The Darkest Secret (Lords of the Underworld #7)(60)
Author: Gena Showalter

Strider balanced five boxes of Red Hots and five boxes of Hot Tamales in the cradle of one arm as he scanned the racks. “Nope. Sorry.” He grabbed a few Twinkies for Paris and threw them on top of his pile. They weren’t fried, but hel . Women ate sweets when they were nursing broken hearts, and Paris was definitely acting like a woman. Guy would be grateful for anything.

Strider was snickering to himself as he mixed a suicide at the soda fountain. Paris, acting like a woman.

What was new about that? When the fizzing liquid reached the rim, he popped the lid and straw in place.

Hard to do one-handed, but he managed it. He sipped. Nice.

Behind him, gasps resonated. He whipped around, expecting trouble with Wil iam—only to spy a scowling Lucien with his hand resting on the shoulder of a stunning redhead. She was a tiny little thing, only reaching his shoulder, but damn was she curved. Her br**sts strained the lacy tank. Her waist flared around low-rise jeans. Real y low-rise. So low it was obvious she wasn’t wearing any panties. She couldn’t be. Her legs were lean and long enough to lock around his back.

He wanted to curse.

“Kaia?” Strider blinked, certain this was only a nightmare. A Harpy, the deadliest race on the planet.

Here. Stinking up his vacation even more. And he’d thought the night couldn’t get any worse.

“Oh, yummy. A Big Gulp.” She closed what little distance there was between them and jerked the cup from his kung fu grip. Then, without waiting for his permission, she slurped the contents. “Thanks.”

Not a chal enge, not a damn chal enge, he told his demon.

Stil . Defeat perked up inside his head. Thank the gods the beast didn’t urge him to act. Yet.

Kaia’s features wrinkled with distaste. “Yuck! What is this stuff? Battery acid?”

“It’s a little of every kind of soda they’ve got,” he gritted, reaching out his free hand and waving his fingers. “Now give it back and tel me what you’re doing here.”

Her sensuous lips pul ed back from her teeth as she hissed, her gray-gold eyes flickering with incandescent striations of silver and deep, dark lines of black. “Mine.”

That wasn’t a chal enge, he mental y shouted.

Defeat practical y twitched against his skul , a wee bit agitated but stil not insisting Strider do anything.

He al owed his arm to fal to his side. Harpies could only eat what they stole or earned, everything else made them sick, so he knew she had to take what she could, when she could. He also knew Harpies were as possessive about their stuff as he was, and Kaia now considered the drink hers. But if she pushed any more, his demon would want him to do something. Strider knew it, felt it. Yet there was no damn way he could chal enge a Harpy in front of humans. That was something better done in private—where he could have his ass handed to him without being humiliated in front of others.

“I asked once, but I’l do it again. What are you doing here?”

He switched his focus to Lucien before she could reply.

“What’s she doing here?”

Lucien met his stare and gave a pitying sigh. “She was bored, so she cal ed me and asked me to take her to you, and because I like my testicles where they are, I decided to indulge her.”

“Take her to me?” Strider thumped his chest to make sure Lucien and Kaia understood who “me” was.

“Why me?”

Neither responded to his question.

“My friend, I wish you a good night. She’s your pain in the ass now,” Lucien said, and after saluting Strider with the same irreverent pinky wave Anya was fond of giving, he strode out of the store to find a nice, deserted corner outside where he could disappear without witnesses.

Strider returned his attention to Kaia. She fluttered her lashes at him, al innocence and feminine wiles. If he hadn’t sparred with her a few times in the past, if he hadn’t known exactly how dirty she fought, going for the groin at every opportunity, he might have believed the act. Even knowing, he had a hard time convincing himself of her extraordinary ability to deceive.

She was here for a reason, and he wasn’t going to like it.

His only consolation was that he liked looking at her. Truly, if the gods had asked him to design a female, Kaia would have been it. She had a deceptively delicate bone structure and long red hair that curled to her waist. She had the face of a wicked pixie, the fangs of a pissed off snake and the body of a  p**n  star, minus the implants. And her skin, oh, gods, her skin.

Al Harpies possessed skin like hers. Like polished opals and crushed diamonds, glinting with al the colors of the rainbow. They had to cover every visible inch with cosmetics and clothing because men became slobbering fools whenever they saw that skin. Strider had caught a glimpse only once—during one of their practice sessions, her shirt had ridden up to her navel—and he’d instantly lost control of his body. He’d become consumed by the need to penetrate her.

She’d covered herself before he had attacked, and the urge had passed. Eventual y. Even then, remembering, he wanted to strip her, take her.

No way. No way in hel . She might be the loveliest female he’d ever beheld, but she would be more trouble than a Hunter. She was a consummate liar and an unrepentant thief. She kil ed indiscriminately, and wel , she was stronger than him. Talk about embarrassing!

Plus, the first time she had visited her sister Gwen at the fortress, Strider had noticed several of the warriors eyeing her as if she were a lol ipop. She hadn’t seemed to notice or care, and he hadn’t wanted to compete for her affections. He’d made the right decision, too.

He stil couldn’t believe she’d slept with Paris.

Paris. Ah, okay. Her need to find “Strider” was beginning to make a little sense. He was with Paris, so what better way to spend time with the warrior without admitting what she real y wanted?

That didn’t bother Strider, but damn it al to hel , he didn’t like being used. “If you’re here to win Paris’s everlasting love, you’ve already failed. He now knows beyond any doubt that Sienna is stil out there, and he’s desperate to reach her. You’re not going to make him jealous by cuddling up to me and you’re not—”

“Wil you just shut up?” Kaia snatched a box of Red Hots and popped open the lid.

He snatched it back before she could eat a single one, and Defeat purred with satisfaction.

“Hey!”

“Mine,” he snapped. Enough was enough.

Rather than attack him, she merely anchored her free hand on her perfectly shaped hips. “Lookit. I didn’t want to kick things off this way, but you’re being an asshat. So here it is.