Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom

Ashland, he had millions of reasons to smile.
    I’d met Grayson a couple of weeks ago, back in November. His younger sister, Eva, had been eating at the Pork Pit when Jake McAllister had tried to rob the restaurant. Grayson thought he owed me something since I’d saved Eva from getting dead.
    “Hello, Owen,” I replied. “What brings you here tonight?”
    He shrugged, his broad shoulders straining against the fabric of his suit. “Eva wanted to come dancing.”
    My eyes flicked over to the dance floor. Sure enough, I spotted Eva Grayson grooving in between a guy and another girl. Eva had the same coloring that Owen did, which made her look like a real-life version of Snow White. Add her rocking figure on top of that, and Eva attracted plenty of attention. She whirled away from one guy to turn and smile at another waiting at the edge of the dance floor. Eva crooked her finger, and the young man eagerly stepped into the fray surrounding her.
    I looked back at Owen. “And you came along to babysit her?”
    “I like to watch out for her,” he rumbled in a low voice. “Besides, she said I needed a night out of the house. Evidently, running my various business interests and adding to her trust fund isn’t exciting enough for her tastes.”
    I smiled. Like most college-age girls, Eva enjoyed flirting with the opposite sex. Dancing the night away at Northern Aggression would be right up her alley—even if big brother Owen would be watching her every move.
    “Care if I join you?” Owen asked.
    I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
    Grayson unbuttoned his jacket and settled on the opposite side of the booth so he was sitting across from me. He signaled one of the waiters and ordered an expensive scotch. I requested another gin on the rocks, with a twist of lime this time. Maybe that would cut the bitter taste in my mouth.
    Our drinks came back, and I took a healthy pull off mine. Nope, still bitter. I sighed and rubbed my index finger down the side of the glass, leaving a trail in the condensation that had already formed there.
    “Something the matter?” Grayson asked, taking a sip of his scotch.
    I shrugged again. “Just not in the mood to party tonight, I suppose.”
    Owen stared at me with his violet eyes. “Perhaps you and I could go somewhere else. Make our own party.”
    “Let me guess where that party would end… your bedroom?”
    Grayson smiled. “Actually, I was thinking the nearest hotel myself. Why drive that far?”
    “Back to wanting to sleep with me again?”
    Grayson’s smile widened. “I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a shot.”
    I snorted. For some strange reason, Owen Grayson had taken a shine to me. Sure, I’d saved his sister from getting fried extra crispy by a Fire elemental. Sure, I was an attractive woman. But I just couldn’t understand whythe businessman was so interested. More than half the women here tonight were hotter, skinnier, younger, and had bigger breasts than I did. Any one of them would have been thrilled to be Grayson’s entertainment for the evening. Hell, just for an hour.
    More importantly, I wasn’t quite sure whether his dogged interest was genuine. Trust didn’t come easily to me, which is why I suspected Owen Grayson had some ulterior motive for wanting to get up close and personal with my nether regions besides the obvious one of simply getting his jolly on.
    But mostly, I wasn’t sure how I felt about him. With his black hair and violet eyes, Grayson was definitely attractive, in a rough, sexy way. But that sort of thing had never much mattered to me. Over the years, I’d had my share of ill-fated flings with the boys at the community college where I took so many classes. Even a grad student and a professor or two. I could do Owen Grayson tonight and forget about him tomorrow as easily as I could wash blood out of my hair. Actually, the blood would be more of a challenge.
    No, the problem wasn’t Grayson and his murky motives, whatever they might be. It was the small fact that he wasn’t Donovan Caine. Despite my best intentions, I’d fallen for the detective, felt something for him. A warm softness in my chest that went beyond mere lust. And when Donovan had left town, when he told me that he was leaving because of
me,
well, it hadn’t exactly done wonders for my ego. Or made me eager to start up something new with someone else.
    Even assassins needed time to lick their wounds.
    But Owen Grayson stared at me very much the way I had looked at