Breath heaving, I sucked warm, moist air, bent over, the H&K still in one fist. I had never taken the safety off, which was a good thing, or I might have loosed a shot during the run. In my other hand was the vamp-killer, the silver plating stinking slightly from contact with vamp blood.

Leo had fed from or fought Katie again. Whatever had happened between them tonight, it had pushed him over the edge. Again. I tracked his scent to the house across the street. It had a convenient, low, brick wall, where someone could sit in the shadows, loitering undetected. Leo wasn’t the only one who had used it to keep an eye on the house.

I didn’t have a key to my side gate, so I limped to the front door and knocked, feeling the house wards buzz against me, recognizing me. My skin glistened with sweat and blood had trailed down my side, soaking my clothes, and down my leg, to puddle on the ground. The door opened. Bruiser stood there wearing sweatpants riding low on his hips and a lose tank with huge armholes. His arms were bare, revealing well-cut musculature, which would have been a nice sight, if I hadn’t been hurting. He was scowling, which wasn’t so nice. But the envelope was still in front of the door, untouched as well as I could see.

“You’re bleeding,” he spat.

I limped in the door and closed it behind me. “Get something to wash away the blood outside. Turn off the lights. A cop saw me fighting and I’m too recognizable. I’d rather not answer questions.”

Evangelina, her eyes wide, was standing at the kitchen doorway holding a serving platter with mugs; I smelled hot tea, raw sugar, and real cream. “Son of a witch on a stick.” She set the tray onto the bottom step that led to the second floor, asking, “What got you?”

“Leo,” I said. Bruiser swore foully and raced to the front door. “Don’t worry. I didn’t stake him.”

“I’ll get my first-aid kit,” Evangelina said. A witch who traveled with her own first-aid kit struck me as hilarious. I couldn’t help the laughter that escaped, hysterical and wild, as adrenaline broke down into toxins and flooded my system with the biological equivalent of poison. She checked her wards, asking, “Vampire blood?”

I looked down at myself and saw the blood. There was an awful lot of it. “Some. I think most of it’s mine,” I managed, huffing between guffaws that seemed to be getting worse.

“Take her to her shower,” Evangelina ordered. “I’ll take care of the blood.” She took the vamp-killer from my hand and held it to the side. Seeing the witch holding the blade in two fingers brought my laughter up harder and Evangelina shook her head in worry. “Hot water. Not all vampire blood is acidic and poisonous but some is.”

“Humans drink it,” Bruiser said in surprise.

“And some blood-servants don’t thrive. And some vampires can’t reproduce except with the bite. And some scions don’t wake up sane. Ever.”

“Leo drank from Katie,” he said, thinking. “Dead blood can make unstable vamps more unstable.”

There was something important in the words, but before I could make sense of it, Bruiser picked me up, his body heated and dry against my cooling sweat. My chuckles stopped as if cut off with a knife. The touch of his skin sent my mind skittering and skipping, like a rock spun out over still water. He carried me through my bedroom to my bath and set me on the shower seat. He tossed a huge bath towel over the door, up high, out of the way of the spray, and turned on the water, holding his hand under the flow while I watched, silent, breathless. From my run. Not from the sight of him. No way.

Bruiser turned the hot water on me and steam burst up from the stall floor and walls, beating me. Drenching me. Heating me from the outside in. Pressing my clothes against my body. Stinging in the deeper cuts and making them bleed afresh, especially the one on my knee. The fang wound. And the one on my side. Claw marks, not deep but long and tearing and bleeding profusely. My left side, above my collarbone. He’d been aiming to rip out my throat. I shivered in delayed response. The Master of the City had tried to kill me. Again. But this time it wasn’t personal. Simply a predator-prey response. He saw me run, and gave chase. I threw back my head and laughed again.

Blood swirled and flowed around my bare feet and Bruiser’s, thick and scarlet, then thinner, weakened by the water flow. I shivered harder, looking up from our feet as Bruiser knelt in front of me, his face on a level with mine. Eyes piercing as blades. Hair and clothes plastered to his skin. Water running over his body like caressing hands.

He traced my limbs, looking for injuries, raised my arms, pulled me forward, so he could see my back, lifted my shirt to check my stomach and studied the lacerations from Leo’s claws. Methodical. Careful. Asexual as a medical technician or nurse. He sat back and held up my feet to see the black asphalt stains and cuts. He winced and took up a bar of soap. And washed my feet.

My laughter stopped abruptly. Tears he couldn’t see because of the shower water gathered and fell as shock replaced the last vestiges of hysteria. He’s washing my feet. His hands moved the soap over my arches, toes, heels and up my calves, massaging and stroking, bubbles rinsing away as soon as they formed. When he was done, he cleaned the fang wound in my thigh, knowing what it was. He had to know what it was. He’d had plenty.

He shook his head as something flashed through his eyes and was gone. “Are you all right?” he asked, his lips moving, his voice lost beneath the roar of the pounding water, his eyes holding mine, requiring an answer. I nodded. “Can you get your clothes off, or do you need my help?” Still no seduction to his words or his tone. Worry. Fear. Anger beneath the surface of that. But no seduction.

But he had washed my feet. And his hands had been ... not casual. Not at all. “I can do it,” I murmured, water pouring into my mouth as I spoke. Bruiser nodded once, the approval of a master sergeant to a trooper. He started to stand and my eyes followed him up. He stopped, midmotion. Becoming as still as the vampire who gave him prolonged life. Slowly, Bruiser leaned forward, gripped my head in both hands. And lowered his face to mine.

He kissed me. Heat arced between us. Sizzling like lightning. A breath left my lungs empty, wanting. I groaned, the sound lost beneath the roar of the water. He yanked me to him, my back arching, his mouth punishing. A bonfire of need exploded within me. I reached for him, his arms and neck slick with water. A rosy glow seemed to envelop me. He leaned into me where I sat, crushing me against the stall wall. I dug in with my fingers and nails, holding him against me. Shower water poured over our faces, our lips.

Liquid and burning, heat flared between us, wet as the shower, intense, building like the steam that billowed around us. He lifted me, one hand sliding under my bottom and taking my place on the shower seat. Pulling me to his lap, my legs around him.

And he ripped off my shirt. Tossed it to the floor. His hands and mouth were everywhere, sucking, pulling, stroking, biting. I arched harder to him, hearing my voice in the distance, buried beneath the roar of the water, “Yes, yes. Please.”

I don’t know how I heard the bathroom door open, but I did. Evangelina! Beast fast, I pushed away from Bruiser and grabbed the towel, covering myself. I pushed open the shower door and stepped out in a cloud of steam, shutting it behind me.

Unable to meet Evangelina’s eyes, I said, “Let me get dried off. I’ll meet you in the kitchen.” I don’t know what she saw in my face, but she left the room without speaking, the door clicking shut softly behind her as bloody water drained off me to the clean floor.

I dropped to the toilet seat and sat. In the shower stall, the water went off. A long silent moment later, Bruiser opened the stall door and stepped out. Dripping, he stared down at me as water sluiced down his face and body, puddling on the tile floor. “This will happen,” he said, a roil of anger beneath his tone.

I shook my head, breaking his stare. He said, “It will.” And he left the bath, wet footprints trailing him, his clothes molded to his body.

I shut the door and removed my shorts, tossing them and the now bloody towel both into the stall on top of my T-shirt. I held a folded washcloth to the wound in my knee and another to my collarbone. The bleeding soaked through the wash-cloths and I added another, pressing to stop the flow, knowing that the terrycloth would give the blood plenty of surface to clot on.

I could shift to heal the wounds, and shift back, but there was no way to explain it to my visitors. Ten minutes later, the flow had stopped. And my heartbeat had slowed and steadied. In the bedroom, I pulled on a pair of shorts, a tee, and my robe. Tightened the belt ruthlessly.

Embarrassed but not willing to show it, I marched to the kitchen and plopped onto a chair at the table, one hand holding each cloth. It was an ungainly march but it was all the pride I had left at the moment.

Bruiser was nowhere to be seen. Evangelina didn’t look up when I entered, as if allowing me the privacy I needed, though I’d never thought her capable of such delicacy of feeling. She pushed away the cloth on my knee, murmuring, “Let me see.” She prodded and pushed at the wound, which welled with blood. She replaced the cloth and worked my leg, as if checking the joint and tendons. “Does this hurt? This? How about this?” I said no to each query and she opened a sterile packet to remove a long metallic probe. Which she inserted into the wound.

I hissed and gripped the chair seat with my free hand to keep myself from slapping her, holding my chest wound tight enough to hurt myself. “Do you have the faintest idea what you’re doing?” I asked.

“Not really,” she lied with a small smile. “I just like hurting you. It’s deep, but it feels like it missed bone and tendon. It needs some stitches.”

“No,” I said, ungraciously. “Put some of that antibiotic stuff on it and tape it.” I didn’t want to worry about stitches when I shifted next. And it was starting to really hurt. And I was mortified about the shower with Bruiser. Could I be any more lewd? Or stupid? I had a bad feeling I could. “No stitches. No doctor.” I pulled the robe open and removed the pad.

Evangelina shrugged and said, “Let me see the ribs.”