My skin was abraded from his beard, all around my mouth and jaw. My breasts. Lower. He had seen the raw places, when we still had sunlight, and tried to get up and shave. I had refused. Told him about big-cats and how they marked their mates. After that, Bruiser, my Bruiser, had marked me. Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere.

I had bitten him, drawing blood once. Beast had kept claws out and hooked into his flesh. It had to have hurt; it had to have been excruciating. But he hadn’t stopped. Bruiser was healed now. Onorios are hard to damage. Good thing.

Out front, a car horn honked. A woman laughed. I sighed, low and long.

“You’re awake,” he murmured.

I smiled slightly, my mouth still bruised and tender. “Mmmhmm.”

He rolled over in the shadows, propping his head onto an elbow so he could see me. “No woman, in all my long life, has ever come to me”—he tipped his head forward and quickly licked my breast, his tongue leaving the nipple to grow cool and tight. Laughter and satisfaction filled his voice—“wearing jeans and a bacon T-shirt, and nothing else.” I tilted my head to see him better. The widow’s peak on his forehead was a pointed darkness on his pale skin, picked out by the streetlights coming through the open balcony doors, and into the bedroom.

“Everything’s better with bacon,” I whispered. He rolled over and collapsed against me, his laughter so exhausted it was little more than a rough breath.

CHAPTER 16

The Plink of Blood Slowed and Stopped

We returned to the cold feast near nine. At some point in the long afternoon and evening, Bruiser had put the oysters and meat in the refrigerator. Nothing smelled spoiled and we were ravenous, and so we sat on a blanket and pillows he tossed on the couch, which he pulled away from the wall to face the balcony. In the flickering shadows of a single candle, we ate wilted salad and drank room-temperature wine and fed each other oysters and Andouille sausage with our fingers. Nothing in my entire life had ever tasted so good.

While we ate, I told him about Satan’s Three and the arcenciel attacking me. Unlike a human man, he didn’t get all protective or worried after the fact. He just listened while I talked, stroked my hair when I described the attack and the distinct scent patterns of the arcenciels. He agreed with me that there must have been two arcenciels at the warehouse, one that was there when the vamps were, and then, later, Soul. He was a man who let me be me. It was different. And nice. And sooo . . . Bruiser.

We made love again, slowly, our bodies crushed together on the couch. This time, his hands were gentle, scarcely touching, his fingertips suspended at the instant where flesh met flesh. Soft caresses, leisurely and deliberate, our pleasure withheld, rising and ebbing. When we were done, I lay beside him, limp and fulfilled, every inch of me. And every inch of him.

Out front I heard a car pull up and a door open and close. I flew from the couch so fast I was a smudged replication in the mirror near one of the balcony doors. Almost as fast, Bruiser rose up on the couch. “What?”

“Leo,” I whispered. “Leo is here.” Bruiser’s scent changed, a smell like burned stone. “Bruiser?” Faster than a human could ever hope to move, yet seeming to glide, Bruiser rolled to his feet and disappeared into his bedroom.

He answered, his voice little more than a murmur. “The last words between my former master and I were not totally clear regarding you.” From the doorway, my jeans came flying; I yanked them out of the air and onto me, careful of the killer zipper this time. A moment later Bruiser emerged wearing the thin pants and T-shirt from the afternoon.

“Not totally clear,” I replied softly. “He told you to stay away from me.”

“Yes. But he did not tell you to stay away from me.” Bruiser sounded smug, vigilant, and meticulous. Cautious. He slid one of his dress shirts off of a hanger and over my head. As if I were a child, he rolled up the cuffs. “What? No bacon shirt for Leo?”

“No.” Bruiser placed the back of his hand against my cheek for a moment, watching my face to read my reaction. “I’m having it framed to hang on the wall over my bed.”

I spluttered with laughter. “Very artsy. Are we in trouble? You know he’ll know what we’ve been up to.”

“Perhaps I am in trouble. He already knows, I’m sure,” Bruiser said, turning away. “The apartment reeks of sex. With the balcony doors open, he knew everything the moment he opened his car door. He’s being excessively polite, allowing us time to get presentable.” Bruiser’s eyes pierced up at me. “I will attempt to control the situation.”

I chuffed out a breath and picked up my silver stakes, twining my hair into a messy bun and securing it with them, easy to hand. “This should be fun,” I muttered. “Not.” But he had a point. Neither of us had showered since sometime in midafternoon and we’d been busy since then. Several times.

Bruiser shoved the couch back in place and tossed the blanket into the bedroom. He took a bottle of red wine from the wine cabinet and opened it. He poured it into a carafe, holding the bottle high over his head and allowing the wine to gurgle and splash down and into the crystal. “Letting it breathe, the fast way,” he explained. “A sacrilege, but the best I can do under the time constraints.” He removed three deep-bowled crystal glasses from a cabinet and set everything on a wood tray on the island. He put a sharp knife on the tray.

I took a seat at the bar, turning one of the white leather bar chairs at an angle so I could see the door and the balcony too. And the bed. It was neatly made. Dang. Bruiser was fast when he needed to be. And agonizingly slow when he needed to be too, for which reason I was very sore, even with Beast’s fast healing. I fidgeted in the uncomfortable chair, noting only now that there were three white leather chairs. How handy.

A knock came at the door and Bruiser opened it. Leo stood on the other side, motionless, not breathing, not moving, his pale skin seeming to glisten in the light of the single candle still burning. Leo was wearing a black tuxedo, the tie loose at his throat. His hair, black and lustrous, lay on his shoulders. It had grown several inches in the time I’d lived in New Orleans.

“I am honored that the Master of this City would visit me,” Bruiser said with polite precision. “Please come in.”

Without a word, Leo entered, Derek on his heels. Derek was dressed in Enforcer leathers, weaponed up like a modern-day samurai. I tensed all over, but his eyes passed over Bruiser and me, sweeping the apartment and checking the balcony, bedroom, bathroom, closet, moving the way a human did when he’s been well fed on vamp blood—fast and smooth and powerful. When Derek was satisfied, he took a place at the door, his hands hanging close to his weapons.