“Are you the Reverend?” she asked in a husky voice.
Or at least he thought that was what she was saying. He was distracted by that scent of hers, that taste . . . the fact that he was now fully erect.
“I need to know,” she said. “And you need to live. Take what you need, but no more.”
With that, she put her wrist against his mouth, pressing the puncture wounds to his lips—and instantly, he was as lost as he had been while dying, his mind floating on a sea of compromised senses, his body no longer his to order, his heart skipping beats, his lungs freezing.
He couldn’t swallow fast enough. He was a bottomless pit.
As Sahvage reclined back into her lap, he stared up at her as he drew against her vein. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, and he wasn’t surprised. He was not the kind of male a female like her should have had anything to do with voluntarily—and not because she was an aristocrat. He could tell by the clothes she wore and that handbag that she was a civilian, but that wasn’t the divider between them.
He knew very well what he was, and anything living shouldn’t be alone with him. Male or female.
And yet here she was helping him. For reasons that defied explanation.
I will not kill you, he vowed to her.
It was the minimum courtesy he owed her, wasn’t it.
On that note, Sahvage retracted himself from her vein, her wrist . . . and, with a grunt, her lap.
On a messy shuffle, he flipped himself over onto his stomach and then he dragged himself away from her, his palms and his heavy arms doing the work, his legs scraping along the concrete, his boots a pair of dogging cabooses. When he was outside the giant blood puddle he’d left behind, when there was a good six or seven feet between him and the female, he let himself collapse again.
The cold floor of the garage felt good against the hot side of his face, and he had a thought that his arousal was getting seriously crammed at a bad angle in his combats. But like he was going to worry about his goddamn dumb handle? As he panted and tried to get his bearings, his hand went back to the side of his neck.
The wound was sealed up. She must have—
“I, ah . . .” The female cleared her throat. “I tried to help close it.”
He looked over at her. “You shouldn’t have bothered.”
“Well, I did.”
Those eyes of hers couldn’t seem to light on anything, but really, what were her good options? Her bloodstained clothes? The pool of blood he’d left? The empty garage they both needed to get out of?
“How are you feeling?” she asked him.
“Fine. Just great.”
“Do you, ah, want to go see a doctor?”
Sahvage laughed harshly. “Sure. Great idea.”
That stare met his own directly. “Are you the Reverend?”
“Who?”
“Don’t lie to me. We’re not strangers anymore.”
Down below on the streets, the sounds of sirens wailed in the distance, and Sahvage wondered how many cops were on their way. Humans were like that, always showing up where they weren’t invited.
The female glanced away toward the noise, her brows lowering like she was attempting to count the number of blocks the police were covering per second. “They’re coming closer.”
“Yup.”
“I need your help.” She looked back at him. “I don’t have a lot of time.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You sure you want the kinds of things I can do?”
“If I had another choice, trust me, I would take it.”
With a groan, he sat up and tried to brush the dirt off his pecs. But drying blood was like glue. “That I believe. What do you need?”
“Are you the Reverend.”
Lowering his chin, he regarded her from beneath his lids. “Do I look like a religious figure to you?”
“Don’t toy with me.”
“I’m not, sweetheart.”
“This isn’t a game to me,” she spat. “I need to know if you’re the Reverend.”
As she jumped to her feet, Sahvage measured her up and down—and had a thought that she would look good naked. Those loose clothes did nothing to emphasize her assets, but she had plenty of them—and he liked the fact that she wasn’t the kind to put herself on display.
“And I need a Motrin,” he muttered as he put his bloody palm up to his aching head.
What the hell did a male like him have to do to die? Wait . . . he didn’t want the answer to that. Some things were best left to the hypothetical. And hey, at least he wasn’t thinking about sex anymore.
“Are you the Reverend!” she said again, her voice echoing around the empty garage level and overriding the sirens.
All of which were zeroing in on this bloodbath involving a pair of vampires, one of whom was on the hunt for some kind of Protestant with fangs, and the other of whom had made it a point to never, ever again get involved in other people’s drama.
Why had he bothered to swing through Caldwell again?
Oh, right. He’d been bored.
Are you the Reverend!”
You’d think Mae’d be yelling to be heard over the approaching police cars, but no, she was just pissed. And meanwhile, the huge male she’d given her vein to—yeah, ’cuz that had been on her list of things to do during this little adventure into downtown—was staring up at her with that bored expression of his, a twin trail of blood streaking from where he’d nearly died to where he’d dragged himself away from her.
The layout of it all looked like he was a rocket going into space, the big pool the explosion of liftoff, the streamers from his boots like the contrails of his fight.
Not that that made any sense at all.
And FFS, she could do without that tattoo on his chest pointing at her.
“My goddamn skull is pounding,” he groaned.
So don’t bare-knuckle fight with humans who have no honor, she bitched in her head. What did you think was going to happen—
“Whatever,” the male snapped as he glared up at her. “You were the one who distracted me.”
Shoot, she’d spoken that out loud. But whatever was right.
“Haven’t you heard of the no-fraternizing rule?” she gritted. “You shouldn’t be here in the first place.”
“Says the female who was also in the crowd.”
Mae put her hands on her hips and leaned down at him. “I’m allowed to go where I please, it’s not the dark ages of vampires anymore.”
“Oh, so you have freedom, but I don’t because I’m a male. How convenient—”
“I wasn’t bare-knuckle fighting with them!”
“So you only came to bet? Then, oh, yeah, you’re totally aboveboard in all this.”
Mae ground her molars—and thought seriously about walking over and kicking him in the leg. Or maybe the ass. Either way, she’d love to give him something to worry about other than his aching head.
“I did not come to gamble—”
“Was it for sex, then? ’Cuz you might get further if you showed some skin. You look like you could be someone’s mother.”
Mae rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, I’m going to take sartorial advice from a three-hundred-pound walking ad for death. Haven’t you ever heard of false advertising, though? ’Cuz last time I checked, you were getting sliced open by a human—”
The male threw up his hands. “Because someone we know was telling me not to kill the sonofabitch!”
“You shouldn’t be killing anybody!”
“Well, aren’t you two the happy couple.”
At the sound of the dry male voice, both of them looked to the shadows where a large figure loomed in the darkness.
Without missing a beat, she and the fighter both spoke at the same time:
“We’re not a couple—”
“We’re not a couple—”
The chuckle that emanated from that corner was a yeah-sure if Mae had ever heard one—but then she was suddenly more worried about her life and safety than whether she was linked with Skeletor over here.
And P.S., survival should have been her priority in the first place.
As her hand dipped into her purse for her mace, the source of the voice stepped into a patch of ambient glow. “I’m going to request that you keep your weapons where they are, thanks. And that includes you, Shawn.”
Shawn?
She looked over at the fighter. And then refocused on what had come to join them.
Okay, this male was . . . nothing like what she would have expected to see in a decrepit part of town. He was tall, he was big, and his face did belong in a lineup of people who’d murdered their enemies in very messy ways. So yes, all that fit the bill—as did his cropped Mohawk. But he was wearing a floor-length fur duster, and the gold cane that was aiding him with his balance made him seem like he was on the way to the opera—
On that note, “Shawn” got to his feet and moved the mountain of his body in front of her. Like he wanted to protect her.
“Relax, big man, I’m not going to hurt her,” the other male said dryly.
“Damn right,” Shawn shot back. “Because I’m not going to give you the fucking chance.”
Mae leaned to the side and looked around a set of bulging arm muscles. “Are you the Reverend?”
The male in the mink’s expression didn’t change. Yet she sensed a shift in him, though she’d have been hard-pressed to pinpoint why she recognized it.
“What do you want the Reverend for, female?” came the slow drawl. “You’re not his type.”
“She’s not yours, either, asshole,” Shawn snapped. “So how ’bout you fuck off—”
“She’s not talking to you, my guy—”
Okaaaaay, she was so sick and tired of big, swinging dicks.
Mae stepped out from under cover and stared at the newcomer. “Tallah sent me. To find the Reverend. And something tells me I’m looking at him.”
Both males shut up, like they were surprised she wasn’t willing to play wallflower to their thumping-chest routines.
“Just be real with me,” she said with exhaustion. “I was so over tonight even before you waltzed in looking like Liberace and Hannibal Lecter had a love child.”
As the male in the mink narrowed his eyes, Shawn barked out a laugh.
“Oh, come on, Reverend,” he said, “you gotta admit that was a good one.”
Mae was too busy measuring the stare of the other male to pay attention to Shawn’s compliments. She had a feeling his irises were dark purple—which was something she had never seen before. And God, that weird sensation was going through her again. It wasn’t attraction—no, no, she seemed to be reserving that for killers who had more ink than a Bic factory and tasted like heaven. No, what she was feeling was something else—and whatever it was, she just wanted to run from the coiling uneasiness.
“I’ll ask you again, female.” The male’s drawl didn’t change. “What do you want with the Reverend—”
“Oh, cut the shit,” she interjected. “And I don’t want you. I want the Book. Tallah said you’d know how to find it.”
As tires screeched down below, and car doors started opening and closing, the male stopped talking. And stayed that way.
“So you know what it is,” she said with hope. “You know what I’m looking for—”
“Sure, I know what a book is. It’s two hard covers with some flimsy stuff bound in the middle. Words are written on the pages in even lines, unless it’s illustrated. And sometimes they have cuss words in them, like what the fuck are you talking about.”
The growl that rolled out of Shawn made it seem like maybe his name was short for something like Shawn-ado. And she wheeled around and pegged him with hard eyes.