magnified the sensation until it was almost unbearable. Not in an uncomfortable way, just alien. Disconcerting.
She’d always controlled every aspect of her life, even as a kid. Her mom, a native of Japan, was an eclectic mix of old-world Bushido and 1970s hippy nonchalance, and her Alabama-native dad was so mellow, she wondered if he was awake half the time. A twenty-year employee of the phone company, Darrel Hollis’s normal tone of voice was that of a terminally bored telephone operator. In response to her parents’ loving indifference, Eve had become self-reliant and responsible to an extreme degree. Everything had its place and could be neatly compartmentalized. Interior design fit beautifully within that structured way of thinking. Assassinating monsters for God didn’t.
“Hey, baby.”
The catcall drifted across the breeze along with a vile stench. As her nose wrinkled in protest, her head turned to find the heckler. Some were easily ignored, others bolder. She needed to know which class of annoyance this guy was.
She found him sitting in the sand on a black towel, his legs stretched out before him, propped up by canted arms. He was fair haired and blue eyed, and sported arms sleeved in tattoos. His face bore a foreign cast, and his irises were hard and glittered like sapphires. He wore only makeshift shorts cut off crudely below the knee and a leer that made her skin crawl.
“Come sit with me,” he cajoled in a gutturally accented voice. He patted the spot next to him in a gesture that was anything but inviting. An indigo teardrop stained the skin at the corner of his eye, distinguishing him as a felon. She was about to look away when he flicked his tongue at her in a lewd gesture.
“Jesus!” she cried, stumbling backward into the lapping water. She was so horrified by the impossibly long and slender forked appendage that had slithered out of his mouth, she barely registered the mark burning her deltoid in chastisement.
A red slash appeared across the demon’s face and he hissed like the snake his tongue resembled. “Du Miststück!” he spat.
She had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t sound good.
As he leaped to his feet, Eve sidestepped to avoid him. “Stay away from me.”
“Make me.”
The menacing tone with which the words were spoken made her hackles rise. It also sent a surge of heat and animosity through her veins. “Christ, you’re a real piece of work.”
His head jerked to the side as if struck, and when he looked at her again, his eyes were unnatural. Brilliant and intensely, inhumanly blue. He lunged. She shrieked and pivoted to run, crashing into something warm and rock-hard.
“Leave her alone,” a dark voice warned. Masculine arms wrapped around her and Eve struggled briefly before absorbing the familiar scent of his skin into her lungs. It was heaven compared to the stench in the air and she gulped with relief.
“Reed.” Her hands fisted in his expensive dress shirt.
“You can’t intercede,” her tormenter said smugly.
“You’d risk the wrath of your brethren for her?” Reed asked.
“She cut me first.”
“I did no—” Eve began, only to find her face pressed brutally into Reed’s chest. She briefly considered biting him, but her overactive libido kicked in with a vengeance, mingling with the hair-trigger aggressiveness pumping from the throbbing mark. It was like PMS multiplied by a million.
“She was toying with you,” Reed drawled. “Assuming you were big enough to take it.”
“Is she big enough to take it?”
“Can you take me?” Reed retorted. “You’re not in the queue; I’m not barred from stepping in.”
A stream of unintelligible words that sounded German poured from her antagonist, and Eve wrenched free to face him. She could feel the evil radiating off him, and his tattoos writhed sinuously over his unmoving skin, as if they were alive.
Wondering if she was the only one aware of the man, her gaze surveyed the area around them. The proliferation of beachgoers hadn’t diminished, yet no one paid any attention to the tense scene taking place in their midst.
Reed’s hand settled at the small of her back, giving her much needed support in a madly spinning world.
“Go away,” Reed said. “Let’s just forget this happened.”
“I won’t forget.” The man crossed his arms. “We’ll meet again,” he told Eve.
“You cross that line,” Reed warned, “and you’ll start a war none of us wants.”
“You don’t want it.”
Eve’s gaze shot back and forth between the two bristling men, trying to grasp the undercurrent arcing between them. They were doing some kind of