“Are you okay?” she asked, the words leaping from her lips as if she could no longer contain them.
He nodded. His gaze went to the autoinjector Richart held. “How did you find me?” Etienne asked him.
“Krysta answered your phone.”
“Does anyone else know you’re here?”
“Jenna and Sheldon know I’m with you, but not where.”
Etienne turned to Krysta and her brother. “I assume you got me out of there. Thank you. Both of you.”
“You saved my life,” Krysta said. “Again. Thank you.”
Sean nodded. “Thank you.”
Richart held up the autoinjector and drew Etienne’s gaze. “We have a problem.”
A colossal understatement.
Etienne’s eyes widened as a thought occurred. Oh shit. We have to call for a cleanup, he told Richart mentally. If humans haven’t already found the bodies we left lying around, it will be a miracle.
Richart swore and tucked the autoinjector away. I’ll go to Chris now. He glanced out the window. The sun will rise soon. Are you coming with me? Or are you going to stay and handle this? He glanced at their audience.
I’ll stay. And do not give Chris this address. Or their names.
Etienne, they’ve seen too much.
And Jenna didn’t get an eyeful when she was still mortal?
A muscle in his jaw twitched. Jenna could be trusted.
I believe Krysta and Sean can be, too. They saved my life. If that isn’t an endorsement, what is?
“Um,” Krysta broached, “what’s going on? You guys are looking kind of intense.”
Just do what you can to appease Chris when you tell him what happened.
As you wish, brother. Call me if you need me.
Richart nodded at Krysta and Sean, then vanished.
“That is so cool,” Krysta professed.
Etienne smiled. “Yes, it is. I’ve always envied him that talent.” Rising, he reached for the black cargo pants Richart had brought him and tugged them on.
Krysta, he noticed, didn’t even pretend not to watch him, her gaze roving him like fingers and making him wish her brother weren’t in the room with them.
“You can’t do it?” she asked. Had she been the one who had undressed and bathed him?
“Teleport? No.”
“Why is he the only vampire who can do that?”
“I feel pretty! Oh so pretty! I feel pretty and witty and gaaaaaay!”
Etienne raised his eyebrows. What the hell was that?
“Oh.” Krysta grabbed something off a nearby table and held it out to him. “Sorry. Here’s your phone.”
That was coming from his phone?
Sean’s lips twitched.
Etienne frowned. “Damn it. Who keeps changing my ringtone?” He took the cell. “Hello?”
“Finally!” Cam said. “Where the hell have you been? Sheldon called and said you’d been injured and tranqed. Or that he thought you had been tranqued.”
“I was, but I’m all right.”
“Where are you? Do you need me to come and get you?”
“No, I’m safe.”
“Are you sure? Because Richart called, too, and he didn’t sound too confident about that.”
“I’m sure.”
“He didn’t go into details. What’s the situation? What do you need me to do?”
“Nothing. Just sit tight. I’ll fill you in when I return home at sunset,” Etienne ordered, knowing his friend would chafe at having his hands tied.
“Fine. You’re the boss,” Cam griped. “And, Etienne?”
“Yes?”
“Richart told me to tell you Chris knows about the woman.”
Click.
Merde.
Mind racing, Etienne tucked the phone into the back pocket of the pants Richart had brought him, then reached for and donned the T-shirt.
“Who was that?” Krysta asked.
“A friend.”
Sean frowned. “Why didn’t what happened at Duke tonight make the news?”
“We kept waiting for someone to come after us or track us down,” Krysta added.
Little did she know they would if Richart didn’t succeed in cooling Chris’s temper.
Sean swore.
“What?” Krysta asked with a frown.
“I have to get ready for work.”
“Call in sick. Your head must still be hurting.”
“I can’t. We need the money and I can’t afford to lose this job if Ed gets a bug up his butt again.” Sean crossed the room, pausing in the doorway to look back at Etienne. “Harm my sister in any way and I will hunt you down and destroy you. Not a threat. A promise. And I won’t play nice like she does. I’ll do it during the day when you’re vulnerable.”
Etienne didn’t mention that he wasn’t physically weaker during the day as vampire folklore suggested. He may have to avoid sunlight, but he could still kick ass. Instead, he said. “I’ve no wish to harm her. Or you.”
Sean delivered a jerky nod, then left to prepare for work.
For several long moments, Etienne and Krysta stared at each other.
“Are you really okay?” she asked.
He nodded. “And you? You were injured.”
“I’m okay. Sean patched me up.”
And healed the worst of her wounds with his hands, Etienne assumed.
Her gaze slid to the digital clock on her bedside table. “Sean is running late. Let’s put this on hold for a minute while I fix him some breakfast. I don’t want him to go to work on an empty stomach after last night.”
And Etienne had heard enough about their financial struggles to know Sean couldn’t afford to pick something up in the drive-through on the way there.
He followed Krysta into the tiny kitchen and kept her company while she whipped up a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and orange juice.
Sean demolished that in about a minute, then rushed out the door with a last warning look at Etienne.
“I’m surprised he left,” Etienne admitted.
Krysta shrugged. “Money has been tight. School limits the number of hours he can work and vampire hunting limits the number of hours I can work. But we’re making it.” She put Sean’s dish and glass in the sink and filled it with soapy water. “You’re worried.”
He watched her with some surprise. How had she known that?
“You were worried before the phone call, but afterward . . .” She trailed off.
“We have a problem,” he admitted. Chris knew about her. Even if Richart managed to stall him, Chris and his henchmen would come looking for her. And it would be best if Etienne were by her side when they found her.
“We?”
“You and I,” he clarified.
“Let me guess. The soldiers we killed tonight have friends who are now out for our blood.”
“Yes.” He’d have to explain all of that, too. “But that’s a whole different problem.”
She frowned. “Someone else is out for our blood?”
“No. Just yours. Figuratively speaking.”
“Your vampire friends?”
“My human friends.”
Her eyebrows rose. “What?”
“Perhaps it would be best if I started from the beginning.”
“I was hoping you would.”
“I have a question I would like to ask you first.”
“Okay.” Crossing her arms, she leaned back against the counter and stared up at him. Her hair was a little mussed, finger-combed into submission rather than brushed. Her face was free of makeup, and bore a couple of faint abrasions, one on her jaw and one on her cheekbone, both on the left side of her entrancing face.
Her slender frame was garbed in a tank top and shorts that left her arms and shapely legs bare. Without her coat and assorted weaponry, she appeared so fragile. He still found it hard to reconcile this lovely, delicate mortal with the vampire hunter he had been observing for the past two weeks.
“Why didn’t you go?” he asked, needing to know.
She tilted her head. “You mean when Sean left? Why didn’t I leave with him?”
“No. At Duke. Why didn’t you run when you had the chance?”
“After you threw me behind the building?”
“Yes. I stayed and fought so you would have time to get away.”
“That’s why,” she said, her gaze never leaving his. “You could have escaped. Even tranquilized, you probably could have gotten away fast enough to elude them.”
“They would’ve killed you had I left. And the drug had already weakened me and slowed me enough that I couldn’t toss you over my shoulder and run without risking you being shot. Or tranqed. I couldn’t let either happen.”
“And I couldn’t let them kill you. Or capture you. Or whatever the hell they planned to do to you. I couldn’t let you sacrifice yourself for me.”
And that meant far more than it should have.
He eased closer to her. “Why?”
She lowered her arms and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
He cupped her face in his large hands, heard her breath catch, her heartbeat pick up its pace just as his own did. Heat rushed through him at the simple touch. “You saved my life tonight,” he whispered.
Reaching up, she curled her small, soft hands around his wrists.
Etienne held his breath, waiting for her to pull his hands away. When she didn’t . . .
“Thank you,” he said.
As she nodded, he dipped his head and pressed his lips to hers.
Fire licked its way through Krysta’s veins at the soft contact. Etienne caressed her cheeks as his silky smooth, surprisingly warm lips brushed hers.
What am I doing?
His tongue stroked her lips, tempting her into parting them.
What the hell am I doing? she repeated just before he deepened the kiss and she stopped thinking.
Her heart pounded in her chest, thudding against her ribs so determinedly she thought Etienne must feel it.