Page 19 of Vampire's Choice

“You’ll pay for that comment.” His voice was calm. The still fix of his gaze told her he didn’t mean here and now.

“Only if you have something to offer worth paying the price,” she retorted.

The trash talk stopped when Marcellus brought a crate into a corner of their sparring space and sat down on it. He settled his dark green wings on either side of him. “I am the person you are protecting,” he told Ruth. “Proceed as you would if you were dealing with Merc as an approaching attacker. Keep him from getting to me.”

Ruth nodded. After considering how she would prepare her charge for such an event, she drew close to the angel and spoke to him in a low voice. “Go now. Follow the escape strategy you and I reviewed and tested a hundred ways before this moment, in case something like this happened. Find a place to hide where he can’t find you, or seek help. I’ll hold him as long as I can.”

Marcellus’s eerie eyes flickered. “So sure you will lose?”

“He’s a stronger and faster opponent. I don’t plan to lose, but I likely will. I can buy you time before he kills or disables me. If I beat him, we’ll have agreed on where to meet.”

Marcellus rose and stepped out of the marked space. “Good. I have left the area to do as you instructed. Show me your fight skills.”

Ready set go. Ruth turned and moved forward.

Merc did the same.

He came at her fast. She dodged and slid under him, flipping around to kick his knee. He was already gone, but a slower opponent, a human one, would have been disabled, the fight over. But if they expected her to fight humans, she wouldn’t be sparring with Merc.

Apparently some electronics worked in this in-between place, because someone nearby had cranked up their music. “Too Much Time On My Hands” by Styx. The beat worked.

She used it, even as she blocked her awareness of her audience, and the pressures associated with them. She was back on the preserve, where she’d gloried in any opportunity to fight and outmaneuver an opponent.

She took a blow to the face that somersaulted her backwards. She landed hard on her ass but rolled away, sweeping Merc’s leg. He used the damn wings to counter, keep himself from falling next to her, but it was an awkward maneuver and she sprang from the ground, pouncing on the outstretched wing and jamming her fingers hard into the shoulder joint as she rammed a foot into his lower back.

He used the wings to flip them over. He would have crashed down on her, breaking her nose in the resulting face plant, but she twisted and took the impact on her shoulder. The mind-numbing bolt of pain announced dislocation, but that could be fixed. She had another arm.

She punched him in the abdomen. There was no give there, at all. Lightning fast, she adjusted her angle and hammered the solar plexus. The flurry of blows succeeded in driving him back a step, and giving her enough room to regain her feet, but he was on her again in an instant.

She’d been right. This fight wasn’t about defeating him, but about the time she could give to her protectee. So she kept her full focus on keeping him occupied and not getting too quickly disabled.

Vampire speed was a boon, and she’d worked to be faster. Play with cats wasn’t play at all, but hunting skills. That and the martial arts and other fighting skills she’d accumulated helped her now.

The fist she drove into his face was hard enough to crack his eye socket. The eye blazed with pain, but also rage and then…

A blast of pheromone-infused heat hit her, weakening her knees, making her shudder, jerk. Fucking hell. Was he really trying to make her orgasm in the middle of a fight?

Well, any weapon was fair game, and two of them could play it. She dropped to a knee, rolled, and punched him between the legs. It was a shame, because the man had nice, heavy testicles. But if she did him permanent harm, he’d asked for it.

“Stop. Merc, stop.”

The order lashed out from two directions, Yvette and Marcellus. As she tuned in to their surroundings, trying to control her breathing and stop her shuddering, she saw there was a literal whip around Merc’s throat, digging into the skin aggressively enough to draw blood and constrict his breathing. Yvette was holding it, her other hand lifted toward the incubus. He’d dropped to a knee, but was fighting to stand, though an invisible force seemed to be holding him down.

He snarled, the light in his gaze promising hell to the sorceress, if he could get past her magic.

He was still battering Ruth with that energy, dragging her toward the precipice. She was barely keeping her feet, swaying, resisting the wave of sexual desire with everything she had.

You never say no to me.

Marcellus was next to him. “The fight is over, Merc. You have done as I asked.”

A slight head shake. Merc’s gaze didn’t leave her. The power of the energy increased.

No. No.

“Don’t touch me,” she managed in a harsh rasp. Not to him, but to whoever had approached her on the left. She didn’t look that way, because she couldn’t chance losing this battle. She was not going to give the bastard the victory of a forced orgasm in the middle of a crowd.

“Back…the…fuck…off.”

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