“Here.” He deposited the rubbish bag and its contents on a steel table. The horrific nature of his task should have eroded the allure of sex he wore like second skin—if you liked your sex kissed by blood and pain. It didn’t. He remained sophisticated and sexy and very much a creature she did not want in her bedroom any time of day or night.
His lips, the lower one just full enough to tempt a woman with fantasies of sin, curved as if he’d read her thoughts. “Do you need help to peel off the skin?”
3
“No.” Her reaction upstairs had been incited by shock at his callousness—she didn’t have a problem working with the grisly find on her own. “I’ll take the best photographs I can, given the condition of the victim, and I’ll mostly work off them. But I want to use the microscope on the tattoo itself, too, make sure I don’t miss any fine details.”
More at ease now, she slid out the slim digital camera she’d tucked into the side pocket of her laptop bag. “A pathologist should examine the head before we consider removing the skin.” She clicked on the camera. “Have you got someone asking around the tattoo parlors?” If they lucked out, she might have a clean photograph to work from.
“Yes.” Snapping on a glove to replace the one he’d removed, he pulled the head out of the bag and stretched the skin tight over the man’s cheekbone as she took a number of highresolution shots from different angles. “That should do for now.” As he put the head down onto a tray and got rid of the trash bag, she set up her laptop and transferred the photos onto the hard drive.
Her body alert to his every small movement, she was aware of Dmitri placing the head in the freezer, stripping off his gloves, and cleaning his hands. So when he appeared beside her chair without warning, the emotion he awakened was so bone-chilling, so vicious, parts of her mind just shut down. And when he lifted her hair off her neck to touch the sensitive skin of her nape, she—
Noise. A shattering metallic crash. Words.
The next thing she knew, she was standing several feet from Dmitri, a tall stool with legs of beaten steel lying on its side between them. A line of blood marked his cheek, but his eyes were focused on the door at her back. “Out!”
Only when the door shut did she realize that someone had attempted to intervene. Sweat dampened her palms, beaded on her spine. Remember, she told herself, remember. But the time was gone, a black spot drenched in the panic that was a vile taste on her tongue. “I hit you.”
Raising his hand, he rubbed a finger on his cheek, came away with a dark red slick on his fingertip. “Something about me seems to make women want to use knives.”
Oh, God. She looked down, realized she was gripping a blade in her hand, the tip wet. “I don’t suppose you’ll accept an apology.” It came out calm, her mind so shocked it was numb.
Sliding his hands into his pockets, Dmitri said, “No, but you can pay for your crimes later. Right now, I need what you can give me on this.”
“I want to consult some of the texts at the Academy library,” she said, forcing her brain into gear, though her hand refused to release the knife she’d apparently pulled from the sheath on her thigh.
“Fine. But remember, little rabbit, not a word to anyone.” He moved close enough that the dark heat of him lapped against her in a quiet threat that made her glad for the blade. “I am not a nice man when I’m angry.”
She held her position, a ragged attempt to erase the humiliation of the panic attack. “I’m fairly certain you’re not a nice man at all.”
His answer was a slow smile that whispered of silk sheets, erotic whispers, and sweat-damp skin. The unhidden intent of it had her heart slamming hard against her ribs. “No,” she said, voice raw.
“A challenge.” He wasn’t touching her and yet she felt caressed by a thousand ropes of fur, soft and lush and unmistakably sexual. “I accept.”
Dmitri made the call an hour later, having had to deal with another matter in the interim. “Sara,” he said when the Guild Director answered her cell.
“Dmitri.” A cool greeting. “What do you need?”
“To know why the hunter you sent me just sliced my face.” The wound had already healed, but it made the perfect opening gambit.
Sara sucked in a breath. “If you’ve done something to her, I swear to God I will get my crossbow and pin you to the side of the f**king Tower.”
Dmitri liked Sara. “She’s being chauffeured home as we speak.” The blood debt was between him and Honor; it would be settled in private. “I gave her a human driver.”
Sara muttered something under her breath. “She’s the best person for the task.”
He stared out at the jewel-bright skyline of Manhattan. “Who did that to her neck?” Cold burned through his veins, a vicious response to the scars of a woman he didn’t know and who would simply be another bedmate for so long as she amused him. Because while her resistance was intriguing, would make for an interesting diversion, he had no doubts that she would end up in his bed—and she’d crawl into it with pleasure.
Then Sara spoke, and the cold turned frigid. “The same bastards who kept her chained up in a basement for two months.” It was a brutal summary. “She was barely alive when we found her. They’d carried on with their sick games even though three of her ribs were broken and she was bleeding and feverish from wounds that—” Sara bit off her words, her rage a finely honed edge, but Dmitri didn’t need anything more.
He remembered the incident. The Guild had requested Tower assistance, been granted it at once. However, involved in the reconstruction of a Manhattan that had been badly damaged by the battle between Uram and Raphael—and, more important, focused on holding Raphael’s territory while the archangel spent the majority of his time in the Refuge, waiting for his sleeping consort to wake—Dmitri hadn’t taken personal control of the investigation. That was about to change. “Status of her attackers?”
“Ransom and Ashwini killed two of the four they found at the scene. The other two were turned over to the Tower, but they were hired muscle at best, allowed to—” A ragged breath. “The ones behind this were smarter. They left no forensic clues and Honor was always blindfolded. We’ll get them.” Icy words. “We always do.”
Ending the call on that, Dmitri looked out at a city that wouldn’t yet slumber for hours. Honor’s attackers would all die. That had never been in question. The only difference was, now that he’d felt her blade against his skin, now that he’d tasted the screaming depth of her fear, he’d take exquisite pleasure in personally cutting out vital organs from their bodies before he left them to heal in some hole . . . and then he’d do it over again.