Chapter 15
EIRA
The teacup slips from my fingers and shatters on the hardwood floor, sending horror through me in one cold, galvanising rush.
I start to move, then freeze.
Bare feet. Broken ceramic. The most powerful vampire I know lounging five feet away like he belongs in my bedroom.
If this isn’t the most colossal clusterfuck of my life, I don’t know what is.
One glance tells me the shards have scattered everywhere. Under the bed. Against the dresser. Across the route to every weapon I’ve stashed in this room.
Then my gaze snaps back to him.
Valentin Moretti doesn’t rise from the armchair.
He watches me with deadly patience, one ankle draped over the opposite knee, fingers steepled loosely.
Against my peach wallpaper, his immaculate black suit looks obscene, framing his mile-wide shoulders and dark hair curling over his forehead in a way that makes him look younger and more dangerous at once.
‘How—’ I begin, then stop.
How is secondary. I’m trapped in glass, and he’s in my bedroom.
‘Come to me, little hunter,’ he says softly.
Yeah. He’s fucking with me, the bastard.
I bark out a laugh that sounds more brittle than I’d like. ‘You mean walk across broken glass towards a powerful vampire and hope, what? That it’s your night off from drinking blood?’
His mouth curves faintly. ‘You believe I cannot control myself?’
‘I don’t know. Can you?’ I gesture at the room. ‘Look where we are. My bedroom. My very private space. I don’t recall inviting you in. I thought you people needed permission to cross a threshold?’
‘You either watch too much television or consume too much fiction.’
‘So that’s a no on the threshold rule?’
‘Thresholds matter,’ he says mildly. ‘Intent matters more.’
‘Cryptic. Love that.’
I shift my weight carefully. A shard bites faintly into my arch but doesn’t break skin. I lift my foot free and tuck it against my ankle, exhaling slowly when nothing sharp follows.
Sweat collects at the base of my spine. My robe is thin. Ridiculously thin. And while I have a shit-ton of weapons stashed around this house, I may as well be butt naked right now.
I was not planning to entertain ancient predators tonight.
‘This place is warded,’ I say, hating the hint of bewilderment in my voice. ‘If the threshold thing doesn’t work on you, the wards still should.’
Selphine has a lot to answer for if her work is a dud. At minimum, she owes me a refund. With interest. Which I will fucking collect. Plus damages for the emotional suffering of watching Valentin Moretti tilt his head in that infuriating way.
‘To keep the weak and ineffectual out,’ he replies. ‘I am neither weak nor ineffectual, Eira Cross.’
Gods, I should not love the way his tongue and lips wrap around my name.
‘Oh no? And how about uninvited? Unwanted. Undesired.’
His silver gaze almost lights up in the semi-darkness, reminding me of how they looked in that lurid dream I’m absolutely not going to thing about right now. ‘Uninvited? Perhaps.’ His voice drops. ‘But I am not unwanted. Or undesired. Am I, little hunter?’
Heat floods my face, and I despise him for how easily he draws it out. ‘You’re very sure of yourself.’
‘I am rarely wrong about hunger,’ he replies, gaze drifting with painful deliberation. ‘And matters of the flesh.’
My pulse betrays me.
One stutter.
Then faster.
Of course he notices. His eyes drop to my throat, then to my breasts, currently peaking like traitorous little idiots, before the corner of his mouth shifts in quiet acknowledgement of advantage.
I cross my arms over my chest. ‘Why are you here?’ I demand, because if I don’t seize back some ground, I’m going to start thinking about the way he said hunger. And flesh.
Instead of answering, he rises.
The movement is unhurried, controlled, almost courteous, which makes the next second infinitely worse. One moment he’s across the room. The next, distance ceases to exist.
His hands settle at my waist, and he lifts me cleanly off the floor. Ceramic crunches under his shoes as he carries me over the wreckage and sets me against the wall beside my bed with careful precision.
My breath escapes in a startled rush.
‘You repeatedly place yourself in danger with your taunts and defiance.’ His voice is low enough that I feel it more than hear it. ‘You’re either breathtakingly brave or maddeningly foolish. Which is it, Eira Cross?’
‘I’m tired of being accused of recklessness,’ I mutter before I can cage the words.
His eyes gain an uncultured gleam I’m sure the devil would love to imitate as he plants thick arms beside my head.
‘Who accused you?’ The question is edged with the same touch of mania he showed when Malachi touched me.
Sweet holy saints.
He’s jealous. Over a throwaway comment.
I push away how that makes me feel… all kinds of hot, and embrace relief. If he’s asking this, he wasn’t inside the house. He didn’t hear my call with Selphine.
‘Does it matter?’ I say lightly.
‘It matters.’
The word sounds like a blade pressed to my ribs. ‘Maybe I’m tired of being handled like fragile cargo.’
His jaw tightens. ‘You are not fragile.’
‘No,’ I agree, holding his gaze. ‘I’m not.’
The silence that follows is thick with everything neither of us is saying.
‘What do you want?’ I ask finally. ‘And how did you even find me?’
I was careful.
Meticulously, expensively careful.
His gaze digs into mine without glamour. ‘I instructed Malachi to trail you when you left the Tower.’
Of course he did.
‘He intercepted your courier before the memory wipe.’
My stomach drops.
Tezra.
‘What did you do to him? Is he okay?’
His eyes light for a heart-stopping second. ‘Your courier is fine. He accepted the inevitable and was therefore not harmed.’
I file that away for later fury. ‘Do you even hear yourself when you speak?’
‘The only one suffering wilful blindness and deafness in this room is you, little hunter.’
‘Because I don’t stay in the box you insist on putting me in?’
A tic appears in his jaw, but he doesn’t answer. He only leans closer.
And I smell him, his warmth bathing me in ways that remind me of a velvet-dark room and a hand at the small of my back, guiding me somewhere I said I’d never go again.
Can vampires manipulate their scent like some shifters can? Because sweet Gods, the way he smells.
Clean rain on hot stone. The first bite of something forbidden. My brain begins turning to slurry, which is deeply inconvenient when a centuries-old vampire has you pinned in your own bedroom.
‘I went to Louisiana,’ I push out, desperate not to lose the thread or the plot.
‘I am aware.’
‘Then if it was a report you wanted, you could’ve called. Or waited for our scheduled meeting tomorrow.’
His breath washes over my cheek. I want to chase it back to its source, which means I need immediate professional help or a brick to the head.
One long finger slides beneath my chin, freezing my motion and lifting my gaze to his.
‘I am here, little hunter, because you were barely there. Louisiana was almost a pit stop. The true purpose of leaving New York was something else.’
Damn.
Certainty, not question.
‘I was there long enough because I know how to do my job. And because what I found didn’t warrant immediate action.’
He waits me out.
I lick my lips, scrambling through the breadcrumbs I planted. ‘The pawn shop transaction I mentioned in Louisiana,’ I murmur. ‘I found a crest ring. Filed down but not enough.’
Valentin steps closer, scent intensifying. ‘You believe this belonged to her.’
‘Yes. I believe she may have been running out of options even then. Girls running out of options tend to liquidate what they can’t eat.’
‘Go on.’
I give him the tale I built. Parish property records. Temporary housing intake facilities within ten miles of the pawn shop. Bureaucratic drudgery that sounds impressive and means very little. Gaps. Manually archived paper files. A trail that looks methodical and forensic.
Progress that will lead nowhere.
Because the ring was real and the alias was real, but the pawn shop transaction never happened. Even then, I knew the crest ring was as dangerous as a spotlight in the dark. I exchanged it for a warm coat and a hot meal at a truck stop heading a dozen directions.
‘And now my report is done twelve hours early,’ I say sweetly, despite my spine being pressed to the wall and my heart auditioning for percussion. ‘Feel free to uninvite yourself and vacate my sanctuary.’
‘You should have returned to me.’
‘I was taking some me time.’
One dark brow arches. ‘Is that what we are calling it?’
‘What would you call it?’
‘Evasion.’
I roll my eyes. ‘You hold such a high premium on yourself, Don Moretti.’
‘Or maybe it was evasion with a reckless dose of anticipation,’ he says quietly, thumb brushing the inside of my wrist in a stroke so light it almost feels imagined. ‘Or excitement. A trace of fear because you knew I would not simply let you get away from me.’
His gaze lowers, then rises.
He leans in and inhales. ‘Yes. Definitely fear. How your juicy little heart races, sweet hunter. But calm yourself. I prefer not to be drenched in the stench of terror when I take someone.’
‘Oh yeah, by all means, tell me more of your gross proclivities.’
His nose skims near the top of my ear, and while I yearn to be grossed out, an unholy number of nerves strain towards him.
‘I find genuine submission the headiest aphrodisiac of all.’
My breath catches despite myself. ‘I am calm,’ I rally belatedly. ‘And if a little fear is what you crave, why claim those women did nothing for you this morning? They practically liquefied at your feet.’
‘Easy prey,’ he dismisses. ‘A whisper of glamour to soften their nerves. That does not quicken my blood.’
‘Poor you.’
‘Indeed.’ His mouth curves slowly, so close I almost feel it against my jaw. ‘Care to offer a tastier challenge, little hunter?’
‘What, pretend to run so you can catch me?’ Shit. Why do I sound breathless?
His head tilts, thoughtful and dangerous. ‘Or we can abandon the pretence altogether.’
‘Assuming I’m pretending, which I’m not, why would I do that?’
His gaze burns into mine. ‘For a prize.’
‘A prize,’ I echo, drawn despite myself.
‘Hmm. You positively bristle with thirst for answers. I’ll give you one guess as to what I propose.’
Don’t take the bait, Eira. For shit’s sake, don’t. ‘And is that what we’re playing for? Answers?’
‘That,’ he says smoothly, ‘is what you are playing for.’
My heart gives a traitorous lurch, and the bastard smiles like he heard it.
‘And what will you be playing for?’ I ask, forcing boredom into my voice and missing by a mile.
His eyes travel over my face slowly, with a rabid focus I feel to the bottom of my soul.
I didn’t bother with underwear after my bath. Given how determined my body is to betray me tonight, it is only a matter of time before he smells it.
‘When I win,’ he says, voice velvet-lined and dangerous, ‘I get to taste you, little hunter.’
‘Absolutely not,’ I snap, though my pulse spikes for entirely unhelpful reasons. ‘I’m not letting you drink me down like hot chocolate because—’
‘I do not mean bite you. There will need to be infinitely more pleading and yielding before I grant you that gift.’
My breath lodges somewhere near my solar plexus, caught between relief and something horrifyingly close to disappointment.
Selphine was right. I’m a fucking disgrace. ‘In your bloody vampire dreams.’
‘We will see.’
Another beat passes. Then three.
‘If you don’t intend to bite me, then… what?’
His thumb lifts, tracing my lower lip with devastating restraint. ‘A simple kiss,’ he murmurs, ‘is all I require.’
I almost laugh. ‘A kiss,’ I repeat carefully.
‘For one answer,’ he counters, as though negotiating stock options instead of my sanity.
My mind screams no. My body, inconveniently, opens a ballot box.
‘You’re assuming you’ll win,’ I say.
His smile deepens. ‘I do not assume. I conclude.’
The air between us tightens, charged and restless. It would be smarter to refuse. Infinitely more strategic. One thousand per cent safer.
And yet my chin lifts. ‘One question,’ I say, meeting his gaze head-on. ‘One honest answer.’
‘And one kiss,’ he agrees.
‘Simple?’ I mutter.
His gaze darkens, heat sharpening into something far less patient.
‘Reckless,’ he corrects softly. ‘But, it seems, inevitable.’
And I realise, with a flicker of anticipation that borders on insanity, I just agreed to play.