This hunter shattered on the innermost level was not likely to tempt him to break that promise . . . but there was no denying that there were hidden depths to her. Depths he was compelled to explore. “You’re an excellent shot,” he said.
A shrug. “I practice, and Valeria wasn’t exactly a moving target.” Lines marred her forehead. “I should feel bad about taking advantage when she was pinned up like a butterfly, but I don’t. What does that make me?”
“Human. Flawed.”
“Strange how that actually makes me feel better.” She reached to open an upper cupboard. The motion pulled her gray sweatshirt a fraction tighter over her full br**sts, but nowhere near enough to showcase a body that Dmitri was damn certain was meant to be showcased.
Hmm . . .
Turning on his heel, he began to prowl around her apartment. When he turned in the direction of what he guessed was her bedroom, she said, “That’s private, Dmitri.”
He ignored her.
Heard her swear a blue streak.
But he was already at her closet by the time she ran around the counter to follow. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Seeing who you were before Valeria and Tommy.” He pulled out a short scarlet dress with a plunging neckline and no back. “This, I like.”
Honor, her cheeks as red as the dress, grabbed the hanger from him. “For your information, I never wore this. It was a gift from a friend.”
His enthusiasm cooled. “That’s the kind of dress a man buys.”
“Or a girlfriend who likes to jerk my chain,” she muttered, shoving the dress back into the closet. “Now get out.”
He reached in to pull out a number of other items instead, throwing them on the bed. Shirts and simple tops, for the most part, but all of them fitted. Nothing like the shapeless tees and sweatshirts she’d taken to wearing. Throwing them on the bed, he said, “Get dressed properly and I’ll show you something you’ve never before seen.”
Glaring at him, she started to put the clothing back. “I happen to be working—the rest of the ink won’t decode itself.”
A cold burn of anger invading his veins at the reminder of Isis, he shut the closet doors with deliberate care. “From what I saw,” he said in a tempered voice, “you’ve been going around in circles.”
A blown-out breath. “I’ve almost got it. It’s there on the tip of my tongue.”
“A break will help.” While she dressed, he’d make a few calls, including one to Jason. If someone was attempting to revive or revere Isis in any way, shape, or form, Dmitri wanted to know. So he could crush the repugnance.
Movement, Honor walking to the vanity to pick up a brush. “Where are we heading?”
“You’ll find out when we get there.”
Narrowed eyes. “Leave so I can get dressed.”
“Don’t take too long.” Striding out to her glare, he began to make his phone calls. Jason hadn’t heard even a whisper of anything related to an angel named Isis, but promised to alert his network. Dmitri also contacted Illium, instructing him to brief the rest of the Seven. His final call was to Raphael.
The archangel’s response was simple. “You’re certain?”
“Yes,” he said, understanding the question. “I’ll handle it.” Isis was his nightmare.
Hanging up, he was staring out at a Manhattan still swathed in the graying kiss of night, the Tower dominating the skyline, when the scent of wildflowers in bloom grew stronger. It tugged at long-buried emotions in him, that scent, made him remember the mortal he’d been so many years ago that entire civilizations had risen and fallen during his lifetime.
“Let’s go.”
He turned to see Honor dressed in ill-fitting jeans and a loose white shirt. “I said properly dressed.” He knew full well what she was doing with her shapeless clothing, and it turned him merciless. “Just because the predators can’t get a good look at you doesn’t mean they don’t consider you fresh meat.”
Fury spotted red high across her cheekbones. “Fuck you, Dmitri.”
“Right now?” He gave her a deliberately taunting smile. “Come over here, then, darling.”
He saw her hand twitch, knew she was fighting the urge to go for her gun, drill him in the heart. “You know what?” she said. “I think I’d prefer my own company. Get out.”
“Pathetic, Honor,” he said, well aware the painful buttons he was pressing. “Valeria—if she still has her tongue, which is doubtful—would be laughing at what she’s made you.”
Honor went motionless. “I think I’m starting to hate you.”
“Doesn’t bother me.” There was strength in hate. It was why he’d survived that dungeon. “It’ll make it even sweeter when I have you na**d and wet for me.”
Not answering, she slammed her way into her bedroom. Ten long minutes later she stepped back out. This time, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, she was dressed in skintight jeans tucked into knee-high black boots, topped with a close-fitting black tee over which she’d thrown a hip-length leather jacket in the same shade. He’d been right—her br**sts were luscious, her body a knockout.
Walking over to stop bare inches from a female form that was all but vibrating with rage, he reached out to touch her, the compulsion undeniable. A blur of movement, an elbow to his chest, his legs being kicked out from under him, and suddenly he was crashing onto the floor, looking up at an Honor who was no victim.
Dmitri laughed.
Honor didn’t know what she’d expected, but that laugh, deep and masculine and hotly real, wasn’t it. When he lifted a hand toward her, she ignored it . . . though it was troubling, how much she wanted to straddle that beautiful body and lean down to kiss those sensual, laughing lips—as if he hadn’t just cut into her with the pitiless blade of his voice.
His laughter faded into a smile that was very, very male. “Come here.”
She walked to the door instead . . . but she was no longer so sure that when it came to this madness inside her, a madness that bore Dmitri’s name, that she’d emerge the winner.
Honor froze when Dmitri brought the car to a halt around the back of a discreet black building in Soho. “You bastard,” she said, her voice so soft it was almost not sound. Erotique was the club of choice for the more high-ranked vampires. Its hosts and hostesses—mostly human, but with the occasional “new” vampire thrown in—were trained to know how to deal with the older almost-immortals. Some called the dancers within its exclusive walls the geishas of the West.
Bracing his hand against the back of her seat, Dmitri shot her a glance that appeared darkly amused . . . if you didn’t look into those eyes, cold and brutal. “There is a high chance,” he said in a voice that was black satin over her br**sts, “that at least some of the vampires you’ll meet here tonight have already had a taste of you.”
“Come on, hunter. Scream a little more. The blood tastes better when you do.”
Spots in front of her eyes, her breath strangling in her chest. Her gun was in her hand and pointed at Dmitri’s head before she was aware of pulling it from the shoulder holster. “I’m leaving.”
Dmitri moved at lightning speed, and suddenly her gun was in his grip, that sensual face an inch from her own. “Taunt them with your survival, Honor. Or run like a scared rabbit. Your choice.”
The violence within her body needed release—she wanted to hit Dmitri, bloody him. “Why do you care?” It was a harsh whisper. “I’m just a new diversion for you.”
“True.” Touching the nose of her gun to her cheek. “But I find there’s no fun in playing with someone who’s already half dead.” He put the weapon in her lap and pushed open his door to step out. “Strange,” he murmured, snicking the door shut, “how you sometimes remind me of her, and yet you don’t have even a glimmer of her spirit.”
She stared at his retreating form as he headed toward the back entrance of the club, leaving her alone in a panther of a car, gun heavy in her holster as she slid it back in. His words had been calculated to incite a reaction, but they still hit. Hard.
“You’re no fun anymore, hunter. I expected more resistance to this game.”
Vaulting out of the vehicle, she stalked after Dmitri. He glanced over his shoulder, waited for her to catch up. “Try not to shoot anyone.” A low purr that stroked her senses with an intimacy as lush as the sinuous scent of midnight roses. “We need people to talk.”
They’d reached the door by then, a door the bouncer was already holding open. “Sir,” he said, keeping his eyes scrupulously off Honor.
“He looked surprised,” she said once they were inside the back corridor. “Not usually your scene?”
“No.” Angling his head in her direction as they turned toward the throaty sound of a jazz singer coming from the left, he said, “They’ll assume I have you in my bed.”
13
Closer, the singer’s voice tangled with the music of soft conversation. The voices were elegant, cultured . . . just like the ones she’d heard in the basement. “I know,” she said, determined not to let this drive her back into the dark, “but since you have a reputation for enjoying pain, I’m sure they won’t be surprised if I give in to the need to stab you.”
A gleam of laughter in those eyes so dark and old, but he said nothing as they walked through the doorway into what appeared to be a very genteel bar, complete with a chanteuse in a glittery green dress on a low stage to the side. The lighting was soft, the groupings of tables intimate, the clientele dressed in immaculate formal clothing. “A bit early for cocktails.”
“Or very late,” Dmitri answered. “Time means little here.”
All the men and women in her line of sight were old enough that vampirism had worked its magic, honing their looks to a level of beauty only possessed by the rare mortal. “I expected . . .” In truth, she’d never thought that much about Erotique, but what she had heard focused on an aspect that was missing here. “The dancers?”