by Cynthia Eden
He didn’t retreat. His eyes bored into hers. “Pity.” His fingers skated down her arm and caught her wrist. He took her glass away and placed it on the bar top with a clink.
She cocked her head and studied him. “Are you following me?” Two nights. First one, sure, that could have been coincidence. A coincidence she was grudgingly grateful for, but tonight—
The faintest curl hinted on his lips. “What if I am?”
His thighs brushed against her. Big, strong thighs. Thick with muscle.
Dee swallowed. So not the time.
But the man was tempting.
She couldn’t afford a distraction. Not then. “Then you’d better be very, very careful.” Dee shoved against him. Hard.
He stumbled back a step and his smile widened. “You keep playing hard to get, and I’m gonna start thinking you’re not interested in me, Sandra Dee.”
Who was this guy? Dee jumped off the bar stool. “You’d be thinking right, buddy.”
He took her wrist again with strong, roughened fingers. The guy towered over her. Always the way of it. When you couldn’t even skim five foot six with big-ass heels, most men towered over you. And since Dee had never worn heels in her life…
The guy bent toward her when he said, “I see the way you look at me.”
What did that mean?
“Curious…but more. Like maybe you got a wild side lurking in you. A side that wants out.”
Maybe she did. The guy sure looked like he could play. After the case.
“I don’t know you, Chase,” she finally told him, too aware of his touch on her skin. Too aware that her nipples were tightening and she was leaning toward him as her nostrils flared and she tried to suck up more of his scent. “I don’t know—”
“I saved your life.” A fallen angel’s smile. “Doesn’t that count for something?”
Maybe.
“Dee!”
Jude’s hard snarl.
Chase’s hold tightened on her.
Maybe not.
The white tiger shifter stormed through the crowd. People jumped out of his path because they were semi-smart. In seconds, he was at her side, nostrils flaring, lips curling back, blue eyes…watering?
“Uh, Jude? What’s going on?”
“Problem,” he growled and the man was good at growling. His eyes—and, they were most definitely watering—zeroed in on Chase. The two men were about the same height, and had the same rough, strong build. But Jude was light, his skin fair, his hair blond, and Chase…
Darkness. The thought came to her once more.
Jude’s gaze dropped to the hand that still bound her wrist. “Man, you’d better not be bothering Dee.”
Great. Because she needed him to act like an overprotective jerk right then. “Got it covered.” More than covered. So what if Chase’s thumb was sliding back and forth over her wrist and the movement had her heart jumping? No big deal.
Jude’s stare turned back to her. “We’ve got a situation.”
One that shouldn’t be discussed in front of an outsider. She got that. She tossed a careless smile Chase’s way, and tried really hard not to care. Her life wasn’t like other women’s. She couldn’t go out, find a great guy, and forget the world while they had sex.
Not when killers were waiting.
If the people in this bar had half a clue what was hunting them…
“See you around,” she told him, keeping her voice bland and tugging her hand free. His fingers had been rough against her, lightly callused, warm, and strong.
Too easy to imagine those fingers sliding over her flesh. Cupping her breasts. Spreading her thighs.
Dee swallowed. Okay. So maybe it had been too long since she’d been laid.
“I can help you.” His cool words had her hesitating, glancing back, dammit.
He stared at her, unblinking.
“Not amateur night, buddy,” Jude murmured and his nostrils twitched. “Dee and I have a job to do, we don’t—”
“Maybe you need prey to draw out the vampire,” Chase continued, never taking his eyes off her. “Maybe I’m the man you need.”
Only one way to find out.
“Hell, what have you been telling him?” Jude demanded, swiping his hand across his forehead. “Low profile, woman, low profile.”
Dee ignored him. Pretty easy to do most days. “We’ve got this one covered.”
Chase’s jaw worked but he shoved his hand into his back pocket and pulled out a card. “You change your mind, you call me.”
Don’t take it, don’t take it, don’t, ah…hell. Dee’s fingers curled around the card.
She didn’t even see his hand move. But in the next instant, his fingers were around hers and he brought her hand to his mouth. His lips pressed against her flesh, his tongue tasted her.
Two seconds, maybe three. Then he dropped his hold and flashed that bad boy grin. “I wanted a little taste.”
So did she.
“Dee…”
She knew that tone. Jude would be having a fit any second—or as close to a fit as a tiger could have.
Chase brushed past her and disappeared into the crowd.
“Shop for a new lover later, we’ve got problems now.” He bent his head toward her and whispered right against her ear, “Kymine.”
Dee sucked in a sharp pull of air.
“They’re pumping it in the place. And if the kymine is here…”
Then the vamps were, too.
Kymine. A sweet little concoction the vamps had created about ten years ago, a brew that they pumped into the air in order to screw with a shifter’s sense of smell.
With about 95 percent accuracy, shifters could pick up the stench of a vamp in a crowded room. Jude had told her once that, to him, vamps smelled like corpses. Yeah, that made sense, considering that vampires were dead. Kinda anyway.
To be reborn as a vampire, a human had to die. The heart stopped. The brain ceased to function. The lungs didn’t rise.
Dead. Cold. Hello, afterlife.
Almost hello. Because if the exchange was successful, a few moments of true death were all the person would have. The heart would beat again, the lungs would fill, and the brain would kick-start to life again.
Alive once more, with a few new extra features.
Like fangs, super strength, and a nearly insatiable lust for blood.
Because the vampires knew that the shifters could smell them—and have one hell of a hunting advantage—they’d researched like crazy and finally produced kymine.
Kymine could only be used in a closed, restricted area. Once it was pumped into the ventilation system, it dispersed. A shifter unlucky enough to be in the area would temporarily lose his sense of smell.
And feel as if fire were burning the inside of his nostrils.
“I can’t smell a damn thing,” Jude said, still close, his breath whispering against her ear. To others, they’d look like lovers.
The best way to hunt. Deceive. Mislead.
“The bastards could be right next to me,” he said, “and I still wouldn’t know.”
So much for the shifter being her secret weapon tonight.
But there were too many lights in that place. Too many people, too many eyes. If a vampire was there, he’d only be scouting for food. The feast would come later.
When he had his prey alone.
Time to switch up plans. “Let’s go outside. You take the front, I’ll take the back.” They’d leave Zane inside, he could keep a careful watch on the bar.
The bar owners had to know about the vampires. No other reason they’d pump in the kymine.
“We need to tell Zane. He’ll need to—”
“Already did.” He eased back and she caught the glimpse of fang. “You armed?”
Her brow shot up. “Seriously? You’re asking me that?”
A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. “Let’s get the bastards.”
Good plan.
She reached into her bag and curled her fing
ers around her stake.
Showtime.
The night was too quiet. Especially for this part of town. There should have been laughter on the wind. Drunken voices. Car horns or the fading beat of music.
Dee paced about twenty feet behind Onyx. No stragglers waited outside. No lovers looked for a quick screw.
Alone.
With the thick silence.
So not natural.
She rocked back on her heels and tried to ignore the fact that Chase lounged somewhere in that bar. He’d probably moved on to a more agreeable partner. One of those women who could laugh and smile and mean it, and not someone who couldn’t stop glancing over her shoulder because she knew there were monsters out there, waiting.
Be afraid of the dark. A lesson she’d learned when she’d been fifteen.
So very afraid.
The faintest pad of footsteps reached her ears. Dee didn’t tense, that would alert her prey. She exhaled, nice and slow and—
“You’re dead, Dee.”
A woman’s voice, soft and mellow.
Slowly, Dee turned toward her. Tall, thin, with a long mane of midnight black hair, the woman stood near the exit of the back parking lot. She was alone, unarmed, and smiling.
Dee kept the stake hidden. No way to tell yet if she was staring at a vamp, a demon, a human—or hell knew what. Come on, Jude, get your ass back here. But if the kymine hadn’t worn off, he wouldn’t be much help, either.
“Are you afraid?” the woman asked.
Dee decided she hated the bitch. “No. Are you?”
The woman glided closer. One of those annoying graceful moves that dancers seemed to make.
Dee marched toward her, more than ready to meet the chick head on.
“No one will mourn, Dee. No one will even miss you when you’re rotting in the ground.”
Ah, so she was little Miss Sunshine and Light. Dee grunted. “And what? You think you’re the one whose gonna take me out?” She shook her head. “Sorry, sister, it’s been tried more than a few times and the assholes who come for me are the ones who wind up in the graves.”
The woman’s lips tightened. Good. It was always better to get under their skin, to rattle them, to—
“You should have died with your family.”
Dee’s vision flashed red. Blood red. Like the blood that had stained her hands, covered her body, and pooled on the floor when she’d found them.
No.
“But it doesn’t matter.” The bitch’s chin lifted. “You’re dead now.”
So Sunshine had gotten under her skin. “I seem to be breathing just fine.” She didn’t hear any other sounds. That could mean it was just her and Sunshine, or it could mean others waited silently and patiently in the darkness, ready for the perfect moment to attack and kill.
Uh, Jude?
Sunshine had on jeans, strappy sandals, and some kind of light, lacy top. Her smile was broad and flashed lots of teeth.
No fangs, not yet. A vamp’s fangs grew right before they got ready to feed. Just like a vamp’s eye color changed to black when they hunted.
Or when they fucked.
One way to find out what she was dealing with here.
Dee lunged forward, the stake gripped tight in her hand. She struck out, grabbing Sunshine and tossing her ass to the ground. Then she went in for the kill.
The woman never even flinched.
That same vacant smile was on her lips when Dee brought the stake down over her heart. “Dead,” she whispered again.
No fangs. No black eyes. If the woman were a vamp, she’d be fighting for her life. She would have gone into hunting mode instinctively. Not just lay there like a lamb at a slaughter.
Dee froze. The tip of the stake pressed into the lace of Sunshine’s shirt. “Who the hell are you?”
Laughter. Low. In-freaking-sane.
Dee lifted the weapon. Staking a human was not part of her agenda for the night. She rose, never taking her eyes off the nutjob. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”
“No, you are.” The woman climbed slowly to her feet. “All alone. Poor little hunter. Will you beg at the end?”
What the—
“She’s not alone.” Hard, deep.
Not Jude.
Chase.
Sunshine’s lips parted.
“Get out of here,” Dee told her, fighting back the impulse to ram one fist into that thin little nose. “And stop screwing around in shit that you don’t understand.” The woman was obviously some kind of messenger. Most of the hunters at Night Watch had a standing policy of not hurting innocents. Well, Zane wasn’t part of that “most” group. But she didn’t like to hurt humans.
The Other knew the safest way to send their warnings to the hunters was to employ puppets. Humans who thought playing in the dark was fun.
When it was more like suicide.
Yeah, she didn’t normally hurt innocents. But this time, oh, talk about temptation.
“You don’t even have a week,” the woman said and when she tilted her head, Dee caught sight of the bruises on her neck.
Bite marks.
Figured. “Neither do you,” she told her, sadly, still not glancing back at Chase. Not yet. “You need to run from them, as fast as you can and never look back.”
A blink. “Why? They can give me everything.”
Or nothing. “You can’t trust vamps.”
Her smile dimmed. “You can’t trust anyone.” Her hand rose to her neck. Covered the wounds. “But when you can live forever, does it matter?”
Yes.
Fingertips brushed her shoulder. Dee spun around, the weapon up.
Chase stared back at her.
“What? Christ, man, how the hell did you move so fast?” And so quietly.
“Where’s your partner?”
Thudding footsteps. Dee glanced back in time to see Sunshine make a break for the line of cars. She lunged forward—
He jerked her back. “Your. Partner.”
“She’s getting away!” If she could trail her, they could find out where the vamps were hiding and—
“Good. The bitch just threatened you. If she didn’t get her ass out of here, I might have killed her.”
What?
An engine kicked to life. No time to argue. Dee elbowed him, twisted, shimmied, then kicked out with her foot.
He flew back, and she shot forward.
“Dee!”
Her legs pumped as fast and hard as they could. Go, go. A car lurched forward, a small, red Ford. Exhaust burned her nostrils and the squeal of tires grated in her ears. Tag, get the—
Damn. Her shoulders slumped.
Gravel crunched behind her. “That hurt, Dee.”
Doubtful. If she’d wanted him hurt, he would have been hurt. “You should have let me go.” She stared at the disappearing taillights. No tag. Sunshine had planned for their meeting. Turning back to Chase, she glared. “She got away.”
He rubbed his side. “Where. Is. Your. Partner.”
Dee tried to brush by him. He caught her shoulders, trapping her against him.
His eyes glittered down at her. “You know, the blond bastard who was licking your ear inside. Where is he?”
Ah, what was that? Jealousy? Men. Take away the jeans and designer labels and you had cavemen beating their chests. “Jude isn’t my partner.”
“Is he your lover?”
Her breath rushed out. “None of your business, okay? I’m on a case, you just let my lead get away and—”
He kissed her. Chase crushed that too hard mouth down on hers and drove his tongue past her lips.
She could have broken free. Could have given him another hard punch but—
Screw it.
She wanted to taste him.
So for a few wild seconds, she forgot the vamps and the death and she locked her arms tight around him and she opened her mouth wide.
Yes.
Her tongue met his. She wasn’t the kind of woman who liked to be taken.
She liked to take.
His hands caught her waist, pulled her closer, and the rising ridge of his cock thrust against her.
His lips caressed. Savored. His tongue swept into her mouth. Slid against hers and had her wanting more. So much more.
A quiver began in the pit of her belly. A stir of hunger that she hadn’t felt in so long.
This man could make her feel. Make her want, and—the sex—it would be fantastic.
His fingers cupped her ass. Squeezed.
Then he lifted her, hauling her high in the air and holding her close so that her nipples, already tight, aching peaks, pushed against his chest.
Yes.
She liked her men strong. Liked her sex hot.
He sure fit the bill and—
“Dammit, Dee, I thought you were working the case, not screwing around with—”
He stiffened against her. Chase’s head rose and his lips, red and shining from her mouth, hovered over hers. “Not your lover,” he repeated and it took her a half-dazed moment to realize he was talking about Jude.
The guy who’d finally decided to make an appearance. “No.”
He put her down, nice and slow. “Then you won’t mind when I kick his ass.”
Um, nah, generally she wouldn’t mind but—
But this wasn’t a fair fight. No way would Chase be able to take down a shifter, unless—unless he was much more than human.
“Come and try,” Jude invited and she didn’t have to look at him to know he’d be sporting his come-get-some grin.
She grabbed Chase’s hands. “What are you?”
His eyes narrowed. “What the hell kind of question is that?”
“One that needs an answer.” In this city, you couldn’t take risks.
But he didn’t answer and his jaw locked.
She glanced over at Jude. “Kymine gone yet?”
“Mostly.” He sniffed a bit. “He doesn’t smell like death.” A grimace. “Just some fancy ass cologne.”
Her shoulders relaxed. Not a vamp. Okay. Everything else was pretty much doable.
Chase stepped back from her and Dee dropped her hands. He slanted Jude a seriously pissed glare. “Don’t come sniffing around me again, tiger.”
Tiger? He knew about Jude?
Not a flicker of surprise crossed the shifter’s face. “You gonna piss and moan all night or are you gonna answer the lady’s question?”