Page 23 of The Biting Bargain

"It’s none of your damn business where I got this card, but if you really wanna know, that guy put it in my hand in the elevator after you bit me. I've never seen this Stellan Whatshisname in my entire life. Doesn't make much sense to hire me to do anythingafterI have met you, does it?"

The V between his eyebrows deepens, his mouth puckers. It's a pretty good mouth, by the way, I have to admit. I remember how those bad boy lips felt on mine. Way too good.

"Why would Stellan DiAngelo give you his business card?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe he wanted to bite me as well and then not pay me. No idea how things usually work in highborn vampire circles, but where I come from, carousers get banned."

The corner of his mouth twitches up. I shouldn't be so delighted about this, oh no.

"Carousers?" The corner of his mouth pulls up further and his bad boy lips are now in full-on crooked smile mode, a smile that I've been thinking about quite a bit the last few days when I was lying alone and stressed in my bed in the dark…

Get a grip, Polly! This really isn't the time to get all turned on.

He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ears. My mouth gets drier than a sandbox in the red-hot desert in the late afternoon sun and my breath catches in my throat.

"Don't you lie to me, dove," he mutters dangerously low, and I stare mesmerized into his amber eyes. "If I find out you're working for that bastard in any way, you're going to wish those two thugs had just taken you away. Just so you know, I will turn your life into a living hell if anyone finds out what you saw."

I swallow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," he says, leaning even closer, whispering in my ear, and my goosebumps go crazy, "that you'd wish the big bad wolf you saw back in that alley had only eaten you."

I blink. That shadow, the primordial beast, shoots through my mind again, snarling, fangs bared.

Amber eyes.

It can't be. My mind tries to put the two mental puzzle pieces together, but they don't fit.

He cannot actually mean that he was there. That he was that wolf. Can he?

Vincent keeps staring me down. I look back, petrified, barely able to breathe. And for some cosmic reason that totally makes no sense I'm more turned on than ever before.

"I'm not lying," I whisper.

Holy hell, when did gravity stop working? I swear, the ground has disappeared from underneath me.

"I hope so for your sake." His voice is rough and he looks puzzled to the maximum. As if something happened that he didn't expect. His gaze dips down. To my lips.

My heart skips a beat.

For a charged moment, we hang between worlds, and I'm not sure if he is going to make good on his threat or just kiss me — for whatever reason — when the door flies open again with a crash.

"Good news, sir." The handsome doctor storms back into the room. "The test results are back."

"Excellent." Vincent quickly shifts away from me and rises, very casual, sounding so bored that I’m blushing.

Of course, I'm just imagining things. The hot vampire wants to kissme? Disaster Polly? Yeah, right.

I swallow, trying to convince my heart rate to slow the fuck down.

"As I suspected, sir, your curse is active again," the doctor beams, swiping at a tablet. "As of now, you're once again turning into a werewolf uncontrollably."

He smiles as if he'd just announced he'd found the cure for cancer. Vincent's expression darkens.

"That’s supposed to be the good news?" he growls, the muscles on his neck tightening visibly.

The doctor shakes his head, chuckling.

"Of course not, sir. The good part is that at the same time she appears to be lifting your curse again."

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