Free Burning Up by authors_sort

everything—and who swore Emmett was a hero.
    Faced with that many enthusiastic supporters, the cops gave up. One older female met Emmett’s eyes. “You didn’t have to crush his wrist.” It wasn’t censure, more a question.
    Emmett raised an eyebrow.
    She smiled and walked off. Right into Dorian.
    The blond soldier grinned. “How about you let me buy you dinner?”
    The cop laughed. “You’re adorable. But I gave up cradle robbing a few years back.”
    Dorian was unabashed. Walking over to Emmett after the woman left, he folded his arms. “Sooooo . . . what happens if I flirt with Ria?”
    “I use your ribs to make a wind chime.”
    “That’s what I thought.”
     
    E mmett told the others what the assassin had revealed. “Vincent stays out of sight by living in a mobile home—it’s a hover-truck, black, with constantly changing license plates. But it’s shiny, all tricked out. The bastard likes living in style.”
    “That’ll make it easier to spot him,” Lucas said. “We’ll start circulating the description. Someone will talk.”
    “He also said Vincent has a stockpile of weapons, so we need to be ready for what he might do when cornered.” The bastard wouldn’t care who he hit. “He’s got connections to one of the big crime families up north—this is a test run. We don’t kick him out, we’re going to have more problems.”
    Lucas nodded. “It’s not just the human gangs we need to worry about—we don’t handle this challenge right, other changeling groups are going to start looking at our territory.”
    “Then let’s make sure we take care of business.”
    Emmett spent the rest of the day ensuring his more shadowy informants knew to look out for the truck. By the time night fell, there was only one thing he wanted to do . . . and only one person he wanted to do it with.
    Unfortunately, though his split lip had healed with changeling speed, he still had a fairly impressive black eye. No way in hell would Ria’s family let him in through the front door, especially at this time of night. If it had been his daughter, Emmett thought with a twist in his heart, he’d have done the same. But that didn’t mean he was going to stay away from Ria.
    Finding his way to the back of the two-story house that was the Wembley home, he nodded at Nate, on watch that shift, and looked up at the window that he knew faced out from Ria’s bedroom. Nate gave him an interested look. “Wall’s got no handholds.”
    “If I can hook myself up to that window,” Emmett said, working out the mechanics, “I can get up.”
    The other man judged the gap. “Doable.”
    Decision made, Emmett backed up until he had enough distance, kicked himself into gear and jumped. The leopard made sure he caught the ledge he aimed for, and from there, it was a fairly simple climb. Holding himself up with one hand on the lower edge of Ria’s darkened window, while his feet found precarious purchase on the slight ledge of the kitchen window below, he tapped on the glass.
    Silence. Then a shush of sound, as if she was wearing something that trailed on the floor. His mind filled with a thousand erotic images, but the window didn’t go up. Instead, he heard Nate’s phone ring. Ria was being very careful. Smiling as he heard the sentinel answer, he waited.
    The window went up a few seconds later. “Are you insane?” Ria hissed, sticking out her head. “How are you even staying up?”
    “Not easily,” he said with a grin, the stress of the day wiped away by the sight of her all sleep mussed and kissable. “Let me in?”
    Pulling back, she waved him in. “Dear God, Emmett,” she said the instant he was inside. “You could’ve fallen and broken your fool neck.”
    “I’m a leopard, mink. Climbing’s my thing.”
    “I don’t think leopards evolved to climb two-storied—” A gasp and she nudged his face toward the light coming in through the window. “What happened?”
    “I didn’t dodge fast enough.” He pushed