Page 56 of The Biting Bargain

The line flickers a little, but otherwise my contact in Cape Town sounds like they are sitting in the next room.

"Just what I emailed you," I say. "Will it be enough?"

"We'll find him, sir." I hear a keyboard clacking with fingers typing away at lightning speed. "Give us one month."

"Bonus, if you can speed things up."

"You got it."

I end the call, staring at the night-black window in front of me. At the reflection of my naked body in the dark glass.

I am a vampire.

The top of the food chain.

No one, no mortal being, can hold a candle to me.

But why don't I feel that way? What is that strange sensation I don’t seem to shake?

I turn. Behind me in the rumpled bed my companion is asleep, still naked and spent, disheveled waves of her butterscotch hair fanning out on the pillow.

The wolf back in my mind growls low as another flicker of that strange sensation ripples through me.

That damned ex-boyfriend of hers who dragged her into this mess better brace himself for some very unpleasant comings. By the time I'm done with him, he's going to wish he only had to deal with DiMartino and his merry band of lowlifes.

He will pay for ever having touched her.

I frown, because that doesn't sound like me. That kind of thing keeps happening lately. Adding to that, that strange flicker I noticed earlier seems to be growing, like the tendrils of a rather stubborn kind of weed.

Polly stirs in her sleep and I step closer.

For some cosmic reason I don’t fully comprehend, it's important to me that she gets out of this in one piece.

When this ends — and it will end, once Aidan finds the antidote — Polly will return to her normal life. And I'll go back to mine.

But I want her to return to a world where her ex pays for his sins. Where she's safe from the likes of DiMartino.

I sink back down on the bed next to her, letting my gaze slide over her. She whispers something in her sleep, curls up some more.

Following another strange impulse, I take the blanket and spread it over Polly. Then I quickly get up and move away from the bed. Disappear into my en-suite bathroom and stand under a very cold shower for a very long time, wondering what the hell is wrong with me.

ChapterTwenty-Seven

Polly

Two days later,it’s time for Vincent to represent at his precious club again. We are in yet another in a fancy assembly hall, and I am sitting on an exceedingly lavish chaise longue, munching away on appetizers as discreetly as I can manage.

Last time I was this ravenous was when Luna talked me into joining her training for the New Hamburg marathon. (Needless to say, after the first and only session I could barely move for the next three days).

Who knew sex would make you so hungry?

Vincent, on the other hand, doesn’t suffer from such mortal ailments, it seems. He sits next to me, twirling the other end of my leash loosely in his large hand, apparently busy observing the crowd. The vampires are busy bobbing champagne and exchanging gossip while looking bored. At least Stellan is nowhere to be seen. A fact I am not too sad about. That particular gentleman really gives me the creeps.

It also relieves me somehow that we stay upstairs this time. You know, where people have clothes on.

Just then, Vincent throws me another one of those looks, dark and searing, that feel like a heatwave on my skin.

I swallow the last roll of pistachio foam and a tendril of liquid lust unfurls in my abdomen at the mere memory of the last forty-eight hours.

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