For an assassin, he had too much heart.
“What’s wrong with you is that you made a fatal mistake in letting me go.” That honeyed voice soothed the knot in his chest, unravelled it and spread warmth through him even as it caused adrenaline to spike and his body to coil tight.
His senses sparked, blaring a warning, and he was quick to block the fist that flew at him. He grabbed it and shoved her backwards, and she hit the wall with a grunt. He flicked his eyes open and narrowed them on her.
“If I give you coin, will you back down?” Those words left his lips of their own volition, that softer part of himself speaking them before he could stop it.
She glared at him, her golden eyes bright with fire that only blazed hotter as she huffed. “Not a damned chance. You can’t pay me off. I’m completing this contract.”
He noticed that she didn’t offer to buy him out.
Either she wanted to kill him or she didn’t have enough coin to cover what the client was going to pay him when he fulfilled his part of the bargain.
And he would fulfil it.
If he couldn’t persuade the fiery redhead to back down, he could incapacitate her by injuring her just enough that she would think twice about going after the vampire’s head.
Incapacitate her? Injure her?
This wasn’t the first time he’d had competition during a contract, but this was the first time he had considered going easy on his opposition, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like how weak he was where Mackenzie was concerned, or how he couldn’t get his damned mind off her.
It was the job.
The only reason he kept feeling a pull towards her when they were apart was because he wanted to be the one to fulfil this mission and he didn’t want her getting the jump on him. Completing this contract was driving him, filling him with a need to make his guild the winner in this fight, protecting their reputation. That was the only reason he had been so restless, so eager to see her again.
Her golden eyes flashed against their reddish-brown backdrop as she shoved away from the wall and came at him, her fists flying, her beautiful face a mask of rage that he knew, deep in his soul, wasn’t just about finding him outside the vampire’s compound tonight.
It was about the night they had met.
He had mulled it over more than once in their time apart. He blocked her and parried, caught her with a swift right jab in her shoulder that knocked her back against the wall. The fire that had flashed in her eyes. Her final words to him. He had hit a nerve by besting her and allowing her to live, and now she seethed with a need to prove to him that she could beat him.
To make him pay for belittling her.
A female with a complex born of some kind of history that no doubt involved people she admired being stronger than her and making her feel weaker than they were, unable to live up to them. Her family, perhaps?
He blocked another flimsy punch, was on the verge of admonishing her for dealing such a weak, untrained blow when she followed it with a fast uppercut he didn’t see coming. He grunted as her fist slammed into his gut, as pain spread across his left side again and she followed through, driving forwards to slam him into the wall.
He cursed himself in the elf tongue for falling for her feint.
Reached down and caught her forearm and twisted hard. His gut twisted too as she cried out, something hot and fierce and unsettling searing him as he released her and she staggered back, clutching her wrist.
What the hell was wrong with him?
She was the enemy and he had to deal with her.
So why couldn’t he bring himself to strike a blow that would seriously wound her at the very least? Why was he pulling his punches, just as he had the night they had met?
Her bright golden eyes leaped to beyond him, towards the square, and he sensed the vampires gathering there, an audience they didn’t need. If the King of Death learned of the fight, he would dispatch his army and they would be done for.
He lunged for Mackenzie, aiming for her arm, but she raised it and his hand met the burgundy leather of her corset instead, skimmed over it and brushed curves that had heat flaring hot and fast in his veins. She knitted her hands together and bit out a hard battle cry as she brought them down, as she smashed them into his shoulder and knocked him downwards.
He collided with her stomach, just above the apex of her thighs. The heat of her seared his cheek and he tried not to grab hold of her, but instinct was at the helm and he reached for her in an attempt to stop himself from falling. She slammed into the wall and lost her balance, and before he landed on top of her, he managed to will a teleport.
Her back hit dirt rather than cobblestones, her grunt loud in his ear as he fell on top of her in the open land just outside the town.
She was quick to shake off the blow and attack him, pounding his head with her fists until his ears rang and he was forced to distance himself. She flipped onto her feet and came at him, fire raging in her eyes as she kicked off. He crossed his forearms over his face, blocked her knee as it came at him and pushed forwards, shoving her back.
She disappeared.
His senses stretched around him, his heart labouring as he waited, sure she would come at him again rather than leave or return to the vampire compound in the centre of the town.
An electric sizzle leaped down his spine and he turned on his heel, growled through emerging fangs as he blocked her arm and spotted the blade she gripped in her hand.
A black blade.
“Must have cost you a pretty penny,” he muttered as he twisted his hand around her arm.
Before he could disarm her, she was gone again. The darkness surged forwards, his mounting frustration pulling it to the fore as he turned in a slow circle. It whispered to him, goading him into ending her before she could land a blow with her new weapon—a weapon made of the same material as his armour and therefore one that could cut through it.
She must have gone hunting for the dagger after their first encounter. It wouldn’t surprise him if it had taken her the entire three days to locate someone who had such a blade for sale. Weapons made from the obsidian metal were rare outside the elf kingdom.
Pain rolled across his back as she slammed into him, white-hot just below his right hip. The scent of his own blood filled the air, thick and heavy, and the darkness pushed harder, demanding he finish her now. She meant to kill him, wasn’t pulling her punches. This was no longer a game. Injuring or incapacitating her was no longer an option.
This was war.
Hartt elbowed her in the face. Once. Twice. On the third blow, the scent of her blood joined his and she grunted and staggered backwards. He growled as her dagger pulled free of his flesh and stumbled forwards a few steps before turning on her. He bared his fangs at her as she flexed her fingers around her blade and swiped her free hand across her face, smearing blood across her cheek.
Blood.
His senses zeroed in on it, hunger rising as swiftly as the darkness within him to fill him with a black need.
To taste that precious crimson.
As that need flooded him, it stirred something primal and powerful, an urge that had his heart labouring and mind blanking, pulled all his focus to that tempting streak of crimson and the sweet scent of her blood.
He wanted to blame it on blood loss as warm wetness slid down his hip, but this was nothing like he had ever felt before in the midst of battle when he was injured and in need of blood to speed his healing.
This was something else.