“No,” I said, heat blossoming in my gut. “I never belonged to you.” I pointed at Leo. At the words, his pupils widened and his sclera began to tint scarlet. The scent of scorching pepper and the smoke of burning papyrus grew stronger. “I was never yours to give away or keep. I was never yours at all except for the job.” I pointed at the bloody wine. “And I don’t offer sacrifice of my blood. Not to anyone.” I pointed to Bruiser. “You should have remembered that.”
Bruiser blinked, something dawning in his eyes. “Too late,” I said fiercely, surging from the chair and to the door. Derek shifted, the movement not subtle, intending to be seen, a warning that he would defend his boss.
To Leo I said, “You can take this job and shove it into the sun.” Barefoot, anger like a flame tossed carelessly into a pile of deadwood, I picked up my keys and walked out of the apartment. And slammed the door. Inside I heard the sound of furniture breaking and a roar of rage. Stupid men.
My cell rang moments later. I ignored it. It rang again. I turned it off as I drove away.
Stupid men.
Stupid, stupid men. I tried to put the memory of Bruiser—all the memories of Bruiser I had formed in the last day—out of mind, but it wasn’t working. I got angrier as I drove, as the images of Bruiser flashed before me. Bruiser stretched out on his bed. Bruiser stretched out on me. Bruiser’s face when I slammed my way out of his apartment. Worry. He’d been afraid. “Well, I can take care of myself,” I said. But . . . Leo had lost his temper when I’d left. There had been the sounds of fighting. Anger and apprehension were boiling in me by the time I neared my home, and my increased body temp released all the scents accumulated over the last hours. Passion and tenderness and sex. Such fantastic sex.
I wanted it. I wanted time to roll back and stop there, Bruiser atop my body, heaving breaths, voice ragged, calling my name. And I wanted it gone, wiped away forever as if it had never been. I cursed when a traffic light stopped me, backlighting me in a bar’s bright, neon beer signs, through the broken windows. In frustration, I beat the steering wheel with my fists. The wheel bent. The driver behind me backed away and took a side street. I laughed, the sound broken and hurting.
Beast said nothing. Nothing about the hours in bed, nothing about the smells, nothing about Leo or Bruiser. Despicable Bruiser, who gave in to the old ways of his old life. No. Beast said nothing at all. She was totally silent, motionless inside me. Which just made me angrier.
I didn’t want to be with people, but I had no place else to go, except to check into a hotel, and that seemed no safer than anywhere else, and might endanger humans. While I was trying to decide, my muscle memory took me the short blocks back to my house. I was forced to park a block down due to traffic, which happened only during tourist event weekends, and I had no idea which tourist event was taking place now. I stomped from the SUV—when was my bike gonna be fixed?—and down the street and through the side gate. I keyed open the door, slammed it too, said a brusque hello to the Youngers as I stormed past, then slammed the door to my bedroom.
Stripping off Bruiser’s shirt, I pitched it into the garbage. The jeans followed. They smelled like Bruiser. And me. And hours in his bed. Maybe I should burn them. I turned the shower to hot. Then to hotter. I tossed the silver stakes into the corner of the small space, stepped under the scalding spray, and slammed the shower door. And proceeded to scrub myself with a loofah that one of Katie’s working girls had given me for Christmas. It was saturated in perfumed soap and I hadn’t been able to force myself to use it, until now, when I needed the stench to hide the other stench.
I soaped my hair and scoured the bottoms of my feet. I scrubbed everything in between as well, every part of me that Bruiser had touched, had marked with his hands and his mouth and his rough, unshaven face. I was abrading the top layer of skin and I didn’t care. If that was what it took to get the reek of Bruiser off of me—
The shower door rammed open, bouncing off the wall. Leo stood there, vamped out, steam rushing to swirl around him. He lunged into the blistering stream. Screaming, “You are—”
Time stood still. Droplets of water stopped, suspended. Steam—minuscule droplets, heated nearly to the point of boiling—vibrated in place. Leo hung in the air, midleap, his face frozen in a rictus of fury. Still dressed in his tux.
There were two-inch talons on each fingertip. His lips were pulled back in a snarl. Three-inch fangs were snapped down in eating/fighting position. Eyes like pits into hell, opening inside volcanos, viewed from above as one fell into the darkness. Vamped out. Vamped out and beyond ticked off. Leo didn’t like to be dissed.
Time . . . time was stopped. Or nearly so. Or I was suddenly outside of it.