Page 176 of Hunters and Prey

“…and before you could sign yourself up to be his new favorite hired gun.”

Black scowled.

I felt it without looking up.

I also felt his affront at the insinuation that he’d just sign himself over to my uncle.

I also felt him realizing that’s more or less exactly what he’d resigned himself to do. After what Nick did to me, anything that might help him kill more vampires in a shorter period of time was a big fucking plus in his book.

If Charles helped him find and kill Nick faster, all the better.

Again, I got it.

I just knew it would end up with Black dead.

Or worse, some kind of puppet of my uncle’s.

I could feel Black thinking again, though. I could feel the more strategic side of that big brain of his clicking back on, even though a not-small part of him resented that fact, and resented me for forcing him to switch gears, when a big part of him really really wanted to yell at me for a while longer, despite what he’d said.

Feeling him think, I could tell some part of him was already realizing I was right.

About Charles. About the vampires being our only option right now.

That same part of him had already known that.

He’d just been ignoring it.

I could feel the fact I was forcing him to listen to it pissed him off, too.

Truthfully, all I could feel was relief. I doubt I even did a particularly good job of hiding that relief from him. As gratifying as it might be for him to go on some kind of full-blown vampire killing spree with my uncle, we flat-out couldn’t afford it.

We had to deal with my uncle first.

We’d have time to deal with the vampires later.

Hopefully.

“Miri,” he said.

He loosened his hold on me, looking down at my face.

I flinched, somehow more thrown by that softer tone of voice than I had been by his anger. Once I’d met his gaze, he gripped me tighter in his arms.

“Miriam,” he said. “Darling. Light of my life.” He clenched his jaw, staring down at me with those gold, flecked, tiger-like eyes of his. “If you ever drug me like that again, my dear, sweet, darling of a wife… for any reason… you and I are going to have a serious fucking talk. A really serious fucking talk. Possibly from separate continents.”

Looking up at him, I could only really nod.

“Okay––”

“––No,” he growled. “Not okay, Miriam. Because I’ll probably need a good, long vacation from you before we have that talk. As in… you’re going to wake up, and I won’t be there. Probably for months, Miriam. Probably not until I’d gone somewhere and had a good long think about why I shouldn’t sleep with about fifty prostitutes, or find a bunch of vampires and let them feed on me, or do anything else that was going to permanently harm or jeopardize my marriage to you, even if I really really wanted to. There might be a few months in there where you didn’t hear from me at all, where I hung out in Muy Thai clubs in Bangkok, getting beat up in the ring and probably going to strip clubs every night…”

Pausing, he stared down at me.

Looking up, I felt the blood drain from my face.

In no way did he not mean every word he was saying to me.

“I love you,” he said, his voice hard as metal. “I love you, Miriam. But so help me God, if you do anything like that to me again––”

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