Then he stopped.

“It’s still not me, is it?”

“Wh—wha—?”

His lips moved down my neck. “It’s insufferably vain of me, but if I’m going to seduce you, I want to be the cause of your arousal, not passive recipient.”

“You don’t seem all that passive to me.”

He laughed, but shook his head, fingers on my thigh.

I craned around to look at him. “So you’re just going to leave me hanging?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of me, would it?”

“Not at all.”

“Hmmm.”

He still hesitated, toying with the edge of my panties.

“Well…?” I said.

“I’m trying to decide…”

“I say yes.”

He laughed. “I doubt it, and I doubt we’re thinking of the same question.”

“Which is…?”

“Control. As in, can I help you without helping myself to you.”

I stood, turned around and repositioning myself on his lap, facing him, squarely straddling him, hands around his neck. “What if I’m offering?”

He growled deep in his throat and reached for me, pulling me against him, hands tugging up my skirt as I unbuttoned his pants—

An alarm rang, so fast and sudden I almost toppled backward off him.

I looked around. Smoke wafted from the hall. I pictured the fire demon again, reaching for the vase of scrolls, sparks raining from his fingertips. A few must have fallen into the vase, smoldered there and caught fire.

From the other room came the shrieks of people hearing alarms, smelling smoke, and reacting as if the building had transformed into the Towering Inferno. I caught the first lick of chaos and shivered, then shut it off.

Marsten’s arms went around me, pulling me back against him with a hard thrust and a soft growl. I rotated to face him, my hands going around his neck, mouth finding his, drinking in the chaos arising around us. Burning building? Who cared? I had a more urgent fire to put out.

Marsten growled again, this one harsher as he pulled his lips from mine.

“I hate to be the one to bring this up, but…”

“The building’s on fire?”

“Unfortunately.”

I slipped my hands under his shirt. “How fast can it burn?”

A low growling chuckle as he pressed against me. “You have no idea how badly I’m tempted to test that. But I have to remind myself that you’re acting under the influence of something.”

“Something other than you, you mean.”

“There’s that, too.”

“Vain,” I said, poking him in the chest.

He caught me up in a hard, deep, tongue-diving, groin-grinding kiss, then put me back on my feet.

“Time to go,” he said, and started across the room.

“Tease.”

He tossed a smile over his shoulder. “Just giving you something to remember, once all this interference is out of the way.”

We reached the main hall to find it log-jammed with people. Marsten hesitated, then took my arm and led me straight into the heart of the mob. The crowd buoyed us along, and before I knew it, the cool night breeze was rippling through my hair. I looked up, and only then, seeing the stars winking against the city’s glow, could I truly believe it.

We were out. Free.

If Tristan and his guards were here, they’d be watching with dismay as the museum expelled a steady river of white shirts and black jackets and nary a yellow dress to be found. The crowd was so thick that even if I hadn’t covered my dress, they’d probably never have picked me out.

As fire engines and taxis competed for curb space, sirens and blaring horns rose above the din of partygoers yelling for their lost spouses and friends. A few taxis managed a passenger snatch-and-grab before the police cordoned off the area.

We let the crowd carry us across the road, where the taxis were regrouping. Marsten’s grip suddenly tightened, and he ducked sideways, nearly plowing me into a white-haired woman with a walker. As I glared at him, a voice cut through the din.

“Hope? Hope!”

“Don’t look,” Marsten muttered by my ear as he steered us into another pocket of people. “Just pretend you don’t—”

“Hope?”

Douglas cut between a couple. He smiled at me. There I was, bedraggled and dirty, hair flying everywhere, wearing a tux jacket, running from a burning building, and he only smiled, as if I’d just popped back from the buffet line.

“The Bairds have invited us for drinks,” he said.

I stared, the words not penetrating, certain I was mishearing and somehow the din around us had turned “Oh my God, are you okay?” into an invitation for post-inferno cocktails.

“I—I have to go,” I said finally. “The—the paper. The fire. I need to—”

“Oh, you’ll need to write it up, won’t you?” He smiled and winked. “For a cause, I’d go with spontaneous human combustion.”

“I was thinking more of fire demons,” I muttered.

“Sure. That’s different. I’ll let you go, then. Have fun, and don’t work too hard.”

Marsten yanked me backward again, as Douglas slipped off through the crowd. When we reached the sidewalk, Marsten body-checked a young man and shoved me through an open cab door, then crawled in after me and slammed it.

He looked over. “Your address?”

I gave it.

To the driver, though, Marsten just said, “Head east.”

“Oh, Riverside is beside the river,” I said. “Which is north.”

Marsten didn’t correct the driver, just shut the panel between the front and rear seats and buckled up.

“To be safe, you should spend the evening someplace else. Your mother’s maybe? Is she in the city?”

“Yes, but if I’m in danger, I’m certainly not taking it to her, no matter how slight the risk.”

“Friend, sibling, cousin…”

I shook my head. “Same thing. This is my problem, so until it’s resolved, I’m keeping it that way. We should find a hotel or motel on the outskirts of town, and get some rest before we figure out how to resolve this, because I’m assuming Tristan won’t just give up and go away.”

“He won’t. All right then. We’ll find a hotel, and I’ll make sure it’s safe. Then, when I come back—”

“Back? Where are you going?”

He patted his pocket, where the jewels were. “I need to take care of these tonight. I shouldn’t be more than an hour or so—”

“Just long enough to hunt down Tristan and kill him.” When Marsten looked over sharply, I said, “I may be foolish, but I’m not stupid and, after tonight, not nearly so naïve. The only way to end this is to kill Tristan, so that’s what you’re going to do. That why you said you’d retrieve my bracelet ‘later’—you meant once I was out of the building and you went back for Tristan.”

He hesitated and studied my expression, then nodded. “I’ve tried walking away twice, and he refuses to leave it that. As much as I hate to bother with someone like Tristan Robard, I can’t walk away again.”

“That’s why you asked for my address, isn’t it? Because you think that’s where he’ll go. Right now, I’m the more urgent threat, the one who could let his Cabal know about his extracurricular activities.”

Marsten nodded.

“Well, you know I’m not going to any hotel.” I held up a hand against his protest. “Have I interfered yet?”

“No, but—”

“And I won’t. I am so far out of my league—” I shook my head. “Let’s just say I won’t embarrass myself further or endanger you by interfering. But Tristan wants me, and if you show up alone at my townhouse, he’ll know something’s up.”

For a moment Marsten and I just looked at each other, then he nodded and gave the driver my address.