“If I never told you,” he growled, grinding us together, “I hate pants on you.” He kissed me so hard our teeth clacked together, and my lips swelled with the pressure. His heated scent filled my nose. I pulled him to me with one hand and slid the other into his dress shirt, sending a button flying, ricocheting inside the limo. Beast growled. The sound came out of my throat in a vibration that demanded.
And Eli knocked on the glass.
Bruiser cursed foully, promising a terrible death and dismemberment to my partner. I laughed against his mouth, my breath fast huffs of interrupted need.
The knock came again, along with a fainter click. Over the loudspeaker the driver said, “Forgive me for intruding, sir, but Mr. Younger has informed me that the Master of the City is awaiting Miz Yellowrock. With some impatience.” I heard that distant click again as the driver returned us to audio privacy. I could have sworn he was laughing.
“We,” Bruiser gasped, “will pick this up the moment I return from searching out the magical imperative of the brooch. And I don’t care if I have to drag you out of a business meeting with the Witch Council, the Mithran Council, and the governor. We will finish this.” Bruiser’s heart was thumping madly against my chest. It had been a while for us. I eased away from him, unlocking my heels and sliding to the seat beside him. He held my eyes for a moment, the look promising much more than any words could, his eyebrow quirking up. Just the one. I felt my belly do a slow roll. “You ruined my shirt,” he accused much more mildly.
“Just one button.”
“Do you intend to sew the button back on?”
“Nope. I intend to destroy another one as soon as possible.”
Bruiser barked with laughter, smoothing my hair back again. He rearranged the stakes he had misplaced in my bun. Kissed me again, much more softly and gently. “He will smell me on you.” He was speaking of Leo, who had once upon a time claimed me for himself, until it was explained tothe master suckhead that I was neither territory nor a slave. He had claimed Bruiser too, but that was before becoming Onorio had freed him from the chief fanghead.
“Good,” I said. “Old guys sometimes need reminders about who belongs to who. Whom. Whatever.”
Bruiser stilled, his brown eyes holding me. “And do we belong to each other?”
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say to that. We were exclusive. But the relationship hadn’t gotten to the three-word-phrase, four-letter-word state yet.I love you.Which thought totally terrified me. I looked down, straightening my clothes. “We’re still finding out.” With that cryptic statement, I grabbed my lipstick that had fallen out of my one good pocket and opened the limo door.
Bruiser said, “Don’t forget date night tomorrow night. You and me at the Rock N Bowl. And my place afterward to address the button problem.”
I closed the door and escaped.
CHAPTER 3
You WillNotBlow It Up
Outside, Eli wore an expression even more obscure that usual. I expected him to tease me or say something, but he simply looked me over and handed me a tissue. “Wipe your mouth and put on new lipstick. You’re smeared.”
“Spoilsport,” I accused. “You enjoyed that.”
He chuckled evilly. Leaving me behind, he climbed the steps with the measured tread of a man with things on his mind. I wiped my mouth and chin and applied lipstick, following my partner up to the entrance of vamp HQ. This was why Eli and I were such a perfect team, the ability to anticipate each other’s moves, needs, thoughts, plans. It was especially effective in battle, and against vamps, battle was always likely.
“Where do we stand on the ability to prevent a shooter across the street?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at the windows there and surreptitiously watching the limo pull out of the drive and down the street. All the upper windows in the two-story building were closed, thankfully. I had been shot at recently from that vantage point, and the local law hadn’t caught him. Or her.
Eli said, “Leo’s lawyers are still in negotiations with the owner and the property management company, but the offer Leo made was too good for them to pass up. They’ll take it. And if they don’t, we’ll manage something.”
“You willnotblow it up.”
“Now who’s the spoilsport?” He flashed me a slice of a grin before we stepped into the glass cage at the front door.
The front entrance system of the Mithran Council chambers was simple on the surface. Visitors stepped through the first “glass” door, which wasn’t just glass. It was triple-paned polycarbonate bullet-resistant glass, strong enough to stop most ammunition up to a small rocket. The doors locked behind the visitors, securing them in the see-through cage, also composed of polycarbonate bullet-resistant glass and steel supports. Then, when the security person watching the entrance on camera was satisfied that the visitors were welcome, the inner doors, ditto on the polycarbonate, opened. If the person watching wasn’t satisfied, the visitor would be asked to remove all weapons, empty all pockets, lift shirts, and remove shoes. Airport security measures had been incorporated too, with metal detectors built into the outer walls. As we stood inside the cage, Eli and I had now been scanned and inside HQ a quiet alarm had gone off. We didn’t have to do the partial strip show, however, since we were part of the team.
Operation Cowbird was still in place, meaning that we were not just worried about attackers from outside, but were still apprehensive about bad guys already inside HQ, especially since two of the baddest of the bad were chained up in the basements, one troublemaker in sub-five and one a bit higher in a private scion lair. Neither vamp was physically capable of escaping. Neither was even coherent. Heck. Neither of them might have healed brains yet. But that hadn’t stopped vamps in the past and humans had paid with their lives. Unfortunately, unlike the rogue vampires I was famous for hunting, the vamps in the bowels of the building were important bargaining chips—or would be when they healed enough—saved for the European Vampires’ visit, and I couldn’t behead them, no matter how many humans they had killed.
HQ’s inner doors opened and the stink of vamp and blood and human rushed at us: the peculiar herbal scent of mixed vamps was peppery and astringent and reminiscent of a funeral home, with the assorted dying flowers. Humans and their blood were a permanent part of the circulating air system, always hanging in the air from feedings. And sex. Not to forget sex. Many humans, when fed upon, and when given small drops of vamp blood as payment, developed high sexual drives, while also being passive and nonresistant to advances. The perfect and willing blood-servant or blood-slave.
Something else I didn’t like.
Wrassler greeted us. “Evening, Legs, Eli.”
I nodded to the big guy and moved into position for the pat-down. Wrassler was seriously huge, nicknamed so because he was bigger than any World Wrestling Entertainment superstar. He motioned a woman to pat me down and took Eli himself, walking with a limp, on a prosthetic that had replaced a foot and lower leg lost in a battle here at HQ. I knew that his injury wasn’t my fault, but I still felt the responsibility to help him move forward and cope with his new life. Responsibility was a step up from guilt, so, for me, that was good. I was growing. I used to try to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. Eli and Alex had been working on me, schooling me to be fair to myself. I was trying.
The woman’s pat-down was professional and non-handsy and I declared the vamp-killer strapped to my thigh. “And I have wood stakes in my hair,” I said.
