“Oh, Vayl,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.” I hesitated, but I just had to know. “Did the… the baby die too?”
“No, they lived.”
“She had twins?”
“Yes.”
Wow. Now I felt even closer to her. And more determined than ever to exact some sweet revenge for her.
A life that short shouldn’t have had to spend so much time with misery in it. I said, “The Berggias?”
“They helped John raise his daughters and died at a very old age, within just a few days of one another.”
“That’s good, then.”
“Yes, they were a devoted couple who deserved some happiness”—his lips brushed my forehead—“like us. I can feel it, almost within our grasp. But first we must go back.” He tipped his head toward the tannery, though we both knew he meant deeper. “And it must be soon.”
“Yeah. But we need to make detailed, get-in-get-busy-get-out plans. And my head stil hurts.”
“So let us leave that for tomorrow.” He slid his hands up my back, squeezed the tension out of my shoulders. Ran his fingers down to the base of my spine. Parts of my body seemed to wake from a long sleep. To stretch and moan as trickles of pleasure washed through them.
I pressed my breasts against his chest. “Tomorrow’s soon enough for me,” I whispered as I ran my fingers up into his soft curls, as I left feathery kisses along his cheekbones, the sides of his lips, the base of his jaw.
“Then tonight,” he murmured into my ear, moved his lips downward, brushed his fangs against my neck. “In what we have left of it. Jasmine. Give me something to remember.” extras
meet the author
Cindy Pringle
JENNIFER RARDIN began writing at the age of twelve, mostly poems to amuse her classmates and short stories featuring her best friends as the heroines. She lives in an old farmhouse in Il inois with her husband and two children.
Find
out
more
about
Jennifer
Rardin
at
www.JenniferRardin.com.
introducing
If you enjoyed BITTEN IN TWO,
look out for
THE DEADLIEST BITE
Book 8 of the Jaz Parks series
by Jennifer Rardin
We ran up the main stairs to the third floor, where I found my jeans crumpled beside the cozy brown suede chair where I liked to curl up every afternoon with a book and a can of Diet Coke. I pul ed my phone out of the back pocket and stuck it between my ear and shoulder while I shoved my legs into my Levi’s.
“Hel o?”
“Jaz? Where’s Vayl?”
“Hi, Cassandra. He’s with me.”
“He’s al right, then?”
“What?” I felt my fingers go numb. Usual y I reacted faster. It was my job to make sure my emotions didn’t cloud my judgment. Even for the extra three seconds it took me to realize my psychic friend was freaking out about my lover.
“What did you See?”
“There was a mix-up in Australia. I accidental y packed one of your T-shirts in my suitcase. So I was folding it back into my luggage because Dave and I are coming up to visit you and Evie. It was supposed to be a surprise—” She swal owed a sob.
“Tel me now, Cassandra.” I tried to keep my voice calm. No sense in shouting at the woman who had already saved my brother’s life with one of her visions. But if she’d been in the room I’d have shaken her til her teeth rattled.
“When I touched your shirt I saw you, leaning over Vayl’s body. He had a stake through his heart. The blood—
oh, Jaz, the blood.” She started to cry for real now.
“Anything else? Come on, Cassandra, I need to know everything you Saw.” I’d zipped into my pants. Run to the stairs. Managed to make it to the second floor without breaking my neck. Jack was way ahead of me.
“I don’t know. There’s this explosion, but not like the kind you see in movies. It’s more… ripply. And at the middle is a young man. Younger than you. Tal er, even, than Vayl, with ful brown hair that keeps fal ing onto his forehead. He’s snarling, which makes two deep dimples appear on his cheeks. He’s standing in front of a tal oak door, above which is hanging—”
“A pike with a gold tassel,” I finished.
“Yes!”
“Shit. Cassandra, that’s Vayl’s front door. And you’ve just described the kid who was ringing the bel .”
“Did Vayl answer?”
“I don’t—”
A shot rang out, tearing my heart in two. Too far ahead of me to gauge his location, Jack growled menacingly, already on his way down the final set of steps. I glanced into the wel made by the turn of the stairs from second to first floor. Yeah, I could jump it. So I did, landing on Vayl’s blue, overstuffed sofa. Rol ing into the walnut coffee table fronting it, knocking it across the hal into a case ful of antique knives. I raised my arm, protecting my face from the shattering glass.
Not knowing how far the glass had scattered, I protected my bare feet by jumping back onto the couch.
Then I took one second to assess the situation.
Twenty feet from me, at the other end of the hal in front of the open door, Vayl lay in a spreading pool of blood, the bloody hole in his forehead a result of the .22 lying on the floor. Two reasons the young man kneeling over him stil wasn’t holding it: he needed both hands for the hammer and stake he now held poised over Vayl’s chest, and Jake’s teeth had sunk deep enough into his right wrist that, by now, he’d have been forced to drop it anyway.
Only a guy as big as this one wouldn’t have been thrown completely off balance by a ful -on attack via 120-pound malamute. His size had kept him off his back, though it hadn’t al owed him to recover his balance enough to counter with the stake in his free hand. That would change if I didn’t reach the scene in time.
I jumped to the outside of the stairs, holding the rail to keep from fal ing as I cleared the fal out from the display case. Another jump took me to the floor. Five running steps gave me a good start for a spin kick that should’ve caught the intruder on the temple. But unless they’re drugged, people don’t just sit and wait for the blow.
He pul ed back, catching my heel on his nose. It broke, spraying blood al over his shirt and Jack. But it didn’t take him down. In fact, it seemed to motivate him. Desperation fil ed his eyes. He ripped his hammer hand out of Jack’s grip, though the bloody gashes in his forearm would hurt like a son of a bitch when his adrenaline rush faded. Afraid his next move would be a blow to my dog, I lunged at him. I was wrong. He threw the hammer at me, forcing me to hit the floor. I rol ed when I felt his shadow loom over me, knowing the worst scenario had me pinned under al that weight. But it never fel on me. I jumped to my feet and began to unholster Grief, though the last thing I wanted was to kil the bastard before I found out who’d sent him.
Stil , I was too late. The intruder had retrieved his .22
and was pointing the business end at my chest. He’d probably hit me too if he held his breath long enough to stop shaking. The only positive I could see was that I stood between him and Vayl. For now.