“Don’t fool yourself about me, Honor. The human part of me died a long time ago.”
“Where are we going?” she asked when the Ferrari pulled away from Jiana’s estate.
“Angel Enclave—Jiana owns a house there.” His words were cool, practical, and she wondered if he even understood how he’d damaged the fragile something between them. “It’s standing empty, but I’ve had men watching it for a while. However, I think it’s time I had a look inside.”
Another thing he hadn’t told her. Another illustration of the fact that while he might appreciate her skills in certain areas, when it came to treating her as an equal . . . But then the idea was laughable, wasn’t it? She’d lived a mere twenty-nine years to his centuries, was mortal to his powerful vampire.
However, none of the logic seemed to matter, and she was no closer to understanding or corralling the violent depth of her emotions by the time Dmitri drove deep into the Angel Enclave, an exclusive settlement along the cliffs that hugged the Hudson. In most cases, the houses were set so far back from the road that it felt as if they were driving through uninhabited land, the trees on either side of the road ancient behemoths that almost blotted out the sky.
When Dmitri stopped, it was in front of gates watched over by a vampire Honor didn’t recognize. Stepping out of the car, and to the ornate metal gates, she pushed them open while Dmitri spoke to the guard. Inside, she saw the drive was relatively short—though the gates disappeared from view when, walking forward alone, she turned a corner. It was beyond tempting to keep going, to see what might very well have been the lair of the monster who’d tortured her, but this wasn’t like with Jewel Wan. She could still think, understood that to go in without backup would be foolhardy.
“Honor.”
She turned to see Dmitri walking toward her—and suddenly the dam broke. “I have every right,” she said, referring to the strange compulsion between them for the first time.
Not even a blink.
Stubborn, always so stubborn. So sure he is right.
On that, she agreed with the voice inside her mind.
The wind whispered slow and easy through the trees, through Dmitri’s hair as she stood waiting for a response from a vampire used to explaining himself to no one. Her fingers spread, and she found herself closing the distance between them to stroke her hand through that thick dark silk. It was an intimate act, one for which she asked no permission, though he was a man no one would touch without invitation.
He didn’t stop her, lifting his own finger to trace the line of her jaw. “You’re asking me to act human,” he said after a long, quiet moment untouched by time. “I’m not human, haven’t been for a long time.”
“And you,” she said, fingers lingering at his nape, “are trying to make me believe you have no capacity for true emotion when I know different.” Dmitri’s heart wasn’t dead, his soul not irrevocably tainted, of that she was certain.
Sliding his free hand down to her lower back, he tugged her closer. “Who are you, Honor St. Nicholas?” It was a strange question, but one to which Dmitri needed an answer. Because this mortal, her scent was that of wildflowers from a mountainside lost in time.
Haunting pools of emerald green met his as she shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Her answer made sense to him, though it was an impossibility. “Come. Let’s explore this house.”
“I thought you would’ve already done it.”
“I had my men look through it, but it may be time for a deeper examination with everything else we know.”
Walking beside him, Honor was both grace and a lush feminine beauty. But she also had a deep vein of strength that had well and truly awakened . . . and that intoxicated. He wanted to reach out, to touch her again, the unrelenting need far beyond simple lust. However, that would have to wait—her desire to enter the house, to run Amos to ground, was a pulse against his skin.
Unlocking the front door, he pushed it open. At first, there was nothing, only the slightly musty smell of a house that had been shut up for a while. Then he caught a whiff of the most putrid odor, that of rotting flesh.
Honor went motionless beside him, her gun smoothly in hand. “There’s something dead inside.”
“Long enough to have decomposed.” Which meant that either Amos had somehow snuck back in past the guards and left a gruesome message, or something else was going on. “Yet not so long ago that the others who came here had reason to be suspicious.”
“Dmitri.”
Following the direction of Honor’s raised arm, he saw her pointing at a flat-screen television on the wall. The power indicator was dead. And when Honor flicked on a light switch, nothing happened. “The electricity’s down. Blown fuse maybe.”
“It’s an older home,” Dmitri said, following the fetid scent. “Such things happen.”
The rank smell took them not into a basement as he’d half expected, but to a large room at the back of the house. There was no lock, nothing to differentiate the door from any other along the corridor.
“God.” Honor put a hand up over her mouth and nose as he pushed open that door—the odor was vile here, so concentrated it felt akin to soup.
The room itself was barren but for a wooden shelf that held a number of books and magazines, and a single armchair that looked as if it had been banished here because it was too ratty for the main living areas. Beside it sat a small burn-scarred table set with a crystal tumbler and a bottle filled with dark red liquid. The rug on the floor was threadbare.