So, she’d stopped.
But where?
I started walking on silent feet, stopping when I heard the scuffle of something that sounded like a body against asphalt.
The swish of a shoe dragging across loosened gravel. A low male curse.
Then I sensed the heightened heartbeat.
The same irregular heart rate that I’d been obsessed with—only in this instance it was beating way too fast. Much faster than her regular heart rate.
I took off running and arrived at the scene of my worst fear within seconds.
I’d spent the last few nights replaying in my mind why exactly I couldn’t have an affair with the woman.
She was soft. She was weak. She had an irregular heartbeat that I knew would kill her one day soon, and she was Austin PD’s golden child.
No, I had to stay away from her.
Or at least that’s what I told myself.
Looking at her now, a man smacking her around while he hurriedly tried to rip his jean’s fly open, I realized that I couldn’t stay away any longer.
With a vicious growl, I leaped the remaining distance that separated me from Acadia and snapped the guy’s neck.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
Acadia, in shock, stared at me with helplessness, then threw herself at me.
It was a surprisingly fast move for a woman that was living on borrowed time. One second she was lying there, weeping, and the next she was in my arms, and I was pulling her in tight.
“You’re warm,” she breathed.
I snorted. “Yes.”
I didn’t mention that I’d drank from someone as I waited for her to come back out of her house once she’d arrived home from that heinous ball that I was forced to go to. It’d been one of her neighbors. I could tell because she smelled faintly of the woman in my arms, meaning they spent at least some time together at some point this evening.
She was smart enough to figure it out. And not to say anything.
Asking sometimes got you an answer you weren’t ready to hear.
“I just nearly died,” she whispered. “He would’ve killed me.”
I didn’t know about that, but he definitely wasn’t there to give her a little tickle play, that was for sure.
“I…”
The familiar whirrurp of a squad car had me sighing.
I’d, of course, heard them coming.
However, I was a glutton for punishment.
I was also screwed.
There was only one place I was going from here, and that was in the back of that squad car.
The thing about vampires in today’s day and age—with us being out—things were definitely a lot more tense than they’d been in times past.
Such as now.
Had I explained to the cop that was barreling down on me with his weapon pulled that I’d just defended the woman in my arms from being raped, they would’ve slowed down and gotten our statements.
As it was, my face was very familiar to the men and women of Harris County.
They knew me. They knew what I did and who I was.
They also knew that I was the most powerful vampire in the city, meaning instead of getting information, they shot first, and asked questions later.
Though, had I not wanted to cooperate, I would’ve been gone before they’d gotten the first word in.
“Put your hands up above your head.”
I tossed Acadia an apologetic look and went to move my hands to my head.
Unfortunately for me, my hand got stuck about midair because Acadia had refused to let go, and when I didn’t comply fast enough because she was practically glued to me, I got a stake to the heart for my troubles.
CHAPTER 5
Stake to the heart, and you’re too late.
-Things you shouldn’t sing when a man dies after defending you
ACADIA
“I don’t fucking care how dangerous the man is!” I screamed. “He saved me from being raped, Weasel.”
“Don’t call me Weasel here, Acadia. You know my name. Use it.”
I narrowed my eyes at my jerk of a brother, Corbin—the one that was on the total opposite end of the spectrum compared to Nash, my other brother—and crossed my arms over my chest.
“I’m serious. The man didn’t do anything wrong but save me. He had my pants lowered, and his hand on his fly. There was nothing else he could’ve done at that point,” I explained.
He moaned. “I can’t. He’s a vampire. Things don’t work with them the same as they work for you or me.”
“I know that I’m going to throw the biggest hissy fit right now if you don’t get him into a windowless cell and find him something to eat.” I slammed my hand down on the book resting on top of his desk. “It says right here in the Vampire Articles of the Confederation that if they’re to stay over six hours in a cell, that they have to be fed. It’s been eight. You owe him that, by law. Not to mention it’s only an hour until dawn.”
My brother gave me a look reserved for meddling little sisters.
“I know how to do my job, Acadia.”
I growled.
“If you knew how to do your job, your trigger-happy cop butt-muncher wouldn’t have stabbed Constantine with a stake in the first place,” I informed him. “Not to mention if he hadn’t moved, it would’ve gone into my chest better than it went into his… not that it went into his really well.”
And it hadn’t.
I’d had an up-close and personal view of the entire debacle, and it was definitely one that I didn’t want to repeat. Or hear ever again.
I could still hear the grate of wood on bone, and it was enough to make my stomach heave for not the first time that night.
The entire thing, however, was a lesson in learning.
Meaning that if I ever needed to kill a vampire, trying to shove a stake through his heart wasn’t the most efficient way. Mostly because the chest was a hard cavity to penetrate, even when you had the correct tools needed to do so.
For a woman like me, with no muscle whatsoever in my arms, I’d have to do some serious research if I ever wanted or needed to kill a vampire in the future.
“The cop has been reprimanded for his overreaction,” my brother said tiredly. “That fact, however, doesn’t negate the fact that he did kill someone.”
“Someone that had his cock in his hand and ready to stick it into our sister by using force,” my other brother, Nash, snarled as he walked into the room.
Corbin growled in frustration and dropped to his seat. It was the first time I’d seen him sit down in well over the hour that I’d been here. The rest of the time I’d been waiting to speak to him while he divvied out directions to every single person that happened to walk by.
Even his secretary had gotten directions—though those directions had been to go get him and me lunch.
Which she arrived with only half a minute later.
“Here you go, Chief.”
“Thank you, Marcy,” Corbin said tiredly. “Have you eaten yet?”
Corbin’s concerned voice had me freezing, and I looked at him. Then I moved my gaze over to Marcy, his ‘secretary.’
How had I not seen that before? Did my big brother have a crush?
“I bought myself a sandwich as well, sir,” Marcy said softly.
The blush was absolutely darling, too.