Ava jackknifed to her feet, knees almost giving out as she peered down at herself. No top, no skirt, no shoes. Only her bra and matching panties.

Shit. She searched, but there was no sign of her clothes. “That tricky bastard! He did this.” And she floundered between admiration, humiliation, and horror. The strength required to destroy a car like that … immense. The intelligence required to outwit her … equally so. But God, the knowledge that she’d failed, choking.

What else had he done?

Frantically she patted her neck. Thank the Lord. No puncture wounds. Still. There was no question McKell had defeated her just as surely as he’d defeated the other agents sent after him. She’d been so cocky, so certain of her success. After all, she hadn’t lost a fight since Judy Demarko, the world’s biggest seventh-grade bully, had slammed her head into a brick wall and hacked off her hair—why did girls always do that to her?—while she was too dazed to move. All because Judy’s ex-boyfriend had asked her out. Well, and maybe because Ava had stashed Onadyn, an illegal alien drug, in Judy’s bag the day before, getting her kicked out of school, her reign of terror finally over. But that was merely speculation.

“I thought he could only stop time in short bursts,” Noelle said. She stood, as well, and tossed up her arms, the picture of exasperated female. “Yet he clearly stopped us.”

“Which means you thought wrong.” Ava, too.

“Thanks for stating the obvious. You’re lucky I don’t—” Noelle gasped.

“What?” Ava whipped left and right, scanning the forest for any sign of intruders. They were alone, the insects as quiet as they’d been around McKell. The scent of him lingered, though, as if he’d only just left. Warm, intoxicating … necessary.

Oh, hell, no. She hadn’t just thought that word. Necessary. She wiped it from her vernacular.

The gasp turned to giggles, and Noelle pointed to her chest.

“What?” she demanded again, looking down and seeing something golden—letters, she realized—smeared on her skin, just above her bra. She frowned, sniffed. Butterscotch. Mmm. Her stomach rumbled. “What does it say?”

Noelle just grinned at her.

She tilted her head, trying to decipher all four of those letters. When she did, she gnashed her molars in irritation. And more admiration, damn it, followed by a stupid wave of giddiness.

McKell had taken her lipgloss and spelled the word DIBS.

Four

The next morning, the gun range overflowed with agents, and Ava resigned herself to a half-hour wait. At least. But Mia arrived a few minutes later—two minutes early for their meeting, God bless her—and three stalls immediately cleared, the agents scampering away without meeting their commander’s eye. Now that was power.

Ava envied her.

Mia claimed the middle, and Ava and Noelle the sides.

In unison, they withdrew and loaded crystals into their pyre-guns, checking the chambers for obstructions while techs placed flame-resistant dummies at the end of the stalls.

Apparently, Mia was a multitasker and liked to conduct her chew-outs while at target practice. Only, as they fired golden beams at the dummies, soot forming where they hit, there was only silence.

Was Mia too pissed to speak?

Ava looked at the woman’s target. Three shots to the fake man’s chest. She looked at Noelle’s. Three shots to the face. Then she looked at her own. Three shots to the groin. No, Mia wasn’t pissed. Otherwise her dummy would have resembled Noelle’s or Ava’s. This was just business as usual. And wasn’t that a shocker.

Still. Ava knew this meeting would not end well for her. How could it? After last night’s failure, Mia would forbid her to approach McKell. To punish him as she craved. To assuage her curiosity and discover what he’d do next. To tamp down her need to peer into those violet eye and … what? She didn’t know.

She only knew the desire to see him again was strong. So, would she obey an edict to stay away? She didn’t know that, either. The man had her cell, and more than anything, she wanted it back. Liar.

Okay, okay. Most of all she wanted to get her hands on him and, uh, choke him. Yeah. Choke him. He’d been way too smug about his victory, writing on her chest like that, then leaving her practically naked. What a show-off. He should be ashamed. Poor sportsmanship always earned a penalty, and choking would be his.

“So …” she began, aiming at her target. Of course, she once again pictured McKell’s beautiful features as she squeezed the trigger. Had he truly been standing at the end of her stall, his stomach would have exploded that time. “We gonna kick this thing off or what?”

Because they were using pyre-guns, background noise wasn’t a problem. Pyres were as quiet as little church mice.

“Didn’t realize you were a masochist.” Mia exchanged her crystal for a bigger one. The bigger the crystal, the hotter the burn. Working off her stress? Looking at her, that seemed implausible. Even with her obviously violent nature, she resembled a ballerina, not a trained assassin. Black hair, blue eyes. A face more delicate than Ava’s.

Despite that face, Mia had earned the respect and yeah, fear of her peers. When she spoke, they listened. They trusted her to lead them properly, intelligently. They saw her strength, saw the spirit of the alpha that lurked at her core. Ava wanted that for herself. Craved it like a drug.

“There are probably a lot of things you don’t know about my girl Ava,” Noelle said to their boss. She’d never been one to back down from anyone. “Like, she enjoys long walks on the beach, cuddling in front of a fireplace, and a new favorite, being written on with butterscotch-flavored lipgloss.”

Mia’s lips curved slightly, the echoes of winter in her eyes almost melting to summer. “That’s inside info that will come in handy, I’m sure. But to be honest, I didn’t command you here so you could listen to me bitch. You did better than any of my other agents, engaging the vampire rather than trying to sneak up on him. You made contact. You weren’t drained. You kept your fingers. Three points for you.”

Wait. Praise? From the iceberg known as Mia Snow? Amazing. But … “Contact or not, we failed,” Ava said. She wouldn’t dress that fact in bows and lace. One, two, three, she nailed pretend McKell in quick succession. Heart, groin again, and inner thigh. Where it might be nice to kiss him. Argh. Kiss him? Idiot!

“Believe me, I know you failed,” Mia replied. Four bright golden beams shot from her gun. All hit the same shoulder, deepening what would have been an injury, not a death sentence. “But it could have been worse.”

“I’m not sure how.” McKell had destroyed their ride and stolen their clothes, so she and Noelle had had to walk to the nearest convenience store, commandeer T-shirts and bandanas—all that had been available—and hitch home. The male driver had leered at their legs the entire way.

Funny thing, though. She’d felt utterly safe. And not just because she knew how to protect herself with a skill and precision, and hell, a determination, not many regular citizens realized. She’d felt something with her, a presence, a dark storm, scaring away the bad, yet never turning on her.

The vampire? Surely not. He’d had his fun, and he’d slipped away in the night.

Mia fired off another shot. “Like I said, you weren’t drained and sent back to me useless.”

Fine. A kind-of success. But kind-of wasn’t good enough for Ava. Especially since she had a feeling McKell had failed to drink their blood because they were women, and he had a weakness—otherwise known as a conscience—rather than their superior agenting skills.

“Plus,” Mia continued, and it was apparent she was trying not to laugh. “We now know McKell can do more than simply stop time. He can stop people. And strip them. And write on them.”

Noelle snickered.

Ava flipped off both women.

Mia shrugged, probably used to such a reaction. “Now you’re better equipped to deal with him.”

Better equipped to—Wait. What? “So you’re giving us another chance?”

“Definitely.”

“I never doubted you would,” Noelle said, which was funny, since she had whined about the “injustice of being fired for one strike-out” the entire drive here.

“Good. Now listen closely.” Mia slapped her gun on the counter, then pinned them both with a hard glare. “I need a blood sample from him, and I don’t care how you get it. I have questions for him, too, but those can wait. Blood’s the most important thing right now. We found another Schön victim.”

“Dead?” Ava asked. She knew the Schön disease worked quickly, turning the infected men and women into cannibals while the virus itself ate through their bodies. But there hadn’t been a new case in weeks. And before that, Bride McKells had used her blood to heal the infected. So they had a cure. Right?

Just the name, Bride McKells, irritated Ava. Bride had married Devyn, king of the Targons, but had once been engaged to Ava’s McKell.

Wait. Hold everything. McKell wasn’t Ava’s. Would never be Ava’s. Her hands fisted. He was a case, nothing more. And she wasn’t jealous that the vampire had pined for the female for decades, waiting for her to return to their underground world and live happily-ever-after.

There was more to the story, there had to be—because really, what kind of woman picked cocky Devyn Targon over brooding Victor McKell?—but that was all Ava had found in the vampire’s file. Had he loved Bride? If so, did he love her still?

Ava’s nails sliced into skin. Doesn’t matter. Relax. He was nothing. Not to her.

Mia nodded, cropped black hair dancing over her shoulders. “One vic means there will be other vics. That’s the way it works. And yeah, Bride Targon’s blood heals the infected, we think, but we’ve basically tapped her dry, and Devyn’s … complaining. We want to test McKell now.”

As fierce and lethal as Devyn was, Ava would bet that “complaining” involved knives.

“Tell me I can count on you,” Mia finished. A demand.

“You’d be stupid not to,” Noelle said. A boast.

“Very true,” Ava agreed. How she’d get that sample, she didn’t yet know. She’d find a way, though. She always did.

Smile returning, Mia patted Ava’s ass. “Good. So go get your man, tiger.”

* * *

McKell’s heartbeat sped up the moment Ava stepped past the line of trees and into his camp, stopping in front of the campfire exactly as she had the night before.

She had returned. He hadn’t had to chase her down.

The other girl, Noelle, eased up beside her, but his gaze remained on Ava. She wore a skin-tight black shirt and equally tight black pants. Her curls had been tamed, forced into some kind of twist at the base of her beautiful neck.

He wanted to strip her again, find out if she’d washed his claiming away. He wanted to set those curls free, find out if fisting them would give him as much satisfaction as he suspected. But most of all, he wanted to sink his fangs into her vein and taste her blood. Would it taste as sweet as her lipgloss?

He’d long since given up trying to fight the desires.

Last night, he had ensured she returned home safely, following in the shadows, even when she rode in some stranger’s car. The stranger in question was alive now only because he’d kept his hands to himself. By the time McKell returned to this forest, distance between him and Ava, his needs had been stronger than ever, and he’d realized he had already lost the battle.

Had she not come to him tonight, as he’d hoped, he would have gone to her tomorrow rather than waiting a few days. He hadn’t wanted to seem too eager, but he was determined to have her. And not just to use her to lure other vampires.

“No kiss this time?” he asked, hoping he’d managed to mask that hated eagerness.

He sat on the same boulder he’d occupied last night. Difference was, his weapons were now stored in places the girls wouldn’t think to look. Since darkness had fallen, he’d been too distracted, watching for Ava, to even pretend to clean them.

“No.” She shook her head, causing moonlight and shadows to fight for dominance on her delicate features. “You’ve been a bad, naughty boy, and don’t deserve a reward.”

Her voice … as close to sex as a man could get without actually removing his clothing. Sure, he’d considered it “sweet” before. After lying in his cave all day, replaying their interaction through his head over and over again, however, he’d realized that sweet obviously equaled dirty to his body. “I did nothing to you that you didn’t deserve. So a bad, naughty boy? Ha! You, though … you took my weapons.”

“Yeah, but you got them back.”

So she wasn’t going to apologize for her actions? “No one takes my things, Ava. Ever. They are mine. Mine.”

She shrugged, his growing rage clearly of no consequence to her. “Whaa, whaa, whaa, and heard it all before. As if that was the worst of my crimes.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why are you here? You can’t defeat me, and you know it.”

“We know no such thing,” Noelle replied. She was still here? “But we’re here because we want to talk to you.”

She did, perhaps, but Ava clearly did not. That female wanted to shoot him. Anger now filled those dark eyes.

McKell couldn’t help himself, wanted to stoke the anger into rage. While she watched, he withdrew her lipgloss from his pocket and coated his mouth. He smacked for good measure. But rather than launch herself at him as he’d expected, she smothered a laugh.

Baffling woman. He’d just taunted her about her failure with him, and she’d gifted him with amusement that stroked his ears. Why hadn’t her anger intensified?