“I am the Alpha of the hellhounds.”
Lore folded his arms. Even through the storm of emotion, Talia couldn’t avoid noticing how the gesture showed off his arms and chest. All he needed were buckskin and a rifle and he could have been a brawny version of Daniel Day-Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans.
Then what he said soaked in. “Hellhound?”
“We are half demons.”
“Isn’t that like being a little bit pregnant?”
Lore gave a sudden, evil grin. He leaned against the brass rail of the footboard, looming over Talia. No one got to be Alpha just because he was a nice guy. If Lore really was the top dog, there was a savage streak to match the wild-man looks. “It means that if you do break out of here, there is nowhere you can hide. I can track the ghost of a ghost, and the whole pack will be hunting you right along with me.”
Talia set her jaw, refusing to give in to a sudden wave of terror. “Why?”
Lore’s grin faded as he took a step away from the bed. “I told you. I’m not certain whether you’re innocent or guilty. I’m the acting sheriff in Fairview. Right now you’re my responsibility.”
“So you’re the self-appointed detective on my case, is that it?”
“Be happy that I care whether or not you’re guilty.”
The handcuffs interfered with her sense of gratitude. “I didn’t kill Michelle.” Her voice cracked, and she gulped down a rising tide of grief. She was in danger. She had to keep her head straight. Don’t you deserve to die?
“Were they trying to kill you?”
“Maybe.”
“Who?”
“I honestly don’t know.” She looked away, hiding the tears that spilled out from under her eyelashes. Oh, God, Michelle.
“No possibilities?”
There were, but none that she’d admit to. Talia shrugged as much as the handcuffs would allow. “No names come to mind.”
“That’s the difference between you and me.”
“What?” She tried to glare, but her eyes were too wet to make it convincing.
“Hellhounds can’t lie.”
“Huh?”
“We’re incapable of telling an untruth. You are not.”
“Are you saying I’m a liar?”
Lore looked unimpressed. “You’re on the run. I found you with a bloody corpse. You use a knife with considerable skill. You’re something more than you’re saying.”
He turned and opened a drawer in a tall dresser. From where she was chained, Talia couldn’t see what was in the drawer, but heard the scrape of metal on wood. When Lore turned back, he had another set of silver handcuffs in his hand.
Talia scrambled backward, squeezing herself into the corner where the bed met the wall. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Extra insurance.”
She jerked at the chain with frustration. “Damn you, leave me alone!”
“It was your choice, me or the police.”
Lore reached over her, his big body stretching easily over the wide mattress. Talia shrank against the pillows as his face came too close to hers. She could smell that burnt chemical scent on his clothes again. Beneath it was the musky scent of man—except it wasn’t. It was richer. Darker. Hellhound. The hair on her neck ruffled. Must be the demon blood, because Mrs. McCready’s cockapoo never smelled that good.
But there was no way she was letting him chain her other hand. His face drew close to hers, a mixture of caution and determination in his dark eyes. She flexed her fingers, calculating the angle between Lore’s nose and the heel of her hand. With enough force, the right blow could knock him out. The squishy mattress would cost her momentum, but she was willing to give it—him—a shot.
Damn! He anticipated her move, his hand rising to block her, so at the last second she changed angles and went for his holster. Lore solved the problem by dropping on top of her, pinning her under his weight. Suddenly her nose was buried in his hair, her breasts crushed under his broad, strong chest.
“Get off me!” she hissed into his ear. His neck was right there, pulse pounding like forbidden candy. She’d heard some vamps liked demon blood.
Talia felt the strength in his body, the stretch and pull of muscle under cloth. She tensed, wanting the freedom to fight but only meeting a solid wall of hellhound wherever she moved. Lore grabbed her right wrist. Nuts! She cried out, the sound plaintive.
He stopped moving and simply held her there, their faces a breath apart. His eyes were so dark, there was almost no distinction between the iris and pupil.
“Are you going to be good?” he growled.
Talia squeezed her eyes shut. “Please don’t cuff my other hand. You don’t need to. I can’t break free.”
Her voice cracked, finally giving way to the terror of the situation. She was too young a vampire to break the silver cuffs, and not nearly as strong as a hellhound. She might as well have still been human.
Helplessness brought back bad, bad memories.
“Do you promise to be good?” This time the question was gentler.
She nodded, hating herself for her eagerness. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
She was lying. He had to know that. It was the first duty of a prisoner to escape—even if she had no idea in the world how she was going to do it.
He rose up on hands and knees. Talia was trapped beneath him, caged by his limbs. The feel of his warm hands still clung to her skin. His touch had been businesslike. Appropriate, if chaining up a woman ever could be described that way—yet now there was something in his expression as he stared down at her, the second set of cuffs still dangling from his hand. Something other.
The look pinned her like a stake.
She resisted the urge to curl into a ball, an instinctive urge to cover her vulnerable parts. He was looking at her as if he’d just decided she might be good to eat—in more ways than one. Worse, she wanted to respond.
Talia swallowed hard, putting all her defiance into her eyes. Refusing to cave.
“Bad dog!”
Chapter 7
Bad dog?
She had no idea.
Prophets spare me.
Lore banged into the stairwell and began running back to the fifteenth floor, taking the steps two and three at a bound. It had been a long night, but acute frustration made up for the bite of fatigue. His nerves were sparking like a faulty wire.
There was a human saying about heat and kitchens, and Lore was beating a retreat before he did something incredibly stupid. That vampiress—possibly murderess—was hot enough to set his fur on fire. When he’d had her pinned to the bed, every cell in his being had sat up and begged.
Definitely not something any hellhound should be thinking about, much less an Alpha. Hounds lived by a set of rules millennia old, and those rules said that no hound looked outside the pack for pleasure. They just didn’t. For one thing, if they did stray, they couldn’t lie about it afterward.
That was awkward, to say the least.
Lore stopped on a landing, breathing hard and glowering at the scuff marks on the wall. His skin felt prickly, as if he’d been standing next to a glowing furnace. Thinking about the vampire’s slender body made it worse. He’d
