and full lips, and he had the oddest urge to ask her to take her blond hair out of the tame, hip-length French braid so he could see if it was as silky as it looked.
Maybe the doe-eyed librarian act was her game. Maybe she drew in the males who wanted to tap a wallflower. Nate had never been that kind. He liked hardasses who knew what they were getting into when they bedded a vampire, but as he’d sized up Vladlena, he began to see the appeal.
But then he’d seen the nervousness in her eyes, heard the note of fear in her voice. Some deep, dark part of him had awakened, and the thrill of the hunt seized him. It was a small rush, barely a ripple in the pool of numbness he’d been drowning in, but Jesus, it was as if a thread of life had been thrown to him, and he was going to cling to it for as long as he could.
“Well?” His body buzzed as he studied her, the way it did when he inadvertently drank blood from a coked-up human, but this was better. Purer, without the fuzzy edges. “You just going to stare at me, or are you going to offer up some incentive for me to hire you?”
Her slender throat worked on a few swallows, and he followed the column of smooth ivory skin lower, to the V neckline of her forest-green angora sweater. Just as he dove south to the smooth swells of her breasts, she thrust a file at him.
“Here’s your incentive.” She waited until he took the file, and then she stepped back, as if wanting to get away. It made him want to cage her between his body and the wall just to show her that if he didn’t want her to escape, she wouldn’t. “Eidolon, the head doctor at Underworld General, prepared that for you. It lists my accomplishments and special skills.”
He nearly chuckled at her attempt to divert him, but he was having too much fun watching her squirm. “
Again, her soft brown eyes flared. “Eidolon wouldn’t know all of my special skills, since he has enough integrity to not require that his employees sleep with him.”
“Is that so.” He set his glass on the desk and flipped through the file, not focusing on particulars. “So tell me, why are you leaving this great place where the upstanding boss doesn’t want his nurses on their backs?”
“My reason for leaving is my business. But as you can see, I come with the highest recommendation.”
Fair enough. But something about this female was off, and Nate had learned a long time ago to trust his instincts. She was too fidgety, too . . . something.
Putting the lid on his less-than-helpful inner voice, he ran his thumb over the loopy whirls of her writing. “The file says you’re a shifter. What species?”
“Tiger.”
Not bloody likely. He inhaled deeply, seeking her scent. Through the tantalizing aroma of vanilla was a wild undertone of feline . . . and canine. Mostly canine, in fact. He’d have pegged her for a wolf, so why was she saying she was a tiger? It wasn’t any of his business, but again, something was off. He’d encountered every species of shifter alive, and he’d never come across one with this particular blend of scents.
His sixth sense was telling him to send her packing. The club had enough troubles, and it operated on a delicate balance. He didn’t need this female messing up anything or causing problems. And yet, she intrigued him with the very qualities that were making him twitchy.
“Okay, Tiger Lady, why are you applying to work here?”
“I need a job, and I work well independently, but I don’t want to work in a human hospital or clinic.”
“Why not? It would be a hell of a lot safer, and you don’t strike me as someone who likes to take risks.”
There wasn’t a tiger shifter on the planet who didn’t like to cozy up with danger, but she didn’t deny his accusation. “Humans provide fewer challenges, medically speaking.”
Her chin lifted, and though she was shorter than he was, she somehow looked down her nose at him, all superior-like. Interesting. Usually females batted their eyelashes and gave him smoky take-me eyes. The superior thing sent another rush through him, piquing his interest even more. Hell, he was actually getting hard.
He picked up his glass again and studied her over the rim. “So you like challenges,” he murmured.
“I love a good fight.” An odd darkness infused her voice, setting off his internal alarms.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just what I said. Challenges are what make life interesting, don’t you think?”
He wondered what she’d do if he
He looked over at Vladlena, who was shifting her weight nervously. “Can you start work now?”
“Right this minute?”
“If I like how you perform, you get the job.”
She glared at him for a heartbeat, as if trying to decide how he meant, “perform,” and then she shrugged. “Why not.”
He took her to the medic station, where Marsden met them with a big, bleeding male with a gaping laceration that had opened up his arm from shoulder to elbow. Blood streamed from his mashed nose and lips, and a piece of his ear had been torn off.
Vladlena leaped into action, snapping gloves out of the dispenser on the wall and then grabbing a towel to put pressure on the laceration as she guided the male toward the exam table. When he growled at her, Nate’s first instinct was to deck the guy, but she handled that like a seasoned pro as well.
“You do not growl at your nurse.” There was an underlying growl of her own in her words, but it was soft, almost gentle, bringing to mind the sound of a mother wolf chastising her young. “I have to help you, but I don’t have to make it comfortable. Got it?”
The male settled down, surprising the hell out of Nate. Mars nodded in approval and then jerked his thumb toward the hall. “I’m going to check on the other participant in the dance floor brawl.” He took off, and Nate turned back to Vladlena, who was reaching for the rolling med kit next to the bed.
“Now,” she said, “let’s get some vitals. What’s your species?”
“Warg,” the male grunted, and yeah, Nate figured. Werewolves, or wargs, as they liked to be called, were growly by nature, and they tended to be larger than other animal-based underworlders and humans—probably because they grew an extra inch or two after being bitten and turned into a werewolf.
She inspected his mouth and airway for any of the teeth that had been knocked out. “Was it a fist or foot that did this?”
Before the warg could answer, there was a shout from outside, and a vampire burst into the room. The warg came off the table, and Nate leaped to intercept him.
“Not in my office,” Vladlena snapped, and for a moment, the warg paused.
Unaffected by her command, the vampire lunged. A pure animal in his rage, he struck out at Vladlena, knocking her into the cabinets.
Fury ripped through Nate with the force of a summer storm, and then he was moving faster than his thoughts, ramming his fist into the male’s nose and popping a double-tap into his throat. As the vamp’s head rocked back, Nate seized him by the neck and slammed him into the wall. He felt the sting of a blade slash at his gut, but he was too lit to let it slow him down. If anything, the pain fed his need to draw blood, and he reached for the fucker’s wrist, snapping it with a quick twist of his fingers. The vamp shouted in agony and dropped the blade. Now Nate was going to tear the bastard’s head off.
Literally. One of the interesting things about being a day-walker was that he was stronger and faster than “normal” vampires, and he was going to make use of that right now—
Marsden’s hands came down on Nate’s shoulders to wrench him away from the nightcrawler as three of the club’s security guys wrestled the warg and vampire to the ground, cuffing them roughly.
“Get ’em out of here,” Mars snapped. “If they want to fight, they’ll do it outside. Then give them a fucking map to Underworld General. They aren’t setting foot in here again.”
Nate whirled around to Vladlena, and when he saw her on the floor, trapped by a shelf that had fallen on her, the pinprick of life he’d felt penetrate his veil of indifference earlier widened. Son of a bitch, if she was hurt . . .
He and Mars tag-teamed the shelf, lifting it off her.
“You okay?” Nate offered her a hand, and she took it, surging to her feet as if she hadn’t just been wearing a two hundred pound wooden shelf.
“I’m fine.” She started to brush herself off, but when she looked at him, she froze. “But you’re not.”
