In a motion too fast to track, Kat pounced forward and wrapped her arms around his neck, gazing up at him with provocative eyes. “Then I just might mate with you.” Her eyes flicked back and forth between his. “Say, you have different color eyes.”
“Katarina!” Nadia gasped. “That’s enough. Why don’t you clean yourself up while I put dinner on the table?”
Kat left the room with a sullen expression, hands clasped behind her back.
“Let me apologize for my sister. She’s crass and doesn’t have a sense of when she’s acting inappropriately.”
He lightly shrugged. “I find nothing rude about stating the obvious, unless the intention is to cause emotional pain.”
Strangely, Prince liked that Kat had addressed his eye color right away. Most people never mentioned it, although they would steal glimpses when they thought he wasn’t looking. She didn’t say it in a way that had offended him either. In fact, he’d stirred a little when she gazed into his eyes, their bodies pressed together and her arms around his neck. He’d centered his attention on her soft lips, or at least he imagined they were soft. Her breasts wereunquestionablysoft by the way they had molded against his chest, and she wasn’t wearing a bra. That kind of detail rarely escaped a man’s attention.
Nadia touched his arm, quieting her voice. “Katarina is like a virus. She infects people with her unsolicited opinions. I’m sure I won’t have to worry about that with a man like you. You’ll have to ignore half of what she says; she was raised differently than I was. She’s lived in America longer and has no ambition. The only time she shows up is when she needs a place to stay for a few days.”
“What does she do that she wanders around like a nomad?”
Nadia cupped her elbows. “She’s a bounty hunter.”
Prince’s jaw slackened. “I’ve never met a female bounty hunter.”
“Now you have. She won’t settle down with a job that doesn’t involve slamming someone’s head against the hood of a car. It pays well, but she’s not as wealthy as she could be because Katarina gives away too much of it to Breed orphanages and God knows what else. Why don’t you go home and we’ll do this again another time?”
Because then Prince wouldn’t get to learn about the peculiar offspring that Alex had produced. “Would you like me to assist you in the kitchen?”
She laughed with her lips pressed tightly together and began to pull off his suit jacket. “Take a seat in the living room and make yourself comfortable. It shouldn’t be long.”
“Yummy.”Kat folded a giant wedge of pizza in half and took a hungry bite, causing an avalanche of melted cheese and meat to slide off. She used her fingers to pinch the cheese in half, winding it up and placing it back on her pizza. The aroma of spices was heavy in the air, and after filling her mouth, she licked the sauce from her fingertips. She hadn’t even bothered to use a plate but instead had set the pizza box in front of her and ripped off the top.
Prince shifted in his chair and examined his glazed quail.
A burst of laughter flew out of Kat’s mouth when she looked at his plate. “Ilovethe position you put her in, Nads. It looks like the poor bird’s about to get laid.”
Nadia shaded her eyes with one hand, concealing the blush that tinted her cheeks. She was sitting at the head of the table to Prince’s left, with Kat directly in front of him.
“I’m not trying to be rude,” Kat continued. “I just thought you were supposed to tie up the legs or something. Say, did you ever get a TV? I don’t want to miss all my favorite shows.”
Nadia cut through her asparagus. “It sounds like you need to buy a home of your own. Then you can have all the television sets you desire.”
Kat gave her a frosty look while picking a sausage off her pizza. “I just thought it would be nice to watch TV while you’re out toasting the town. I’m not much of a reader—not that you have any books,” she said with a chuckle. Then she turned her attention to Prince. “I may not look like it, but I’m the homebody in this family. Nadia likes to party all night, but I guess you know that already. When I’m not working, I just like to kick off my shoes, snuggle up on the sofa with a warm blanket, and have something to take my mind off everything.I Love Lucyworks like a charm every time.”
Prince set down his fork. The way she shifted her eyes when talking about winding down from work made him curious about how stressful it was. “What is your line of work?”
“Bounty hunter. Butshhh. It’s never a good idea to spread that kind of thing around. Most of the guys I turn in stay locked up for life, but people hold grudges for a long time. The last thing I need is someone blowing my cover, so usually the only people who find out are the ones I haul in.” She chewed on the crust of her pizza and spoke with a mouthful. “It’s good money, in case you’re wondering. And while Nads over there thinks I do it because I enjoy beating people up, it’s not about that. When I catch a criminal, I’m doing some good in the world, like taking out the trash. You know? I get to choose my cases, and I can’t resist hunting down a no-good loser who touched a little kid where he shouldn’t have.”
A muscle twitched in Prince’s cheek, and he leaned back. Just the thought of a male harming a child sent a reaction through him like fire racing up a trail of gasoline toward an explosive. “How can someone your size capture these men?”
Kat swept her dark hair back, unaware she had a dab of tomato sauce on the corner of her mouth. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear the underlying sexism in that remark. I’m tougher than I look, and so is my wolf.”
“Are you armed?”
She eyed him suspiciously and bit off another piece of her crust. “I carry a stunner because sometimes I have to track down the occasional Mage.”
Stunners were weapons, usually knives, infused with magic that would paralyze a Mage if embedded in their flesh. “And what if they are not a Mage?”
“Well, as it turns out, knives come in handy with just about anyone. Except Vampires. I once paralyzed a Vamp after driving a wooden spike through his shoulder, but I don’t like getting that close to them. They have a nifty trick of snapping necks with a flick of the wrist. I won’t be doingthatagain,” she said almost to herself, picking up a giant glob of cheese from her plate and putting it in her mouth.
Prince had never met a beautiful woman with such atrocious table manners. And yet her behavior wasn’t vulgar so much as it was quirky. Kat fascinated him in a way that took him off guard. She reminded him so much of Alex.
“Are you also estranged from your father?” he asked coolly, hoping she would give him more answers than Nadia had.
