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“I noticed. There’s not much you’re not good at, is there?”
I stopped and stared down at his back, mouth ajar. He’d said it so matter-of-factly, like it was a given: Ridley is good at pretty much everything.
I only wished it were true, because this thing between me and Zaq confused the hell out of me. I wasn’t good at relationships. I was a relationship-virgin, in fact.
I’d never really had a boyfriend. I hadn’t even dated. I’d had hook-ups, of course, but that was it.
Zaq liked me. I could feel that. And the sex had felt like more than fucking, despite what he’d said.
But I wanted more. I wanted his trust, even though I probably didn’t deserve it.
I heaved a sigh. Gods, I was messed up.
And he was already ten steps below me. I jogged down the steps after him.
We descended several flights before arriving in an abandoned subway tunnel. The white tiles were cracked and grimy. Water dripped from the ceiling and puddled on the concrete floor between rusty metal tracks. The only light came from a long way to our right where subways rumbled by out of sight; without my enhanced night vision, I’d have been walking blind.
Zaq took my hand and we picked our way along the wet concrete floor. “When it rains,” he said, “the tunnel floods to your waist. Even the homeless stay away. The only things that live here are vampires and rats.”
On cue, a pair of eyes glowed red a few yards away at ankle height. A frisson of fear went up my spine. A rat, and it was a good sixteen inches long. I swallowed—hard—and hoped it had eaten recently, because it appeared to be sizing up my ankles for its next meal.
“Damn, Kral. You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”
“They don’t attack. They’re too smart to attack anything down here that walks on two legs.”
His barely concealed amusement made me want to stick something sharp in him, but we weren’t carrying weapons. Zaq had said they’d only confiscate them. “Down there, it’s their world. We have to play by their rules.” We’d left my phone at the squat for the same reason.
I kept a wary eye on the rat until it scampered off.
We drew even with a tunnel leading off the main tunnel and Zaq stopped. Several other pairs of eyes glowed at intervals down the side tunnel. These eyes weren’t at ankle height, and they shone blue at the edges.
“Here we go,” Zaq said out of the side of his mouth.
I nodded.
Every big city in the world had vampire outcasts like those in Père Lachaise, the vampires who’d never joined a syndicate or had been thrown out. In New York, they lived in the abandoned subway tunnels beneath Manhattan. I knew about them, of course, but I’d never been down here before. Slayers who entered the underworld without an invitation tended to disappear.
Zaq released my hand and stepped in front of me. “It’s Batman. I’m here to see Spider.”
Batman and Spider? I swallowed a sudden, inappropriate urge to laugh.
The closest pair of eyes came nearer, and I saw they were attached to a lanky vampire with a face like the hot billionaire in Crazy Rich Asians and a shock of purple layered over his black hair.
“George.” Zaq nodded hello.
George didn’t return his nod. “Who’s the woman?”
“Mine.”
George leaned to the left so he could see around Zaq. His eyes tracked up and down my body like I was for sale and he was in the mood to buy.
My shoulders tightened with a mix of anger and uneasiness. Inside, I cursed myself for agreeing to Zaq’s “no blades” edict.
Zaq reached back and pulled me up next to him. He tucked me under his arm, making it clear I was under his protection. I leaned into Zaq and fluttered my eyelashes at him, playing the dazed, love-struck addict for all I was worth.
“I said, she’s mine,” Zaq told George in menacing tones.
My inner thighs constricted. God, I liked hearing me claim me, even if it was only for George’s benefit.
