Rapture's Edge

debt.”

He’d be damned before he’d be indebted to this smug, priggish dilettante, but Alexi reacted as if he’d been stroked on his head. He purred his pleasure in lilting, flowery French.

“Bien sur. Quelque chose pour toi.”

Anything for you. He’d said the same thing to her on the phone, and from the tone of his voice and the look on his face, D had no doubt it was true. Eliana sensed his growing fury and stepped back toward him, still with her hand on his chest, which Alexi noted with flattened lips and a fleeting glance at him that telegraphed, This means war. His gaze settled back on Eliana, and it softened.

“Your family is upstairs resting comfortably. I’ve prepared a bedroom for you, as well. You can stay as long as you like, of course—”

“Mel can take my bedroom. She’s downstairs in the car. We’ll bring her in now.”

“Mel!” he exclaimed, eyes widening. “Wait—you said she was shot.”

Silent, Eliana slowly nodded.

Alexi threw his hands in the air. “Why isn’t she in the hospital?”

“We can’t…we can’t go to hospitals,” she said lamely.

Alexi looked at her with narrowed eyes for a beat and made a little noise of disbelief or disapproval in his throat. Then—apparently accustomed to this kind of thing from her—he rolled his eyes and sighed. “I’ll phone my private physician. He gets paid enough to be on call. He should be able to be here within the hour.”

“A doctor?” Eliana whispered with something odd in her voice.

Through the fabric of his shirt, D felt her fingers tremble. He reached up and placed his hand over hers, an action not meant as anything but comfort, but Alexi took note of it, his mouth puckering as if someone had just stuck a lemon in it.

“Yes, a doctor, Butterfly,” he said sourly. “That is who normal people go to see when they’ve been shot. Right before they go to see their lawyer.”

Eliana said, “Lawyer. Um…”

Alexi crossed his arms over his chest and went into problem-solving mode. “What’s her condition now? Is she stable, conscious? Where exactly was she injured?”

“She was shot in the chest, and she’s still not conscious, but she’s stable, she’s been…operated on…”

Alexi’s golden brow crumpled to a frown. “I don’t understand. You said she hadn’t been to a hospital.”

“Er, no…”

“Field surgery,” D cut in abruptly. “I did what I could with what I had on hand.”

Alexi regarded him with new interest, his expression bordering on incredulous, his eyes keen. “Well. This just keeps getting better.” His gaze flickered over D’s shaved head and pierced eyebrow, the tattoos peeking out above the neck of his black shirt, his long black coat, and his boots and leather pants. “Let me guess—Harvard School of Medicine?”

D smiled. He withdrew the Glock from the waistband of his pants, pointed it in the general direction of Alexi’s crotch, and calmly said, “Harvard School of Another Word and I’ll Turn You from a Rooster to a Hen with One Shot, motherfucker.”

“Demetrius!” Eliana hissed. She snatched her hand from his chest and looked at him, a plea in her eyes.

Don’t antagonize her human boy toy. Right.

In what was maybe the third-hardest thing he’d ever done, D stepped away and stuck the gun back in the waistband of his pants.

Alexi, again to his credit and surprisingly, hadn’t twitched a muscle. D guessed it wasn’t the first time he’d been threatened with grievous bodily harm; the man really had a way of irritating people. But Alexi looked back and forth between D and Eliana twice before he spoke.

“Bring her in. I’ll call the doctor. And afterward, you and I, we’ll talk.”

He made the word talk sound like something they’d do in bed.

To Alexi he sent a look that said, I’ve got your number; touch her again and it’s up. To Eliana, D said, “I’ll get her.” Then he left the two of them standing in the silent opulence of Alexi’s grand foyer and headed for the SUV in the parking garage below.

“So are you going to talk to me or just keep staring out the window?”

This was said without rancor in that gently teasing way Alexi had that used to make her smile, but now it only made her head hurt. More than it already did.

They were in a room next to the one Mel had been ensconced in, some kind of sitting room on the top floor outfitted all in white with mod furnishings and a shaggy rug and a view of the city through the glass windows along the east wall. She’d made sure Mel was taken care of, spoken with Bettina and Fabi, and then allowed herself to be led here, though she wouldn’t take the hand Alexi had offered on the way.

The sun was rising, painting the city in shifting tones of lavender and blue and gold, and with every degree it rose in the sky, she felt it like an opposing weight in her body. She could not recall the last time she’d had a good night’s sleep.

“Have I said thank you yet?”

She turned to look at him. He was seated beside her in a chair identical to her own, an egg-shaped, plastic affair that might have been designed as a torture device for all the comfort it gave. She didn’t understand how something with no sharp corners could be so damn…pinchy. But that was Alexi. Form over function any day of the week. “If I haven’t—thank you. I’ll start by saying that.”

“You’re welcome.” He regarded her very seriously, though she knew he was pleased to have her here. Happy, even. It radiated from him in waves, thick as honey. As if to prove it, he said, “It’s nice to have company. I should have bought something smaller. This place is really too cavernous and lonely, even with Smithers.”

Smithers. The dour British butler who always pretended not to remember Eliana’s name. She’d been here dozens upon dozens of times when she and Alexi were an item, but he remained aloof, with an air of vague disapproval, though in all honesty the poor man must have quite the challenge, what with the revolving door of women Alexi presented him. At the moment he was in the kitchen, preparing breakfast for his bevy of unexpected, hungry guests.

“I’d almost forgotten how relentlessly unflappable you are,” she mused. “Over a dozen bedraggled, semi- hostile strangers in your house, including one with a gunshot wound, and you act like it’s an impromptu cocktail party.”

Now he did smile, widely. “Relentlessly unflappable? You make it sound like a personality defect. I’m positive, Butterfly.” He tapped his temple. “Secret to my success.”

“Really? That actually works?”

“You should try it sometime.” His voice was droll, his look pointed, and suddenly she felt defensive.

“I’m positive,” she protested, which was met with soft, mocking laughter.

Alexi raked a hand through his hair, thick strands of golden brown and honey that glinted in the rising light, and shook his head. “You’re many wonderful things, Eliana, but positive, I’m sorry to say, isn’t one of them.”

Now she was more than defensive. She was outright offended. “In what way am I not positive, exactly?”

“Well, let’s see.” He looked at the ceiling and, in irritatingly quick succession, ticked a list off his fingers. “You don’t trust anyone, you don’t let anyone in, you assume the worst in every situation, you think people are guilty until proven innocent, you wield sarcasm like a weapon—which technically you don’t need since you always have a sword strapped to your waist in case you need to cut someone down to size—and you have some really bad anger management issues. Oh, and you like to fight.” He looked back at her. “Did I forget anything?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice flinty. “I hold grudges. Like, forever.”

He dissolved into laughter, which, if she wasn’t so mad, would have been charming. She stood stiffly from the chair and went to stand in front of the windows. “I don’t see what’s so funny,” she muttered acidly to the breathtaking view, her arms crossed over her chest.

When his laughter finally died, he came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. Only because he was helping her family, she didn’t bite it off.