“I don’t know. Pick one.” There was hostility in my voice, and I wondered where it had come from. Why can I never say the right thing?

“Argh!” he grunted, looking frustrated. Scarlett Bernard, frustrator of men. His fingers flexed, and I realized he was angry. “You know, Scar, I get that you got a raw deal. What happened to you was awful. Will still feels guilty that he didn’t see it coming, or warn you, or whatever. But just because she turned out to be—”

“Shut up,” I said too sharply, then regretted it. “You don’t know anything about that, so just drop it.”

“Tell me, then. Talk to me like I’m a real person and not just a penis that delivers your whiskey.”

“Why?” I asked, unable to look at him. I stared at the steering wheel instead. “What’s the point? You can’t change any of it.”

“Maybe not. But I’d still like a shot at making you laugh.”

I did look at him then, startled. His light-blue eyes were calm and direct—no bullshit. I sighed and reached down to turn on the engine. “Look, Eli, if you don’t want to sleep with me anymore, fine. But—”

To be honest, I’m not sure what I was about to say. I never got a chance to find out, though, because at that exact moment, the driver’s side door was wrenched open, and a large head poked into the car. “Ladies,” said the enormous man, and the passenger-side door popped open, too. Eli had unbuckled, was trying to push his way out of the car, and the guy on my side reached in and punched me in the left eye.

“Son of a bitch,” I gasped, and Eli looked like he was about to howl. Eli is not a small man, and even in human form, I couldn’t believe the guy on his side was able to keep him in the seat.

“Stay, boy,” said the giant on my side of the van. He held up a wicked-looking handgun, pressing it against my temple, and Eli went very still next to me.

“Get her out,” ordered the man who’d appeared next to Eli, a weaselly-looking guy in a cheap dark suit.

Eli and I were dragged out of the van and marched around the back. I saw the slick-looking SUV the two men must have brought idling a few feet away. I’d been too involved in my romantic drama to even notice it arrive.

“Cuffs,” said the giant, and the smaller man pulled out a glaringly shiny set of handcuffs. It took me a second to realize why they gleamed.

Oh God. “Silver,” I breathed.

The giant nodded, looking very smug. “You got it, bitch.”

The weaselly guy put the handcuffs on Eli. “So you can’t follow,” he rumbled, a surprisingly deep voice. Then he kicked Eli viciously in the stomach, and Eli doubled over, gasping. The guy kicked him in the ribs a couple of times for good measure, and I realized that I was screaming. The giant just reached down and picked me up, throwing me over his shoulder and into the back of the SUV, where he scooted in right after me.

The weaselly guy jumped into the driver’s seat, and I ignored them both, turning in my seat to look at Eli, who was struggling to his feet. The SUV pulled away, and I felt the tug when he left my radius. Eli dropped like a stone in a pond, writhing on the ground in the parking lot.

“What are you doing?” I yelled at the giant next to me. I lunged across the seat and punched him, which would have been completely ineffectual if he hadn’t been taken by surprise. Instead, I got a little weight behind it and hit him straight in the nose.

He cried out in pain, backhanding me across the seat. “You stupid bitch!” he hollered.

I was dizzy with pain for a few seconds from where the side of my head had bounced off the window, and when my vision cleared, the big guy was touching his nose, holding his fingers up to see the blood. He did this again and again, fascinated, and I realized that this was a strange experience for him. I closed my eyes and concentrated for a moment, then popped them open. Vampires. Which I should have realized a hell of a lot earlier. My fingers scrabbled at the lock on my door, but there must have been some sort of child safety setting on because it didn’t budge.

I turned back and said, “I work for Dashiell, you assholes, and he’s going to be really pissed.”

To my surprise, they both chuckled, and the bloody giant leaned over and leered at me. “Bitch,” he said smugly, “who do you think we work for?”

Chapter 11

I stayed quiet for a few minutes, adjusting to both the new information and the pain. If Dashiell had sent these guys to collect me, instead of just calling, he was expecting me to be hostile. To resist.

It’d be a shame to disappoint him. I kicked the back of the driver’s seat in front of me. “Hey. Little guy.”

The giant next to me snickered, and the weasel reached up and fiddled with the rearview mirror so he could glare at me. “What?” he rumbled.

“Why didn’t Dashiell just call me?”

He turned his head to exchange a look with the giant, but neither one of them answered me.

I kicked the seat again. “Hey.”

The big guy reached for me, but the driver barked, “Hugo!”

The giant froze.

So the smaller man was in charge. Interesting.

“We’re not supposed to hurt her yet.”

Fear clenched my heart at the word yet, but I pushed forward. “Sit, Hugo. Stay. Roll the fuck over.”

“What’s one more bruise?” Hugo whined toward the driver. “She’s already going to have two.”

“Knock it off,” he commanded, and Hugo sulked back in his seat.