Page 62 of Marked
I strain my ears for any sound. There is only her breathing and the gentle thrum of her heart. My fingers flow up her shoulder and into the thick waves of her hair. She tilts her head back to look at me.
“I want you to stay here.” Her pulse speeds again. The light from my eyes illuminates her features in a honey glow. “I’ll be fine. Vampire Captain, remember?”
Her lips tremble. “If you don’t come back ... Seriously,” she says, “your gun.”
I smile and stroke her cheek with my thumb. Her heart skips in my ears. My free hand slides down her full rear and she arches against me. It feels so fucking good to have those curves against me. Too good. “Stay,” I order. She bites her lip, but nods as those damn blue eyes seem to glitter.
Pulling away before I can give in to the need to taste that lush mouth of hers again, I slip out into the dim hall and close the door to the closet behind me. The stairs wobble under my bulk, but hold my weight. I peer out of the stairwell, searching up and down the hall.
It’s empty.
Something bangs below.
Running down the corridor through the dressing room and out into VIP, I grasp the banister and vault over. My legs wobble as I land with a thud. I pull my Glock as a dark shape flits out the open front door across the room.
I streak after it.
A burst of power flares like the sun, leaving me shielding my eyes. It pulses in shades of green and white. I try to gaze through the gap in my fingers. But there is nothing but the light. “Fuck.”
Sage flows along the warm breeze, bringing with it another wash of magick and night. But no hellfire or flowers. A magick user.
Son of a bitch.
Some of the light dies and I peer up and down the sidewalk. There is not a soul in sight. Whoever was here isn’t anymore. “Fuck,” I swear again. Pulling my cell, I open the dialer to call Tanner. “T?”
“Yeah, Cap?”
“Get to Carnage,” I snap, eyes scanning the sidewalk again and again. “We got a new problem.”
Chapter 28
Lilah
Ruin hands me a bottle of water from the club kitchen. I palm it and cradle it to my chest. His men, Tanner, the delicious looking shifter, and Gage, the emerald-eyed fae warrior, pace near the bar. Both men are large. Ruin’s size. Though Gage is thicker. They offered me polite nods when they entered, and set to work trying to figure out who orwhatwas here with us.
“The radar isn’t pulling up anything,” Gage says, waving a wand to what looks like a multimeter around. The little device is jet black, and small in his grasp. He turns the screen this way and that as strange flashes of color dart across the top. “Could’ve been human.”
“A squatter?” Tanner asks.
The other man purses his lips. “Maybe.”
Ruin folds his arms next to me. Where he has been since he came and got me from the closet. The closet where, within a blink, my fear went to a need that scorched every inch of my body. A need that is still arcing through me with him so near. “They moved too fast to be human,” Ruin says. “And I didn’t imagine the light. Whoever it was ... They wereother. No doubt about it.”
Gage tucks the meter back into his belt. “But they could have been slumming here, Cap. There are no guarantees they wanted anything else.”
Ruin shakes his head, but doesn’t speak. I don’t need him to. He disagrees.Vehemently.
I shift next to him.
Tanner looks at me. “Yes?”
I flush. “Um, well ...”
Ruin glances down at me. “Lilah?” Still I hesitate. Something in his features softens, and he bumps my arm with his. “Go ahead.”
“I think we should go to the house on Lock Lake.” He frowns. “I never knew Vic owned it. Or that I do, apparently.” They stare at me. “Anyway ... Maybe there is a clue there. Or at one of the other houses down there. It can’t hurt to check, right?” I peer between them.
Tanner smiles. “She’s right, Cap. It’s the only lead we got.”
