One Foot in the Grave

TWENTY

BONES SHOWED UP PROMPTLY AT SEVEN THE next night. We had plans to have an early dinner and then escape-until the following morning, anyway. As soon as I’d left the compound the previous evening, Don put round-the-clock surveillance on me. That had been a mood kill, to say the least. They probably had microphones pointed at my house, too, for maximum spying potential.

It pissed me off no end. What did Don think, that if left unsupervised, I’d hold undead rallies to give every pulseless person within a hundred miles a blueprint of his compound? If Don didn’t have such a strong “greater good” agenda, I might have quit my job right then and there.

I was still scowling over it all when I opened the door to let Bones in…and then I stopped and gawked at him.

He wore tailored black pants and a dark blue shirt, his skin radiating against the deep-colored fabric. A black leather jacket was slung loosely over his shoulders and complemented his ensemble. It was the jacket itself that held my attention. It was long, trailing almost down to his calves.

“Holy shit, is that what I think it is?” I blurted.

Bones grinned and did a circle. “You like? After all, you kept your Christmas present”-he nodded to the Volvo in my driveway-“so it only seemed fair to retrieve mine, especially since you took my other jacket.”

The jacket I’d bought him for Christmas years ago fit him perfectly. I’d never had the chance to give it to him, since Don had swooped me up before the holidays. Bones must have pried it out from its hiding place under the loose board of the kitchen cabinet in my old apartment. I’d told him where it was the day before I left him. The thought of Bones going back to get it made me almost burst into tears.

Some of that must have shown on my face, because his expression softened.

“Sorry, luv,” he said, pulling me into his arms. I could almost hear cameras snapping as Don’s spies zoomed in on us. “Didn’t think it would make you sad.”

I put a rein on my emotions. “I’m fine,” I said briskly, giving the leather a light rub. “You look great in it. Just like I pictured you would-except your hair’s different, of course.”

Bones shook his head, making his honey-brown curls sway. “This is my natural color. Didn’t really care about coloring it much lately, and the platinum did stand out more, don’t you agree? Why, which do you prefer?”

I considered it. “Since I met you as a blond, that’s just what feels right to me. But don’t worry. I won’t break out the peroxide later.”

He chuckled low. “Whatever turns you on.”

His eyes roamed over me as he said it, making me feel warm everywhere he looked. I had on a simple, short black sheath that was sleeveless, with a front and back V-neck. Light makeup, no jewelry, definitely no perfume. Every vampire I knew hated that. With their sense of smell, it was always too heavy, no matter how sparingly applied.

“Ready to go?” he asked softly.

“Um hmm.” Somehow I couldn’t come up with a more articulate response. God, I’d wanted nothing more than to spend the night in his arms for literally years now, and very soon I’d get my wish. So why was I so nervous all of a sudden? You’d think I’d somehow morphed into a teenager on prom night.

Bones climbed onto his bike, a snazzy new Ducati. He’d always liked motorcycles, even though they weren’t my favorite method of transportation. Still, the bike was the obvious choice for our plans to lose Don’s tail on us later. For one, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Don had ordered my car bugged while I met with him yesterday, and for another, nobody could catch a vampire on a motorcycle.

Bones gave me an amused look as I put my helmet on and climbed onto the back of the bike.

“I can hear them; they’re scurrying like rats now. Let’s see how well they can keep up. I’ll take it easy on them to start.”

And he gunned the bike, shooting down the street with no regard for the speed limit.

I tightened my arms around his waist. Yeah, this definitely reminded me of old times.

The restaurant Bones took me to was called Skylines. It sat at the top of a twenty-story building overlooking the city. Glass made up the exterior walls for an unobstructed view, and our table was right up against the window. The red and white lights of the cars crawling along the street below us held my gaze, and idly I wondered which contained Don’s men. With all the noise of surrounding traffic and the building’s occupants, it was hard to tell. They were out there, though, I knew it. It was all I could do not to wave at them from my window perch.

“Showing them we haven’t tried to escape?” I commented after the waiter took our wine and appetizer order.

He gave me a smile. “Didn’t want them to come barreling up here and ruin our dinner. Come now, you haven’t even looked at the menu.”

I scanned the food options in front of me, but kept returning my gaze to Bones. I wasn’t alone in admiring him. Bones’s perfectly etched features, matched with that prowling grace, had turned every female head when he walked in. His darker hair contrasted against the smooth brilliance of his skin, and I wondered how its longer length would feel in my hands. The top button was open on his shirt, giving me the faintest peek of his chest, which I knew was as hard as the table we were sitting at. I remembered how erotic it felt to slide my nails down his back and pull him closer. How his power pulsed against my skin when our flesh merged. How green his eyes were when he was inside me. And how his vampiric ability to control where the blood went in his body meant he could make love to me until I was beyond sated.

No wonder I couldn’t concentrate on the menu. Food? Who needed it? All of a sudden, I wasn’t the least bit nervous about later. In fact, I wanted later to be a damn sight sooner.

Bones must have picked up on that, because his eyes began to glint with green flecks.

“Stop it, luv. You’re making it very difficult for me to behave.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said as I recrossed my legs, letting him hear the rub of skin on skin since I was sans hose.

Our wine came. I sipped it while shifting in my seat and casually stroking my cleavage. After years of practice, one thing I’d honed to precision was how to make a vampire hot. It was practically my livelihood, only in this case, there would be no silver stake at the end. How refreshing.

Bones leaned forward. “Do you know how beautiful you are?” There was a gravelly edge to his voice. “Absolutely ravishing. I’m going to spend hours reacquainting my mouth with every inch of your body, and I can barely wait to see if you taste as good as I remember.”

The wine lingered in my mouth a moment before I swallowed. This was the part that wasn’t normal for me. My previous targets had never evoked such a heated response.

“Do we really have to stay for the whole meal?” My eyes locked with his, and I stroked his hand with one finger. “Let’s just take it to go, hmm?”

He opened his mouth to reply-and suddenly I was rolling underneath the neighboring tables with him on top of me. There was the sound of glass shattering and shrill screams. Tables crumpled and people were knocked from their chairs while I wondered what the hell had happened and why my forehead was burning.

I must have instinctively shut my eyes, because when they snapped open, I cried out. Bones’s face was right next to mine, and a blood-smeared hole was staining his hair red before it began to close on itself.

“You’ve been shot!” I gasped. “Someone tried to kill you!”

It took a moment for the facts to register. We were on the floor. He’d rolled me away from our table, but I could still see where we’d been. Three holes punctured the glass, and none of them were by his seat.

Bones pulled me to my feet with his back to the window, and the truth hit me even as he answered.

“Not me, Kitten. You.”