He didn’t answer, but his eyes scrutinized her with a familiarity that unnerved her. “You and I both know you’re not who you say you are.”
Oh. God.Kaya swallowed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He chuckled. “Damn, you’re good. But then, you always were.” He reached behind him and turned the lock. Then he started to advance toward her. “It’s been a long time. Two years, is it? Three, maybe?”
She shook her head. “I swear, I’ve never seen you before today.”
Another chuckle, but this one had a menacing edge. “You can drop the act now. Just what kind of game are you running here, Raven?”
CHAPTER 7
Where the hell had she gone?
Aric saw Kaya abruptly leave the pavilion. Her pace had been purposeful, even verging on urgent. If there had been any graceful way to extricate himself from his dance with Mercier’s bride, Aric would have gone after her immediately.
Now, she’d been inside the mansion for several minutes and counting.
Something wasn’t right.
With murmured excuses as soon as the song ended, he left the dance floor and weaved through the clusters of swaying couples, his warrior instincts growing increasingly taut with each brisk step he took.
No sign of Kaya among the other reception guests inside. He scanned each cluster of well-dressed attendees, searching for a splash of dusty rose silk or Kaya’s long dark hair.
It was as if she had simply vanished.
And then he heard it.
Just the slightest bump of noise coming from one of the closed rooms along the main floor’s hallway. To any of the humans in attendance the sound was too muted to register at all. But to his Breed ears, it was unmistakable.
The sound of a scuffle.
His senses on high alert, he ducked into the passageway. Behind one of the ornately carved doors, another tangle of movement sounded. Followed by the unmistakable thump of a body hitting the floor.
Fuck.
Aric freed the lock with sharp mental command. Then he threw the door open.
Holy shit.
“Kaya.”
She straddled the big body of one of the estate’s security detail. The guard who’d cleared them through the metal detectors when they arrived lay supine on the room’s thick Oriental rug, his face splotched red as he struggled and sputtered under Kaya--no easy feat when her bent knee was jammed against his throat.
Her pretty dress was torn in several places, her glossy dark hair drooping into her face in wrecked disarray. Her breath gusted through her parted lips, one of which was split open and bleeding.
A growl exploded out of Aric. There was no stopping the battle rage that flooded him as he flicked his furious gaze back to the man who’d hurt her. His vision burned instantly, hotly, amber. His fangs ripped out of his gums, not only in anger, but in reaction to the sudden olfactory blast of Kaya’s blood.
The guard’s eyes flew wide when he realized what Aric was. There was horror in those human eyes, but there was hatred too. “Fucking bloodsucker!”
In a panicked scramble beneath Kaya’s hold on him, the man somehow managed to free his service pistol as Aric stalked forward.
The shot he squeezed off was wild, aimless. But it was lucky. Aric felt the bullet’s sting as it grazed his shoulder. He glanced down in reflex, and when he looked back at Kaya it was just in time to watch her crush the guard’s throat under her knee.
Her fury was swift and cold. Lethally so.
“I had no choice,” she murmured softly, while outside the room the sound of gunfire had ignited panic among the reception. She looked up at Aric, her eyes stark, but without apology. “The son of a bitch was on to us.”
He frowned. “How?”
