One Foot in the Grave

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.

“Alias, all of them.”

There were several. I was going to need more money.

One by one, Bones asked Ellis questions about the contract out on me, and he knew better than anyone which ones they were. Tricks of the trade, I thought sardonically as I wrote. It takes a hit man to interrogate one.

My jaw clenched when Ellis outlined in a dull voice how he’d been given very special instructions regarding my dispatch. It was to be a head shot only, a minimum of three bullets, and at a range no closer than a hundred yards. No car bombs, poison, physical confrontation, or any contact near my car or residence. Ellis didn’t know what I was, but whoever had hired him must have had a frigging good idea. These stipulations were too specific to be coincidental.

By the end, I’d written on over a dozen different bills, and my hand was cramped from the minuscule pen. Considering the alternative, however, I wasn’t going to complain. Finally Bones sat back on his haunches and asked if there was anything else Ellis hadn’t mentioned.

“The client got anxious in the last e-mail and moved up the time frame. Said new circumstances mandated immediate results. My price was increased by twenty percent if the job was done tonight. I followed her from her house to the restaurant. Easier to escape in the confusion there.”

Motherfucker. Someone wanted me dead in a hurry, and whoever that was also knew where I lived. A sick feeling swept over me, because there were only a select number of people who knew that.

I didn’t think we were going to turn him over to the police, but the swiftness with which Bones yanked Ellis to him and latched his mouth onto his throat still startled me. This wasn’t the first time I’d witnessed death by fang, but it was the first time I did nothing and just watched. Ellis’s heartbeat raced at first, then slowed, and finally stopped.

“Does that hurt?” I coldly wondered when Bones released him, letting him fall to the ground.

He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Not nearly as much as he deserved, but we don’t have time for that.”

With a touch now gentle enough to soothe a baby, he traced his fingers along the scratch on my temple. I knew what it was. The graze from a bullet.

“So bloody close to losing you,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t have been able to stand it, Kitten.”

He pulled me to him, hard, and a delayed reaction to my near-death experience set in. I’d had people try to kill me before, sure. Too many times to count, but a gunshot at far range seemed so…mean. I shivered.

“Cold? Want my jacket?” He began to shrug off his leather coat when I stopped him.

“You’re warm. I’ve never felt you this warm before.”

The reason for his new temperature was ten feet from us, but I didn’t care. I held him and savored his unusual heat. Then I tugged at his shirt collar, popping loose a button, just so I could feel his heated skin next to my cheek.

“Don’t, luv,” Bones said in a strained voice. “I have very little control left in me.”

Except I didn’t want his control right now. Or mine. Back at that restaurant, I’d been nanoseconds from being blown to kingdom come, but here I was. Alive, unhurt…and unwilling to waste another moment.

I kissed his collarbone, sacrificing another button to better access it. Bones’s hands tightened on my back. The waves of leashed power emanating from him excited me. Under my mouth, his skin seemed to crawl with voltage begging to be let free. My tongue flicked out, sliding lower on his chest to follow the hard grooves-until Bones yanked my head up and slanted his mouth across mine.

There was a metallic taste to his mouth, but it didn’t repel me. Instead I kissed him like I was trying to devour him, sucking on his tongue while tearing at his shirt. Bones picked me up and walked swiftly to the end of the parking lot, where there were more shadows. Something hard and uneven touched my back, but I didn’t turn around to see what it was. I was too busy running my hands over the warm flesh that his torn shirt had revealed.

There was a yank at my dress and the front split open. Bones’s mouth left a hot trail down my neck to my breast, his fangs deliciously grazing my skin. A strangled moan tore out of me when he pushed my bra down and sucked hard on my nipple. Throbs of desire so acute they were almost painful burned in me.

I moved my hand between our tightly molded bodies with the single-minded intent of destroying his pants. Then all thought fled as his fingers slid under my panties to push into me. I arched back hard enough to hit my head on whatever I was propped against, harsh cries of need spilling from me. My loins twisted in pleasure with each new rub, the intensity inside me building-until his hand was gone, leaving me wet and aching.

“I can’t wait,” Bones muttered fiercely.

If speaking was still in my control, I would have immediately agreed. But all my vocal abilities were used on gasping at the unbelievable sensations his fingers caused. Bones shifted, I heard another rip, and then he thrust deeply inside me. His mouth claimed mine at the same instant, muffling my cry at the ecstasy of his hard flesh filling me. Then there was the sweetest edge of pain as he began to move rhythmically, almost roughly, inside me.

My mind was seized with a single jumbled rant: Harder-faster-more-yes! It was all I could think as I clawed at his back, desperate to somehow get closer. Bones’s arm was under my hips, holding me tighter even as the solidness at my back rocked with our movements. Between his kiss, my grip, and that unknown