A high-pitched shriek from the woman in the room distracted Blake for a split second. Had she seen the attacker’s glowing eyes?
A fist connecting with his temple made him tumble back a step. Blake swung his arm back and aimed for the hostile vampire’s chin, but when he stepped forward again to use all his weight against his opponent, his foot got caught in something and he slipped. He caught himself in mid-fall and jumped back, but the other vampire was already heading toward the open doorway.
Frantic, Blake disentangled his foot from the lamp’s electrical cord, in which he’d gotten caught, and raced after him. The kitchen was small, and from it a second door led back into the hallway. The assailant was heading for it, but Blake ripped him back and spun him around.
But before Blake could deliver a punch, the attacker braced himself on the kitchen counter and kicked both his legs into Blake’s stomach, knocking him on his ass. It gave the hostile vampire enough time to hoist himself over the kitchen sink and lunge for the open window.
Blake was already up again and charging toward the window, when something hard hit him from the side. Momentarily disoriented, he spun his head toward the open doorway, where the scantily-dressed woman stood with a hairdryer in her hand.
“Shit!” he cursed and jumped onto the counter, lunging toward the window. But when he looked outside, the vampire was already fifty yards away from the building and mounting a motorcycle.
He sped away. Despite his vampire night vision, Blake couldn’t make out the numbers: they had been obscured with dirt.
“Fuck,” he cursed, slamming his hand against the wall, before jumping down and turning back to the woman. “Why the fuck did you hit me with that thing? I had him!”
She lifted her chin. “You didn’t have him! He was beating the shit out of you. I was fucking helping you!”
“Yeah, you were a big help!” he growled. “You should have stayed out of it.”
“Oh yeah? And play the damsel in distress?” she griped.
He stepped toward her, furious now. “You were the damsel in distress.”
He took a deep breath, and for the first time really looked at her. Yeah, and what an utterly beautiful damsel she was. Fuck, he hadn’t even noticed. But he sure noticed now.
She was a natural blonde, her hair the color of wheat. It cascaded down her shoulders and touched the exposed skin of her neckline, where her pink bathrobe gaped open. Beneath the fabric, her breasts heaved from the force of her heavy breathing, possibly from the effort of hitting him, certainly from the outrage over his admonishment. Well, he didn’t mind the view. Not at all, in fact. She was quite something to look at. Not petite, not fragile, but tall and athletic.
His eyes wandered lower. The robe only reached to mid-thigh, and the legs that he now admired were trim and a little pale from lack of sun. But he could imagine that in the summer her skin would turn the color of bronze, accentuating her golden hair. Involuntarily he shifted, the sudden tightness in his pants forcing him to find a more comfortable position, before the beauty before him noticed that he was sporting the beginnings of a hard-on—and that it was her fault.
A huff made him lift his eyes to her face. Her cornflower-blue eyes scrutinized him with barely-veiled suspicion now. He could get lost in their depths, were they not narrowed at him now.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
He tilted his head to the side. “You mean apart from saving your pretty ass from that jerk?” He pointed to the window.
A little bit of color rose to her cheeks. “Yeah, apart from that.”
“I could ask you the same thing. ‘Cause for sure you’re not Hannah. And this is her flat. So what are you doing here?”
“That’s rich!” she sniped. “You’re breaking in here, and you’re asking me what I’m doing?”
Involuntarily, he pointed in the direction of the front door. “If I hadn’t knocked down that door, God knows what that guy would’ve done to you. You were screaming for help, so excuse me if I didn’t ring the fucking door bell!” Damn it, the woman could rile him up!
She sucked in a breath, but instead of lashing out with another insult, she appeared to calm herself down. “I’m sorry, but so much has happened, and I guess I’m just a little agitated. I mean that burglar… it’s not as if I didn’t have enough on my mind already.”
A burglar? That’s what she thought that vampire was? For now he’d let her believe that, but he was almost sure that the attacker had something to do with Hannah not showing up for work. Had the stranger been human, then, sure, he could have been an ordinary burglar, but a vampire, when Hannah worked with vampires? That was too much of a coincidence.
Slowly, he nodded. At least the woman wasn’t acting combative anymore. He could work with that. “You’re a friend of Hannah’s?”
“Lilo. Her best friend from back home. You live in the building?”