So no, theirs hadn’t been a grand romance, but to talk of her as disposable? What kind of person did that?
“I thought the same,” Walter murmured. “I’m afraid your abnormally small fangs did lend weight to his words.”
“You, of course,” Venom said, “didn’t rely only on the words of a weak and faithless man.”
“No, indeed,” Walter said as Holly caught the sharp edge of disgust in Venom’s frigid statement. “I spoke to those who haunt the shadows where Holly works, and all were of the opinion that she wasn’t a vampire Made by choice.” Anger lit his expression as he returned his attention to Holly. “People said the circumstances of your Making had caused you to be angry and difficult to control, especially as those circumstances put you outside the Contract structure. You were an annoyance to the Tower.”
If only this man knew how much she’d give to be on a standard Contract.
Venom’s phone vibrated at that instant. Walter Battersby went motionless.
Taking out the phone, Venom scanned the message, then slid it back into an inner pocket of his suit jacket.
“So.” Walter put down his glass. “Are my years of life over?”
“It appears you are to have a stay of execution.” Finishing off the glass of blood Walter had given him, Venom rose to his feet and held out a hand for Holly.
She took it because . . . because, after hearing what David had said about her, she needed not to feel like a monster, and Venom did that for her. Warm and strong, his fingers closed over her palm.
“However,” he continued without glancing at her, “you now work for the Tower in the matter of the bounty on Holly.”
“Of course.” Walter got to his feet and bowed with old-world courtliness. “I will pass on any information that comes to me, though it’s unlikely the client will contact me now that my part in this is over.”
“It’s a long game, Walter. Play it well.” The warning was clear.
Venom didn’t speak again until they were in the elevator. “You are unique, kitty. The Tower considers you many things, but the one thing you are not is disposable.”
She squeezed his hand hard as her throat thickened. She couldn’t speak, not until they were in the car. And then she didn’t talk on the subject of David and his view of her worth. “You liked Walter Battersby, didn’t you?”
“I’ve always had a soft spot for the hustlers of this world.” He floored the pedal, zooming them out of the tony street and startling the drivers of the gleaming black town cars that prowled this part of the city.
Holly laughed, exhilaration in her blood.
Grinning, Venom threw his sunglasses into her lap . . . without slowing. His speed was deathly fast, his reflexes insane. As he displayed when he brought the car to a sudden halt in front of a crosswalk where a homeless man was pushing across his cart. Holly’s seat belt had jerked her safely in place, but her heart thumped a bass beat. “How did you even see him?”
“Do you think I would drive this way if I couldn’t?” He took off as soon as the man was safely past.
Holly screamed and it was a sound of sheer excitement. The roads were quieter at this time of night, but with New York a city loved by night-owl immortals and mortals both, they definitely weren’t empty. Yet Venom made his car flow like liquid around all possible obstacles until she thought that if anyone was watching from above, his car would look like a lightning streak against the black of the tarmac.
They’d just hit a stretch of road that was miraculously empty when Venom came to a total stop. She went to ask him why . . . and glimpsed vivid flame red out of the corner of her eye. Dmitri’s Ferrari, a low-slung crouching tiger of a car, sat on the other side of the passenger window. Dmitri’s hair was windblown and he was laughing, a grinning Honor waving to Holly from the passenger seat. Holly waved back, astonished at this side of Dmitri.
He looked . . . young.
Without warning, Venom gunned the engine and they were off, Dmitri streaking along beside them. Holly whooped as the two vehicles built for speed powered down the straight at insane speed. The waters of the East River rushed up at them.
Venom swung left and onto the road that paralleled the water.
There was more traffic here, but that didn’t stop either Venom or Dmitri. They wove through the traffic as if it didn’t exist. She glimpsed a flash of hot red in her peripheral vision before Venom pulled ahead and the other vehicle disappeared. “You’re winning!”
“Dmitri’s fast, but he’s not a viper.” Grin wild, and his own hair flying back in the breeze after he lowered his window, he pointed up without losing control of the vehicle. “Look right and up.”
That was when she saw there was a third player in the game. Wings of brilliant blue edged with silver raced over the water alongside them, Illium’s speed in the air a thing of beauty. “How can he keep up?”
“He’s the fastest angel in the city, probably one of the fastest in the world.” Venom swung past a lumbering people mover, slid in front of a sedan, then moved back into the other lane so quickly that she wasn’t sure the other drivers had even seen him.
Dmitri’s red Ferrari appeared behind them a second later. The leader of the Seven went to overtake, but Venom blocked his every move. Illium, meanwhile, kept pace as the two vehicles screeched into another turn that threatened to spin the Bugatti.
But the torque forces didn’t win against Venom’s handling and they rocketed away. All the way back home, where he brought his vehicle to a stop in front of the Tower itself. Dmitri pulled up two heartbeats later, looking over through the open window of his car. His grin was as untamed as Venom’s, and when Illium landed in between the two cars, he completed the trifecta of beautiful, dangerous men.
Venom’s fingers touched the back of Holly’s neck, his arm stretched out and braced on the back of her seat as he leaned across to speak to the others. A sudden, sharp sexual awareness rippled through her body, the tiny hairs on her arms rising. She thought she’d caught it in time, but Venom’s hand curled around her nape.
He rubbed his fingers gently over her hypersensitive skin.
She couldn’t look at him, her heart beating so hard in her chest that she could barely hear the conversation the others were having. She heard Illium laugh, saw Honor’s hand on Dmitri’s cheek as she turned his face toward hers for a kiss, watched Illium and Venom bump fists. And felt Venom’s fingers brushing her skin in a slow, rhythmic motion that went straight to her core.
“. . . tomorrow.”
She caught the last word before Dmitri pulled away to drive his vehicle around and down into the Tower garage. Illium lifted off a second later in a wash of wind that blew her hair back from her face.