attempt to salvage my dignity.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I heard Tate ask, with an edge to his voice. “Wrong way, Bones. The men’s showers are in the opposite direction.”
“I’ll file that away with all the other information that doesn’t pertain to me” was Bones’s mocking reply.
I ignored them and kept going, reaching my locker room, shutting the door, and stripping off my clothes in a blur. A cold shower, that’s what I needed.
Tate’s voice still reached me through the door. “Got something you’re embarrassed to show us, vampire?” he taunted.
Bones merely laughed. From the sound of it, he was almost at the door.
“Just not stupid. Where would
“Don’t answer that,” I heard Juan caution Tate, and then Bones came inside my locker room.
I was already under the cold spray of water. When Bones turned his eyes to me, I shivered, but it had nothing to do with the chilly liquid.
“Not here. It’s…inappropriate.”
Bones removed his pants and kicked off his shoes in a single motion that made my breath catch. He came toward me, reaching behind me to turn the water from cold to hot.
“Sod ’em,” he responded, kneeling in front of me. His mouth caressed my stomach. “I want you, Kitten, and you want me.” His tongue snaked out and moved lower with relentless accuracy. “That’s all I care about.”
I clutched his shoulders as my knees went weak and my worries over propriety went out the metaphorical window. The hot water poured over us in much the same manner as the blood now racing through me.
“I’m going to fall,” I warned him with a gasp.
“I’ll hold you,” he promised throatily.
I believed him.
When we emerged an hour later, my face was flushed from sex, the heat of the shower, and the look Tate gave me when I walked into my office. He was waiting for me there. Bones had stopped by the lab again for more blood extraction, per Don’s request.
“Christ, Cat, you couldn’t even wait until later to crawl into the coffin with him?” Tate asked, giving his head a disgusted shake.
That succeeded in dampening my good spirits. “First of all, none of your business, and second, how do you know we weren’t just talking?” We weren’t, but that wasn’t the point.
Tate snorted rudely. “My senses just got put on steroids, remember? Not only could I hear you-now I can smell it on you. You reek of it, even after your shower.”
God, how could I be so
“Then I switch to my first point, which is that it’s none of your business.” No way was I going to cringe under his gaze.
Another snort, but with bitterness this time. “Yeah, you’ve made that crystal-clear.”
The pain on his face stopped my next spiteful remark. “Tate. I’m not trying to hurt you or prove anything. What happens between him and me doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
As if mentally summoned, Bones appeared in the doorway. Tate brushed by him without acknowledging his presence, throwing a last parting comment to me as he went.
“You might not be out to prove anything, but he sure as hell is. Forget him wearing your panties around his neck-he just smothered himself in your scent.”
“Ready, luv?” Bones asked, ignoring Tate.
“Is he right?” I didn’t let it drop, even though I could already guess the answer.
Bones regarded me with all seriousness. “Partially. I always want you, and you know how fighting gets my blood up, but did it cross my mind that I’d be literally rubbing his nose in it? Yes. Better he lose his illusions, fast, when it comes to you. But would I have acted any differently if we were alone? Of course not. I can’t get enough of you.”
“This isn’t going to be easy,” I grumbled as we headed toward the exit.
Bones shrugged. “Nothing worthwhile ever is.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
BONES WAS VERY BUSY THE NEXT DAY, PULLING in his people from around the nation and even across the globe. He wanted them nearby when he told Ian that he’d found me and had hostages. Bones made me stay put while he went to my house and fetched my cat, who hadn’t been happy to be left alone for two- plus days. Then the next morning we woke up at ten, frightfully early for us both, and headed straight to the compound.
“You said you had captive vampires here, right, Kitten?” he asked after we arrived.
“Yeah, three of them, why?”
Bones clucked his tongue in contemplation. “They might be useful. Let me see them.”
Tate, Juan, and Cooper accompanied us down to the lower level where the vampires were housed. The guards averted their eyes when Bones walked past, having been instructed by Don not to interfere, but they had never seen a vampire unfettered and strolling about. Their obvious discomfort filled the air.
“In this pen we have Grumpy,” I narrated, flipping up the concealing liner that hid the vampire in his prison. It was only raised when the other guards were safely out of eyesight. Since Tate, Juan, and Cooper were juiced with Bones’s blood, they could look at him and not worry. “His real name is Dillon, or so he told us. He’s about thirty, I guess, in grave years.”
Dillon’s blue eyes widened when they met the cool, appraising brown ones. Bones nodded, indicating he was done viewing him.
“Next is Jack, but he’s known as Chirpy. He’s got a real high-pitched voice, hence the nickname. I’d say sixty? Seventy? We snagged him at a baseball game. He liked to drink the beer vendor girls.”
Sixty or seventy again referred to his undead years, but the living ones didn’t seem far off from that number, either. Jack was small, wrinkled, and frail-appearing. Right up until he’d try to rip your throat out.
“And this”-I raised the last shield to reveal the blond vampire I’d captured months ago-“is Sunshine. We don’t know her real name; she never told us.”
As soon as Sunshine looked up, she vaulted off her cot in a blur of speed to press herself against the glass.
“
“Belinda, fancy seeing you here,” Bones chuckled. “Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not here to rescue you.”
“You know her?” I asked foolishly, since it was obvious.
She touched the glass. “How can you say that, after what we meant to each other?”
I stiffened, but Tate jumped right in. “You fucked Sunshine?”
I was waiting for his reply as well, with a pointed glare.
“We didn’t mean anything to each other aside from a few shags, Belinda,” Bones answered the question bluntly with his rejoinder.
My hands clenched. Now I wished I’d killed her instead of capturing her.
Juan said something in Spanish I couldn’t follow, and to my added amazement, Bones replied in the same language. Juan’s forehead crinkled as he laughed at whatever the exchange was.
“That’s rude,” I snapped, not amused in the slightest. Somehow I knew they weren’t discussing Sunshine’s-or Belinda’s-teeth.
For the first time, I looked her over as a woman, and I didn’t like what I saw. Belinda was very pretty, even without a smidgen of makeup. She had long blond hair, hence the nickname we’d given her, big breasts, and a small waist on top of curvy hips. Her cornflower-blue eyes complemented her full pink lips.
