“Ellis Pierson.”
Such a normal-sounding name, and it went with his appearance. Aside from his fresh bloody nose and bruises, he looked about as threatening as Mickey Mouse. Ellis had black hair neatly trimmed, a paunch, and round baby cheeks. The prick was obviously good with a rifle and a scope, though. I’d be missing several choice pieces of my brain now if it weren’t for Bones tackling me. How he’d known about the shots was still beyond me.
“Alias, all of them.”
There were several. I was going to need more money.
One by one, Bones asked Ellis questions about the contract out on me, and he knew better than anyone which ones they were. Tricks of the trade, I thought sardonically as I wrote. It takes a hit man to interrogate one.
My jaw clenched when Ellis outlined in a dull voice how he’d been given very special instructions regarding my dispatch. It was to be a head shot only, a minimum of three bullets, and at a range no closer than a hundred yards. No car bombs, poison, physical confrontation, or any contact near my car or residence. Ellis didn’t know what I was, but whoever had hired him must have had a frigging good idea. These stipulations were too specific to be coincidental.
By the end, I’d written on over a dozen different bills, and my hand was cramped from the minuscule pen. Considering the alternative, however, I wasn’t going to complain. Finally Bones sat back on his haunches and asked if there was anything else Ellis hadn’t mentioned.
“The client got anxious in the last e-mail and moved up the time frame. Said new circumstances mandated immediate results. My price was increased by twenty percent if the job was done tonight. I followed her from her house to the restaurant. Easier to escape in the confusion there.”
Motherfucker. Someone wanted me dead in a hurry, and whoever that was also knew where I lived. A sick feeling swept over me, because there were only a select number of people who knew that.
I didn’t think we were going to turn him over to the police, but the swiftness with which Bones yanked Ellis to him and latched his mouth onto his throat still startled me. This wasn’t the first time I’d witnessed death by fang, but it was the first time I did nothing and just watched. Ellis’s heartbeat raced at first, then slowed, and finally stopped.
“Does that hurt?” I coldly wondered when Bones released him, letting him fall to the ground.
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Not nearly as much as he deserved, but we don’t have time for that.”
With a touch now gentle enough to soothe a baby, he traced his fingers along the scratch on my temple. I knew what it was. The graze from a bullet.
“So bloody close to losing you,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t have been able to stand it, Kitten.”
He pulled me to him, hard, and a delayed reaction to my near-death experience set in. I’d had people try to kill me before, sure. Too many times to count, but a gunshot at far range seemed so... mean. I shivered.
“Cold? Want my jacket?” He began to shrug off his leather coat when I stopped him.
“You’re warm. I’ve never felt you this warm before.”
The reason for his new temperature was ten feet from us, but I didn’t care. I held him and savored his unusual heat. Then I tugged at his shirt collar, popping loose a button, just so I could feel his heated skin next to my cheek.
“Don’t, luv,” Bones said in a strained voice. “I have very little control left in me.”
Except I didn’t want his control right now. Or mine. Back at that restaurant, I’d been nanoseconds from being blown to kingdom come, but here I was. Alive, unhurt... and unwilling to waste another moment.
I kissed his collarbone, sacrificing another button to better access it. Bones’ hands tightened on my back. The waves of leashed power emanating from him excited me. Under my mouth, his skin seemed to crawl with voltage begging to be let free. My tongue flicked out, sliding lower on his chest to follow the hard grooves—until Bones yanked my head up and slanted his mouth across mine.
There was a metallic taste to his mouth, but it didn’t repel me. Instead I kissed him like I was trying to devour him, sucking on his tongue while tearing at his shirt. Bones picked me up and walked swiftly to the end of the parking lot, where there were more shadows. Something hard and uneven touched my back, but I didn’t turn around to see what it was. I was too busy running my hands over the warm flesh that his torn shirt had revealed.