“Do you trust me?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper.
“With my life.” The response came without hesitation and she knew it to be true.
His mouth lowered to hers, brushing an achingly sweet kiss across her lips. Every muscle in her body relaxed, becoming almost languid. Somehow she managed to drag heavy hands to his lapels and grasp them. Lifting her head to his took a strength she didn’t know she possessed. But when her lips met his again, she kissed him with a new hunger.
“Our fearless leader returns at long last. With food.”
Unable to stop herself, Alice stiffened at the familiar voice of the vampire who’d wanted to kill her.
Cicero.
Chapter Nineteen
Bast nipped at Alice’s bottom lip once. A gentle reminder. He was here and would not let anything happen to her.
Not ever.
He pulled her upright, loving the look of complete adoration mixed with a bit of drunk satisfaction in her expression. Yeah, Cicero had probably messed with her head by stepping in when he had, but Bast wasn’t about to let that go. “Lieutenant,” he growled in warning. He did not want to hear his shit. Especially not about Alice, and definitely not in front of her. The men would be given an explanation for this breach of security, despite Bast not owing them one, but in his own time. Not theirs.
Cicero folded his arms across a brick wall of a chest. “You brought a human here? Do you—”
Rage and righteous indignation propelled Bast forward, the momentum barely allowing him to register that the other members of his team had also approached. Goddamn, he was sick of the man’s constant needling and insubordination. Only one of them could be in charge, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the Hassassin. Enough. The hand that pushed Cicero against the wall had enough force to punch through skin to land on bone.
His lieutenant fared better though. Bast clamped onto his neck with jaws capable of crushing the vampire’s windpipe. His teeth punctured the skin there, blood squirting into his mouth almost immediately.
The battle-seasoned warrior knew better than to struggle. Any movement would have done nothing more than encourage Bast to rip out his throat. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would hurt like holy hell. The healing process even more painful and excruciatingly slow. Whether or not he’d recover his voice, questionable.
Bast drank from the spilling wound on pure instinct alone, the taste coming nowhere close to the sweetness Alice provided him. Cicero vibrated with returned anger but smartly stayed stock still.
Bast wasn’t the oldest vampire by a long shot. Of course, he wasn’t even a full-born vampire like the others. Hell, he wasn’t the most lethal of the men. But he’d been chosen to lead them—him—and he had no problem reinforcing to any of them why that decision had been made. No one but fucking Cicero ever seemed to need a reminder.
At last he pulled away, stepping away from the direct spray of blood once the pressure had been removed. If Cicero wanted the wound healed, he could ask one of the others to lick it over. Bast didn’t give a shit if he bled out. “Let that be the last time,” he told Cicero in a low voice. “The last fucking time.”
For some reason Bast couldn’t be bothered to explore, Cicero was almost fanatical about staying with the guard. If he was going to voice his displeasure again, Bast wouldn’t be the one to hear it. That alone kept Bast from taking his life and being done with it.
He turned his full attention back to his lover by outstretching a hand. “Come here, baby. Let me introduce you to the team.” Once the pale, trembling woman stood at his side, he made his intentions clear to the others. She held his hand tightly, and he returned the hold, knowing how insane this must have all seemed to her. To him, it was just another day. “Alice is under my protection.”
Gray’s eyes contained a mix of curiosity and admiration, but he gave a curt nod. There was no attempt to touch her, even with a friendly handshake, and Bast mentally thanked the vampire’s insightfulness. “And if you are under his protection, you are under mine. Gray Thallum, at your service.”
One by one, the other three members introduced themselves. Drew and the twins, Kemp and Conell. Dressed in tuxedos, none of them managed to hide the innate thug that made most people—vampire and human alike—instinctually fearful. Despite what others might think, he trusted every one of them, including Cicero, with his life...and now with Alice’s.