by Chloe Hart
And that the price for getting him out of her life was the price she’d set for killing Celia.
Now his enhanced hearing picked up sounds from inside the mansion, including musicians tuning their instruments in what sounded like a high-ceilinged ballroom. Jessica was no doubt expected at the ball that was soon to begin. She was certainly dressed for it.
He found himself oddly mesmerized as he watched her. Not merely because she was beautiful, but because he could sense emotion simmering beneath her cool demeanor. The very air around her seemed to reverberate with tension.
He wondered what that emotion was, and what she was thinking as she stopped shooting, setting her bow down beside her and holding her last arrow in her hands, running her finger softly over the tip.
Her hand closed over the arrowhead and he heard her hiss in pain just as he caught the unmistakable scent of blood.
His nostrils flared and his incisors burst from his gums.
He gripped the branch above him until the rough bark cut into his palm. His muscles trembled as he fought to control the unexpected bloodlust.
What the hell was wrong with him? He was no fledgling vampire, ruled by thirst or any other appetite. He’d learned the lessons of self-control in a harsh school, and he would not forget those lessons now.
It was only a bit of blood, for Christ’s sake.
He could see the droplet now. Jessica was staring down at her hand, at the small crimson stain on her pale flesh. She seemed as fascinated by the sight as he was.
Slowly, slowly, he brought himself under control. His fangs retracted as he took a deep, unneeded breath.
It had been a long time since he’d felt bloodlust that strong. He felt a wave of resentment against the Fae girl for provoking it, unfair and illogical as that reaction might be.
Why the hell was she out here, anyway? She should be in front of the mirror like any girl before a party, fussing with her hair and makeup and all that crap.
Jessica turned away from the target, towards him, and he saw her face clearly for the first time. And the look in her eyes was one he’d seen before.
It was a look that froze him into utter stillness.
Hawk had learned years ago how to drink without killing. And he’d never had trouble finding humans who craved the sensual explosion of a vampire’s bite, those who gave their blood willingly, knowing he wouldn’t take their lives.
But every so often a human had come to him wanting a different kind of gift. Wanting him to go further—beyond the point of no return.
They’d come to him seeking death. Desiring death.
That was the desire he saw in Jessica Greenwood’s eyes before she closed them, lifting her chin and raising the arrow towards her throat.
It was none of his business. If the Fae girl wanted to kill herself, the only factor that should concern him was how that act might affect his own objectives.
But the second the arrow grazed her throat, he moved.
Chapter Two
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Jessica’s eyes flew open, and she found herself staring at a stranger. A stranger who jerked the arrow from her hand before grabbing her by the shoulders and glaring at her.
His eyes were black as jet, his features rough-hewn. His hair was black, too, and long enough to fall across his forehead.
He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen in her life.
And he was a vampire. His fangs weren’t showing and his eyes weren’t demon yellow, but a Fae could sense a vampire even when he looked human.
She should have registered him as a threat. Her warrior reflexes should have kicked in the second she knew what he was. She should be fighting him right now, grabbing the arrow he’d tossed aside and stabbing it through his heart.
But she felt no rage, no battle lust, no warrior instincts at all.
What she felt was a relief so intense it was close to joy.
She had longed for death, and death had come.
“Do it now,” she whispered.
She was trembling, but not from fear. Elation raced through her, and she almost laughed out loud. Her heart pounded, and she was intensely conscious of the blood in her veins, the breath in her lungs. It seemed fitting that in her last moments she should feel so intensely alive.
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, exposing her throat.
But instead of the slice of fangs in her neck, she felt a stinging slap on her cheek.
Her eyes flew open again as the vampire shook her roughly. “What the hell is wrong with you? Are you drunk? Or have you lost your mind?”
Her mind couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. “What?”
“Or maybe you’re just profoundly stupid.”
He was glaring at her again, and she stared back at him.
Slowly, her mind registered everything that had happened in the last few moments.
“You’re not here to kill me?”
“Jesus. No. I don’t participate in assisted suicides.”
If he truly were Death personified, he wouldn’t talk like this. Would he? And he wouldn’t look like this, either. His black eyes were snapping with temper, his jaw muscles twitching. He was furious with her.
Maybe she was stupid. Because for the life of her, she couldn’t understand what was going on.
“What’s happening?” she whispered.
He slapped her again. When he raised his hand to slap her a third time, her instincts finally kicked in.
She grabbed his wrist before the blow could fall.
“What are you doing? Who are you?”
His black eyes glittered, like onyx. “Who do you think I am? You spoke to me like you knew me.”
“I thought…” she swallowed, and then went ahead and finished. “I thought you were Death. My death.”
His eyes turned opaque. “Why did you think that?”
Maybe he’d cast some kind of spell on her…a spell that made her answer truthfully.
“Because you’re so beautiful. And…familiar.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “Thank you for the compliment. But I don’t look familiar because I’m the grim reaper, you silly girl. I look familiar because we’ve met before.”
The only vampires she’d ever met (without killing them, anyway) were Jack Morgan and Evan Grant. What could he be talking about?
And then it came back to her.
That night in the alley. The night the Fae council had sent Jessica out to capture Celia and bring her back for questioning. She’d tried to do so, but Evan had gotten in her way.
Of course that was before she’d gone into the absinthe trance with Celia, and learned that the spellcaster had been right about everything. Since that revelation, she and Liz and Celia had become…well, friends might be too strong a word. But they were allies. And she’d accepted Jack and Evan as allies, too.
But that night, they’d all been potential enemies. And this vampire had been there. Wearing the same sardonic smile he was wearing right now, and calmly smoking a cigarette as Evan had wrestled her to the ground, ensuring Celia’s escape.
He was an assassin, she remembered. Someone had hired him to kill Celia.
The fine hairs on the back of her neck stirred, although there was no wind.
“Hawk,” she said, recalling the name Evan had called him by. She took two steps back and bent her knees slightly, ready to spring.
He raised one eyebrow. “How nice that you’ve remembered my name. But it’s a little late for caution, don’t you think? If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already. And, anyway, I thought that’s what you wanted.”
Her hands clenched into fists. She had wanted that, hadn’t she? There was no use in denying it. She’d told herself she would never take her own life, and then she’d offered it up to this stranger, fantasizing that he was the angel of death.
It had been a moment’s madness, but she couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. She’d shamed hersel
f and shamed her clan.
But she could make up for it now.
“If you’ve come for Celia, you’ll have to go through me.”
“Yeah, and wouldn’t that be a challenge. A Fae girl with a death wish? I’m shaking in my boots. But you can make your mind easy about the redhead. That job’s been called off.”
“Why are you here, then? You’re on the queen’s grounds without leave, and that means death.”
He smiled again. “Threatening me after I saved your life? Seems a bit ungrateful.”
“You didn’t save my life.”
“Didn’t I? My mistake. Then you weren’t about to cut your throat with this?” He rested the toe of his boot against her arrow before kicking it away.
Her face flamed. “No.”
His eyes narrowed. “At first you were just toying with idea. Fantasizing. But then you seemed to float outside your own body, as though you were two people. And you watched yourself lift that arrow towards your throat, as though it was someone else’s hand. And that illusion would have carried you through. Up until you breathed your last, it would be as though someone else had done the deed.”
She couldn’t say a word. Her eyes dropped, and she looked down at the arrow that he had kicked away.
“Or maybe I’m wrong, and you wouldn’t have done it. Maybe you would’ve stopped yourself when it came to the point. But I didn’t feel like taking that chance.”
His voice had lost its ironic edge, and she looked up at him again.
He was a vampire and an assassin, and she shouldn’t be standing here talking to him like this. She should be fighting him.
But she knew in her heart that he was right. He had saved her life.
She wrapped her arms around her waist. “Why did you stop me?” she heard herself ask.
He shrugged.“Maybe I was curious.”
“Curious?”
“Curious to know what could lead a woman like you, a woman who’s been given every blessing this world can bestow, to contemplate taking her own life.”
He took a step towards her, and then another, until only a few inches separated them. “Will you tell me why?”
Once again she could only look at him without saying a word.
In the last few weeks she’d learned that vampires weren’t the soulless monsters she’d always believed them to be—or, at least, that not all of them were. But as much as she’d come to respect Evan and Jack, she’d never felt like this around them. She’d never felt so…shaken. The way he looked at her…the way he’d spoken out loud the things that were inside her…
As she continued to stare into those black eyes, she became aware of other things about him. His height—he had at least eight inches on her, and she wasn’t short. The broad, powerful shoulders under his black leather jacket. The strength in the hands that had gripped her. And most of all the power of his personality, a power that had already pulled more truths out of her than she’d ever shared with anyone.
She felt intensely aware of her own physicality. Her life force seemed to crackle across her skin, like electricity. She felt separately aware of every nerve and cell and synapse in her body.
It made her feel fragile and powerful at the same time.
She was aware of something else, too. As Hawk’s eyes held hers her stomach muscles tightened, sending an unfamiliar pulse of excitement through her. She became conscious of her breasts, how thin the material covering them was, how the act of breathing moved that material ever so slightly across her skin…and how sensitive her skin was to that sensation, as if it was the brush of fingertips instead of silk.
Thinking about fingertips made her nipples tighten. She felt it happening, and had to fight the urge to look down to see if it showed. If Hawk would be able to tell. And the thought of him seeing her nipples harden made them harden even more, and a wave of heat whipped color into her cheeks.
What was happening to her?
She remembered the first mad impulse she’d felt when she saw him—the impulse to expose her throat to him. To give herself to him.
To surrender.
Suddenly her hands clenched into fists. A warrior had no business surrendering. Not to anyone. Not ever.
And especially not to a vampire.
She tasted bile as she pictured how she must have looked to him—like some kind of swooning vampire groupie, letting her head fall back as she begged him to take her.
But that wasn’t who she was.
Jessica took a deep breath as she backed away from him. She needed to stay cool and keep her head, and find out what he was doing here.
“I might consider telling you—if you’ll tell me what a vampire assassin is doing at the home of the Faery Queen.”
* * *
Hawk studied the Fae girl for a long minute before speaking. For the second time that night he was struggling for self-control—and he was damned if he’d let it show.
He could have sworn she’d looked at him with desire a moment before. But it was hard to trust his senses when he’d been overwhelmed by a wave of hunger, a hunger that made his body harden and his incisors ache. Maybe his own desire had made him believe she felt the same.
Had he only imagined that intense moment of connection? That moment when her eyes seemed a direct pathway to her soul?
They were the most remarkable eyes he’d ever seen. Blue-green irises ringed with ebony, set in a thicket of lashes and framed by dark brows that arched like wings across her forehead.
Big and luminous and ocean-deep, tempting a man to fall into their depths.
He’d felt himself on the brink of doing just that when she’d taken a step back. And then, just like that, her ice-cold Fae mask was back in place. Those amazing eyes turned cool, with no hint of the pain and vulnerability that had tugged at him so powerfully. And he knew his curiosity about her, about what could have led her to think of harming herself, was not going to be satisfied.
But the danger was past now. He’d shocked her out of that near-trance, at least—and he doubted she’d go down that path again, now that she’d seen it for what it was.
Though why he should give a fuck was another mystery that would have to go unsolved.
It was time to focus on what he’d come here for. He’d already compromised his mission for this girl. His unaccountable need to save Jessica Greenwood’s life had, for a moment, been stronger than his instinct for self-preservation.
Time to get back on track.
“I’m here for the party, of course,” he said with a smile.
She raised one delicate brow. “I don’t believe you’re on the invitation list.”
He shrugged. “An oversight, I’m sure. Queen Talia and I are old friends.” It occurred to him for the first time that he might be able to leverage his contact with Jessica, turning a mistake into a tactical advantage. “Why don’t you take me inside to your mother? You can see for yourself what sort of welcome she gives me.”
He was a little curious about that himself. How would Talia react to seeing the vampire she’d hired to kill one of her own people? Especially when the meeting took place under the eyes of her daughter?
Jessica didn’t know about the contract her mother had taken out on Celia, and he was willing to bet Talia wanted to keep it that way.
Jessica folded her arms. She had gorgeous arms, slender and toned and strong.
“You want me to take you inside. To my mother.”
“Why not? That’s where I was headed when I saw you and got…sidetracked. Not that I’d mention our little encounter to your mother, of course. I’d hate to think she might misconstrue your actions the way I did.”
His words served a dual purpose. He was reminding her that she owed him a debt, and also that he had the power to expose her moment of weakness to her mother.
He was betting she didn’t want that. And he could tell by the way her lips tightened that he was right.
“Are you threatening to tell my mother about what I…what you think I was a
bout to do?”
“Not at all,” he said smoothly. “I was merely suggesting that one good turn deserves another.”
“You’re aware that there are hundreds of Fae inside, including my mother’s personal guard?”
“Of course. I told you my intentions were peaceful. I’m certainly not planning to take on a small army of Green Fae single-handed. Do you want to search me for weapons?” He actually had several concealed on his person, but he doubted she would take him up on his offer.
Once again, she surprised him. “I’ll be happy to check you for weapons—after you disarm yourself, as an act of good faith.”
It was a test, of course. Would he give them all up, or leave one or two and chance that she might discover them?
Well played, Faery girl.
“Fair enough,” he said nonchalantly.
He started with the most obvious: the dagger at his waist, the one in the inside pocket of his jacket, and the one strapped to his wrist. He handed the three knives to her hilt first, with a smile.
“I’m sure that’s not all,” she said, smiling back.
“I didn’t say I was finished.”
The one in the toe of his boot? She’d probably spot that, so he triggered the mechanism himself and handed the blade over. Then he undid his belt and passed it to her.
“Two razor blades embedded in the leather, and the buckle makes a fair cosh. And that’s everything.”
She dropped the belt on top of the other weapons and stepped close. “Take your jacket off. And put your arms up.”
He complied.
“Not that I don’t trust you,” she added as she went over his arms, shoulders, back, and chest.
“Of course,” he said, speaking easily even though the feel of her small, strong hands was having an unwelcome effect on his body—one he couldn’t seem to control.
Since he couldn’t hide it, the only thing to do was make a joke of it.
“Be sure you check everywhere,” he said, his tone deliberately flirtatious as she moved closer to the danger zone. He knew the moment she noticed his erection, because her hands went still.