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I waved her warning off. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. No acting like Superfury for a while.” Scott’s hand was still on my back, lingering when it didn’t need to. Suddenly self-conscious, I pushed myself away. My eyes widened’ when I stood and was rewarded with absolutely zero pain. “Wow, that’s some good shit.”

Kiara snorted. “Indeed. Now, if you two will excuse me. . .“ She disappeared from Scott’s bedroom before we could react.

“I can’t believe she just left us alone in your bedroom.”

“She knows there’s nothing to worry about.”

The words cut more sharply than I expected. “Yeah, well, this
nothing
had better take herself to bed.

Good night.”

I stepped toward the door, but his hands moved to my arms and he whirled me roughly. “Dammit, Riss, you know that’s not what I—oh, screw it.”

His lips crushed down on mine, and fire exploded inside my body. I moaned, arms clutching his to keep from falling.
This is a mistake. We shouldn’t—oh, screw it!
His mouth opened slightly, and I took advantage of the opportunity, thrusting my tongue inside and tasting, long and deep. He tasted as good as

—better than—ever, a mixture of masculine scents and the slightly feminine berry-flavored candy he sucked on to stave off cigarette cravings. He’d quit that nasty habit for me, and the evidence that he’d kept it up sent pleasure radiating straight to my belly. Then again, that could have been the sheer lust our kiss ignited.

Then, as suddenly as he’d begun it, he ended the kiss with another curse, shoving me away and stalking toward the bedroom’s oversized window. At first, I thought he was pissed at me, and that had me shoving my hands on my hips and scowling. After all,
I
,hadn’t been the one to jam my tongue in his delicious mouth.. . Okay, that wasn’t helping settle the desire overloading my system. My eyes narrowed in sudden realization. That desire was an obviously mutual feeling. Which meant he still wanted me. And now we both knew it.

His words echoed my thought perfectly. “Don’t ever say ‘you’re nothing to me. You should damned well know better.”

I considered questioning that statement, seeing as how, after what I’d thought was an amazing eighteen months together, he’d chosen both his family and money over me, but now didn’t seem the time to dredge up old grudges. Time enough for that later.

“I—okay. Maybe I’m not exactly nothing to you, but what’d you expect me to think when you said that?”

He ran an impatient hand through his shaggy hair, and then turned to face me. “When I said Kiara knows there’s nothing to worry about, I meant because she’d love it if we got back together.”

My mouth snapped shut on the comeback I’d managed to cobble together as his words sank in. And the warm fuzzies they generated had my cheeks blooming with color. “Could have fooled me. I thought she hated me.”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah, she hates you so much she’s nagged me to call you at least once a week since you left.”

That had my mouth popping wide open again. “She— did?”

“Yeah. Called me an idiot for letting you go like that.”

“Then why. . .“ I jerked my mouth shut again. So much for not dredging up old grudges.

“I had my reasons,” he said. “I still do, so this is probably a huge mistake.” He approached me again. I wasn’t sure what to expect, which made it all the more surprising when he caressed my hair in an achingly familiar gesture.

He was right. Things were too unresolved between us. So much time had passed, so many bitter things had been said. I thought I had put it all behind me. Being with him again. . . it was hard to know where we stood, but it was easy to see that nothing had really changed. He was working for the man who I once thought had something to do with Vanessa’s disappearance, who could
still
be involved at some level.

But Scott had been showing that he wanted me back in his bed with a dozen little looks and touches since getting over his initial anger. He’d never been afraid to go after what he wanted, one of the things that most attracted me to him, and he didn’t hesitate to draw me into his arms once more.

That fact was enough to have me surrender to the desire still thrumming along every nerve ending.

Gods, it’d been so long since I’d been touched like this. Years since I’d been intimate with a man—with him. And I found myself throwing caution to the wind. Who cared if we both regretted it later? For now, we wanted each other.

He nudged me toward his bed, and I went gladly. Heat flared between us, a slow, steady burn that flashed into a firestorm as skin touched skin and our breathing grew ragged. His hands slipped beneath my T-shirt and zoomed straight toward my black satin bra. I gasped as he caressed the sensitive skin through the insubstantial fabric, somehow driving me crazier than if he’d been touching bare flesh. When his amazing fingers finally
did
skim beneath the satin, I arched my back and grabbed on to his hair. A dozen sensations danced across my skin, a dozen memories of other times we’d been locked in heated embraces in this very bed flashed through my mind. The man making love to me with his hands always knew how to touch me, both physically and emotionally, never failed to make me feel in a way no other man could.

‘Oh, shit. I still care about him.

That
had me scrambling out from under him and off the bed so fast my head spun. My knee trembled, although Kiara’s remedy worked as promised and the pain remained masked. Scott flipped himself over and into a sitting position, face excruciatingly blank.

“What, it wasn’t good for you, baby?” The derision in his voice could have made me cry if I let it.

“This
is
a mistake. One we can’t repeat.”

My hands had the door half open when he got off his parting shot. “Run away, Riss. Just like you always do.”

Tension clenched my body, and I considered turning to argue. But that would be pointless. He was right, but I didn’t give a damn. Sometimes, running was the only smart thing to do. I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—let him break my heart again. Being immortal didn’t mean being indestructible.

THE DOOR TO MURPHY COMMAND CENTRAL
jerked open before my fingers could settle on the knob. My pulse leapt and I assumed an aggressive stance, halfway to shifting when brain caught up to instinct and cataloged the person on’ the other side of the doorway as friend rather than foe.

Sean Murphy lifted both hands in an
I’m unarmed
gesture. His nostrils flared and his eyes, the color of old whiskey—the darkest of all the Murphys—narrowed in an oddly fierce expression. Before I could ask him what was wrong, though, he leaned against the doorjamb, his stretched tank top outlining the chiseled perfection of well-cut abs and chest in a way that made me uncomfortably aware of just how much Scott’s little brother had grown up.

“Where you running off to so fast?”

His words unknowingly echoed the last his brother had thrown at me. I struggled not to take the sudden flash of Rage out on him.
Innocent bystander, Riss.
“I need to check on something real quick.”

He glanced over my shoulder to the hallway leading to the building’s residential area, where most of the Murphys made like one big happy family in a warren of cushy apartments. “And big brother isn’t shadowing your every move?”

His voice teetered on the edge separating humor from bitterness, catching me off-guard. Two years ago Sean had all but worshipped Scott, no doubt one of the reasons he’d formed
a
mild crush on me. I’d never embarrassed him enough to call
him on that infatuation, but now I couldn’t help speculating, Had my breakup with Scott somehow prompted the mix of hope and frustration seething across his features?

I kept my tone light. “Nah, I’m a big girl. I can take a walk by myself if I want.”

His lips, narrower than Scott’s but no less attractive, curved upward. “I could keep you company, if you like.”

“Maybe some other time. I need to do this on my own.”

He stepped forward with a suddenly intense expression on his face. One of his hands settled on my shoulder, sending my pulse skittering madly for no reason I could put name to.
When the hell did little
Sean get so damned hot, anyway?
Okay, no reason I
wanted
to put name to.

“Riss, I know it’s none of my concern, but I’d hate to see you get hurt again. You deserve better, you know?”

I struggled to fight hormones that had no reason to be stirring, trying to convince myself they were all byproducts of the heavy petting session I’d just walked away from. No way on earth did I find Scott’s
little brother
in the slightest way sexy. “Ah, sorry. Deserve better?”

Brown eyes darkened even further. “Better than
him.
You have to know how I feel about y—”

Oh, hell. This conversation had just bypassed uncomfortable and

zoomed straight to creepy. “Ah, sorry, Sean. Really gotta go!” I broke away and scurried toward the door to Hounds of Anubis, ignoring his attempted protest and slamming the door open and shut with dizzying speed. My typical luck—which was to say, crappy—held, and the last person I wanted to see was the first person to catch sight of me as I made my escape. Liana Murphy, Scott’s mother. Panic set in fast when her eyes met mine from across the store and she started walking my way.
Shit, she’s gonna know we
made out!
Of
course
she was going to know. Her son’s scent was all over me, and she was a Hound.

She touched her left cheek to my right, then vice versa. “Good to see you, Marissa.” My mouth dropped open. “Close your mouth, dear. Wouldn’t want the flies to get in.”

I obeyed automatically, much as everyone else who came into contact with Liana. “Wha—how—good to see you, too.”

She took my arm in hers and led me toward the entrance. “Molly, mind the store~ Marissa and I are going for a stroll.”

Suspicion immediately dawned. No wonder ‘she was being so nice. She just wanted to get me into a back alley so she could dispose of me without witnesses.

“Worried, dear?” She closed the door behind us with a snap. “You need not be. You may have fooled everyone else, but I’m not so easily snookered.”

Snookered?
I mouthed the word, having trouble picturing it in the elegant woman’s vocabulary. Then again, she
had
been married to Morgan Murphy a damned long time now.

I tried to bluff my way through it. “No idea what you’re talking about, Liana.”

She tugged me along the cobblestoned walkway, deeper into the Belly.

“Of course you do, silly girl. You still care about him. And he still cares about you.”

My mouth dropped open so far, every fly for a mile around had the perfect opportunity to make good her earlier admonition. I focused on the dingy bricks at our feet, trying to figure out her angle. She had to have one. Why else would we be strolling along the street, arm in arm, like we were bosom buddies?

I drew to a halt, jerking my arm away from hers, eyes narrowing. “Where are you taking me?”

She faced me, biting her lip nervously. “Andre Carington wants to see you. Morgan asked me to bring you by.”

Rage welled. I had to fight even harder than usual to push it back to a manageable level. “And you were going to lead me there like a lamb to slaughter? Did you think I would just go along meekly?”

Impatience flickered in her eyes. “Now, when would anyone make the mistake of thinking
you
meek?

Use your brain, girl.”

Unease settled in my stomach. “He threatened you somehow, didn’t he? That son of a—”

She gripped my hand in one of her own. “Calm down, Marissa, or neither one of us will survive five minutes inside. And, yes, he strongly
suggested
I bring you there.”

“As if I’ll just let you drag me there?”

Her hand ground the bones of my knuckles painfully. “Could you fucking shut up and listen for once in your life? Everything’s not always about
you,
Marissa. Haven’t you noticed that a certain Murphy has been mysteriously absent the past two years?”

Profanity from the supremely elegant Liana Murphy?

Now
that
was a first. I frowned as her question sank in. Suddenly, things clicked into place. “He blackmailed Morgan into taking him on as a client. That’s why Scott took over the business instead of—”

My eyes widened. “Instead of Amaya.” Amaya Murphy, Scott’s older sister, the Warhound Morgan had been grooming as his successor until.. . until she apparently vanished two years ago. All of Scott’s other close relatives were present and accounted for. Amaya’s disappearance was pretty much a news flash to me, since nobody had bothered to share that tidbit. I wondered how the hell they’d managed to keep a lid on that bit of gossip. Surely I would have heard it by now if it had become common knowledge.

Relief that Scott hadn’t chosen money over me conflicted with betrayal that he’d never confided in me.

How could he
not
have told me about Amaya’s being held captive? That would have changed
everything
two years ago. I never would have broken up with him if I’d known that Dre Carrington had blackmailed his family into protecting him from my Rage. “Where is he holding her?”

Liana’s hand dropped away, and she aged decades in the space of seconds. “If we knew that, she’d be home and he’d be dead. He has a sorceress on his payroll, concealing Amaya from us entirely.”

Guilt clawed at my heart, guilt and Rage. “He wanted you all to protect him because be thought I’d find something. Some sort of proof that he
was
involved in Vanessa’s disappearance. And he knew that the only mercs who had even a snowball’s chance in hell of staying my hand. .

“Were Scott’s family.” She reached out and took my arm again. This time I didn’t pull away. “I’m sorry, Manissa. There’s so much I want to say, so much you need to hear, but Dre didn’t give us much time to get there. He claims he has something you’ll want. Something that can help you.”

A bitter laugh exploded from my lips. “Something that can help
me,
or keep me from killing him?” I zeroed in on her eyes, which were truly the windows to the soul for Warhounds. Few of them could lie outright once you knew them with more than passing familiarity. “Is he the one who’s trying to kill me?