“You and me both,” he murmured, dusting off his pants.
She worried her lip. “I’d hug you, but you have dead stuff all over you. Rain check.” She skipped out the door, Claude shadowing behind her.
Christian lowered his voice and nodded at Wyatt. “I owe you one.”
Wyatt shook his head. “Not this time. You can thank your ex-partner over there. After we kicked her out, she squeezed information from one of Darius’s men. Then she spotted tire tracks on the road before anyone else. She’s a keeper if you ask me,” he said, giving Viktor a cursory glance as he walked out of the room with a brisk step, hands in his pockets.
Christian lowered his eyes, addressing those around him. “Can I have a moment?”
I turned to leave when he snapped my collar back.
“Not so fast.”
When everyone had moved out of sight, I turned around to face Christian, my Vampire eyes adjusting to the darkness. His unblinking gaze unnerved me, so I stepped aside and put my back to the wall.
“Ex-partner, Wyatt says. Does that mean Viktor tossed you out?”
“Yep. Your dreams have come true.”
Christian flattened his palm on the wall above my head, glaring down at me with obsidian eyes. His tousled hair was full of dust, and some of the particles floated around him. “So you did all this to get back in his good graces. Admirable.”
“I don’t want back in.”
He tilted his head to the side, brows drawing together. “Are you langered? If he didn’t trust you before, he certainly does now—regardless of your motives. Why would you turn him down?”
The way Christian looked at me gave me butterflies, and I couldn’t tell if it was fear or something else. Maybe that was why I had reservations about joining up with Keystone. The second I saw Christian’s body lying next to a skeleton, my heart squeezed.
Just a little bit.
I barely knew him, but I felt so responsible for what had happened.
He lifted the ends of my hair. “You cut it.”
“Claude did. It’s a long story.”
Christian leaned in so close that I felt his breath on my cheek. He looked at me differently than he had before—touched me differently. Not as if he were playing with his food or amusing himself, but as if he were gazing upon something intriguing. His fingers grazed the side of my jaw, and my knees wobbled.
Just a little bit.
I scarcely breathed. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m curious about your motives.”
“Even after I led your team here?”
He tilted his head. “Aye. Your decisions aren’t pure. You might be fooling them, but you don’t fool me.”
“Saving your life isn’t enough?” I’d met some imperious Vampires in my time, but this one took the cake.
“You did what you needed to do to get this job, no matter what you’re telling yourself. Maybe I need a little reassurance that our partnership would supersede anything else, and that your actions tonight weren’t just a stepping-stone to get on Viktor’s good side. Ifkillingme would have made Viktor happy, would you have shown up a few hours earlier with a can of gasoline and a match?”
Despite the animosity dripping from his tongue, the sensual caress of his fingers never stopped. Even without my looking into his dark Vampire eyes, he had me in his thrall. Maybe the truth kept my feet cemented in place. I wanted to make things right with Viktor, but it wasn’t to get back into Keystone.
Or was it?
“I don’t care if you trust me,” I finally said.
“A man can’t trust anyone, not even himself. But seeing as you’ve saved me from spending eternity with Martha, maybe I owe you a favor.”
