had the foresight to know her friend would spot the tell, should have cleaned the remains of her lipstick off before Syn had arrived.
Syn rolled her eyes. “Really, Mackenzie?”
She was quick to shake her head, something she regretted when the right side of her chest stung. A blow for a blow. She had stabbed Hartt on that side, and he had targeted it when he had turned into some murderous, rampaging madman.
“He busted my nose.” A reasonable excuse. “I must have smeared it when I was wiping the blood away.”
Syn didn’t look as if she was buying it. Her friend got comfortable, sitting cross-legged on the dirt as if they were out for a delightful picnic somewhere picturesque, not recovering from a fight that might have ended with Mackenzie’s death.
If the elf hadn’t pulled his punches at the last minute.
Cold snaked down her spine as she replayed how he had changed again, abruptly stopping himself when he had an opening, could have easily taken her down. Had the side of him that didn’t want to hurt her risen back to steal control in that moment?
“Tell Auntie Syn all about it.” The demoness patted her knee and Mackenzie scowled at her. Syn pouted, pulling a face of mock pity. “Did the big, bad man hurt my widdle girl?”
Now Mackenzie really glared at her. “He got a few lucky shots in and it’s not like I could do much about them. He snapped.”
“Snapped?” Syn’s jet eyebrows rose and she leaned back, toyed with one of the silver streaks in her onyx pixie cut and pretended she wasn’t stroking the tip of her small polished black horns that curled around her ears.
“Like a rubber band. Is that right?” Mackenzie pulled a face. “Maybe more like a twig. One minute he was whole, the next he was… broken.”
That summed him up a little too well and she fell silent as she contemplated how suddenly he had changed on her. She made a mental note to be more on guard around him, in case Mr Hyde came out to play again.
Not that she was planning on spending more time with him.
“Ooh.” Syn’s amber eyes lit up. “Mac’n’cheese is a bad girl and made out with a tainted elf.”
She hated it when her friend called her that and Syn knew it.
Mackenzie tensed when her senses lit up, but Syn was already way ahead of her, turned her head to her right to glare at the male who had just emerged from an alley between the buildings there. One of the vampire guards.
“Get lost, fang face. This is a private party.” Syn’s black leathery wings suddenly unfurled from her bare back, the reason she always insisted on wearing corsets with low-cut rears.
The blond vampire took one look at them and then at her friend’s horns, and left them alone.
“Freaking pervert,” Syn muttered.
According to the demoness, every male was a pervert looking to score with every female on the planet. None of them was worth even a tenth of their weight in salt and all of them were incompetent meat-sacks not worth her time.
Mackenzie never had been able to get her friend to confess what had happened in her past to birth such an aversion to the opposite sex. The few times she had tried, Syn had either clammed up hard or had lashed out at her and not spoken to her for weeks.
She had stopped asking when Syn had done something other than those two things.
The sight of her best friend breaking down into tears had been enough to earn Mackenzie’s silence on the matter.
“So, he did kiss you, right?” Syn leaned forwards again, her wings shrinking into her back, and placed both palms on the knees of her black leather pants. The demoness peered closely at her, her amber eyes narrowing, and then they widened. “Oh my Dark Lord… you totally kissed him.”
Mackenzie grimaced.
Syn’s eyes lit up as if she had just confessed every juicy detail. “Sick. You are sick. You know he’s the enemy, right? The competition? Did you want to give him a happy ending?”
Mackenzie frowned at her friend. “No. It was the heat of the moment. The battle high. I didn’t mean to do it, and it won’t happen again.”
It really wouldn’t. She wasn’t fantasising about it right that moment. She really wasn’t.
But sweet gods, his lips had been firm and unyielding, his kiss commanding and absolutely thrilling, as if he had been made to kiss her. His body had felt delicious against