“We won’t hurt you, pretty girl,” the woman said, her voice oddly seductive.
“Then what do you want?” Orianna insisted. “And don’t tell me it’s to talk.”
The woman lifted her head, her black eyes glittering with evil. Orianna knew she needed to run, but her legs wouldn’t get with the program, as though she’d been submerged in quicksand.
“You’re looking for your sister, aren’t you?” The woman’s pale face tilted to the side, sinister eyes studying her.
Suddenly, Orianna stopped trying to fight. “How do you know that?”
“Amber, is it?” the man taunted.
Orianna tried to keep her eyes on both of them, but it wasn’t working. They were moving around her, circling and assessing.
“Tell you what,” the woman prompted, “meet me at this party, and I’ll tell you exactly where you can find your dear sister, Amber.”
“What party?”
The woman conjured a small card, passed it over.
Orianna snatched it, making sure there was no skin-to-skin contact. She glanced at the address jotted in small block letters.
“Do you know her?” Orianna demanded. “My sister.”
“I’ll tell you everything you need to know when I see you. Party starts in half an hour. Don’t be late.”
Before she could launch another question, they both vanished into thin air. Orianna spun around, peering into the shadows, trying to see which way they’d gone.
Because there was no way in hell she would believe they’d simply gone up in smoke.
Nope.
No way.
After chowing down at the evening meal, then checking in with thefiestreighin the war room, Eclipse met up with Magnar to get an update on Orianna.
Looking not at all happy about being pulled in from the field, the male had relayed what Eclipse had come to expect: Orianna was working at night, sleeping during the day, and for the past few days, she’d done nothing else, her little Subaru POS still parked in the same spot it had been in for the past three weeks because she preferred to walk to her destinations.
Not that he’d been hoping for something different. Truth was, Eclipse already knew all of that without ever leaving the mansion.
Granted, that didn’t mean he should be sitting on his thumbs. He knew he needed to be out there, spending some time following Orianna, instigating their formal introduction, but as had been the case for the past few weeks, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Not because he didn’t want to engage with her. Eclipse wanted that more than his next breath, and he’d proven as much with their early-morning telepathic interactions. It had been a risk to slip into her mind, but he’d taken it time and time again. The other morning, he’d even gone so far as to tell her he couldn’t keep going on like this. A moment of weakness on his part, but that didn’t make it any less true.
The problem was, Eclipse had killed a man in front of Orianna, and he seriously doubted the female had any desire to mix it up with the likes of him. Just because she’d thought about the male who’d saved her in that alley did not mean she wanted to spend time with him. On the other hand, their interactions were heating up, and she seemed to be reaching out to him more, sparking more hope than he had any right to have.
So, once again, he had Magnar out monitoring Orianna’s movements while he sat around on his ass, pretending to chill. Never mind the fact that chilling would require his brain to stop racing a million miles a minute, something it showed no signs of doing anytime soon.
Movement in his peripheral vision had him glancing over from his spot on the sofa in the sunroom.
“Where’re you headed off to?” Eclipse asked Kaj when the vampire strolled by.
Kaj stopped, turned, stared up at him as though assessing. Always assessing, that one. Or maybe it was a trait all vampires possessed, because he’d yet to meet one who didn’t do it.
He must have come to a decision, because Kaj slowly ascended the steps, paused at the top.
“I need to check in.” Kaj’s eyes darted to the television briefly before landing on him once again. “Maybe you want to go with me.”
“Where?”
