Where Darkness Lives (Guardians of Eternity #7.75)(7)

Where were they?

Oh yeah, her murderous stalker.

She shrugged. “It started with spiteful notes left on my door.”

“What did they say?”

“The usual. ‘I hate you.’ ‘Go away, bitch.’ ‘Whore.’ ” Her lips curled in disgust. “Something a juvenile human would do.”

“What else?”

“My tires slashed. A dead rat left in my swimming pool.” Her gaze shifted past him to the bullet hole in the floor. A few more inches and she would have been skewered. “At least until today.”

His frown deepened, his expression distracted. “Strange.”

“Strange that someone tried to shoot me, or strange that they hadn’t tried before?” she asked dryly.

“It usually doesn’t escalate so swiftly.”

She forced herself to hold his questioning gaze at his unnerving perception.

It wasn’t bad enough his mere touch could make her wolf pant with need, he also had to be intelligent?

“You mean the attacks?”

“Exactly.” His hands shifted so his thumbs were brushing the sensitive line of her throat, pausing over the unsteady beat of her pulse. “It’s a hell of a leap from scribbling a nasty note to pulling a trigger. Most people never progress to that point. And those that do take longer than a few days to go from catty to psychotic.”

“Hmmm.” Her expression was noncommittal. “I see your point.”

His eyes narrowed. “When did you receive your first threat?”

“A few days after I moved into my new house. Two weeks ago,” she promptly answered. “I assumed it was a jealous neighbor.”

“Nothing before then?”

“Lots.” Her lips twisted wryly. “I am the Queen of Bitches, remember? But most of my enemies have the balls to face me, not creep around like an angst-ridden adolescent.”

He gave a slow nod. “Tell me about your neighbors.”

“I’ve only met a handful.” She hadn’t been particularly concerned by the lack of a welcoming committee. “Most of them are mortal. Big yawn.”

“But not all?”

“No. There’s a vamp who has a lair directly behind my tennis courts.”

His thumbs skimmed up and down her throat with an intimacy that should have made her wolf snarl in warning. A Were’s neck was considered off-limits to all but their most trusted pack mates.

Instead she battled the urge to tilt back her head and offer her tender flesh to his teeth.

Christ, what was wrong with her?

“A vamp wouldn’t waste their time with notes and tire slashing,” he said, his gaze following the path of his fingers, a glow deep in his eyes. “You piss one off and they go directly for the throat. Literally.”

“Kirsten’s barely out of her foundling years,” she informed him. “She’s still at the mercy of her human emotions.”

He seemed to dismiss the vamp, although Sophia didn’t doubt he’d tucked the info in the back of his mind.

Nothing was allowed to escape this Were’s notice.

Not the most comforting thought.

“Anyone else?”

“There’s a nymph down the block.” Sophia grimaced. “She’s always polite in public, but I sense that she has no intention of becoming my BFF.”

“She might be responsible for the drive-by harassments, but nymphs aren’t usually bloodthirsty.”

“You haven’t seen how possessive she is of her current lover.” Sophia shuddered. There had been a fanatical glint in the nymph’s eyes when she’d introduced her boyfriend to Sophia, her hands clinging to him with an embarrassing desperation. “It’s creepy.”

Luc lifted a dark brow. “Lover?”

“A cur.” Curs were humans who’d been bitten instead of being born a pure-blooded Were. They were capable of shifting, but they couldn’t control the shifts as a Were could, and they weren’t immortal, although their lifespan was greatly increased. “Well, more or less.”

“What does that mean?”

“He’s been turned, I can smell it, but he’s a pathetic excuse for a cur.” The image of his short, pudgy body and pasty face turned Sophia’s stomach. “He’s an embarrassment to curs everywhere. I’ve never encountered such a timid creature.”

He stepped forward, pressing her body against the wall. “Not your type at all.”

“You know nothing of my type.”

Lowering his head, he allowed his lips to brush over the racing pulse at the base of her throat.

“I know I’m it.”

Hell, they both knew he was it.

She was going up in flames from a mere touch.

What would happen if he actually kissed her?

Not about to stay around and find out, she shoved her hands against his chest.

“Ugh,” she muttered, marching around him and down the stairs.

It was bad enough that she’d spent the day dodging bullets. She wasn’t going to make it worse by becoming another victim to Luc’s fatal charm.

She had no doubt there were enough of them littering the streets of Miami.

Luc finished his sweep of the office building and was pulling his black Mercedes SL550 Roadster past the uniformed guard who was opening the gates of Sophia’s neighborhood when his cell phone beeped.