“He was stalling,” she said. “He had to be. He’ll come up with a plan.” She looked up at Riker as if trying to convince him that her brother wasn’t an ass**le.

“He will. I would. I’d do everything in my power to save him, even if it meant jail. I wouldn’t let him die. He won’t let me die—”

“Hey.” He cut off her rambling before she went into a full-blown panic attack. “You’re not going to die. I was bluffing about killing you, Nicole. Your brother might be bluffing, too,” he said, although he suspected that wasn’t the case.

She rubbed her arms again, and he felt like a heel for letting her get chilled. “But if he doesn’t come through, I’m screwed. We’re screwed.”

He didn’t like the way she’d said that, both because it meant that Neriya was in jeopardy and because it also implied that they were in this together. Which he supposed they were. He just didn’t like it.

“It’s not over.” He snagged the black hoodie jacket hanging next to the door. “It’s your company. If Chuck

can’t help, you still have power.”

“I’ve been fired,” she said, her voice so devoid of emotion that he couldn’t get a read on her. “Daedalus is apparently no longer my company.”

“Fired?” He draped the jacket over her shoulders and carefully freed her red-blond hair from under the collar. His hand lingered longer than what was appropriate, but damn, her hair was so soft, so silky, and it looked good against the black leather. She gave him a fragile but grateful smile, and he returned the smile like a kid with a crush. His heart even hammered in a crazy rhythm. He was a dolt. A big, vampire dolt.

“Fired for what?”

Shivering as if he’d stripped her of clothing instead of giving her more, she looked down at her lap.

“For slaughtering dozens of vampires in a lab.”

His heart hammered harder, this time for a different reason. Just when he’d thought Nicole was a different kind of Martin—and a different kind of human—she hit him with this.

“And you killed them . . . why?” He spoke through clenched teeth.

“I didn’t,” she said in a breathless rush. “Yes, I mean, the vampires were killed, but I didn’t order their deaths.”

“Then why are they blaming you?”

“Because my signature is on the execution order.”

She lifted her gaze, the bold challenge in her eyes daring him to call into question her reasoning for signing the order.

Which was how he knew there was more to the story. Just forty-eight hours ago, he’d have believed she’d murdered dozens of vampires with no more thought than a butcher gave a cow. But now he wasn’t so sure. No, strike that. He was sure. The Nicole who had saved Terese’s ring and who had been so outraged at Lucy’s capture wouldn’t casually send dozens of vampires to their deaths.

“So what did the order say?” Putting a lid on his inner drill sergeant, he sat on the arm of the recliner, doing his best to come across as nonthreatening. Right now, he needed her cooperation, and her ass**le brother had unintentionally given Riker a golden opportunity to swoop in and be the good guy. “Why werethey killed?”

“Apparently, the lab where they were being kept was over capacity.”

“They were murdered because the morons who work for you were too stupid to count?”

“That about sums it up.” She got up off the couch and stared at the wall, as if she was as lost in his quarters as she’d been in the forest.

He wondered what she’d do if he came up behind her and folded her into his arms. His desire to comfort her was beginning to become a regular thing, wasn’t it?

What was it Myne liked to say? Never dust off your give-a-shit. If you do, you keep having to use it.

“Nicole?”

“Hmm?”

“Why did you sign the execution order?”

“I didn’t.” Tugging the jacket closed tight at the front with one hand, she started to pace. “My signature is on the paper, but I don’t know how it got there.”

Frustration seeped into her voice. “I’ve stayed up so many nights going over it in my head, trying to figureout how the hell it happened. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Even if someone else had signed the order, I was in charge of the company at the time, so the buck stops with me.”

It was a command principle he knew well. Being a leader came with perks, whether that meant a lot of money, a lot of power, or a lot of fame. But it also came with a lot of risks. A single incident, even involving someone far down on the command chain, could end careers and ruin a lot of lives. The fact that Nicole was willing to take responsibility spoke volumes about her character, and he found himself softening toward her even more.

He’d done far more than dust off his give-a-shit.

He’d polished it to a flawless shine the way he’d polished his combat boots and weapons so long ago.

Dumbass.

Nicole pivoted suddenly and made a beeline to his desk. She grabbed a pen and a pad of paper and started sketching a series of lines.

“What are you doing?” She didn’t reply, just kept scratching furiously on the pad, her messy mop of hair hiding her face.

Without thinking, he reached out and brushed a silky strand back behind her ear. The tips of his finger skimmed her cheekbone, her soft skin. She turned, and God, when her eyes met his, it was as if there was nothing between them. Nothing holding him back from tugging her hard against him and doing what he’d wanted to do to her in the cave.

His heart thundered behind his ribs, pounding

painfully hard and fast. His intense response to her shocked him. She was the enemy. This was so wrong.

The argument was weak, and he knew it. Nicole might not be a friend, or even a neutral party, but she wasn’t the enemy.

He drifted closer. Tension bloomed in the span of space between them, heavy and hot, like a summer storm brewing on the horizon. She swallowed, and instinctively, his gaze flicked to her throat.

Nicole flinched, and in less time than it took to squeeze off a rifle round, the tension snapped. So awkwardly that Riker felt sorry for her, Nicole inched away and returned to her sketches with a shaky hand. More desires bubbled up inside him, feelings he hadn’t felt since Terese was alive.

His parents had always believed he’d grow up to be a doctor or some kind of teacher, so his enlistment in the Army had been a stunner for them. Delta had literally beaten most of the compassion out of him, and then decades of fighting humans as a vampire had sucked out the rest.

Until Terese.

With her, a harsh word or a raised voice would make her withdraw at best. At worst, she’d turn into a sobbing, trembling ball on the floor. The qualities his parents had admired in him had slowly surfaced again, only to be crushed and buried even deeper than before  when Terese died.

Now, it seemed, they were creeping back into his life like a team of poachers. How long would it be before his rogue emotions took him down for good?

Nicole’s scribbles started to form a pattern. A building with landscaping around the property, fences, gates . . . He tapped the paper. “That’s one of your labs.”

She nodded. “A few years ago, my uncle showed me the basic plans for all of the offices, processing plants, and research facilities so he could explain how the security worked. Daedalus designed all the labs to be nearly identical so employees, equipment, and security could be easily interchangeable.” She labeled a room with the word MEDICAL, another with STAFF, and another with UNKNOWN. “Chuck told me Neriya was being held at what he called the B-lab. There’s no reason to think that its design is different from any other Daedalus lab. I’m sure I can get in through the main entrance if word hasn’t gotten out about my dismissal from the company.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about saving Neriya.” She looked at him like he was a complete idiot. “Isn’t that the point of all of this? If I can get inside, I might be able to bluff my way out with her.”

Whoa. Was she really contemplating breaking into her own lab, or was this a trick to escape? “Let’s slow down for a minute and think.”

“Think?” She shook her head. “I’ve thought about it. We need to do this now, before my firing and kidnapping become common knowledge.”

His gut told him her offer was genuine, but there were other considerations. “We can’t do anything for a couple of days. The full moon is tomorrow. Starting today, no one is allowed to leave unless it’s to patrol for enemies.”

As if she didn’t hear a word, Nicole went back to sketching with an almost obsessive intensity, her non— stop chatter heightening the insanity. “I’ll go at night, when most of the staff is gone. The lower-level security people will be even less likely to know about my situation.” The paper filled up with lines and barely

legible words. “Neriya will probably be in the room over here—”

He grabbed her hand to still the craziness. “Will you stop?”

“What? No.” She peeled his hand away and hunched over her sketch again. “We can do this. We can get in—”

“Dammit, Nicole, stop.” He palmed her shoulders and dragged her around to face him. “We need to look at this from all angles.”

“We don’t have time. I don’t have time. This is my fault. I have to fix it before more vampires die.”

The tremor in her voice socked him right in the heart.

“Before I die.” She tried to pull away, to go back to the notepad. The harder he held on, the harder she struggled, until she was fighting him, beating her fists

against his chest, and making sounds that were somewhere between mewls and sobs.

“Nicole.” She didn’t seem to hear. “Nicole.” He captured her wrists, but that only made her use her whole body as one big fist as she rammed herself against him. “Nicole!”

Nothing.

So he did the only thing he could to stop her struggles.

He kissed her.

Chapter 16

Riker lips were firm, his body hard, his tongue demanding as he backed Nicole against the desk. Her rear hit the edge, leaving her slightly off balance and clinging to his shoulders to steady herself.

She’d wanted this, had wondered how she’d react.

Wondered if she’d hate it or like it. Wondered if she’d be disgusted or relieved that he felt the same fi erce, magnetic pull she felt.

And now she knew. She liked it.

And that scared her.

The smart thing to do would be to push him away.

But in a matter of minutes, she’d lost everything, from her company to her hope of returning to a normal life after this ordeal was over. If it ever was over. Right now, all she had to cling to was the male kissing her senseless.

Riker roughly wedged his h*ps between her legs, forcing them open as he wrapped his hands around her waist and lifted her onto the table. His palms slid up her rib cage, his thumbs brushing the swells of her br**sts just fi rmly enough to send delicious shocks through her body.

Again, she considered stopping this before it went too far. The thought made a hysterical laugh start to bubble up in her throat, because the truth was that this had already gone too far. And yet, as his tongue tangled with hers, she was sure they hadn’t gone far enough.

“Shit,” he breathed against her lips. “I’ve been wanting to do this since I first tasted you in the prey room.”

The reminder that he’d tossed her into a cold, dank dungeon and then scared her to death should have put a damper on things, but it didn’t. She was so stressed out, so tired of not knowing if she was going to live or die—she couldn’t help but embrace these few precious moments of forgetting the hell that was her life and remembering what it was like to actually live.

Boldly, she ran her hands up Riker’s arms, letting her fingers map the rough scars and thick veins that wound around his biceps. His muscles flexed and twitched under her touch, and when she grew even bolder, shifting her palms to his pecs, a low rumble of approval rolled through his magnificent chest.

“You feel good.” His voice was a husky purr. “You’re so beautiful.” He kissed a trail to her ear and captured her lobe between his teeth.

“Mmm . . . yes.” She gasped, both shocked and pleased by how something as simple as a nibble charged her up. She arched into him, and he answered enthusi— astically, rubbing his arousal against her. She was going to do this with him, wasn’t she?

She was going to have sex with a vampire.

She waited for a panic attack to overwhelm her.

Waited for her brain to kick in and give her a million reasons why she couldn’t do this. Waited for all of her insecurities and prejudices to rise up and give her excuses to stop this thing from happening.

While she waited, Riker’s mouth did wicked things to her ear, and his hands . . . oh, God, his hands . . . they eased under her shirt, one at the small of her back, his fingers resting just below her waistband, the other sliding upward to her br**sts.

There was no point in waiting for any of those things that might stop her. All her life, she’d been expected to do what was required to secure her family’s legacy. She’d been raised and groomed to do one thing: run Daedalus. No one, including herself, had ever taken into account her dreams and desires, and even her focus on vampire physiology had been considered a nice little hobby by everyone but her.

But now, just this once, she was going to do something selfish. Something reckless. If she regretted it, she’d deal. So much of her life had been out of her control that she was actually excited to have a regret that was purely her own.