Rich, dark eyes met hers . . . right as another wave of scent—luscious and primal in its erotic promise—crashed over her senses. Her knees threatened to crumple. “So,” she managed to get out through a throat gone husky with driving hunger, “the truce is over?”
“Wouldn’t want you to think we were friends.” It was the kind of thing she was used to hearing from Dmitri, but there was a thrumming anger beneath the words today, the same anger she’d sensed as they stood looking down at Betsy’s desecrated body.
She didn’t take it personally. She’d stood over too many broken and mutilated victims, knew what it was to want to strike out, make someone pay. The desire was a quiet, unremitting fury that could destroy. If her friends in the Guild hadn’t pulled her back when she’d gotten too close, hadn’t taught her the brutal necessity of emotional distance, she’d have fallen into the abyss long ago. So yes, she understood—but that didn’t mean she was about to allow Dmitri to use her as his whipping boy.
He was so close now that the heat of him caressed her body in long, languid strokes, his scent twining around her like a thousand silken strands. Breathing through her mouth, she put one hand on his heavily muscled shoulder, leaned in close as if she planned to whisper in his ear ... and bit down on his earlobe.
HARD.
“Fuck!” He wrenched away with preternatural speed.
“Game over?” she asked with poisonous sweetness as she struggled to catch her breath. “Or do you want a matching set?”
“Bitch.” A slow, sensual smile that no longer held the raw edge of rage. “Always liked that about you.”
Sliding back the dagger she’d pulled the same instant that she bit him, she said, “I can’t do this with you here.” Even muted as it was now, his scent blinded her to anything else in the vicinity. It was a drug, that scent, addictive and toxic. “Get out or I’ll kill you.”
Her flat statement made him blink, rock back on his heels. “You sound as if you really mean that.”
At that instant, she did. Allowing the knowledge to seep into her expression, she met those eyes filled with a confident, potent sexuality. Slater had touched her with his scent, nearly broken the mind of the child she’d been—a child who didn’t understand why her body liked what the monster was doing to her. Her horror of compulsion ran deep, deep enough to drive her to the most primitive savagery in a bid to survive.
Dmitri inclined his head, withdrawing all but a final taunting tendril of scent. “I think you might want this.” A slender metal key dangled from his finger.
She stepped aside.
To her surprise, he prowled forward and inserted the key into the lock without further jerking her chain. Her eyes were drawn to the droplets of blood on his shoulder. “You bring out the worst in me.”
Nudging open the door, he turned, a faint smile on that face meant for silk-sheeted bedrooms and blood-soaked fields of battle. “Thanks.”
“Did you come inside before I got here?”
“No.” He leaned in the doorway while she walked through and into the living room. “I hear your Bluebell is here.” A pregnant pause.
Neck prickling in warning, she shifted to keep him in her line of sight. “What?”
“Be careful with Illium, Elena.” A soft caution. “He’s vulnerable to the humanity you carry within.” He was gone the next instant.
Frozen by the impact of the unexpected words, she started when she heard the whisper of angelic wings. “Stay there.” She kept her back to Illium as she spoke. “I want to do a walk-through first.”
“Your wish. My command.”
His unruffled agreement cut the taut rope of tension running up her spine. Glancing over at him, she saw that he was playing a carved silver knife in and around his fingers, each flick blindingly fast. Her friend, she thought. He was her friend, just like Ransom, just like Sara, and she wouldn’t damage that friendship with false worries.
He has a fascination with mortals.
Raphael had said that to her before she’d woken with wings of midnight and dawn.
“Why are you staring at me, Ellie?” Illium said without taking his eyes from the blade dancing around his fingers.
The words were instinctive, something she might as easily have said to rib Ransom. “You’re so pretty, it’s difficult to resist.”
A flashing grin, a hint of that aristocratic English accent in his response. “It’s hard to be me, it’s true.”
Snorting, but with her composure restored, she began to inspect the apartment. It was much as she’d expected. Ignatius had been neat enough, but not obsessive about it. She could see a glass in the sink, a sweater thrown over the sofa, and the bed, though made, was done so in a way that said he was more worried about comfort than anything else. There was even a flower in a vase on the bedside table—a bit exotic for her taste, but vampires tended to go for the dark and lush.
Returning to the living area, she nodded Illium inside. “There’s nothing weird here. No scents that shouldn’t belong, no signs that he was losing his mind.” Vampires in bloodlust often destroyed their homes during the first surge. “Supports what we saw at the scene—that he was in control of his faculties when—”
“Elena.” Illium’s voice was as lethal as the sword he wore along his spine.
Guard up, she walked to where he stood in the bedroom doorway, followed his gaze to the glossy black of the hothouse orchid that stood on the bedside table. “Tell me what that means.”