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“Showing them we haven’t tried to escape?” I commented after the waiter took our wine and appetizer order.
He gave me a smile. “Didn’t want them to come barreling up here and ruin our di
I sca
No wonder I couldn’t concentrate on the menu. Food? Who needed it? All of a sudden, I wasn’t the least bit nervous about later. In fact, I wanted later to be a damn sight sooner.
Bones must have picked up on that, because his eyes began to glint with green flecks.
“Stop it, luv. You’re making it very difficult for me to behave.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said as I recrossed my legs, letting him hear the rub of skin on skin since I was sans hose.
Our wine came. I sipped it while shifting in my seat and casually stroking my cleavage. After years of practice, one thing I’d honed to precision was how to make a vampire hot. It was practically my livelihood, only in this case, there would be no silver stake at the end. How refreshing.
Bones leaned forward. “Do you know how beautiful you are?” There was a gravelly edge to his voice. “Absolutely ravishing. I’m going to spend hours reacquainting my mouth with every inch of your body, and I can barely wait to see if you taste as good as I remember.”
The wine lingered in my mouth a moment before I swallowed. This was the part that wasn’t normal for me. My previous targets had never evoked such a heated response.
“Do we really have to stay for the whole meal?” My eyes locked with his, and I stroked his hand with one finger. “Let’s just take it to go, hmm?”
He opened his mouth to reply-and suddenly I was rolling underneath the neighboring tables with him on top of me. There was the sound of glass shattering and shrill screams. Tables crumpled and people were knocked from their chairs while I wondered what the hell had happened and why my forehead was burning.
I must have instinctively shut my eyes, because when they snapped open, I cried out. Bones’s face was right next to mine, and a blood-smeared hole was staining his hair red before it began to close on itself.
“You’ve been shot!” I gasped. “Someone tried to kill you!”
It took a moment for the facts to register. We were on the floor. He’d rolled me away from our table, but I could still see where we’d been. Three holes punctured the glass, and none of them were by his seat.
Bones pulled me to my feet with his back to the window, and the truth hit me even as he answered.
“Not me, Kitten. You.”
TWENTY-ONE
I DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO DIGEST THE NEWS. “Hold on to my neck and don’t let go,” Bones said next with seething ferocity. “We’re getting the sod.”
He wrapped both arms around me the same instant I clung to his neck, and then he vaulted himself backward straight through the windowed wall behind us.
The thunderous noise of glass crashing outward drowned out my screams at suddenly free-falling from a twenty-story building. My legs flailed helplessly and my stomach lurched upward with a nauseating lift. Wind stung my eyes, which were fixed in horror at the rapidly approaching ground. The grip I had around his neck stiffened into the hold of the damned, and then an incredible thing happened. We started slowing down.
Incredulous, I looked up to see if a parachute had miraculously appeared, but there was nothing beyond the lights of the building. Before I could even wrap my mind around that, however, I felt a whoosh, and then we weren’t falling anymore. We were sailing diagonally through the air toward a black van that had just sped into traffic. My screams died in my throat, choked off by astonishment.
Cars screeched, either from the erratically driving van or the people who’d hit their brakes in disbelief at seeing a dark form streak above them. The van was speeding, but we were faster. Bones caught up to it in seconds and grasped the rear bumper, flipping the vehicle without even letting go of me with his other hand.
It upended with a spectacular crash. Oncoming cars swerved and more brakes squealed. Bones flew upward in a single spurt that bore us clear of the traffic melee and set me down on the sidewalk with a short directive.
“Stay here.”
He streaked back toward the wrecked van before I could even croak out a reply. There was a crack of gunshots, more screams from onlookers, and then moments later he reappeared with a man flung over his shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
Bones grasped me firmly once more, and then the ground left our feet. My eyes bugged. Mother of God, we were going so fast. To keep my feet from swinging crazily, like my mind was doing, I tangled my legs in his and held on, almost afraid to look down to see how high up we were.
Ten minutes later, Bones set us down in a warehouse alley as neatly as if he’d hopped off a curb. I was panting in amazement and staring at him like I’d never seen him before.
“You can fly?” I gasped out the obvious.
He glanced over at me while shaking the hapless assassin like a rag doll.
“Told you I was more powerful than you were aware of.”
I kept staring. Bones would have seemed nonchalant-if he wasn’t shaking the living hell out of the man in his hands.
“But you can fly?” I finally repeated, struck into stupidity.
“I’m a Master vampire. If a Master gets to be powerful enough and old enough, this is one of the perks. There are others, but we can get into those later,” Bones said as the man’s eyes fluttered open, focused on him, and then bulged. He was awake now, and he looked like I’d felt when Bones had catapulted us out of that window. Scared shitless.
Bones dropped him to the ground and knelt in front of him. A flash of emerald spilled out of his eyes, and after a harsh command, the man quit struggling and sat still.
“This woman,” Bones said, indicating me with a jerk of his head. “Why did you try to kill her?”
“Business,” the man replied in a monotone, mesmerized by the glowing orbs fixated on him. “I was hired to.”
Another hit man. Guess Bones hadn’t been wrong about that contract out on me.
“Who hired you?” Bones asked immediately.
“Don’t know. The contract came in, instructions were enclosed, and the money was to be wired on completion. Sometimes I get jobs through referrals, but not this time.”
“Kitten.” Bones didn’t break eye contact. “Write this down.”
He withdrew his wallet. A tiny pen was clipped to it. I used the first piece of paper I found, which was money.
“Name.”
“Ellis Pierson.”
Such a normal-sounding name, and it went with his appearance. Aside from his fresh bloody nose and bruises, he looked about as threatening as Mickey Mouse. Ellis had black hair neatly trimmed, a paunch, and round baby cheeks. The prick was obviously good with a rifle and a scope, though. I’d be missing several choice pieces of my brain now if it weren’t for Bones tackling me. How he’d known about the shots was still beyond me.