Kate Daniels 03 - Magic Strikes

a quarter from his abs.
    Curran stepped into the tub. He was obviously in no hurry.
    It was like walking on a high bridge: don’t look down. Definitely not below his waist . . . Oh my.
    He sank into the hot water near me. I remembered to breathe. “How’s your back?”
    “It’s fine,” he said. “Thanks.”
    “Don’t mention it.” It had to be sore.
    “Does your side hurt?”
    “No.”
    His smile told me he knew we were both full of it.
    I drank a bit of my beer, barely tasting it. Having him at the other end of the hot tub was like standing face-to-face with a hungry tiger with no fence between us. Or rather a hungry lion with very large teeth.
    “Are you going to sack Jim?” I tried to sound casual.
    “No,” the lion said.
    Exhaling in relief was completely out of the question—he’d hear it.
    Curran stretched, spreading the breadth of his massive shoulders against the tub wall. “I concede that if I was paying attention, I would have nipped this in the bud. It never should have gotten to this point.”
    “How so?”
    “Jim took over security eight months before the Red Stalker appeared. The upir was his first big test. He blew it. We all did. Then there was Bran. Bran stole the surveys three times, waltzed in and out of the Keep, attacked you while you were in our custody, and took out a survey crew, Jim included. Jim considers it a personal failure.”
    “The guy teleported. How the hell are you supposed to guard against someone who pops in and out of existence?”
    Curran shifted along the tub wall, sinking a little deeper into the water. “Had I known how hard Jim took it, I would’ve pointed it out to him. You remember when he tried to use you as bait?”
    “I remember wanting to punch him in the mouth.”
    “It was the first sign of trouble. His priorities had shifted to ‘win at any cost.’ I thought it was odd at the time, but crazy shit kept happening and I let it slip. He became paranoid. All security chiefs are paranoid, but Jim took it further than most. He began to obsess with preventing future threats, and when Derek screwed up and got his face bashed in, it pushed Jim over the edge. He couldn’t handle being responsible for Derek’s death and for my having to kill the kid. He had to fix it at any cost. Basically, there was a problem and I missed it. And he sure as hell didn’t bring it up.”
    Dear Beast Lord, as your chief of security, I must warn you that I have deep-seated inadequacy issues . . . Yeah, hell would sprout roses first.
    “I can’t keep up with everyone all the time,” Curran said. “And Jim’s the one who never went nuts on me. It was his time, I guess. So to answer your question fully, there’s no reason to demote him. He has a talent for his job and he’s doing reasonably well considering what he’s up against. If I sack him, I’ll have to replace him with somebody who has less experience and will screw up more. This is a lesson. Three months of dragging giant rocks around will help him get the stress out of his system.”
    We sat quietly. I sipped my beer, feeling a bit fuzzy. Funny how six months sober had turned me into a lightweight. Curran rested the back of his head on the edge of the hot tub and closed his eyes. I stared at the way his face looked, etched against the darkness of the wall. He really was a handsome bastard. Poised like this, he seemed very human. Nobody to impress. Nobody to command. Just him, in the hot water, tired, hurting, stealing a few precious moments of rest, and so irresistibly erotic. Well, that last one came out of nowhere. It was the beer. Had to be.
    Despite all his growling and threats, his arrogance, I liked being next to him. He made me feel safe. It was a bizarre emotion. I was never safe.
    I closed my eyes. That seemed like the only reasonable way out of the situation. If I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t drool over him.
    “So you didn’t want to see me hurt?” he said. His voice was deceptively smooth and soft, the deep, throaty, sly purr of a giant cat who wanted something. Admitting that I took his well-being into consideration might have been a fatal mistake.
    “I didn’t want you to have to kill Derek.”
    “And if he had gone loup?”
    “I would have taken care of it.”
    “How exactly were you planning on pushing Jim aside? He was the highest alpha. The duty was his.”
    “I pulled rank,” I told him. “I declared that since you had accepted the Order’s assistance, I outranked