"And it doesn't?"
"Not… always. With you, not always."
His lips lifted a little. "Then for once in my life, I'm glad I'm different."
"I'm scared."
He grew instantly serious, his diamond-bright eyes meeting hers. "Don't be. I won't hurt you. And I won't let anything else either."
For a split second her defenses went down. "Promise?" she said hoarsely.
He put his gloved hand over the heart she'd fixed and spoke a beautiful rush of words she didn't understand. Then he translated: "On my honor and by the blood in my veins, I so avow myself."
Her eyes shifted away from him and unfortunately landed on a rack of nunchakus. The weapons hung on pegs, their black handles lying like arms off their chain shoulders, at the ready to do mortal damage.
"I've never been so scared in my life."
"Fuck… I'm sorry, Jane. Sorry about all this. And I will let you go. In fact, you're free to leave anytime you want now. You just say the word and I'll take you home."
She looked back at him and stared at his face. His beard had grown in around the goatee, shading his jaw and his cheekbones, making him look even more sinister. With those tattoos around his eye and his sheer size, if she'd run into him in an alley she would have fled in terror even without knowing he was a vampire.
And yet here she was, trusting him to keep her safe.
Were her feelings real? Or was she in fact knee-deep in Stockholm syndrome?
She traced his broad chest and his tight hips and his long legs. God, whichever one it was, she wanted him like nothing else.
He let out a soft growl. "Jane…"
"Shit."
He cursed too and then fired up his next cigarette. As he exhaled, he said, "There's another reason I can't be with you."
"Which is?"
"I bite, Jane. And I wouldn't be able to stop myself. Not with you."
She remembered from the dream the feel of his fangs going up her neck with a soft scratching. Her body flooded with heat even as she wondered how could she want such a thing.
V stepped back into the doorway, the cigarette in his gloved hand. Tendrils of smoke rose from the handrail's tip, thin and graceful as a woman's hair.
With their eyes locked, he took his free hand and ran it down his chest, down his belly, down to that heavy erection behind the thin flannel of the pajama bottoms. As he cupped himself, Jane swallowed hard, pure lust slamming into her linebacker style, hitting her so hard she nearly went off the bench.
"If you'll let me," he said quietly, "I'll find you again in your sleep. I'll find you and finish what I started. Would you like that, Jane? Would you like to come for me?"
From out of the PT room, a moan sounded.
Jane tripped as she got up from the bench and headed in to check on her newest patient. The escape was obvious, but whatever-she'd lost her mind so her pride was hardly a concern at this point.
On the gurney, Phury was twisting in pain, batting at the bandage on the side of his face.
"Hey… easy." She put her hand on his arm, stopping him. "Easy. You're okay."
She stroked his shoulder and talked to him until he settled down on a shudder.
"Bella…" he said.
Well aware that V was standing in the corner, she asked, "Is that his wife?"
"His twin's wife."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
Jane got a stethoscope and the blood pressure cuff and did a quick vitals check. "Does your kind normally run low for BP?"
"Yeah. Heart rate, too."
She put her hand on Phury's forehead. "He's warm. But your core temperature's higher than ours, right?"
"It is."
She let her fingers drift into Phury's multicolored hair and ran through the thick waves, smoothing the tangles out. There was some kind of black oily substance in it-
"Don't touch that," V said.
She whipped her arm back. "Why? What is it?"
"The blood of my enemies. I don't want it on you." He strode over, took her by the wrist, and led her to the sink.
Although it went against her nature, she stood still and obedient as a child as he soaped up her hands and washed them off. The feel of both his bare palm and his leather glove slipping over her fingers… and the suds lubricating the friction… and the heat of him seeping into her and running up her arm made her reckless.
"Yes," she said as she stared down at what he was doing.
"Yes, what?"
"Come to me again in my sleep."
Chapter Twenty
As head of security for ZeroSum, Xhex did not like any kind of guns in her house, but she especially did not like petty punks with metal fetishes running around armed up to their dime-sized balls.
That was how 911 calls happened. And she hated dealing with the Caldwell PD.
So on that note, she made no apologies as she manhandled the current little shit in question and found the weapon he'd taken from the redhead he'd been standing next to. Yanking the nine-millimeter out of the kid's pants, she popped the clip free and tossed the shell of the Glock on the table. The sleeve of bullets she put in her leathers then she frisked him for ID. As she patted him down, she could sense he was one of her kind, and somehow that cranked her out even more.
No reason why it should, though. Humans didn't have a lock on being stupid.
She spun him around and shoved him into a chair, holding him down by the shoulder as she flipped open his wallet. Driver's license read John Matthew, and the DOB put him at twenty-three. Address was in an average, nuclear-family part of town that she was willing to bet he'd never set eyes on.
"I know what your ID tells me, but who are you really? Who's your family?"
He opened his mouth a couple of times, but nothing came out because he was clearly scared shitless. Which made sense. Stripped of his flash, he was nothing more than a runt of a pretrans, his brilliant blue eyes wide as basketballs in his pale face.
Yeah, he was a tough one, all right. Click, click, bang, bang, and all that gangsta shit. Christ, she was bored of busting posers like this. Maybe it was time to freelance a little, get back to doing what she did best. After all, assassins were always in demand in the right circles. And as she was half symphath, job satisfaction was a given.
"Talk," she said as she pitched the wallet onto the table. "I know what you are. Who are your parents?"
Now he seemed really surprised, although that didn't help with his vocal chops. After he got over his fresh shock, all he did was flap his hands in front of his chest.
"Don't play me. If you're man enough to carry, there's no reason to be a coward now. Or is that what you really are and the metal's there to make you a man?"
In slow motion his mouth closed and his hands dropped into his lap. As if he were deflating, his eyes lowered and his shoulders curled in.
Silence stretched, and she crossed her arms over her chest. "Look, kid, I got all night and a real bitch of an attention span. So you can pull the silent shit for as long as you want. I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you."
Xhex's earpiece went off, and when the bar-area bouncer stopped talking she said, "Good, bring him in."
A split second later there was a knock on the door; When she answered it, her subordinate was front and center with the redheaded vampire who'd given the kid the gun.
"Thanks, Mac."
"No problem, boss. I'm back out by the bar."
She shut the door and eyed the redhead. He was past his transition, but not by much: He carried himself like he didn't have a good sense of his size yet.
As he put his hand into the inside pocket of his suede blazer, she said, "You take out anything other than ID and I will personally put you on a stretcher."
He paused. "It's his ID."
"He already showed me."
"Not his real one." The guy extended his hand. "This is his real one."