“Leo,” I whispered. “Leo is here.” Bruiser’s scent changed, a smell like burned stone. “Bruiser?” Faster than a human could ever hope to move, yet seeming to glide, Bruiser rolled to his feet and disappeared into his bedroom.
He answered, his voice little more than a murmur. “The last words between my former master and I were not totally clear regarding you.” From the doorway, my jeans came flying; I yanked them out of the air and onto me, careful of the killer zipper this time. A moment later Bruiser emerged wearing the thin pants and T-shirt from the afternoon.
“Not totally clear,” I replied softly. “He told you to stay away from me.”
“Yes. But he did not tell you to stay away from me.” Bruiser sounded smug, vigilant, and meticulous. Cautious. He slid one of his dress shirts off of a hanger and over my head. As if I were a child, he rolled up the cuffs. “What? No bacon shirt for Leo?”
“No.” Bruiser placed the back of his hand against my cheek for a moment, watching my face to read my reaction. “I’m having it framed to hang on the wall over my bed.”
I spluttered with laughter. “Very artsy. Are we in trouble? You know he’ll know what we’ve been up to.”
“Perhaps I am in trouble. He already knows, I’m sure,” Bruiser said, turning away. “The apartment reeks of sex. With the balcony doors open, he knew everything the moment he opened his car door. He’s being excessively polite, allowing us time to get presentable.” Bruiser’s eyes pierced up at me. “I will attempt to control the situation.”
I chuffed out a breath and picked up my silver stakes, twining my hair into a messy bun and securing it with them, easy to hand. “This should be fun,” I muttered. “Not.” But he had a point. Neither of us had showered since sometime in midafternoon and we’d been busy since then. Several times.
Bruiser shoved the couch back in place and tossed the blanket into the bedroom. He took a bottle of red wine from the wine cabinet and opened it. He poured it into a carafe, holding the bottle high over his head and allowing the wine to gurgle and splash down and into the crystal. “Letting it breathe, the fast way,” he explained. “A sacrilege, but the best I can do under the time constraints.” He removed three deep-bowled crystal glasses from a cabinet and set everything on a wood tray on the island. He put a sharp knife on the tray.
I took a seat at the bar, turning one of the white leather bar chairs at an angle so I could see the door and the balcony too. And the bed. It was neatly made. Dang. Bruiser was fast when he needed to be. And agonizingly slow when he needed to be too, for which reason I was very sore, even with Beast’s fast healing. I fidgeted in the uncomfortable chair, noting only now that there were three white leather chairs. How handy.
A knock came at the door and Bruiser opened it. Leo stood on the other side, motionless, not breathing, not moving, his pale skin seeming to glisten in the light of the single candle still burning. Leo was wearing a black tuxedo, the tie loose at his throat. His hair, black and lustrous, lay on his shoulders. It had grown several inches in the time I’d lived in New Orleans.
“I am honored that the Master of this City would visit me,” Bruiser said with polite precision. “Please come in.”
Without a word, Leo entered, Derek on his heels. Derek was dressed in Enforcer leathers, weaponed up like a modern-day samurai. I tensed all over, but his eyes passed over Bruiser and me, sweeping the apartment and checking the balcony, bedroom, bathroom, closet, moving the way a human did when he’s been well fed on vamp blood—fast and smooth and powerful. When Derek was satisfied, he took a place at the door, his hands hanging close to his weapons.
Bruiser ignored him and followed his former master to the island. He shot me a look that lasted half a heartbeat, intense and cutting. His eyes then shot to Derek. Pointing me to look at the Enforcer, a direction, an order, a suggestion of some kind. I hadn’t fought beside Bruiser like I had with Eli. The battlefield communication wasn’t yet in place; I had no idea what the look meant, except to be alert and wary and ready for anything. I could sense Bruiser’s worry even over the smell of sex that permeated the place. “Would you care for a glass of wine?” Bruiser asked. “I think you will find the vintage agreeable.”
Leo lifted the bottle, read the label, and raised a single eyebrow, but over the reek of sex I could detect a rising change in his scent pattern, from banked discontent to something more peppery and hot. The beginnings of anger. “Outside of Pellissier Estates in France, there are fifteen bottles of Pellissier Cabernet, 1945. My cellars contain ten of them, or they did.”
“They still do,” Bruiser said, ignoring the less-than-subtle accusation that he might have pilfered from the MOC’s wine cellar. He poured the dark red wine into each glass. “I bought this and one other at auction last year for a dreadful sum. Though the fast aeration is a desecration, this bottle seemed an appropriate sacrifice for the moment.”
I managed not to react to the word sacrifice, until Bruiser picked up the knife and sliced his fingertip. He held it over one of the glasses and let the blood drop into the wine. Suddenly I could hear everything: cars outside on the street below, the sound of my heartbeat, the plink of blood meeting wine, the slight shift of Derek’s leathers at the door. In my peripheral vision, I made sure his hands were still empty, and I could feel his eyes on me, gauging me. I forced myself to remain sitting, compelled my body to relax against the low back of the chair, a false ease that might fool Derek, but would never fool Leo. Slowly Leo’s mouth opened, and his fangs dropped down. They were ivory-toned in the dim light, tinted darker by the flickering candle, as if they were lightly coated with old blood.
Sacrifice, Bruiser had said. For taking me to bed. Which meant that, even with the fancy dismissal as blood-servant, Leo’s claim on me still stood, and Bruiser’s careful interpretation of the edict wasn’t going to protect us. In Leo’s eyes, Bruiser had stolen from the Master of the City. Leo thought it okay to sleep with anyone and everyone in singles and batches, but he wasn’t much on sharing what he had claimed.
To make his anger worse, according to Del, Leo was missing Bruiser. Whom I had just stolen.
But despite Leo’s claim, he had never owned me. I would not be owned.
Beast is not prey, she thought at me.
The plink of blood slowed and stopped. And I knew what Bruiser wanted even before he looked at me. Questioning. Was I willing to offer blood for the supposed wrong I’d done to the MOC?
“No,” I said, heat blossoming in my gut. “I never belonged to you.” I pointed at Leo. At the words, his pupils widened and his sclera began to tint scarlet. The scent of scorching pepper and the smoke of burning papyrus grew stronger. “I was never yours to give away or keep. I was never yours at all except for the job.” I pointed at the bloody wine. “And I don’t offer sacrifice of my blood. Not to anyone.” I pointed to Bruiser. “You should have remembered that.”
Bruiser blinked, something dawning in his eyes. “Too late,” I said fiercely, surging from the chair and to the door. Derek shifted, the movement not subtle, intending to be seen, a warning that he would defend his boss.
To Leo I said, “You can take this job and shove it into the sun.” Barefoot, anger like a flame tossed carelessly into a pile of deadwood, I picked up my keys and walked out of the apartment. And slammed the door. Inside I heard the sound of furniture breaking and a roar of rage. Stupid men.
My cell rang moments later. I ignored it. It rang again. I turned it off as I drove away.
Stupid men.
Stupid, stupid men. I tried to put the memory of Bruiser—all the memories of Bruiser I had formed in the last day—out of mind, but it wasn’t working. I got angrier as I drove, as the images of Bruiser flashed before me. Bruiser stretched out on his bed. Bruiser stretched out on me. Bruiser’s face when I slammed my way out of his apartment. Worry. He’d been afraid. “Well, I can take care of myself,” I said. But . . . Leo had lost his temper when I’d left. There had been the sounds of fighting. Anger and apprehension were boiling in me by the time I neared my home, and my increased body temp released all the scents accumulated over the last hours. Passion and tenderness and sex. Such fantastic sex.