“Alias, all of them.”

There were several. I was going to need more money.

One by one, Bones asked Ellis questions about the contract out on me, and he knew better than anyone which ones they were. Tricks of the trade, I thought sardonically as I wrote. It takes a hit man to interrogate one.

My jaw clenched when Ellis outlined in a dull voice how he’d been given very special instructions regarding my dispatch. It was to be a head shot only, a minimum of three bullets, and at a range no closer than a hundred yards. No car bombs, poison, physical confrontation, or any contact near my car or residence. Ellis didn’t know what I was, but whoever had hired him must have had a frigging good idea. These stipulations were too specific to be coincidental.

By the end, I’d written on over a dozen different bills, and my hand was cramped from the minuscule pen. Considering the alternative, however, I wasn’t going to complain. Finally Bones sat back on his haunches and asked if there was anything else Ellis hadn’t mentioned.

“The client got anxious in the last e-mail and moved up the time frame. Said new circumstances mandated immediate results. My price was increased by twenty percent if the job was done tonight. I followed her from her house to the restaurant. Easier to escape in the confusion there.”

Motherfucker. Someone wanted me dead in a hurry, and whoever that was also knew where I lived. A sick feeling swept over me, because there were only a select number of people who knew that.

I didn’t think we were going to turn him over to the police, but the swiftness with which Bones yanked Ellis to him and latched his mouth onto his throat still startled me. This wasn’t the first time I’d witnessed death by fang, but it was the first time I did nothing and just watched. Ellis’s heartbeat raced at first, then slowed, and finally stopped.

“Does that hurt?” I coldly wondered when Bones released him, letting him fall to the ground.

He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Not nearly as much as he deserved, but we don’t have time for that.”

With a touch now gentle enough to soothe a baby, he traced his fingers along the scratch on my temple. I knew what it was. The graze from a bullet.

“So bloody close to losing you,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t have been able to stand it, Kitten.”

He pulled me to him, hard, and a delayed reaction to my near-death experience set in. I’d had people try to kill me before, sure. Too many times to count, but a gunshot at far range seemed so…mean. I shivered.

“Cold? Want my jacket?” He began to shrug off his leather coat when I stopped him.

“You’re warm. I’ve never felt you this warm before.”

The reason for his new temperature was ten feet from us, but I didn’t care. I held him and savored his unusual heat. Then I tugged at his shirt collar, popping loose a button, just so I could feel his heated skin next to my cheek.

“Don’t, luv,” Bones said in a strained voice. “I have very little control left in me.”

Except I didn’t want his control right now. Or mine. Back at that restaurant, I’d been nanoseconds from being blown to kingdom come, but here I was. Alive, unhurt…and unwilling to waste another moment.

I kissed his collarbone, sacrificing another button to better access it. Bones’s hands tightened on my back. The waves of leashed power emanating from him excited me. Under my mouth, his skin seemed to crawl with voltage begging to be let free. My tongue flicked out, sliding lower on his chest to follow the hard grooves-until Bones yanked my head up and slanted his mouth across mine.

There was a metallic taste to his mouth, but it didn’t repel me. Instead I kissed him like I was trying to devour him, sucking on his tongue while tearing at his shirt. Bones picked me up and walked swiftly to the end of the parking lot, where there were more shadows. Something hard and uneven touched my back, but I didn’t turn around to see what it was. I was too busy running my hands over the warm flesh that his torn shirt had revealed.

There was a yank at my dress and the front split open. Bones’s mouth left a hot trail down my neck to my breast, his fangs deliciously grazing my skin. A strangled moan tore out of me when he pushed my bra down and sucked hard on my nipple. Throbs of desire so acute they were almost painful burned in me.

I moved my hand between our tightly molded bodies with the single-minded intent of destroying his pants. Then all thought fled as his fingers slid under my panties to push into me. I arched back hard enough to hit my head on whatever I was propped against, harsh cries of need spilling from me. My loins twisted in pleasure with each new rub, the intensity inside me building-until his hand was gone, leaving me wet and aching.

“I can’t wait,” Bones muttered fiercely.

If speaking was still in my control, I would have immediately agreed. But all my vocal abilities were used on gasping at the unbelievable sensations his fingers caused. Bones shifted, I heard another rip, and then he thrust deeply inside me. His mouth claimed mine at the same instant, muffling my cry at the ecstasy of his hard flesh filling me. Then there was the sweetest edge of pain as he began to move rhythmically, almost roughly, inside me.

My mind was seized with a single jumbled rant: Harder-faster-more-yes! It was all I could think as I clawed at his back, desperate to somehow get closer. Bones’s arm was under my hips, holding me tighter even as the solidness at my back rocked with our movements. Between his kiss, my grip, and that unknown brace, I could barely breathe, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was the escalating passion within that had my nerve endings contracting and twisting in a frenzy.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop!” I cried, but it came out as only a garbled shout against his mouth. Bones must have translated, however, because he ramped up his speed until I wasn’t even sure I was still conscious. Spasms began to shake me from the inside out as my body convulsed with the overload of pleasure. I heard Bones groan, barely audible above the thundering of my heartbeat, and then moments later felt the wetness of his release inside me.

It took a few minutes before I could speak. “Something’s jabbing me…in the back.”

I was still panting. Bones wasn’t, of course, that whole not needing to breathe thing. He pulled me away and then glanced at the offending object.

“Twig.”

Finally I looked behind me. Yes, there was a tree. With a very smashed twig on the front of it.

My legs slid down from his waist until I was standing once again. I glanced at my dress. Ruined. Guess I couldn’t complain, not with how Bones’s shirt was in strips. Then I looked-belatedly-around the parking lot to see if we’d just given anyone a free show. No one was nearby gawking, thank God. Good thing this store closed early and Bones had chosen a tree in an unlit area.

“That took the edge off years of deprivation,” I murmured, still basking in the residual tingles.

Bones had been kissing my neck. At my words, he stopped. “Years?” he asked quietly.

I felt inexplicably shy all of a sudden. Yeah, with what just happened, shyness didn’t make sense, but it was true. It was one thing to risk getting caught with my pants down-literally-in public during the heat of the moment. Quite another to get caught with my previous celibacy swinging in the breeze.

Still, it was too late to take it back. I took in a deep breath. “Yes. Noah was the first guy I dated since you, and we didn’t…well. We didn’t. Enough said.”

Bones slid his hands up my arms in a slow caress. “It wouldn’t have mattered if there’d been other men since me, Kitten. Oh, I’d have cared, make no mistake, but in the end, it wouldn’t have mattered. Yet you’ll forgive me if I confess to being very, very glad that there weren’t.”