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СКАЧАТЬ He took another step, and she didn’t back away, boldly holding position. He liked the challenge of her. It kept back the whispers. “Monsters under the bed?”

      “Please.”

      “Snakes? Spiders? Creepy crawlies?”

      After a thoughtful pause, she said, “Falling.”

      He noted her cool composure. Truly, not scared. She was a trained killer, through and through. And yet he’d just peeled back a thin layer from her hard exterior. “So, on the roof last night?”

      She nodded.

      “That’s the only reason I was able to kiss you. Because you were afraid of falling.”

      “You think I’d ask to be kissed by a man with fangs?”

      He ran his tongue along a fang, cursing the fact that he could not will them up as any normal vampire could. UV sickness had really worked a number on him.

      A violin screeched in his brain. He caught his head against a palm.

      “What is it?”

      “Nothing but my own madness. Time to leave you.” As if mocking him, the violin played a series of notes that mimicked what he’d just spoken. “But not without one final plea for my life.”

      Domingos slid his arms around Lark’s back. Pulling her to him, he bowed to kiss her. He wished his fangs were not down, but so be it. He was bruised, broken and beyond repair. The hunter would have to deal with it. He did not want to risk cutting her and tried his best not to let the fangs graze her lips too hard.

      Warm in his embrace, her body felt liquid and bright, something that would never again be his to own. Tender, yet strong, she was a prize he had not earned, could never rightfully own.

      When she gasped, he opened her mouth with his, but did not dash out his tongue. Too presumptuous. And the danger of poking her was real. He pressed a palm to her jaw and bowed his forehead against hers.

      “Too sweet,” he murmured. “Never again mine.”

      Dashing for the door, Domingos fled the temptation of softness that had been stripped from his life by the werewolves’ heartless blood games.

      “He said he didn’t know what sweet was,” Lark said as she stroked a finger over her mouth. The rasp of his parting words had brushed her jaw and she still felt the tingle of that touch warming her skin.

      Twice now the enemy had kissed her. And she couldn’t deny that her curiosity for the enigmatic vampire was growing stronger.

      A kiss could be used to manipulate—by both of them. But she sensed no untoward intentions from Domingos. And that worried her. Because she liked a challenge. She needed that challenge to feel pride for a job well done. If the vamp was just going to stand back and let her at him with stake at the ready, what was the thrill in that?

      As well, it mattered little whether she liked him or despised the very marrow in his breed’s bones; if the vampire wouldn’t stop kissing her she’d never be able to stake him. Never would she be able to move on to number seventy-three, and seventy-four, and so on. She’d be stuck, paused.

      Because a kiss…? Well. Such intimacy. Their bodies needn’t even touch, only their mouths, breathing, tasting, granting permission. And in such a startling manner. She honestly did not know how to deal with it.

      Lark closed the door and leaned against it. “What do I do now?”

      Rook would slap her soundly and tell her to get a grip. If Todd were still alive he would—

      “No,” she whispered. “He’s gone. When can I finally bury him so that my heart can move on?”

      Only after she’d achieved her goal. A goal that had suddenly stalled at number seventy-two.

       Chapter 6

      Lark snapped upright on the sofa. The digital alarm on her cell phone played the opening notes to the Brandenburg concerto. Earlier in the evening she’d set it to go off at midnight, knowing she was tired and would probably doze after she’d showered and ordered in Greek.

      With the stoic resignation she’d gained during her training, she turned off the alarm and padded into the bedroom. Behind a secret door in the closet she found full Order gear: Kevlar-lined leather trousers, Kevlar vest over a T-shirt, cleric’s coat and leather gloves. Inside the coat and around her belt she wore three titanium stakes, a syringe filled with holy water (worked on baptized vamps), a pistol with silver bullets (would kill a werewolf but only slow down a vampire) and numerous nonstandard-issue blades that she’d used more often than any of the other weapons.

      She had no idea whether or not Domingos had been baptized. Didn’t matter. The physical fight was her strong point. Up close and in their face was the only way to bring vampires down. Rook often chided her for taking the risk of putting herself so close to the opponent, but she’d argued that staking required close contact anyway, so why stake them and make it easy when a fight served to ignite her need for vengeance?

      The physical struggle actually soothed something deep in her soul. It was the only way she could do what she did. And if she began to question her motivations, then she’d be lost.

      She pulled her straight black hair into a tight ponytail and fluffed her bangs. A little eyeliner and some lip gloss (just because she was on the hunt didn’t mean she had to look like a pale ghost), and then she stepped into the pair of running shoes she’d packed. The soles on these had better traction than the Doc Martens she normally wore. The boots were outfitted with hinged blades she utilized often during the fight, but tonight she wanted stealth.

      Because she knew exactly where to look for Domingos LaRoque.

      She locked the front door and strode down the outer walkway that hugged the building, and headed back inside to the main hallway. Smoothing away a strand of hair from her mouth, she touched her lips and experienced a flash of kissing the vampire, of feeling his seeking mouth against hers and of not at all reacting defensively to the hard slide of his fangs. He’d had to be careful not to cut her. At the moment she’d felt the fangs her blood had run cold, and yet the kiss had been too amazing for her to want him to stop.

      As had been their first kiss up on the roof. After her initial horror, that is.

      Lark sighed and shook her head miserably. It had been too long since she’d been kissed if she was thinking vampire kisses rocked. Either that or crazy was a communicable disease.

      She tugged open the roof-access door and made her way up the rubber-padded concrete stairs, stealthily, a stake gripped at her side. She emerged in the warm summer night air. Moonlight sparkled on the tin eaves, but Lark didn’t admire the beauty. Instead she strode over to the man sitting on the mansard roof, leaning back on his elbows, bare toes jutting over the edge.

      “Thought I’d find you here.”

      “According to the last church bells I heard, it’s past midnight,” he said without looking up at her. “Time’s up.”

      Now the moonlight would not allow her to ignore the beauty surrounding her—and that right in front of her. The vampire had cleaned up well. Lark had never been interested СКАЧАТЬ