Page 48 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
Andres forced himself to suppress his fluttering heart and followed Shane at a more casual pace, turning to trail after his prey instead as she meandered anxiously. Maybe this time he’d actually finish the job.
“Margaret, is it?” he growled, slipping one hand around her waist, and the other over her throat.
She made a sound of surprise, then another of horror. Her body tensed, as still as a deer caught in the headlights. “W-what do you want?”
“A word.”
He guided her into the nearby privacy space, through the curtains of the small, dark room. The couple already occupying the sea of floor cushions scrambled up, cursing. The human must have realized the severity of the situation, though, because he grabbed their things so fast he nearly knocked over thebasket of fresh sheets. On their way out, Andres caught a flash of his face, and he swore the man looked just like the pictures of his cousin’s boyfriend, same undercut and crooked mouth, his long hair pulled back into a messy bun. But he was gone in a flash, and Andres had other things to worry about than whether his cousin’s open relationship secretly involved vampires.
He shoved Margaret against the wall, his fangs bared in a way the soft red glow from the fairy lights would turn monstrous. “Did Vitalis-Barron send you here?”
“Why would you think that?” Margaret snapped back, her voice fierce despite the fear in it. Andres couldn’t tell if she remembered him, but she certainly rememberedthis, the nearness of a predator, the rush of adrenaline and the prick of the bite from when his fangs drove into her neck at the gala. She swallowed. “I’m here as a guest.”
“Lies.” And they were—they had to be—but they also weren’t entirely.
As she trembled there, her gaze on the other side of the room and her heart pounding through the vein in her neck, her chin tipped and turned, so slight a gesture it had to be subconscious. Whatever she had come for, however much she clearly feared and despised the vampires she’d worked so hard to sacrifice in Vitalis-Barron’s labs, a part of her yearned for the prick of fangs. The flood of venom. The rush and the bliss and the submission.
“If you want so badly to bleed for a vampire, I can arrange that,” Andres murmured, dark and sensual in an entirely different way from the tone he took with Shane. Not a vampire’s voice, but a monster’s. “Or, you can tell me the truth.”
Margaret whimpered as he caught her hair, tugging her head to the side. Andres could hear a buzz coming from just beside her temple. There—a little black earpiece. How he hated being right sometimes. He snatched it up, holding it to his own ear.
“Lane,” a voice spoke through it. “We’re sending our people in now. Just hold out a few more—”
Margaret wrenched herself toward the main space, yowling as her hair ripped in Andres’s hold. He let her go. She was expendable to Vitalis-Barron. There was nothing else like this place for San Salud’s vampiric community, and it currently held so, so many vampires they’d lose if it went down.
“Lane!” the Vitalis-Barron rep shouted, then gave a lower, obviously annoyed, “I think we lost her.”
“Do you not even weep for your own?” Andres spat into the device. He dropped it and ran.
Maddox and Valentine met him halfway across the room, Shane just behind them.
“We locked the front as a precaution, and we have eyes on the back,” Maddox stated.
Andres nodded. “We have to get everyone out of here, now.”
“And funnel them into the alley all at once?” Valentine shook his head. “They’ll be snatched up.”
“What if we move them across from the roof to the buildings east of us and drop down onto the busier main street beside the boardwalk?” Andres asked.
“You make that sound so simple.”
“I saw your upper stories coming in. I think I couldmakeit simple—simple enough for vampires.”
They stared at him, Shane included.
He shrugged. “I sneak into places I’m unwanted for a living. Sometimes the front door method doesn’t work both ways.”
Maddox pointed toward the private room they’d talked in earlier. “Go with Valentine. I’ll send the other vamps up to you.”
“I can help,” Shane offered. His softness, his vulnerability and obedience, all of that had been bundled up beneath a fire that seemed to solidify him.
Still, Andres’s heart cried out. It was too dangerous; he was human, which meant if Vitalis-Barron touched him, they would face legal retribution, so they wouldn’t go after him purposefully, but that wouldn’t stop him from getting caught in the crossfire. And worse, what if this wasn’t a usual hunt for lab subjects; what if they weren’t taking pre-selected vampires, chosen for the fact that they could disappear without a trace? Whatever their original purpose here had been, they could have easily decided that the risk of burning everyone to the ground—destroying the community that was keeping vampires out of their reach—served them better than collecting new specimens.
Shane must have seen Andres’s worry, because he restated, “Ihaveto help.”
“Then please be safe,” Andres replied. He slipped off his long jacket and slid it onto Shane, barely realizing that he was unfolding Shane’s arms, gliding fresh fabric up the crook of his elbow, all without Shane shying away even once. Andres’s throat felt tight, a lump forming at the base. “In case you end up outside,” he explained belatedly.
Then, all hell broke loose.
