"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."

Chapter Twenty-One

I DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO DIGEST THE NEWS. "Hold on to my neck and don't let go," Bones said next with seething ferocity. "We're getting the sod."

He wrapped both arms around me the same instant I clung to his neck, and then he vaulted himself backward straight through the windowed wall behind us.

The thunderous noise of glass crashing outward drowned out my screams at suddenly free-falling from a twenty-story building. My legs flailed helplessly and my stomach lurched upward with a nauseating lift. Wind stung my eyes, which were fixed in horror at the rapidly approaching ground. The grip I had around his neck stiffened into the hold of the damned, and then an incredible thing happened. We started slowing down.

Incredulous, I looked up to see if a parachute had miraculously appeared, but there was nothing beyond the lights of the building. Before I could even wrap my mind around that, however, I felt a whoosh, and then we weren't falling anymore. We were sailing diagonally through the air toward a black van that had just sped into traffic. My screams died in my throat, choked off by astonishment.

Cars screeched, either from the erratically driving van or the people who'd hit their brakes in disbelief at seeing a dark form streak above them. The van was speeding, but we were faster. Bones caught up to it in seconds and grasped the rear bumper, flipping the vehicle without even letting go of me with his other hand.

It upended with a spectacular crash. Oncoming cars swerved and more brakes squealed. Bones flew upward in a single spurt that bore us clear of the traffic melee and set me down on the sidewalk with a short directive.

"Stay here."

He streaked back toward the wrecked van before I could even croak out a reply. There was a crack of gunshots, more screams from onlookers, and then moments later he reappeared with a man flung over his shoulder.

"Let's go."

Bones grasped me firmly once more, and then the ground left our feet. My eyes bugged. Mother of God, we were going so fast. To keep my feet from swinging crazily, like my mind was doing, I tangled my legs in his and held on, almost afraid to look down to see how high up we were.

Ten minutes later, Bones set us down in a warehouse alley as neatly as if he'd hopped off a curb. I was panting in amazement and staring at him like I'd never seen him before.

"You can fly?" I gasped out the obvious.

He glanced over at me while shaking the hapless assassin like a rag doll.

"Told you I was more powerful than you were aware of."

I kept staring. Bones would have seemed nonchalant-if he wasn't shaking the living hell out of the man in his hands.

"But you can fly?" I finally repeated, struck into stupidity.

"I'm a Master vampire. If a Master gets to be powerful enough and old enough, this is one of the perks. There are others, but we can get into those later," Bones said as the man's eyes fluttered open, focused on him, and then bulged. He was awake now, and he looked like I'd felt when Bones had catapulted us out of that window. Scared shitless.

Bones dropped him to the ground and knelt in front of him. A flash of emerald spilled out of his eyes, and after a harsh command, the man quit struggling and sat still.

"This woman," Bones said, indicating me with a jerk of his head. "Why did you try to kill her?"

"Business," the man replied in a monotone, mesmerized by the glowing orbs fixated on him. "I was hired to."

Another hit man. Guess Bones hadn't been wrong about that contract out on me.

"Who hired you?" Bones asked immediately.

"Don't know. The contract came in, instructions were enclosed, and the money was to be wired on completion. Sometimes I get jobs through referrals, but not this time."

"Kitten." Bones didn't break eye contact. "Write this down."

He withdrew his wallet. A tiny pen was clipped to it. I used the first piece of paper I found, which was money.

"Name."

"Ellis Pierson."

Such a normal-sounding name, and it went with his appearance. Aside from his fresh bloody nose and bruises, he looked about as threatening as Mickey Mouse. Ellis had black hair neatly trimmed, a paunch, and round baby cheeks. The prick was obviously good with a rifle and a scope, though. I'd be missing several choice pieces of my brain now if it weren't for Bones tackling me. How he'd known about the shots was still beyond me.

"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."

He kissed me, long and searching. Then he pulled away with a noise of resignation. "We need to get out of here, luv. Soon someone will stumble across us."

Yeah, and with a dead body across the parking lot, if it was a police officer, we'd get charged with a whole lot more than indecent exposure.

"Bones." I paused. Okay, I had no right to ask, since I'd dumped him and given him written instructions to get on with his life. But I couldn't stop myself. "I'll say the same thing, it doesn't matter, but...what about you? I'd rather know than wonder."

He met my eyes squarely. "Once. Close enough to count. I'm not going to be all Clinton about it and call it by a different name. After Chicago, when I left you that watch but you didn't come to me, I was very out of sorts. Thought perhaps you'd truly forgotten me, or didn't care. At the same time, an old lover of mine was in town. She invited me to her room, and I went."