“Not me, Kitten. Someone tried to kill you.”

  And they wouldn’t get away with it. That shot had sounded like it came from street level or close to it, and the shooter would be on the run now that he’d missed.

  Bones wouldn’t miss. Screw witnesses, secrecy of the race, and everything else. He wasn’t letting the bastard get away.

  “Hold onto my neck and don’t let go,” Bones said while tightening his grip. “We’re getting the sod.”

  With that, Bones grabbed his fallen leather coat, and then blasted them through the glass wall behind them.

  22

  Cat’s scream seared his ears as Bones let gravity take them down while he scanned the area. Most people hadn’t noticed two forms falling from the twentieth floor yet, so they walked at a normal pace along the sidewalks below…with the exception of a black-haired, rotund fellow carrying a large object under his arms as he ran toward a van. From his speed, he was human, and the canvass-wrapped object he carried was shaped like a rifle.

  Bones slowed their descent so that Cat’s head didn’t whip around dangerously when he changed direction. He couldn’t have her neck break and finish the shooter’s job. When they slowed enough for her to be safe, Bones flew them toward the van, which was now speeding into traffic with the cloaked figure driving.

  “I’ve got you,” Bones muttered over Cat’s screams as he shifted until he held her with one arm, leaving his other arm free. The van was just ahead, weaving around other vehicles and then gunning the gas once it was clear of traffic.

  Oh, no, you don’t!

  Bones caught up and grabbed the van’s bumper. With a burst of enraged strength, he flipped the van completely over until it slid along the street on its roof with its tires still spinning.

  “Holy shit!” Cat shrieked.

  Bones flew her over to the sidewalk with a muttered, “Stay here” before flying back to the van and punching out the driver’s side window. The driver shot him with a handgun this time, but Bones barely felt the bullets, either because they weren’t silver or because he was too incensed.

  He yanked the driver out through the broken window, ignoring the new screams and screeching brakes around him. Then, he punched the bloody, struggling man unconscious before flying back to Cat and grabbing her.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” she began.

  Bones didn’t. He flew straight up, ignoring the gasps and continued crashing sounds below. Don had arranged a cover story for the multi-car pileup Bones had caused back in Ohio when he rescued Cat from Don’s first attempt to kidnap her. Don could cover up this mess, too, especially since he’d probably been the cause of it.

  Bones did take the time to find a quiet, deserted area for his interrogation, though. The warehouse complex several miles away would do. The building barely had any security lighting on it, and the parking lot was dark and empty.

  Bones landed in the furthest corner of the parking lot, where a tree gave them additional camouflage from anyone who might wander by. Then, he let Cat go, dropped his coat, and started shaking her would-be assassin.

  Cat bent and grabbed her knees as if she were about to throw up, but her gaze never left Bones. “You can fly,” she said with absolute shock.

  He shrugged as much as shaking her attempted murderer would allow. “Told you I was more powerful than you realized.”

  “Yes, but you can fly!”

  Her voice rose to a shriek. She was probably fixating on that because she wasn’t ready to process that someone had nearly blown her head off mere minutes ago.

  “If a Master vampire gets to be powerful enough, old enough, and comes from a line of flyers, this is one of the perks. There are others for Masters, but we’ll get into those later. Right now, we need to deal with him.”

  The sod was finally waking up. He gave Bones a dazed glance, and then his eyes widened in terror.

  Bones shoved him to his knees, glad at the new scent of blood and the pain that flashed over his pasty features as the asphalt bit into his skin.

  “Don’t move, don’t speak unless spoken to, and don’t you dare lie to me. Now, why did you try to kill this woman?”

  The man glanced at Cat before fixing his brown eyes onto Bones’s blazing emerald gaze. “Business. I was hired to.”

  Bones’s jaw tightened. Don was dead. He didn’t care how angry that made Cat-

  “Guess you weren’t wrong about that other contract on me,” she said with a horrible attempt at a laugh.

  Bloody hell. She was right. This might not be about Don. He was so upset that he wasn’t thinking. That stopped this instant.

  Bones forced his ice to the surface, freezing out the sight of the blood that still spattered Cat’s face as well as the sound of the gunshots that keep reverberating through his mind.

  “Who hired you?” Bones asked in a much calmer tone.

  “Don’t know,” the man replied. “The contract came in, instructions were enclosed, and money wired on completion. Sometimes, I get jobs through referrals, but not this time.”

  Standard operating procedure for professional killers so far, but this was no ordinary target. This was Cat…and he couldn’t allow himself to make this personal again. Not yet.

  “Write this down, Kitten,” Bones said, not trusting himself to remember every detail. If his ice still couldn’t contain all of his emotions, his memory might fail him, too.

  Bones handed Cat his wallet. He always kept a pen clipped to it, and there was enough paper money for her to take notes. Good thing he preferred cash to credit cards.

  “Birth name,” Bones prompted.

  “Ellis Pierson,” the man replied.

  Cat began writing, using the wallet as backing.

  “Aliases, all of them.”

  Ellis had many. He also had several industry contacts, a few prior handlers, and two sniper trainers, but all of them had been human. So had his prior kills, judging from how Bones didn’t recognize any of the names Ellis rattled off. Did the person who’d hired Ellis not know that Cat was a half-vampire?

  “How did this contract differ from any others you’ve taken?” Bones asked when it was obvious that he’d learn nothing from Ellis’s history.

  “The restrictions.” Ellis’s mouth turned down. “No bombs, poison, strangling, stabbing, garrote, bludgeoning, or physical contact of any kind. The hit also couldn’t take place at her residence, car, or place of employment because she’s a monitored government employee, and it had to be a head shot from a minimum of a hundred yards, with a second and third head shot, too.”

  Bones needed all his ice now. Otherwise, he’d tear at Ellis until there was nothing left except the bloody stains coating him. Oh, yes, whoever had hired Ellis knew what Cat was. They also knew that someone might try to raise her as ghoul, if she were killed. All it took to create a new ghoul was for a human to die while drinking vampire blood, and then have a willing ghoul trade hearts with that person while a vampire used their blood to activate the new heart.

  With vampire blood running through her veins, Cat always met the first requirement, but she couldn’t come back as a ghoul if she no longer had a head. Three bullets from a high-powered rifle would have ensured that.

  “Anything else you haven’t mentioned?” Bones asked when he was finally in control enough to speak again.

  Ellis nodded. “The original contract came in last week, but today, the client got anxious and said ‘new circumstances mandated immediate results.’ The price increased by twenty percent if the job was done tonight. That’s why I followed her from her house to the restaurant. The steep vantage point made the shot harder, but being so far below a crowded place meant that it should’ve been easier to escape unnoticed.”

  Ellis sounded dour at that last point, and he gave Bones an accusing look, as if Bones had cheated by flying after him.

  Bones only smiled…and yanked Ellis’s throat to his fangs. One rip later, Ellis’s blood was overflowing Bones’s mouth. Bones had held back all his venom, not wanting a drop of it to soothe the prick’s pain. The only reason he wasn’t dying in more of it was because of how pale Cat was. She didn’t need to see Bones dole out the kind of death that Ellis truly deserved. She’d been through enough tonight already.

  Bones shoved Ellis aside when his heartbeat stopped. With the deep jugular tear, it didn’t take long. Cat stared at Ellis’s body for a moment before raising her gaze to Bones.

  “Did that hurt?”

  He couldn’t tell from her tone whether she wanted the answer to be yes or no. Either way, he went with the truth.

  “Yes, but not nearly as much as he deserved,” Bones said as he wiped a smear of blood from his mouth. Then, finally able to shed his ice, he touched the rent on her temple that the bullet had left when it grazed her.

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

  He folded her in his arms, needing to feel how warm, solid, and alive she was. Her breaths were caresses against his skin, and each heartbeat soothed him more than his ice ever could. But those trembles…were they delayed shock, or something else?

  “Cold? Want my coat?” he asked, starting to fetch it.

  She stopped him, clinging to him as if the ground had suddenly left her feet again. Bones held her, running his hands down her back in long, soothing strokes. Between that and his body pressed against hers, her shivers soon eased.

  “You’re warm,” she murmured, rubbing her cheek against his chest. “I’ve never felt you this warm before.”

  No, she hadn’t. Fresh human blood was inside him, and a lot of it, raising his body temperature well past what it normally was. That heat would fade in an hour or so, but right now, he was nearly as warm as she was.

  Cat suddenly yanked his shirt collar open. Buttons flew, and she rubbed her face against his bare skin and made a sound very much like a purr. A new kind of heat scorched him, and he had to fist his hands to keep from tearing at her clothes next. Not here. She’d had a shock, and her attempted murderer’s body was only a meter away-

  Her mouth trailed over his bare skin. His cock nearly jumped to attention. Bloody hell, he needed his ice again right now if he was going to walk away from this.

  “Don’t, luv,” Bones rasped with the last of his honor. “I have very little control left in me.”

  “Good,” she whispered, kissing the hollow at the base of his neck. “I don’t want your control.” A lick seared his collarbone before her tongue slid lower down his chest. “And I don’t want to waste another moment of being alive-”

  Bones yanked her head up and kissed her.

  23

  Cat’s mouth was sweetness and fire while her body taunted him with its perfection as she pressed against him hard enough to bruise herself. She tore at his shirt again, too, and Bones groaned when it split open and he felt her bare skin rubbing his, but not enough of it. Her dress was still in the way.

  He backed her against the tree while splitting open the front of her dress. Now, her breasts rubbed his chest with all their silky, sensual fullness. He needed to taste them, and he dipped his head until her ruby-hard nipple was in his mouth. He sucked on that delicious peak while stroking her curves until she swung her legs around his waist. Feeling her heat grind against his cock, separated only by her knickers and his trousers, made his senses explode. He needed her now.

  He pushed her knickers aside and plunged his fingers into her, groaning at her wet, hot depths. She cried out and began to breathe so raggedly that he tore away from her mouth to kiss her neck instead. Her pulse slammed against his lips as she ripped at his trousers, and cool air touched him as they fell. Then, there was only her hand, gripping him hard enough to bruise, and pumping his cock until he couldn’t stand the sensual torture.

  “I can’t wait,” he ground out, and tore her knickers off. Then, he claimed her mouth while he thrust into her, nearly coming right then from the pleasure ripping through him.

  His lips muffled her scream of “Yes!” She gripped him tighter as he moved deeper, harder, lost in the feel of her. Some part of him warned him to be gentler, but he couldn’t. Not when he was suddenly drowning after years of dying of thirst and burning after only feeling ice.

  “Don’t stop, don’t stop!” she cried against his mouth.

  He never wanted to. He needed every moment of this. Leaves showered them from the tree Cat was braced against from his hard thrusts, and Bones half expected them to burst into flames, too. The fire sizzling his nerve endings had to be tangible. Nothing this intense could merely be feelings.

  Cat’s loud cry heralded a climax that pulsed around him with such erotic spasms, the last of his control vanished. A groan tore free as rapture turned into cascading bliss that spread until even his toes felt numb. Cat sagged against him, only the pressure from his body holding her up against the tree.

  “Something’s jabbing me…in the back,” she panted out long moments later.

  Bones held her more firmly onto his hips and moved her away from the tree. A small, very smashed tree branch was behind her.

  “Twig,” he said.

  Her legs nudged him in a “let me down” sort of manner. He didn’t want to, but he did, mourning the loss of their joined bodies as he slid out of her. His arms stayed around her, though, and he kissed her neck as she steadied herself.

  “That took the edge off of years of deprivation,” she said under her still-accelerated breaths.

  His afterglow was so strong that it took him a moment to process the significance of that statement.

  “Years?” he repeated in a suddenly hoarse voice.

  She tucked her head beneath his chin until he couldn’t see her eyes. “Ah, yeah. Years. Noah was the first guy I dated since you, and we didn’t…well. We didn’t.”

  Relief roared through him, followed instantly by shame. He couldn’t say the same to her after his terrible mistake, but he could say this, and it was the absolute truth.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered if there’d been other men since me, Kitten. Oh, I’d have cared, make no mistake, but in the end, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  Nothing would have kept him from her. Not one former lover, and not a hundred. She was his regardless.

  “But I confess to being very glad that there weren’t,” he murmured with raw honesty. Then, he tilted her head up and kissed her.

  She melted into it, until their lack of clothing in crucial places was becoming very difficult to ignore. One shift of their bodies, and he’d be inside her, feeling her walls clench around him while her wild cries filled his ears again…

  “We need to stop,” he said, forcing his mouth and other parts away from her. “Soon, someone will stumble across us.”

  Cat let out a ragged laugh and glanced over at Ellis’s body. “Yeah, and if it’s a cop, we’ll be charged with a whole lot more than indecent exposure.”

  A flash of his gaze would prevent that scenario, but with law enforcement having dash cameras and body cameras, that solution would also create its own problems. Bones was about to let her go when she touched his arm.

  “Bones.” She swallowed hard. “I have no right to ask since I gave you written instructions to forget me, and I’ll say the same that it doesn’t matter, but…I’d rather know than wonder.”

  Of course she would. This might be the last thing he wanted to talk about, but she deserved the truth.

  “Once. Close enough to count, leastways. After Chicago, when I left you that watch but you didn’t come to me, I was very…out of sorts. Thought you’d forgotten me or at best didn’t care. At the same time, an old lover of mine came to my room.”

  “And?” Cat said. Details, her gaze added.

  He’d hoped vagueness would be enough, but he should have known better. He couldn’t even blame her. He’d want to know everything, too. In this case, brutal truth was kinder than leaving it to the imagination, which had no limits.

  “She and I were in bed, I’d tasted her, and then I stopped because I couldn’t quit thinking about you. So, I apologized and left.”

  She closed her eyes, pain tightening her features while her scent harshened with anger. He wanted to clutch her to him, to ask for forgiveness, to plead with her to forget it, but he didn’t. She was entitled to feel all her anger, all her pain, and whatever else churning inside her without him trying to minimize or erase it.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she gritted out several moments later. “It really doesn’t. It just…hurts, that’s all.”

  Wounds did, and this was a wound just like her leaving him was. Neither had done it with intention to hurt the other, but that hadn’t stopped the pain.

  “I am sorry, Kitten. I should never have allowed it to go that far. I was angry, lonely, and hurt. Not an honorable combination, I’m afraid.”

  She opened her eyes, forcing a smile.

  “Again, I didn’t find out about that watch until weeks after you left it. I’m not saying I would have run off with you had I seen it sooner, but I would have pressed that button, Bones. I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself.”

  A smile ghosted across his lips. “I’ve never been able to stop myself when it comes to you, either, Kitten.” And I never will. “But, we really do need to leave now.”

  “On foot?” she asked with hope in her voice.

  Bones snorted as he tied the two largest rips in his trousers together. Now, they wouldn’t fall off, at least.

  “No. The faster way.”

  Her mouth turned down, but she accepted his coat and put it on. She’d be warmer that way, and also, now her pale skin wouldn’t be a beacon against the night sky.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that you can fly. I can think of more than a few times back in Ohio where that would have saved me a lot on gas money,” she muttered.

  “As if you’d have been so blasé. Remember how you reacted to all the other ways I wasn’t like a human back then?”

  “True,” she said after a pause. Then, “Let me guess-you can also leap tall buildings in a single bound?”