I shrugged. “I recall vaguely my behavior when I unintentionally imbibed at Zeus’s pool party. The results were . . . not pretty.” Actually the results had sent me into the lap of a god, after which his estranged wife, the goddess of love, had threatened to kill me just for looking at him. Not good all around, and I planned to avoid a repeat of that scene.

Ernie held up two fingers. “Ouzo for me.” The waitress wrote it down and then hurried off when Remo waved her away.

“Really, how can you drink ouzo?” I looked at the cherub, who leaned back on the high seat of the bench.

He smiled and winked. “It makes me think of cupcakes, and you know how I love my food.”

A rush of heat spread up my face. “May I remind you that my brush with poisoning others was not something I’m proud of?” I’d decided that putting my venom into a batch of cupcakes would give me a leg up on the bad guys. It had worked, with one small hitch. I’d mixed up the cupcakes and taken some of the poisoned ones to a family dinner. My parents were still complaining about the smell of vomit in their dining room.

“But it got the job done.” He pulled one wing forward and ran his fingers through the white feathers.

Not really, it hadn’t. The only good thing that had come from it was the satisfaction of watching Roger and Barbie barf all over each other. See, I wasn’t joking about my parents inviting my ex and his girlfriend over to eat.

The waitress brought us our drinks. “You sure you don’t want anything, honey?” She put a hand on Remo’s shoulder, rubbing it gently, and I tensed, a low hiss slipping out of me before I could catch it. She didn’t hear me, but I had no doubt Remo did. His eyes shot to mine, and I struggled to pull myself together. She was just getting fresh; it happened. No matter how big or the dangerous the aura he carried was, Remo was one dang sexy man, and I knew it, along with the rest of the female population of Seattle.

He shook his head and waved her away without a word. She gave a little huff and shot me a dirty look. Maybe she had heard me hiss at her. I smiled and reached across the table to take his hand. He pulled back, leaning in his chair away from me. That was . . . odd.

“We have to talk,” he said, a coolness in his voice that hadn’t been there just moments before. Even the first time we’d met there had been heat between us. We’d fought, but he’d never been cold with me.

Ernie flopped down on the table while my heart began to pick up its pace, a slow-burning adrenaline coursing through me. Something was wrong, and I was afraid of whatever it was that made Remo so different.

The cherub seemed oblivious to the rising tension. “What are we discussing tonight?”

Remo turned and stared at Ernie, giving him a glare that should have frozen the wings off the cherub. “Privacy for this. It is between Alena and me.”

Ernie stopped in midmotion, a pretzel halfway to his mouth, his shot glass of ouzo in the other. “Oh . . . one of those talks. Got it. I won’t be far.” He popped the pretzel into his mouth and zipped into the air, flew a few booths away, and then leaned down as if he was listening in on the conversation.

My stomach twisted into a sudden knot, as if the snake in me had turned in on itself and was hiding her head. I reached across the table again and took Remo’s hand, wrapping my fingers around his, but he didn’t react. “What is it?”

He pulled away from me, brushing my fingers off his—as if I were dirty. Part of me wanted to smack him, and the other part of me wanted to smack him too. What was going on?

He closed his eyes. “You understand there are unspoken rules in our world? That there are not supposed to be cross-species relationships? We have discussed this before.”

The coil in my belly tightened further, constricting my ability to speak well. I knew what he was talking about, but I thought we were past that issue. “Yes.”

His jaw tensed. “I’ve told Dahlia to break it off with Tad. Their relationship is not right and is bound to fail.”

“You what?” I jerked, slamming into the booth back behind me. “But they have something special. They really love each other! How could you do that?”

“I know that they care for one another.” His jaw ticked again. “That doesn’t negate the reality of their lives, or mine.” He paused, his eyes flickering over me and then staring just over my shoulder. “I have other vampires coming in to join me in my fight against Santos. Vampires who are older than me and who are sticklers for the rules. I cannot have cross-species dating happening. If your brother were only a favored donor, that would be something else. But Tad’s not, and we all know it.”

I felt the prickle along the back of my neck, but I refused to cringe. I refused to beg like Roger for something I could see Remo had already decided on. I straightened in my seat and folded my hands on the table.

“You can’t be with me, can you? That’s what you are saying?”

His whole body tensed as he slid farther away from me and leaned back in his chair. “No, I can’t.”

CHAPTER 2

I sat there, frozen in place. I shouldn’t have been bothered Remo was breaking things off with me. It wasn’t like we’d been dating long, only a week or so since my divorce had been finalized, and before that we’d not really been together. Just . . . working toward it. We hadn’t even had sex. I mean, I’d slept beside him more than once, but no nookie because . . . damn it, I couldn’t seem to find a good enough reason now that I was losing him.