She had him under her spell, but she needed him deeper still, needed to make sure he would do what she wanted.
Without surrendering her blood.
Her gaze dropped. She meant to look him over, to pretend to drink her fill of him and like what she saw, which wasn’t a chore since he was handsome and suited her tastes to a T. Only her eyes snagged on a thin, silvery line that cut across his throat at a horizontal, a scar that ran from one side to the other, starting and ending below his earlobes.
Someone had either tried to garrotte him with wire.
Or they had come close to lopping his head off.
He bared fangs, a low growl rumbling from his chest, and seized her throat, shoving his hand up to her jaw and her head up with it. She took the hint. The scar was a sore subject, one she would take his advice about and not look at again.
Crimson eyes glared down at her, filled with malice rather than hunger now.
She swallowed hard and wished she had told Syn to hang around, just in case her plan didn’t go the way she intended.
A way she had a terrible feeling it was about to go.
The vampire pressed his thumb to the left side of her jaw, angling her head to her right, and raked his scarlet eyes down the column of her throat.
Or maybe not.
Hunger flooded his gaze again, in danger of turning his pupils elliptical as it caused his eyelids to lower as he stared at her neck.
“Not here,” she whispered. “Somewhere private. I’d like to be alone with you.”
She pointedly looked towards the tavern and the vampires who were watching them.
Her vampire took the bait.
“Private, like my quarters?” His pupils transformed now, turning elliptical, as he slowly dragged his gaze over her throat and adjusted his grip, his fingers stroking her flesh and sending a shiver traipsing down her spine.
She nodded.
The corners of his lips curled slightly and he glanced towards the bastion, and then his eyes locked with hers. “I don’t have quarters here.”
He didn’t? Damn it. She had picked the wrong vampire, probably the only one in the entire town who wasn’t a member of the First Legion of the Preux Chevaliers.
“Oh,” she said, shooting for breezy and a little confused. The latter was real. “I thought you were one of the legion. If I had known you weren’t… I mean… I came to the town on a dare because my friends thought I couldn’t hook up with a guy from the legion.”
On a dare? Hook up?
She inwardly grimaced and sent up another thousand prayers hoping he bought her ditzy, vampire-ho act. She had been in this town enough times to know that plenty of the females who passed through this wretched corner of the free realm were looking to get with one of the vampires, had some stupid notion it would gain them power or something like it. Sleeping with and donating blood to the rank and file vampires wasn’t going to elevate anyone within any form of society as far as she could tell, and she doubted the officers of the legion were just wandering around town looking for a hook up.
The King of Death was strict, probably kept his commanding officers off the streets, not wanting them to be distracted by the groupies that visited the town.
“Too bad.” She shot the vampire a smile and went to move past him, towards the tavern. Maybe one of those vampires could get her into the compound.
His grip on her throat tightened rather than loosened, halting her beside him. He looked across at her, those cat-like pupils narrowing into thin slits in the centres of his ruby irises.
“I did not say I was not with the First Legion.”
Mackenzie stilled right down to her breathing and edged her gaze towards him. “You’re with the legion, but you don’t live here? That’s odd.”
And unsettling for some reason.
Her stomach did a weird flip as she stared into his eyes, her instincts rising to the fore to label this male as dangerous. The scarlet bled from his irises, fire giving way to ice again, and his pupils rounded again.
“What is it you do for the legion?” She tried to tamp down her nerves but failed as she continued to look into his eyes.
As he leaned towards her, bringing his mouth close to her ear.
Whispered.
“I am an assassin.”
She tensed and she knew he had felt it, because he smiled at her, that