Page 92 of Edge of Darkness (Night Prowler 4)
When he saw the look on her face, his voice hardened. “This is not a discussion. I’m informing you of the facts. You’re going to sign that agreement for the bookstore, and you’re going to let your wicked stepmother have her share so she’ll leave you alone, and then you can go right back to working there if you want. But you’re going to sign it.”
Dizzy with his declaration and still glowing from pleasure, she decided to argue about the store later. “Wicked stepmother?”
A wry smile crossed his face. “Señor Alvarez had a few choice things to say about our friend Marguerite. A few very unflattering things.” He leaned down and kissed her shoulder. “You’re trembling,” he noted, running his hand up her arm.
“Your fault, Mr. Sex God. I probably won’t be able to walk for days.”
He tensed. “Did I hurt you?” he whispered, his fingers caressing her upper arm.
With her heart aching and tears burning her eyes, Ember wrapped her arms around him, and buried her face in his neck. “Never,” she whispered. “I’m just trembling from happiness. You make me so happy, Christian. Thank you.”
He exhaled a relieved breath and chuckled, brushing the hair off her face. “I like this side of you, little firecracker. I certainly hope you’re going to be this defenseless and tender every time we make love.”
“Only one way to find out.”
He chuckled again. Then he swiftly sat up, gathered her in his arms and stood. “Yes, let’s go find out right now. Only I think I’d like to be in a bed this time; rug burn isn’t really my thing.”
He walked swiftly through the dark house and up the stairs, and carried her to his bedroom. They made love again in his huge, soft bed, and this time it was tender and slow and even more beautiful. Afterward, Christian fell asleep wrapped around her, one heavy leg thrown over both of hers, his breathing deep and steady at her ear.
But Ember couldn’t sleep. Even when dawn showed faintly pink and gold over the horizon, she was still staring up at the ceiling, trying to put her finger on the sense of dread that had overtaken her at Christian’s words, his promises she would be taken care of.
I’m going to ensure that you never again have to worry about money, or the future, or anything at all.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that three words were missing from that sentence. Three words that would have been equally at home at the beginning or the end.
After. I’m. Gone.
Dante had a very bad feeling about the man who’d knocked on his door, rousing him from sleep in the middle of the night.
It wasn’t the look in the man’s dark, dark eyes—a look so wild it was nearly unhinged—or his size, which was substantial, or the charcoal drawing he held in one crooked, bandaged hand, or the way he’d demanded to know where the girl in the drawing now lived.
It was the gun he pointed in Dante’s face.
Slowly, with his hands held up in submission, the night air swirling around his bare shins beneath his robe, Dante repeated in a shaking voice what he’d just said, a lie he was hoping wouldn’t get him killed.
“She moved out. I-I don’t know where she went.”
He said it in English this time, because the man with the gun clearly didn’t speak Spanish. Dante had a fleeting, deranged thought that maybe the man spoke Martian. He had an unnervingly alien look about him, all eye
s, teeth, and appetite.
Keeping his wild black gaze trained on his, the man silently stepped over the threshold into Dante’s apartment. He kicked the door shut behind him, and Dante retreated, terrified but saying a silent prayer of thanks that Clare was in the hospital, and not in her bed in the second bedroom.
The man lowered the gun to the general level of Dante’s crotch. “I’ll give you three seconds. And then I’m going to start shooting things. Things that won’t kill you right away, but will hurt. A lot.” He paused as Dante gaped at him in horror, then said, “One.”
“I told you! She moved out! I don’t keep records of where the tenants go when they leave. She didn’t tell me where she was moving—”
“Two.” The man grew an ugly smile, a malicious specimen that bared his teeth in a truly horrific, animalistic display.
Dante was sweating. His heart raced, his hands trembled, his bowels threatened to spill their contents onto the tile floor. “I swear!” he shouted, backing away. “I don’t know!”
“Three.”
The man’s finger moved to the trigger and every thought except surviving blew out of Dante’s head. “The docks! The docks at El Raval! The building is called La Brisa Marina!” He screamed it at the top of his lungs, then sucked back in a breath of dismay, instantly realizing what he’d done.
Ember would be getting a visit from this crazy man next.
Before he had time to contemplate that, the man smiled another of his feral smiles, darted forward in two short steps, and smashed the butt of his gun directly into Dante’s temple.
