“Is my soulmate embarrassed?” Andre’s voice was amused.
Damn vampires and their sense of smell. When I reached the target, I began yanking the blades out. “You shouldn’t go provoking women who play with knives,” I said, sliding one into a sheath while reaching for another.
The air shifted, and then Andre’s lips brushed against my ear. “Maybe I like my women dangerous.”
I smiled. Tonight there would be some naughty combat. In one fluid motion, I spun, aiming the edge of the blade I held for Andre’s throat.
He caught my forearm, predicting the move, and bent my wrist back until pain forced me to drop the knife. Even as I did so, I brought my leg up and kicked him in the chest.
Or at least I tried to.
He let go of my arm in time to catch my leg, and then he twisted it. I only had an instant to lift my other leg. Had I waited a second later, Andre would’ve snapped the bone.
And he probably would’ve done it, too.
When we first began training, I assumed Andre wouldn’t hurt me. I assumed wrong.
The first injury was a dislocated shoulder. And it took me a week to forgive him. During that time, Andre still dragged my ass to training, still threatened bodily injury when we faced off, but boy was he remorseful. I wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t smile at him. Never had I heard someone apologize so much as he did that week.
Lesson learned: I might be able to bring a man to his knees faster by kicking his legs in, but nothing felled a man quite like a woman’s wrath.
My entire body twisted in the air, and I landed hard on the ground. But already I’d pulled my boot back and kicked Andre in the face as his body followed mine to the floor.
Andre bellowed as bone crunched, and for a split-second his grip on my leg loosened. It was as good an opening as I was going to get. I slammed my boot against him again, eliciting another roar from Andre, and then I wrenched my foot from his grasp.
I tensed my muscles, ready to lung at Andre and go for a kill shot again, but before I had the chance, he sprang forward, knocking me back into the ground. Even injured, he was a force to be reckoned with.
And this was precisely why Andre risked injuring me: pain honed us. Physically it made us better, quicker, more resilient, and it forced us to think and strategize through agony.
And it might be the only way I’d survive the devil.
With one hand Andre captured my wrists, and with his other hand he snatched one of the knives from my belt.
He pressed the edge of the blade against my neck, just as I had originally intended to do to him. “Never allow your enemy—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, feeling the knife slice into the skin of my neck as I spoke. “If I get pinned to the ground, I’ll be deader than you are.”
Andre frowned at that, and then his eyes caught sight of the blood at my neck. He grimaced and threw the knife aside before leaning down and placing a kiss to the wound. “I’m sorry for this, soulmate,” he murmured against my skin, just like he did every time he hurt me while we fought.
“It’s okay,” I said, mostly because I knew how badly Andre did feel about my injuries. He was raised in a time where women were treated like breakable objects. Hurting me went against some of his most deep-seated beliefs. But even those beliefs could be overridden by fear for my future wellbeing. “I’m, ah, sorry about your nose,” I added. “Sorta. Okay, I’m not, but only because that’s like the seventh time I’ve ever gotten a hit on you.”
“Oh?” Andre said. “You’re not sorry?” he murmured as his lips skimmed up my neck and jawline, heading straight for the pay dirt that was my mouth. Ah, naughty grappling. My favorite.
“Nope,” I said, being obstinate.
His mouth halted. “Well in that case …”
He drew his lips away from my skin, and I groaned. The bastard was going to hold out on me until I caved. “Okay, fine,” I conceded, “I’m super sorry. Are you pleased now?”
Andre’s mouth returned to my skin, and I felt him smile against it. “Very much so.”
His lips had just alighted upon mine when his phone rang. He groaned against me. “I’m not done with you,” he whispered into my mouth, and then he pulled away to sit on his haunches.
“Yes?” he said brusquely into the phone he’d procured from his pocket.
“Sir,” said the voice on the other end of the line, “I looked into last night’s attack, just like you asked.”
I pushed myself up onto my forearms, and Andre’s eyes met mine. He knew I could hear the conversation.
“And?” he asked.
“It seems your theory is right that a demon attacked.”
His theory. Ha!
“Only it’s so much worse,” the man said.
“How so?” Andre’s grip had tightened on the phone.
“In demonic circles there’s a bounty out on Gabrielle’s head. It’s rumored that the devil himself placed it.”
My eyes widened. Had that been why I’d seen so many shadows since I’d arrived? Were they all demons who were after me?
“And what, precisely, is the bounty for?” Andre said, his low pitched low.
I heard the man on the other end of the line exhale before he spoke again. “Whoever can successfully deliver the girl to the devil has been promised title and power by the Unholy One.”
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that whoever was going to deliver me wasn’t planning on dropping me off at the devil’s doorstep. Nope. My butt was going to get shanked.
“We need to stop this,” Andre said, menace lacing his words.
A pause. Then, “Sir, I’m not sure we can.”
Chapter 21
“Merry freaking Christmas to me,” I muttered the next morning as I padded into Andre’s study with a cup of coffee and a book. Other teenagers got clothes and electronics for Christmas. I got my name on a hit list.