Page 27 of Total Eclipse of the Moon
"I swear I won’t do it again."
The space between them disappeared as her arms wrapped above his shoulders to cradle his head. He snaked an arm around her waist and grabbed a handful of her ass. They needed privacy. They needed a surface. The bench would work. The side of the building looked promising.
Desperation clawed at her, eroding her control. The months apart dissolved. The tension, the pent-up frustration, all the times she’d touched herself while longing for him…
He grabbed her hands where they worked the zipper of his pants and brought them behind her back. She blinked up at him, confused and dazed. He bent his head to her neck and kissed a spot on her shoulder. His heart beat hard. Little pants of breath from him hit her neck.
She was the first to speak as they stood there. "You’re really good at that."
"At what?"
"Making me hot. Kissing me. Making me forget where we are."
His mouth curved upward a bit as he took a step away. "This has to be some sort of spell you cast on me, which we need to reverse. But…" He righted his shirt, fixed his pants, and put distance between them. "We have company."
"I hate that I missed some good action. Had to wait for the sun to set. Limitations, you know." A vampire she recognized as Antonio stalked down the small path between plants. He paused above the lycan body. "Charred lycan. Horrible stench." He waved a hand in front of his nose. "Is he dead?"
Shane shot him a double eyebrow raise. "Unless he's about to become a zombie, I'd say so. Not our doing. The collar killed him."
The vampire cocked his head at her, evaluating. "It’s been a while, Madeline."
"Antonio." She nodded stiffly, cold suffusing her. "How canyoupossibly be friends with Shane?"
"We work together. It helps to have someone like me on the team." He leered an expanse of white teeth and sharp fangs. The problem with the vampire was he had certifiably psychopathic tendencies, according to Cora. When Cora met Antonio fifteen years ago, he had trouble understanding others’ emotions. He was able to detach from situations too easily. Cora speculated it was more age-related rather than a true psychopathic problem. The older all nonhumans got the tougher it was to connect to others.
"How do you know her?" Shane asked.
"Mutual acquaintance."
"Why did you never mention this?"
"You never asked." Typical of the vampire to know Shane wanted to find her yet not mention they’d met before. "It’s not as if my meeting her in passing several years ago through a mutual friend would’ve been remotely helpful to you."
"We could’ve gone to the mutual friend." Shane's cheek muscles tightened.
"That would’ve been a bad idea. Madeline may be a passably gifted witch, but…" Antonio said to her, "How is mi bruja hermosa?"
She blinked at him. He'd just called her aunt his beautiful witch?
"Does she still have green or purple hair?"
"It’s a different color now."
Antonio and Cora had been in the middle of a short-term fling when Madeline met Antonio. On one of Madeline’s vacation days from dodging MI6 assassins, she’d bumped into the vampire at Cora’s home. Memorable, since he’d been naked in the kitchen drinking blood from a travel cup when they met. His inability to emote, obvious from his lack of care about her distressed state that day, had put a gigantic damper on his and Cora’s relationship. No one as highly sensitive and emotional as Cora could tolerate someone so blatantly cold on purpose. Cora said she tried to teach him how to feel, but as much as they both enjoyed the sex, Antonio couldn’t connect. She guessed if he "worked with" Shane then in a life-or-death situation he’d be useful since he could probably remain detached and be deadly to the extreme.
Fully expecting them to part ways, she announced, "We should all leave."
Shane bent over at the waist. His left hand was trembling. The side of his face twitched. The skin from his eyebrow to nose jerked in small spasms.
"Shit," Antonio said. "On a scale from zero to ten, where are you, Shane?" He whipped off his suit jacket and wrapped it around Madeline. He said low to her, "To hide the blood that’s all over you. We’re about to have to move fast and no doubt will run into people. You’re going to stay with us until you and Shane chat, but first, we resolve his current issue."
"What’s wrong with him?" She tried to figure out why Shane seemed different. In the low ambient light, his irises had gone dark. Gone was the brilliant blue color of a summer sky in the tropics. Had to be something to do with the demon inside him.
Shane stuttered, "A-a-at le—least a nine."
"Keep up with me, Madeline." Antonio hoisted Shane onto his shoulder without so much as a grunt, a tribute to his strength. In a blink, he was running with his load through a knee-high hedge maze illuminated by a few dim streetlights.
"What’s going on?" She ran beside the vampire through the gardens, branches catching on her pants.
