"His tastes tend to run on the sadistic side, and he...well, he's been known to enjoy the company of children from time to time. Particularly young girls."
"Jesus Christ," Renata exclaimed in a tight rush of her breath. She closed her eyes and turned her face aside, all of her going very still, as though it took some work to keep from breaking down. When she finally looked back at Niko, there was a murderous glint in her unblinking jade-green gaze. "I'll kill him. I swear it, Nikolai. I will fucking kill him if he's done anything to her." "We're gonna get him," he assured her. "We're going to find him, and we're going to get Mira back."
"I can't fail her, Nikolai."
"Hey," he said, reaching out to cover her hand with his. "We won't fail her. Got it? I'm with you on this. We're gonna get her back."
She looked at him in silence for a long moment. Then, very slowly, she flipped her hand over and linked her fingers through his. "She's going to be safe...right?"
A trace of uncertainty, one of the first times he'd heard it in her voice. He wanted to erase the doubt for her, and the worry, but all he could offer was his promise. "We're going to get her back, Renata. You've got my word on that."
"Okay," she said. Then, more resolutely, "Okay, Nikolai. Thank you."
"You're really something, you know that?" She started to shake her head in denial, but Niko gave her hand a gentle squeeze, keeping her centered. "You're strong, Renata. Stronger than you know. Mira's lucky to have you on her side. Hell, so am I." Her answering smile was faint and slightly sad. "I hope you're right."
"I'm hardly ever wrong," he said, grinning at her and barely resisting the urge to lean across the little table and kiss her. But that would only lead to one thing - something that his libido was already imagining in explicit detail.
"So, how long are you going to fondle those Colts before you let me have a look at one?"
Niko leaned back in the metal folding chair and chuckled. "Take your pick. You sure you know how to handle - "
He didn't have a chance to finish the thought. Renata reached out for the gun nearest to her and a full magazine of rounds. She had the weapon loaded, locked, and ready for action in three seconds flat. Niko had never seen anything sexier in his life. "Impressive."
She set the pistol down on the table and arched one slim dark brow at him. "You want help with yours now too?" He started to laugh, but swallowed the sound before it left his mouth.
They weren't alone.
Renata followed his gaze upward, to where Nikolai could swear he heard a muted thud. It came again, then a small creak of the garage roof.
"We've got company," he whispered to her.
Renata gave him a nod, already getting up from her chair. She slid the loaded to him across the table and moved in swift, efficient silence to begin loading the other.
No sooner had Nikolai picked up the gun than the garage apartment door burst inward, kicked off its hinges. A huge vampire in the black SWAT gear of the Enforcement Agency rushed inside, the laser sights of his silenced automatic rifle locked on Renata. "Son of a bitch!" Niko shouted. "Renata, shoot him!"
For an awful second, she didn't move. Nikolai thought she had frozen up in shock, but then the Agent let out a howl of pain and dropped his weapon to clutch at his temples. He went down on his knees, but there were two more armed males right behind him. They leapt over the shrieking obstacle and opened fire in the small space. Renata took cover behind one of the metal file cabinets, firing on the Agent in the lead. Niko targeted the second newcomer, but his shot went wild as the small window above the bed shattered and yet another Enforcement Agent dropped into the fray, armed to the gills.>He told himself a lot of bullshit things as he laid his head back with a groan and let Renata take all that she needed from him.
Renata had never felt more alive. Nikolai's blood was a fire in her senses, every nuance of the moment buffeting her with vivid awareness. The wound in her shoulder gave her no pain now; her need for Nikolai was all she knew.
He held her hips as she impaled herself on his sex, her mind lost to all but the heat of him filling her, the masculine beauty of his big body moving in a shared rhythm beneath her. Through the swamping haze of her desire, she admired the corded muscles of his arms and chest, a symphony of strength, flexing and contracting, power made all the more stunning by the artful colors and patterns of his changeable dermaglyphs.
Even his fangs, which by rights should have terrified her, took on a lethal beauty now. The sharp tips of them gleamed with every sawing breath he dragged through his teeth. The blood she'd taken from him must have made her a little bit crazy, because some dim part of her wanted those lethal canines pressed up close against her neck, piercing her flesh as she rode him.
She could still taste his blood on her tongue, sweet and wild and dark, an electric tingle that spread all through her and lit her up from within.
She craved more of that power, more of him...
All of him.
Renata dug her fingers into his thick biceps and drove deeper, harder, chasing that dangerous need his blood had unleashed in her. He took every desperate thrust of her hips, holding her steady as a shattering orgasm slammed into her. She cried out as the pleasure washed over her, a scream of release that she couldn't have contained even if her life depended on it. The intensity was far too much to bear. She trembled from it, awed by the force of her passion for him - a passion she had been afraid to feel for so long.
She didn't fear Nikolai.
She wanted him.
Trusted him.
"Are you okay?" he asked her, little more than a growl as he continued to rock with her. "Are you in any pain now?" She shook her head, unable to speak when every nerve ending in her body was still taut with need and vibrating with sensation.