“I faded into the crowd like you wanted me to—”
Her words sounded more like a question and he nodded to indicate she’d done the right thing.
“—but as I was walking back to the SUV, I spotted the woman who cut you practically crawling down the street. You tossed her across the room after she attacked you.”
“I remember that, too. I should have killed her.”
“There’s time for that later. Anyway, I gave her a ride home in exchange for some intel on who sent her to attack you. She all but admitted that the cartel owns this whole town.”
“It’s nearly dark, Lana,” he said urgently, wanting her to speed up.
“Right, sorry. Anyway, she told me where they were holding you and what they wanted. That guy over there—” She pointed at the other vampire who was still sleeping soundly, which only reaffirmed his youth. “—is a vampire, but you probably knew that. He’s been with them pretty much from day one. He thinks he belongs to them, like a slave. And that’s how they treat him. They keep him in this—”
“I figured that out. What do they want with me?”
“He knew who you were,” she said, indicating the other vamp with a jerk of her head. “He must have seen us when we first pulled into town or something. He knew you were powerful, and he told them about you. They think they can make you their slave the same way they have him. But with you, they’ll have a lot more power at their command.”
Vincent stared at her, blinking his eyes against the dust, speechless for once. The local cartel bosses—probably a regional HQ of the larger cartel organization—thought, based on their experience with the newbie over there, that they could enslave Vincent?
“So much for détente between the cartels and the vamps,” Lana murmured. And she had a point. This shouldn’t have happened. Something was seriously wrong here.
Vincent started to sit up, but was forced to lie back down when his head spun dizzily. This was not good. He was weaker than he’d expected. He’d lost blood before, but never so much, so fast. A weaker vamp would have been down for days, might very well have died. If the woman had cut arteries instead of veins, Vincent would be dead, too. There was only so much the Vampire symbiote could do to keep its host alive and well in the face of that kind of trauma.
“Vincent?” Lana had started to sit up with him and now leaned over, her fingers once again soft and warm against his face. “You okay?”
“Still getting there. I lost more blood than I thought.”
She gazed down at him, her forehead creased with worry, biting her full lower lip in a way that made his dick hard. Or at least as hard as it could get when he was short a few pints of blood.
“Do you need blood?” she whispered hesitantly.
Vincent wanted to grin, but he knew how much it had cost her to make the offer. He gripped her wrist gently. “I hate to ask, Lana—”
“You’re not asking. I’m volunteering,” she told him. “I didn’t break into this hole just so we could both die here.”
“Then, if you wouldn’t mind . . .” he said softly.
“You know . . . this wouldn’t be happening if you didn’t feel the need to seduce every woman who comes within five feet of you,” she muttered as she slid down next to him again.
“Jealous?” he teased, knowing she was nervous and covering it with irritation.
She gave a ladylike snort of dismissal. “As if.” She tugged at the neck of her T-shirt and said, “How do we—”
Vincent could have told her that her wrist would do just as well as her neck . . . but he wasn’t that good of a man. He’d wanted a taste of Lana Arnold from the moment he’d met her. She wasn’t that wrong about him seducing every woman he met, but that wasn’t why he’d wanted to taste her. He was willing to admit that part of it was precisely because she’d been so completely immune to his charm. The thrill of the chase and all that. He was a predator, after all. But it was more than just the drive to hunt. She was like this self-contained little universe, traveling through life all alone, letting no one truly touch her. She cared about people, like her father and mother, and the men she’d called uncles. But she kept herself apart. It was about responsibility, more about duty than love.
He wanted to know what it was like to be loved by such a woman, wanted to be the flame that finally warmed her heart.
And besides, she had a killer body and all that silky hair.
He rolled up on one elbow, cupped her hip in one hand and gave a tug, pulling her beneath him. Her eyes widened in surprise and maybe a touch of fear.
“Don’t be afraid, querida, I would never hurt you.”
“I’m not afraid. Just do it.”
Vincent smiled. Not the most romantic offer he’d ever received, but certainly among the most inviting. He brushed a few loose tendrils of hair away from her neck, lamenting the necessity that had her hair bound into its usual braid. The next time he took her vein, her hair would be spread around her like a silken sheet.
“Vincent?” she whispered, and there was the tiniest tremor in her voice.