A Venetian Vampire

“Close your eyes.”

She shook her head in irritation and shook a fist at him.

A trace of the Casanova smile tickled his mouth. “Humor me?”

Why did the man have to be so pretty? She didn’t want to punch him; she wanted to hug him. And lick him. And allow him to touch her all the ways he’d done last night.

With a huff, she slammed her hands to her hips and closed her eyes.

“Now,” he said gently. “What do you smell?”

About to reply that she smelled a bastard, she inhaled deeply, vying for a modicum of calm. She had to figure this out, a way to deal with him, to bargain perhaps and get the egg back. As soon as she got the call to hand off the prize, she had to be ready. Or bye-bye eternity.

Wrinkling her nose, she took in the scents in the foyer. First being Dante’s after-sex warmth and musk. Mercy, could she have seconds? And thirds?

Focus, Kyler!

Beyond that annoyingly attractive scent lingered the dry coolness of the floor stones, and then—she opened her eyes. “Wet dog?”

“Exactly. It was raining hard earlier this morning. We were awake but were focused on one another. A delicious focus, I might add. Easy enough for a werewolf to break in and nab the item with the rain to muffle the noise.”

“A werewolf? Oh, please. Don’t you have security on this place?”

He nodded toward the door. “Just a simple lock with key access. An easy crack. I never keep anything of value here, and oftentimes in the winter months I’ll leave the place open, available for friends to use.”

“I cannot believe you are so lax with security!”

“Yes, well. I’m paying the price now, aren’t I?”

“How so? It was my nab! And there’s nothing you can say or do to change that. I did the work.” She thumped her fist on her chest in frustration. “I stole the egg. It’s mine.”

“Do you have it in your hands?”

She huffed at his need to state the obvious.

“Then it’s not yours, is it? Whoever holds it owns it. As I learned when it was originally stolen from me.”

“What?”

He waved a hand, dismissing the comment. “Doesn’t matter now. What does is that I’ve come to Venice to claim the Fabergé egg, and I won’t leave without it.”

“So you admit you used me—seduced me—to get what you wanted?”

He lifted a finger. “The sex was not my original intention. I had not planned to use intimacy to obtain the egg. That was a fortuitous bonus.”

“Liar. You took me home, knowing I had the egg on me. Then you fucked me and planned to steal it while I was sleeping or in the bathroom.”

“I did intend to steal the egg from you. I won’t deny that. But the sex was completely separate from my larcenist goals. And I’ll thank you not to combine the two. What we shared last night was intimate and sacred.”

“Sacred? Yeah right. You are a classic womanizer.”

“I am not a womanizer,” he protested. “I love women. All of them.”

She blew out a breath. Was there a difference? “I don’t believe you,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. Right now, I’ve got to find the smelly wolf who stole my egg. You really think it was a werewolf?”

“The scent is obvious. And the fact we can both still smell it means the culprit must have been here in the last hour or two.”

“Then I need to track it.”

She sniffed the air but couldn’t quite pick up the salty-wet scent. It was quickly dissipating. How to track a wolf? She’d never even met a werewolf. She knew it was safer to talk with them in their un-shifted were form than when they were in their shifted half human, half wolf form. She’d figure it out.

But first. “Stand up. I want to search you.”

Dante stood and raised his arms out from his sides. His shirt opened, and his abs flexed magnificently. Kyler spread her fingers before her, deciding where to touch him first. No place on his person to hide an egg the size of a skull. Had she counted those ridges last night? That was definitely more than a six-pack, now that she considered it. And she could smell his leather-and-musk heat wafting through the atmosphere, tempting, teasing—

“Forget it.” She gazed about the foyer to distract her waning fortitude, and as she did Dante pulled her into his embrace. She struggled against him, but he wrangled her into compliance with ease. “Don’t touch me. I don’t want this from you. You didn’t mean any of it last night.”

“I meant it all, Kyler. I promise you that. I take intimacy with a woman very seriously. Look at me.”

She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.

“Fine. And you’re right. There’s time later to argue the semantics of our ill-timed love-making session. We need to track the wolf before the trail goes stale.”

“We? I don’t think so. The egg is mine. I am out of here.”

“I’m right behind you!” Dante called.

Kyler didn’t listen. With the backpack in hand, she slammed the front door behind her, then, thinking to look for a clue, she studied the door handle and sniffed. Yes, maybe a faint scent of wolf there. The sidewalk was still wet, so she couldn’t see tracks or decide which way the trail led. Tracking people was not her forte. Just as thievery was not.

But falling for some scheming, too-pretty womanizer? Sign her right up. Apparently she was a professional when it came to being seduced.

“I can’t believe last night happened.”

But she’d do her damned best to forget about her lack of discretion now. To forget the scent of him on her skin and at her mouth and—

“Aggh! Focus, Kyler. You are a vampire. You’ve got skills. You can do this. And no,” she muttered as she strode down the street, tugging down her shirt, “this is not a walk of shame. I am without shame. Really.”

Mostly. At the very least she could be thankful her hair wasn’t in a tangle and she wasn’t wearing a spangled miniskirt and sky-high heels.

She sniffed the air again. Tracking werewolves had not been a part of her paltry Welcome to Vampirism 101 education. Because she’d never received that complete course. Her creator had been too busy, unwilling to divulge more than a handful of details, and—

“Uninterested,” she said with a sigh. So why was she here in Venice now trying to help that very vampire out?

Because she did appreciate the gift of vampirism he had given her. And that was all there was to it. She owed him.

She walked slowly, trying to pick up clues, scents, anything. As she struggled to fix on a doglike scent, it became horribly obvious she’d never find the wolf unless it walked right up to her.

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