I texted my friend at the Silver Lode and got confirmation that I'd have a room waiting for me.

And other than that, I didn't have anything to do but pretend to give a shit about the people staring at me. My lack of interest showed in my measly tips, and by the time I finally called it quits a little before ten, I only had a couple of hundred dollars, and that headache had trickled back into my skull, pulsing in my temples and setting my teeth on edge.

That still left me with too much time to kill. I could go home, get really clean, make sure not a trace of sweat and glitter and oil remained. Put on some nicer clothes.

But no, fuck that. A quick stop in the locker room shower, and my usual old jeans and hoodie, would be good enough for the purpose. This wasn't a date, dammit. And I didn't need to impress him. Who cared what he thought of me? It already wasn't much, anyway, judging by how he'd treated me. And I'd still be cleaner tonight than I had been when we'd gone to that hotel two nights ago. He'd been willing to get fucked by a sweaty, glitter-dusted stripper then , so I'd be damned if I'd try to make myself appealing to him now .

The drive from the club to the Silver Lode wouldn't be nearly long enough to fill the time, since I hadn't lingered over getting dressed, so I found myself pulling over halfway there—strangely enough, into a strip mall with a 24-hour sex shop. Maybe they had the same brand of lube the fairy had brought to our rendezvous the other night.

I'd parked and shut off the engine before it hit me what I'd been doing.

Fuck. I leaned my forehead against the steering wheel, struggling to get a breath to go all the way down to the bottom of my lungs. My head still hurt, throbbing in time with the weird itching under my skin, a craving that I couldn't seem to satisfy.

I had a really horrible suspicion that only one thing would satisfy that craving, and that it might or might not be turning up at the Silver Lode at midnight.

That'll wear off, I think .

Well, it fucking hadn't. My anger grew along with the pain in my head, both throbbing in time with the matching sensations in my hardening cock.

No. I would not buy lube. I would not give in to this. The second he appeared, I'd wrap my hand around his throat and I'd squeeze, pricking him with my claws, watching his eyes go round and terrified, and I'd force him to fix whatever the fuck he'd done to me.

And pay me.

Then I'd leave him there and I'd never want to see his lying face ever again in my life.

With that all sorted out and clear in my mind, I started the car again and pulled out of the lot, heading for the Silver Lode. And if I drove a little over the speed limit, well, no one could blame me for wanting to use my time efficiently.