Page 33 of Rapture's Edge (Night Prowler 3)
He spun out of the way and she followed, thrusting, leaping forward when he danced back, slashing out with the blade, her face grim and determined. He didn’t think himself in much danger—he was far stronger and had trained in all kinds of fighting since he’d been selected as a child for the king’s elite guard because of the strength and purity of his Bloodlines—but he was careful not to let her see his confidence, and he kept a safe distance while letting her advance and lunge while he feinted and leapt clear.
“Stop playing with me and fight!” she spat as he deflected a vicious thrust with a quick turn of his wrist. He had to admire her technique, he grudgingly admitted to himself. She’d obviously trained with someone who knew what they were doing.
“We are fighting. You’re lunging at me with a knife, and I’m trying not to get stuck, so it’s definitely a fight. And for the record, I didn’t kill your father.”
In response to that, Eliana froze. He froze as well and stared at her warily as she looked back at him, her chest rising and falling erratically, that pulse still fluttering wildly in her neck.
“Right to my face,” she muttered and shook her head.
This time when she lunged forward with a savage snarl—teeth bared, eyes alight with demonic fury—D was a little less certain he’d be getting out of the room alive.
Damn! Eliana barely missed D’s face with a well-timed swing.
The fact that he kept looking at her like that wasn’t helping her concentration. How he had the audacity to stare at her with such rampant glee after what he’d done—it made her even more determined to kill him. She lunged at him again.
“I’d almost forgotten how beautiful you are when you’re mad,” said D, feinting from her lunge so fast he was a blur. He wasn’t even breathing hard, damn him, but she was sweating, her hands were clammy, and the adrenaline blasting through her veins was making her shaky. She adjusted her grip on the dagger and breathed in, trying with no success to slow her pounding heart.
This was nothing like fighting with Alexi.
“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say,” she spat. “I just want you to die!”
“Ouch.” He looked pained and leapt clear as she lunged again.
She spun around and faced him. Big and brawny and utterly masculine as she remembered, he was still a masterpiece of agility, nimble and graceful with every move. He wore boots, black leathers slung low on his hips, and a half-zipped hoodie that revealed a distracting expanse of chest. Of tattooed, corrugated chest. His presence filled the small room, and she felt almost suffocated by the nearness of him, his size and scent. Just being close to him was overwhelming. She needed to get this over with, and quickly.
“Coward,” she growled as he deftly avoided another of her swings.
“I’m not the one who ran away from home in the middle of the night,” he countered. Though his tone was serious, she knew he was enjoying this, enjoying seeing her sweat and pant, trying to chase him.
Enjoying playing with her.
Fury blasted through her veins. He’d killed her father. He’d ruined her life. He’d taken away everything she’d ever known and used her in the worst way possible, and now he was toying with her.
She fell still and lowered the dagger to her side. D watched this with a wary expression from several feet away. “Come on then,” she challenged, holding his gaze. “Come and get me if you’re not a coward. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s why you broke into that police station. So you could take me to some godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere,” she said, gesturing to the room, “and get it out of me?”
His expression darkened. His brow crumpled to a frown. “Get what out of you, exactly?”
“You really think I’m that stupid?” She began to shake badly now. Emotions she’d managed to bottle up for years welled dangerously close to the surface, a tidal wave of rage and betrayal, anger and loneliness, gathering into a howling, molten core so pressurized it threatened to go supernova. “You think I don’t know I’m only alive right now so you can find out where the rest of us are hiding? So you can finish what you started three years ago and kill us all?”
His nostrils flared at that. His eyes, dancing with barely repressed glee only moments before, turned murderous. “I saved your life today,” he said, his voice very low in his throat. “If I wanted to see you dead, I would have left you at that prison and let The Hunt have you. And who do you think fixed those damn bullet holes in you? The tooth fairy?”
Her hand flew to the bandage on her hip, hidden beneath the boxers. The Hunt? A flicker of emotion pinched her stomach—confusion? doubt?—but it was quickly eaten by anger.
“Clever. Pretend to save me from your own gang to gain my trust, keep me alive just long enough to find out where the others are, and then kill me. You’re even craftier than Silas said. I can’t believe I ever trusted you!”
And with that, the missing puzzle piece clicked into place.
“He told you it was me,” D said, incredulous. “That son of a bitch told you I killed your father, didn’t he?”
Eliana’s dark eyes flared hot, and two spots of pink appeared high on her cheeks. She sucked in a breath and then shouted, “No one had to tell me anything because I saw it with my own eyes, you bastard! You, the gun, my father lying dead on the floor with a hole in his head!”
She backed a step away, her breath ragged, her legs bent as if she would leap at him at any moment.
D stood ready for her move, every nerve and muscle throbbing with the effort it took to restrain himself from lunging at her, crushing her to his chest, crushing his lips to hers. “You saw nothing,” he said between clenched teeth. “I was holding a gun, that was all. And then you ran away before you let me explain—”
She made the tiniest move, her muscles coiled to spring, and, tired of the cat and mouse and dagger game, he was instantly there to catch her. He reached out and grasped her wrist. With a gasp, she tried to yank free, but his grip was too strong and she dropped the blade. Struggling wildly, she ended up losing her footing and executing an ungainly back flop onto the box spring mattress, where she bounced once, then recovered her equilibrium and kicked out sharply with a leg.
But again he was too fast for her. D caught her ankle in his other hand and wrestled her, bucking and screaming, down to the mattress.
