Ashwini caught the tone, knew he was ribbing Janvier about being jealous. “I think you’re getting ahead of yourself, Louis,” she said. “I haven’t decided whether to keep him or throw him to the gators yet.”

Louis slapped a hand over his heart. “Janvier, mon ami, I am in love. As I see you’re not carrying your blades today, I think I can take you.”

“I’m not the dangerous one,” Janvier drawled, his arm around her waist. “What can you tell us about Hinge?”

“It’s a meat market, but safer than Masque.” His expression made it clear that didn’t mean much. “I can recommend a club with better music.”

“We’re not here to dance,” Janvier told his friend. “We’re looking for a girl with a tat on her ankle. Cher?”

Taking out her phone, she held it out to Louis. “Yeah,” he said after a couple of seconds, “I think I might’ve seen her here. Remember the tat because feet are the first thing I see when people come down the steps. Don’t know her name or remember much else about her, but one of the regulars might.”

“Can you point out the regulars?”

“Sure.” Louis glanced at his watch. “I’m on break in ten minutes. I’ll come join you.”

There was no coat check inside Hinge, so they stripped off their outerwear and placed it on an open bar stool while ordering drinks. Ashwini had no intention of consuming hers, but with Janvier’s accelerated ability to process alcohol, that’d be easy enough to cover.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket just as the bartender put the drinks in front of them with a flirtatious flash of his fangs directed at her. Sliding the phone out of her pocket, she read the message and had to bite back a cry of delight. When she looked up, it was to see Janvier looking at his own phone, a grin on his face. “Ransom?” She knew the two men were friends, often went out riding together.

“Yeah.” Janvier’s grin grew wider as he input a reply. “He finally did it, asked his librarian to marry him.”

“And she said yes!” Ashwini sent back a congratulatory message.

Janvier’s eyes lingered on her after she returned her phone to her pocket. “What about you?” he murmured, leaning in to be heard over the music, his hand on her lower back and his body heat a languorous caress over her skin. “Will you ever say yes?”

Hanging on to her control by her fingernails, she very deliberately brought her vodka mixer to her lips, forcing distance between them. “I see two women who might be donors.” The glass was icy against her palm, but it did nothing to chill the heat licking over her body. “Faint bite bruise on one.”

Janvier wrapped an arm around her front as she went to move past him on her way to the women. He’d pressed a kiss to her cheekbone before she could avoid it. Gritting her teeth against the craving to haul him to her, take that delicious mouth with her own, she instead moved her lips to his ear . . . and bit down hard enough on his earlobe to leave a mark.

He hissed. “You do realize many vampires consider pain foreplay?” Hot breath against her, the muscles in his arm flexing to keep her close.

“You don’t.” Sliding out of his hold, she strolled over to strike up a conversation with her targets.

The conversation proved a bust, though it appeared Janvier was having some success with the bartender. Louis joined the other two males not long afterward, and she decided to head back.

A vampire shoulder-bumped her on the way, his hand sliding over hers. It should’ve been nothing, the contact was so fleeting . . . but it set off a deluge of nightmare that swamped her senses, threatened to take her under. Screams, he had screams inside him. Legs shaky and stomach threatening to revolt, she reached out to brace herself against the bar, but instead of the cold, hard edge of stone, she felt a body warm and tensile.

Sliding his arm around her with a lazy grace that belied the tension in his body, Janvier nuzzled at her. “I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Pretend you can’t get enough of me, cher.”

She wanted to snap off a quick retort, make light of this, but her heart was thumping too hard and her nerves trembling. Wrapping her own arm around Janvier’s waist, she held on to the solid strength of him, tucking her head against his neck. Her breath came in jerky bursts, her hand clenching on his T-shirt as he murmured things she couldn’t hear through the roar in her ears, but that she knew would make it seem they were indulging in a public display of affection. Sickening but normal.

Her vision eventually cleared to the point that she could see Louis watching them, a smile wreathing his face. The other man was several feet away, where Janvier must’ve been before he moved to intercept her. Swallowing, she took a deep breath and Janvier’s scent filled her lungs: primal, earthy male.

Her chest shuddering, she rubbed her nose against his neck in a moment of weakness before raising her head. “Merci.”

He brushed back a strand of hair that had come loose from her braid to curl against the side of her face. “No thanks between us, Ashwini. No balance sheet.”

The things he said. The things he meant.

Releasing her grip on the cotton of his tee, she slid her hand into his hair, tugged down his head, and kissed him soft and sweet and with every ounce of the heartbreaking emotion inside her. It lasted for a fleeting fragment of time and it changed the world.

22

Janvier was the one who trembled this time, his arm firming to hold her tight. “Why that vampire?” he asked, voice hoarse.