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Excerpt 2:
Dulcina sat upright, her hand sliding down his chest until she pulled back and let it rest on her own leg. She was thinking things through. He'd thrown a lot at her, and he could see she'd taken it all in, was trying to figure him out.
“What if...” She paused for a moment, her gaze shifting to the door, and then she lowered her voice. “If you could confirm he's here, is there a way to make your countrymen aware of when he returns to the States? Then they can arrest him upon arrival?”
Hope surged though him. “Maybe. It might be a while before he feels safe enough to return. I'd have to keep tabs on him until he got on a plane, and when he does, you'd have to let me make a phone call.”
“I think we could make that happen. I'll help, Jake, but you have to do two things for me,” she said, imperious as she sat atop him. “Number one. If we hit a dead end, you let this go.”
“And the second?” Jake already knew what the last thing was, he just needed confirmation.
“No more trying to escape.”
“Yeah,” Jake said, and even as he said it, he knew he'd be true to his word. He valued preserving her life over taking one of a criminal.
“Trust me,” she coaxed, tilting her head slightly as she looked down into his eyes, a slight crook of a smile on the left side of her lips.
“I'm trying to. How do you think you’re going to find him?”
“I speak French. You don’t. Also, I happen to have a friend well connected to...everything. Airlines, car services, drugs, bars, criminals, humans, vampires, rumors, facts. He would know when your man came in and where he was headed. From there, any movement within the city will be easy for him to track,” she said, her confidence in this man boundless.
“We’ll find him.”
“When can I talk to your guy?”
Dulcina threw her head back and laughed, a wild laugh that made his insides jump to life, all giddy and drawn to her infectious smile. This time, when meeting his gaze, she sent him one of those looks that said he'd lost all sense of reality. A ‘good for you for believing you can fly to the moon on a kite’ kind of a look.
This moment between them was special and he could damn well recognize the rarity. There was intimacy in this sharing of secrets, of planning the future. She was with him on this, one hundred percent at his side.
Thank goodness she'd tied him down, because if he'd been free, he would have flipped her onto her back and kissed her until she sighed. Jake cleared his throat, more so to redirect his thoughts than to gain her attention, but it accomplished both.
She slowly shook her head. “He won’t talk to you.”
“So you'll talk to him?” Jake tried sitting upright, his excitement getting the best of him, but he wasn't going anywhere all trussed up with her still parked on top of him. “He’s your kind, right?”
“It’s not that easy, Jake.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to get this guy. Tell me what to do,” he demanded. She took a long, drawn-out breath, and for a moment Jake thought he'd lost her. With only a few tools left in his belt, Jake raised his voice to draw her focus. “Hey! Look at me, Dulcie. Want me to be your pet? Fine. Your servant? Done. Anything.”
“Anything?”
He tipped his chin down in a solitary nod. “I need this.”
“What I need,” she said, leaning forward until her face hovered just over his, so close he felt her breath curling over his chin, “is for you to obey me.”
“I’ll polish your damn boots for the rest of my life if you want. Just give me this,” he pleaded through clenched teeth.
“You're not listening, Jake. I'm not asking for shiny boots. I'm asking for your obedience. If I tell you to follow me, you do so without question. If I need you to duck out of sight, you've got to move fast,” she said, and Jake kept nodding along. He was right there with her, agreeing to everything she threw at him. With her help, her trust, he might actually have a shot at catching Tulio, and that was better than the hollow nothing he was living with right now. She continued her list of demands, but slower, “And if I need you to keep that smart mouth of yours shut, you will do so. I can't have you saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person and getting us both killed.”
His eyes widened. “That can happen?”
“With certain vampires.” She shrugged lazily. “Yes.”
All he had to do was stop looking at her as jailer, and start thinking of her like she was his captain. Jake was an officer, a SWAT member. Following directives was second nature. On top of it all, she wasn't wrong. He was walking onto a battleground he didn't know how to navigate. She did.
“Yeah, we're good,” he said, nodding his compliance. “I'll follow orders.”
“No matter what, Jake. If you're going to walk at my side out there on the streets, you're going to encounter a way of life you don't understand. That means if a man is attacking me, you don't move unless I say.”
“Listen, if someone is—”
“Nothing. You do nothing. If the situation is bad enough I think I'm in danger, then I will tell you to run. And you will.” At his questioning look, she shook her head to quiet him and continued, “If something happens to me, and demons don't get you first, there will be a kill order out on you. You will need to know where it is safe to seek sanctuary.”
“I'm in. You lead,” he said, though he was a little unsettled by the devious smile that suddenly curled this beautiful woman's lips. He was in for a hell of a ride.
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