Page 107 of Bourbon & Blood

“Oh, thank the Goddess!” she declared and scrambled to her feet.

“What you doin’ up so late, cher?” I asked with a smile and a light chuckle, pleased as punch that she’d waited up for me.

“Mm,” she lowered herself flat footed as she took her mouth away from mine and said, “I missed you, and I was worried about you,” she said.

“Aw, you don’ need to worry ‘bout me none.”

She snorted indelicately, “Bullshit – and the day Idon’tworry about you will be your first clue that things are seriously wrong, you understand me?”

I smiled and shut the door behind me, throwing the lock.

“I hear you,” I said.

“Good,” she said letting out a breath slowly.

“Now tell me, how’d it go? Did you get one of them?”

I looked at her, searching her face and what I saw there? I simply nodded and her shoulders sagged.

“One down, one to go, Maya,” she murmured and tears gathered on her lower lashes. I pulled her into me, and she wrapped her arms tight around me and she murmured, “Thank you.”

“Anything for you, cher,” I said and I meant it.

She looked up at me then, and said words I ain’t ever expect to hear really.

“I love you.”

I lowered my mouth to hers and kissed her and her arms twined around my neck. I smoothed hands down over her slender body and walked her back toward her bedroom, and she went willingly, letting me guide her, trusting I wouldn’t run her into anything.

Maybe I should have said ‘I love you, too’ but honestly? I just figured I’d much rather show her.

CHAPTERFORTY

Alina…

“Turn on the news, Marcus just rushed out to grab some of the papers,” Dorian was saying into the phone and I dashed into the living room to turn on the noon edition of the local news.

“…Bashaw is beingrockedby quite the scandal today, Michael,” the woman said.

“That’s right, Linda. For any of you tuning in who don’t know who Nathanial Bashaw is, he’s the local New Orleans city councilman who just announced his bid to take on the race for governor in this latest election cycle.”

“That’s right Michael. It will be interesting to see what he does now with this article in the Times Picayune bringing severalwildallegations to light in a sex scandal the likes we’ve never seen…”

I sank onto the edge of my couch, and looked back over the way of my bedroom door and at La Croix leaning against it’s frame. It’d been three or four days since he’d come back so late in the morning and had told me without telling me that Maya’s killer had been dealt with.

He gave me a single nod as Dorian asked in my ear, “Are you seeing it? Lina, are you there?”

La Croix gave a nod in my direction and pushed off the doorway going back into my room; presumably to dress.

“Yeah, Dor, I’m here, I see it,” I said grimly.

“She did it,” he said. “Somehow, she actually did it. She took him down,” he said and his voice was faint, the same news report I had in front of my own eyes echoing through the phoneline. I smiled, and I knew it was darkly malicious.

Yes, she did,I thought to myself.With a little help from her friends…

“It’s almost over,” I said and Dorian seemed to snap-too, coming awake on the other end of the line.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

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