“I thought it was just— It’s supposed to be agame.”Her breath hitched, almost like she was struggling to hold back tears. “None of this was supposed to happen. I just needed some money. Easton said it would be easy.”
Nothing in the syndicate is ever easy or straightforward,he wanted to tell her.It’s a meat grinder we all get tossed into, one way or another, and none of us escape it unscathed.
Instead, he asked a more important question that had dogged him since he found her in the bedroom. “What could you possibly need this much money for, Frankie?”
Taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he guided her to meet his eye. “Are you in trouble? If you have debts, I’ll pay them. All you ever needed to do was ask.”
Francesca blinked owlishly up at him. “Why would I ask you for help?”
The normal version of himself would’ve laughed that off. He would’ve laughed at just about everything that had happened that night, because none of it mattered. He’d go on as he always had, making money and playing and pretending like none of it meant anything to him.
But the normal version of himself was dead in a ditch somewhere, brutally murdered by this woman the moment she chose to kiss him first, and he was beginning to realize that there might not be any chance of reviving him.
Luis had to consciously unclench his jaw to respond to her. “Because,” he dragged out, “I’m your vampire. Your man. If you need help, you come to me first.”
Of course she chose that moment to get a little bit of her fire back. Francesca put her hands on his shoulders and straightened her arms, pushing herself back far enough to give her attitude plenty of room.
“You arenotmy man,” she tartly corrected him. “If you recall, I turned you down. Twice.”
“You also let me spank your pussy with my bloody fingers,” he challenged, eyebrows raising. “And I’ve now killed for you. In vampire terms we’re married.”
Francesca slapped his chest. “Oh, shutup.We are not!”
Relieved to see a little life returning to her perfect face, he offered her an easy grin at odds with his next question. “So are you going to tell me who you owe money to or am I going to gave to torture it out of you?”
“Why?” she asked, suddenly shrewd. “You gonna take my fingers if I don’t?”
Luis winced.Ah, she heard about the trophies.
It was an ill-conceived idea he’d had back in his early days as a junior enforcer. He didn’t particularly love torture,though he was understandably extremely good at it. However, he quickly learned that a terrifying reputation did a lot more for interrogation than any pliers, drills, or ropes could. Keeping a box of fingers — mostly of people caught cheating in their underground casinos and game rooms — for a while did the job of spreading his reputation well enough that he’d been able to toss the damn thing just as they began to really stink up his office.
He didn’tlovethat she’d heard the rumor, true though it was. Any tiny, dying hope that he could maintain the carefully crafted illusion he’d presented to her flicked out.
Sighing, he pulled one of her hands off his shoulder and gave her knuckles a soft kiss. “No, I like your fingers where they are. When I torture you, it’ll be a little different.”
“Yeah? How?”
His eyelids fell as he imagined all the wonderful ways he could make her scream. Cock hardening beneath her wonderfully round ass, he murmured, “Keep being a bad girl and you’ll find out soon enough.”
It was such a pleasure watching her cheeks go from sallow to pink in the blink of an eye. “You know that even if you win my contract, there’s absolutely nothing in it that says I’ll sleep with you, right? You just get my blood.”
Just?It wasn’tjustanything.
Even the mention of her blood made his venom gland ache. He couldn’t deny that sipping her was very high on his list of desires, but it wasn’t something as basic as hunger that motivated him. The sharing of blood directly from the vein was an intimacy unlike any other. It was an exchange of trust, and it bound a vampire to his anchor in a way that was almost impossible to describe.
Which was exactly why he’d never done it before.
Turning her head towards his a bit, he risked another bite by pressing a skimming kiss to rouged lips. They softened under his, parting invitingly and tempting him to taste her again. Speaking between kisses to her upper lip, then the corners of her mouth, he ordered, “Answer my question, kitten.”
Her eyelids fluttered. She went soft against him, all curves and silk and hands sneaking under the unbuttoned sides of his shirt. “Um… I don’t…”
His hands skated up her back, tracing the perfect contours of her. “I’ve got you,” he promised, tracing his claws over the wings of her shoulder blades to feel her shiver. “Just tell me.”
Francesca’s breath feathered over his lips. Her fingers curled into the hair at the base of his neck, holding tight, when she kissed him oh-so-gently.
“No,” she growled. In an instant, the fingers in his hair stopped being gentle and turned to tugging hard enough that his neck bent back on reflex.
Luis choked, more shocked than hurt, as she hopped off his lap and bounded away on her bare feet.