Read Burning Both Ends for Free Online

don’t seem surprised,” she said. It might have been smarter to leave it alone, but if he was still pissed with her, she wanted to deal with it now. If left to fester, grievances between them tended to erupt at the most inconvenient times and places.
    His dark eyes studied her with amusement. “I assumed I had done all the masterful pushing you were going to tolerate.”
    “Damn straight. This is my fight, too.”
    “We are not going there to fight, Arianna.” His face lost its humor. “We will have four guards with us. Do not start anything we cannot finish.”
    She grinned at him, but said, “I’ll be good.”
    “Try to keep that in mind. Considering your last meeting with Sebastian, I doubt if he finds your temper as…intriguing as I do.”
    When she gave an indignant snort, he laughed. “Let us not fight with each other. We need to pack.” He slipped an arm around her waist, pulled her close, and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
    And that was the end of it. Andreas had turned off his annoyance, put it behind him. He’d known she would insist on going. Sometimes he was overly protective, and Ari didn’t understand that. She was a cop, for Goddess’s sake. No one else treated her with kid gloves—except Ryan, on rare occasions. Maybe it was an alpha male thing. In any case, she and Andreas had worked well as partners in the past, and she figured he wasn’t really opposed to her joining the delegation.
    Once the decision was made, they hurried to finish preparations. The flight left at 6:03 p.m. and would put them in Toronto a little before midnight. She didn’t call Ryan until they arrived at the airport and was relieved to avoid his questions when she reached phone mail. She left a message stating she’d be out of town a couple days and not to worry. It wouldn’t stop him from wondering where she was, but suspecting she was up to something versus knowing she had gone into the enemy camp were two different levels of concern. Either way, there wasn’t much he could do about it.
    The flight was uneventful. Andreas only flew first class, and Ari was curious how much he’d paid to get them all onboard at the last moment. He sat next to the window and brooded at the dark sky outside. Ari read the in-flight magazine and dozed for a while. Russell and Lilith chatted in low voices one row ahead of them. Ari couldn’t see the other two vamps, but she heard Marcus giggling over his video game from a couple rows behind. The flight attendants, aware of the number of weapons they had declared, gave the six members of their party a wide berth.
    It was nearly 1:00 a.m. by the time they checked into the Toronto hotel. While Ari and the werelions settled into the suite, Andreas and the other vampires left to explore the city and locate Sebastian’s court. They still hadn’t returned by the time Russell, Lilith, and Ari decided to go to bed. Ari was tempted to stay up, but she needed to be fresh to guard the vampires while they slept during the day. Yawning, she crawled into her bed. Since they never slept together, Andreas’s room was next door. He had understood when Ari made it clear she never wanted to wake to find his “dead” body lying next to her. Way, way, way too creepy.
    Around dawn Ari awoke to find a single rose next to her pillow. She sat up, instantly awake, picked it up, and sniffed the sweet fragrance. Slipping out of bed, she blew a kiss toward the connecting door and smiled all the way to the shower.
    When Ari wandered into the suite’s common room half an hour later, Lilith was already there.
    “Coffee’s made, and we have reading material.” The lioness swept her hand toward the kitchen table.
    Ari glanced at the pile of maps and brochures stacked there. First things first. The hotel coffee was only passable, but it held the essential ingredient, caffeine. After several quick sips, she began to feel human again. As human as a witch ever felt.
    The werelions and Ari spent the morning