Moira Rogers - Wilder’s Mate

“You’re too hard on yourself.”

Simple words, but they made her uncomfortable. “I can’t afford to forgive my own mistakes when they might cost Nathaniel his life.”

His eyes shadowed. “Are we back to that? You not trusting me unless you give me what I want?”

“No,” she said quickly, not allowing herself to consider the subtle shift. What I want. “No, I simply mean—I want to help. I need to help, so I can’t make mistakes.” Wilder turned to the window once more. “Everyone makes mistakes. Convincing yourself that you’re different doesn’t help anyone.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t.” She dropped her hands to the smooth fabric of her skirts and closed her eyes.

“What will we do when we reach the border?”

“If I played my cards right, someone will come to us.”

“Someone who will lead us to wherever they’re keeping Nathaniel?” His jaw tightened, as if in anticipation of the fight to come. “Someone who will lead us to someone important. That’s where we start. If it also happens to be whoever has imprisoned Nate, all the better.” Wilder was smart. Skilled. For the first time it struck her as odd that someone so valuable had been sent on a rescue mission. Her willingness to risk her life for Nathaniel made sense. Perhaps his did as well, if he’d forged a friendship during his training.

But bloodhounds were not their own masters, and the Guild had better uses for them than rescue missions that would only save one man, no matter how brilliant that man might be. “Is this what you do?

Save people who have been spirited away into the Deadlands?”

“I solve problems,” he answered simply. “Doesn’t matter where they are.”

“And Nathaniel…” It felt traitorous to even imply that he wasn’t worthy of rescue, but he was the one who’d taught her to assume the Guild was always looking out for their own best interests. “Is it because he’s good at his job? Or because of whatever secret project it is that he kept locked away where I could never see it?”

He glanced at her, just a little too sharply. “What sort of project?” She’d only glimpsed inside the private workroom once—an accident Nathaniel had been careful never to repeat. Curiosity might have led her to snoop once—or twice—but when her mentor wanted to secure a room, he knew all the ways to do it. “I’m not sure. I thought it was one of his pet projects.” He watched her, his gaze intense. “What do you know? It could be important, Satira.”

“Nothing,” she repeated, dread uncurling inside her. “But I’m beginning to suspect you know more than you’ve said.”

“All I know is that Nate was working on something big. Something important to the Guild.” To the vampires too, presumably. Levi’s death during the last new moon had given them the perfect opportunity. A well-planned attack, under cover of darkness… “So that’s why they left me alone? Because they were only there for Nate?”

His hands closed into fists. “I don’t know.”

Satira wrapped her arms around her body and fought back a shiver. “He managed to set off our alarm before they took him. I was still half-asleep when they reached my room, but I’d already—” Guilt very nearly choked her. “I have a safe room. Levi taught me to lock myself in if anyone attacked. Perhaps it wasn’t worth it to break their way in once they had who they’d come for.” His voice lowered to a tense rasp. “It means they came in with a very specific objective. A task to complete.”

“And they completed it.” She closed her eyes and drew in a slow, careful breath, desperate to settle her nerves. “So he’s more likely to be alive, then?”

“The Guild seems to think so.”

Looking at him was more difficult this time, but she forced herself to do it. To reassess what she’d seen of him, and the conclusions she’d drawn. It had been easy to believe the Guild wouldn’t waste a competent asset to rescue one lone man who was likely already dead. But with an important project at stake… Oh yes. They’d send their best.

Perhaps it was time to assume Wilder might deserve a little bit of his ego. “Then I owe you an apology. I made certain…assumptions about your qualifications as a rescuer.” Wilder actually laughed. “Yes. Yes, you did.”

Satira pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “I wasn’t the only one.” He acknowledged the truth of her words with a small nod. “So we’re square now, right?” As square as they could be with no mention of how very close they’d come to kissing. Or that she’d slept in his arms the previous night, safe and warm and more at peace than she’d been in weeks. “I believe we are.”

Again, he nodded, this time as if her words settled the matter. “Then we can get on with what needs doing.”

Saving Nathaniel. For the first time since he’d been taken, Satira honestly believed they might manage it.

They reached the border just after nightfall, and the main street through the rough-and-tumble settlement blazed with gaslights and lanterns hung from windows. More than half were red, though there was no telling whether they advertised sex for sale…

Or blood.

Wilder climbed out of the carriage and held a hand out to Satira. “I know which hotel we should go to. I’ll do the talking, you just stand there and look put out if it takes too long.” 32

She slipped her hand into his and stepped down, still a bit uncertain in the heeled slippers Polly had provided. Her gaze swept the street, taking in the details in a slow, methodical fashion until the first piercing whistle split the night air.

A dirty, intoxicated gunslinger leered appreciatively at her from the opposite side of the street, and Wilder was close enough to hear the tiny, nervous hitch in her breath before she tightened her hand around his and lifted her chin.

He bared his teeth, and the drunk man sneered but backed down. “Keep walking,” Wilder whispered to Satira. “You don’t notice his sort, because that’s my job.” She nodded, the barest whisper of movement. “I’m ready.”

He nodded toward the saloon, a three-story affair that surely had rooms upstairs for all sorts of things she’d never considered. “Even ready for that?”

“The men won’t do more than look at me, will they?”

Over his dead body. “Not a chance.”

If she pressed any closer to his side, she’d be climbing him. “Then I can stand anything.” They both had to stay calm and hold their ground, because the last thing she needed was to watch him fight to defend her. So Wilder took a bracing breath and climbed the wide steps up to the swinging doors.

Deafening silence didn’t fall when they walked in, but those at the tables closest to the doors turned to stare, mostly at Satira. More than a few covetous gazes, male and female, followed her as they walked to a small table near the bar and sat.

It took the space of three heartbeats for his gambit with her alias to pay off. The bartender appeared at his elbow, bowing so low as to be obsequious. “If I might inquire… Could this beautiful flower humbling my establishment be the lovely Lady Rothschild? Word of her arrival has preceded her. Several have already left messages, requesting the honor of an interview.” Satira looked at Wilder, her widened eyes saying more loudly than words that she thought he’d lost his mind. “The lady is fatigued from her journey,” he told the man gruffly. “She’ll only consider interviews and offers once she’s had some rest, but she would like some refreshment.” The man shifted his attention to Satira, who managed to plaster a haughty look on her face, though her jaw clenched so tightly it looked like it hurt. When it became clear she had no intention of saying anything, the bartender looked back to him. “Of course. Only the best for our distinguished guest.” Wilder mustered a dismissive nod and went back to studying the room. When the bartender had gone, he leaned close to Satira. “Gonna make it?”

Her lips barely moved with her whispered reply. “I’m suitably occupied planning my revenge.”

“It got their attention, didn’t it?” The look she gave him was worthy of any outraged heiress, and he rolled his eyes. “It worked. Now we just have to play it out.”

She parted her lips, glanced around the bar at the dozens of eyes staring at them in abject curiosity, and snapped her mouth shut. Color crept its way up her neck and into her cheeks, but she clung to her aloof demeanor until the barkeep returned with bread and stew and a vinegary wine that a true aristocrat wouldn’t have let within a stone’s throw of her lips.

Satira ignored everyone else in the saloon as she ate. Though her discomfort was plain to him, he doubted anyone else would notice. When she finished her meal, he tossed several crisp bills on the table and rose to offer her his arm.

Half the bar watched her slide her hand into the crook of his elbow and rise, her back held stiffly straight and chin high. Wilder got more than a few irritable looks from men and a couple of come-hither smiles from women whose eyes promised they’d give him a better time than any stuck-up blueblood.

It wasn’t unusual for guards and escorts to extend their duties into the bedroom, and many of them probably figured he’d be climbing into Satira’s bed with her tonight. His dick grew hard at the thought, and he didn’t have to feign a dour expression as they walked out.

If only they knew.

He’d almost managed to get to sleep when a timid knock sounded on the door that led to Satira’s adjoining room. “Wilder?”

He fought the urge to slam a pillow over his face. “Yeah?”

She must have taken his reply as permission to enter, because the door inched open and she slipped through, a slight shadow wrapped in a blanket. The floorboards creaked as she took a step closer to the bed.

“Do you mind…?”

She looked like she thought he’d growl at her until she ran screaming from the room. “Come on in.”

“I can’t sleep.” Her voice held more than a little shame at the confession. “If people are expecting you to bed me, it can’t hurt our disguise if we sleep in the same room, can it?” Now he wanted to slam a pillow over his lap. “Can’t hurt our disguise.” It could only hurt him if he had to control himself around her. She grasped her blanket tight around her shoulders, but the gauzy fabric brushing the floor as she walked was sheer, flesh-colored silk.

She stopped next to the bed. “If you don’t want me here, I’ll go. I’ll understand.”

“Do you?”

“I think so.” She stared at the floor. “Men have needs, but you’re not interested in complicating our already difficult situation by giving in to them.”

If he was a snake… “Did you come over here for sex, or because you’d sleep better if you weren’t alone?”

“The latter.” She shivered and clutched at the blanket as it began to slip. “I know you could get to my room quickly enough if anything happened, but the way some of those men were watching me…” She was scared, and he felt even worse about his lust as he patted the blanket beside him. “Climb up.

You don’t have to be alone, and you don’t have to worry about me.”

“Thank you.” The blanket gaped open as she scrambled onto the bed, revealing that the damn flimsy nightgown Juliet had packed for her was transparent all over. She shivered and pulled the blanket up to her chin.

Wilder shook his head. “That scrap of nothing isn’t warm enough.” Satira choked on a laugh, a little hysterical but genuine. “I know. If it gets much colder tonight you’ll have to kick me out of your bed to keep me from cuddling as close as I can.”

The laughter was better than the way she’d looked at him before, hesitant and wary and almost ashamed of her fear. “If you put your cold feet on me, I’ll scream like a little girl.” Icy toes poked at his leg, and he laughed and shoved her away.

She squirmed right back, and this time he got an entire foot pressed against his knee. Her breathless laughter cut short on a little moan of pleasure. “You’re so warm.”

“Won’t be for long.” He affected a growl, one he ruined by laughing again. “Jesus, woman. What were you doing, hanging your legs out the window?”

Satira huffed, but it didn’t stop her from tucking her other foot against his shin. “My feet get cold.”

“You’re a walking icebox.”

She echoed his words back, laced with drowsy contentment. “Won’t be for long.” Quick as a rattlesnake bite, his protective shell of humor faded, leaving him in bed with a sleepy, scantily clad woman whose body made his knees weak. “Then it’ll be my turn to freeze.” One small hand crept back across the covers until her fingers brushed his. “I’d keep you warm.” His balls ached. “Better watch what you promise, sweetheart. I’m not a noble man, no matter what you think.”