A twist of his lips. “Oh.”
“That’s not good enough? Okay, let me try again. I think you’re the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen and I can barely keep my hands off you…well, not when there’s a decent source of chaos around.”
He growled and scooped me up off the bed, kissing me again.
“Enough already,” I said, squirming free. “I admitted you were—”
“Charming.”
“I said you had your charms.”
“Which means you find me charming.”
“No, well yes, you are charming, but I don’t find that charming.”
He laughed and shook his head. “All right, you find me physically attractive then.”
“Yes, you are, but, no, I don’t find that particularly attractive.”
He bared his teeth in a quick grin and stepped closer. “My wit?”
I moved back and shrugged. “Witty enough, though not as witty as you think you are.”
“Ouch.” He gave an almost self-mocking grin. “Then it must be my undeniable sense of style.”
“Because you can pick out a decent tux?” I snorted. “There’s what, one color option and two or three styles?”
A feigned look of shock. “You mean you don’t find me irresistibly suave, debonair—”
“Where I grew up, guys learn suave from the cradle.”
His grin only grew. “Then whatever you find attractive about me has nothing to do with any of this—” He waved his hands over himself. “This infinitely polished package?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Very good.”
He caught me up in a kiss. As he did, a distant vibe twanged through me.
“They’re here,” I whispered.
Marsten glanced out the window, his body blocking mine, gaze scanning the dark street.
“They’re across the road,” he murmured as he turned back to me. “They must have just arrived. On the count of three, I’m swinging you past the window and onto the bed.”
He did. As soon as I hit the mattress, I rolled to the far side and dropped onto the floor. Marsten followed. We crawled into the hall, down the stairs, and to the back door, arriving just in time to duck behind the kitchen cabinets when we heard footsteps on the rear deck. The guard tested the door, peered in, then moved on.
“Quickly,” Marsten murmured. “They’ll be back in a minute. This is the safest place to break in.”
As we slipped out the door, I started pushing in the handle, to relock it when it closed. But Marsten caught my hand.
“We want them to know we came out this way,” he whispered.
Hunched over, and darting from bush to tree to garden shed, I led him across my tiny yard, and down the small hill to the woodland beyond. Marsten found a place for me to hide. He made sure I had my gun, and warned me to stay where I was, whatever happened. Then he gave me a card from his wallet, and told me if he didn’t return in an hour, I was to run to a public place, call the handwritten number on the back, and explain everything.
A moment later, he was gone.
I stayed where I was. As impotent as I felt cowering in those bushes, I knew if I tried to help, I’d more likely get us both killed. So I hid and I listened.
I listened as the soft lullaby of cricket and frog calls went silent under the heavy footfalls and guttural muttering of Tristan and his guards. I listened as those mutters gave way to orders and oaths. I listened as those trudging footsteps divided and turned into running feet. I listened as a scream shattered the night, a scream cut off by flashing fangs.
That wasn’t my imagination working overtime. I saw those fangs flash, smelled bowels give way, felt hot blood spatter my face, and the visions brought not a split second of chaos bliss. With every cry, every scream, every silenced pistol shot, I was certain Marsten had been hit. The death vision came twice, and still I heard multiple running feet and voices. My God, how many were there? How would he ever—
Another shot. Then the sound that broke my resolve: a piercing canine yelp of pain.
13
I broke from my cover then, but I resisted the urge to run pell-mell toward the noise, toward the laughs of triumph. Instead, I gripped my gun tight and slunk through the shadows until I was close enough to see a flashlight beam cutting a swath through the dark forest. The beam stopped, and my gaze followed its path.
A black mound of fur lay motionless at the end of that flashlight beam. A guard stood beside the mound, gun pointed down.
Oh God. God, no—
Something flashed near the top of the heap, a blue eye reflected in Tristan’s flashlight beam. The eye rolled, following Tristan. I took another three steps until that dark mound became a massive wolf lying on his belly, his head lowered but not down, his ears and lips drawn back as he watched Tristan’s approach. The fur on Marsten’s shoulder was matted with blood. The guard had his gun pointed at Marsten’s head, and I couldn’t tell whether he was staying down because of that gun or because he was too badly injured to rise.