Still, she kept her eyes down.
Smart girl.Men like Felix loved a challenge, and tended to look for it everywhere — in a tone, a gesture, and even a single glance. He suspected she’d dealt with her fair share of people like Felix in The Lush, though he doubted she had ever encountered someone with as much power as him.
“Tell me your name before you go.”
Harlan was impressed by the way such a waif could manage to look so coolly uninterested. Her expression was blank as she stared at a spot on his shoulder.
In a pretty, lilting voice, she answered, “Dahlia, sir.”
Felix hummed again, except this time it sounded unsettlingly like a purr. His eyelids lowered as he gently released her wrist. “Pretty name.”
When she was sure he wouldn’t grab her again, Dahlia beat a hasty retreat. Felix’s eyes followed her until the last strands of her golden hair disappeared through the doorway behind the bar.
Almost to himself, he said, “Really is a nice bar, though they’re fucking stupid to have a woman like that serving drinks. Someone is going to snatch her.” He flicked his tongue against a fang. “I’d run this place better than theVancefamily.”
“Take it, then,” Harlan grunted, increasingly annoyed by how long this was taking. He had a traumatized anchor to get back to, and all the stress made his body work overtime. Already he could feel his gland aching, filling with more venom.
The desire to possess Zia was stronger than it had ever been. Now that he knew what it was like to have her ripped away from him, Harlan struggled to control the urge to keep his fangs buried in her throat indefinitely. Until the day her body was fully in tune with his and his seed firmly fucking planted, he might just do that.
It wasn’t a reasonable urge. It was primitive and raw and a little bit ugly, but it was a desperate sort of need born from a fear that he would never be able to shake.
Felix shot him a smile as he lifted the bottle of Velvetto his lips. “Just might. Couldn’t hurt to expand operations westward now that you’ve taken care of my little problem.”
You’d be a fucking idiot to bring the Syndicate to the EVP,he thought, eyeing the young man coolly.But if anyone can, it’s probably this arrogant motherfucker.
Because unlike Julius, who was arrogant to his rotten core but otherwise average, Felix was wickedly intelligent.
That cleverness glittered in his eyes when he lowered the bottle onto the glass table top. “So,” he drawled, nodding toward the ring that sat between them. “What do you want?”
“Peace.”
The younger vampire eyeballed him with open disbelief. “Really? You know what I’d pay you to work for me, Bounds? The kind of rank I could give you?”
“I don’t want your money and I don’t want a high rank. I want to be leftthe fuckalone.”
Felix rolled his eyes. “What if I offered you a position as my right hand man on the west coast? You could be the head of the entire operation on this side of the continent. All I’d ask is that you help me take out Yvanna.”
Maybe before Zia, Harlan would have considered it. The poor, lonely boy in the gutter would have jumped at the chance to have that kind of power and respect he was being offered.
But that boy now had a family to think of — not just Zia, but Atticus and Adriana, Zia’s brothers and her parents. Sooner rather than later, they would have their own children, too.
He didn’t want any of them getting dragged into the Syndicate. Not after he worked so hard to keep them out of it in the first place.
Besides, he wasn’t tempted. Not really. He had everything he needed — more than he ever thought he deserved, certainly.
“I don’t want half the continent,” he answered, utterly immovable. “I eliminated one of the biggest threats to your power today. All I ask for in exchange is that you leave me and my family alone.Forever.”
He could tell Felix wanted to argue. Like him, he was not a man who gave up something he wanted easily. But he could also see that the younger vampire knew it was not a fight he could win. He could give him this, or he could make himself Harlan’s enemy.
And Felix had more than enough enemies to deal with already.
Snatching up the bottle, he took a long drink before he slowly inclined his head. His eyes cut briefly to the bar before they moved back to Harlan’s forbidding expression. “Fine. I get the bastard’s body and you get out for good.”
They shook on it before Harlan stood. “Try not to die too young, Felix.”
“Don’t plan to, old man.” The younger vampire laughed as he stood up from his chair as well. Instead of heading for the door like Harlan, he knelt by the body bag and began to unzip it.
Harlan was nearly at the door when Felix called out, “Grim’s tits! What the fuck happened to him?”
