Not answering, she slammed her way into her bedroom. Ten long minutes later she stepped back out. This time, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, she was dressed in skintight jeans tucked into knee-high black boots, topped with a close-fitting black tee over which she’d thrown a hip-length leather jacket in the same shade. He’d been right—her br**sts were luscious, her body a knockout.
Walking over to stop bare inches from a female form that was all but vibrating with rage, he reached out to touch her, the compulsion undeniable. A blur of movement, an elbow to his chest, his legs being kicked out from under him, and suddenly he was crashing onto the floor, looking up at an Honor who was no victim.
Dmitri laughed.
Honor didn’t know what she’d expected, but that laugh, deep and masculine and hotly real, wasn’t it. When he lifted a hand toward her, she ignored it . . . though it was troubling, how much she wanted to straddle that beautiful body and lean down to kiss those sensual, laughing lips—as if he hadn’t just cut into her with the pitiless blade of his voice.
His laughter faded into a smile that was very, very male. “Come here.”
She walked to the door instead . . . but she was no longer so sure that when it came to this madness inside her, a madness that bore Dmitri’s name, that she’d emerge the winner.
Honor froze when Dmitri brought the car to a halt around the back of a discreet black building in Soho. “You bastard,” she said, her voice so soft it was almost not sound. Erotique was the club of choice for the more high-ranked vampires. Its hosts and hostesses—mostly human, but with the occasional “new” vampire thrown in—were trained to know how to deal with the older almost-immortals. Some called the dancers within its exclusive walls the geishas of the West.
Bracing his hand against the back of her seat, Dmitri shot her a glance that appeared darkly amused . . . if you didn’t look into those eyes, cold and brutal. “There is a high chance,” he said in a voice that was black satin over her br**sts, “that at least some of the vampires you’ll meet here tonight have already had a taste of you.”
“Come on, hunter. Scream a little more. The blood tastes better when you do.”
Spots in front of her eyes, her breath strangling in her chest. Her gun was in her hand and pointed at Dmitri’s head before she was aware of pulling it from the shoulder holster. “I’m leaving.”
Dmitri moved at lightning speed, and suddenly her gun was in his grip, that sensual face an inch from her own. “Taunt them with your survival, Honor. Or run like a scared rabbit. Your choice.”
The violence within her body needed release—she wanted to hit Dmitri, bloody him. “Why do you care?” It was a harsh whisper. “I’m just a new diversion for you.”
“True.” Touching the nose of her gun to her cheek. “But I find there’s no fun in playing with someone who’s already half dead.” He put the weapon in her lap and pushed open his door to step out. “Strange,” he murmured, snicking the door shut, “how you sometimes remind me of her, and yet you don’t have even a glimmer of her spirit.”
She stared at his retreating form as he headed toward the back entrance of the club, leaving her alone in a panther of a car, gun heavy in her holster as she slid it back in. His words had been calculated to incite a reaction, but they still hit. Hard.
“You’re no fun anymore, hunter. I expected more resistance to this game.”
Vaulting out of the vehicle, she stalked after Dmitri. He glanced over his shoulder, waited for her to catch up. “Try not to shoot anyone.” A low purr that stroked her senses with an intimacy as lush as the sinuous scent of midnight roses. “We need people to talk.”
They’d reached the door by then, a door the bouncer was already holding open. “Sir,” he said, keeping his eyes scrupulously off Honor.
“He looked surprised,” she said once they were inside the back corridor. “Not usually your scene?”
“No.” Angling his head in her direction as they turned toward the throaty sound of a jazz singer coming from the left, he said, “They’ll assume I have you in my bed.”
13
Closer, the singer’s voice tangled with the music of soft conversation. The voices were elegant, cultured . . . just like the ones she’d heard in the basement. “I know,” she said, determined not to let this drive her back into the dark, “but since you have a reputation for enjoying pain, I’m sure they won’t be surprised if I give in to the need to stab you.”
A gleam of laughter in those eyes so dark and old, but he said nothing as they walked through the doorway into what appeared to be a very genteel bar, complete with a chanteuse in a glittery green dress on a low stage to the side. The lighting was soft, the groupings of tables intimate, the clientele dressed in immaculate formal clothing. “A bit early for cocktails.”
“Or very late,” Dmitri answered. “Time means little here.”
All the men and women in her line of sight were old enough that vampirism had worked its magic, honing their looks to a level of beauty only possessed by the rare mortal. “I expected . . .” In truth, she’d never thought that much about Erotique, but what she had heard focused on an aspect that was missing here. “The dancers?”
“In another section,” Dmitri told her. “There’s an entire floor below us, as well as a number of other more intimate areas similar to this one.”
“Dmitri.” A stunning woman in a clinging black dress that reached her ankles and showcased her assets with sensual elegance crossed the room to them, her steps quick. “I didn’t know you were coming or we’d have set up a private room for you and your guest.”