Silence as he waited.

Rumy and The Erotic Passage. What a name for a club, but then what else should she have expected from a world of bloodsuckers.

After a moment, she heard Adrien talking quietly to the one he called Rumy. There was some laughter, chatting, queries about health, about the prison, a few jibes, the usual masculine nonsense.

Lily’s thoughts turned to Josh, and she lifted the chain to her lips. Josh, her firstborn, the last of her family. Was he truly alive? How many times had she wondered if Kiernan had somehow fabricated the phone call, using the memory of her son to manipulate her into taking on this mission?

But she couldn’t have mistaken her son’s voice. She would have known it anywhere. He’d called out, “Mom? Is that you? Mom!” He’d wailed after that.

She clapped her hands over her ears, trying not to hear that sound, a pitiful, bellowing wail. She had to get to him. Had to find him.

She heard Adrien sigh. Her desperate thoughts about Josh disappeared, and her present reality returned.

Adrien rose from the bed, flinging his phone onto the comforter. “You need to get cleaned up and dressed.” He walked to the bathroom, but the chain tugged, so she sat up, leaning toward him. Damn this chain for its short leash.

He reached inside the room and the next moment he flung a washcloth at her, which she put between her legs.

So far sex was just as messy with a vampire as with a human male, a thought that did nothing to ease her temper.

“You finished glaring at me?” he snapped.

“Sure, for now.” She lifted her chin. “What’s the plan? Does Rumy know where the weapon is?”

“No, but he suggested we check out a local Paris dive first.” He moved past the foot of the bed, snatched her clothes off the floor, and flung these at her as well.

“What are you so pissed about?” She put on her bra and shirt, then scooted to the end of the bed, her jeans now in her lap.

“Can’t I be angry, like you’re angry right now? Or do you suppose I can’t tell that you’re mad?”

“I think you just had sex and took some of my blood, so I don’t know what you have to complain about.”

“You enjoyed this.” He gestured with a slice of his hand toward the bed. “Your voice is still raspy from all the moaning and screaming.”

As she slid off the opposite side of the bed from where he stood, she turned to face him. “And I suppose you think I should be grateful to you for giving me a halfway decent ride.”

“Halfway decent?”

She lifted one brow then shrugged. She didn’t know why she was poking the bear, but he didn’t have to look so damn smug.

She moved in the direction of the bathroom only to have the chain give a tug because he stood too far away. She didn’t turn toward him as she said, “Will you please cut me some slack? Literally.”

“No.”

She stood bare-assed and humiliated, her jeans in her hands. The proximity that the chains required wouldn’t even allow her a decent exit. Lifting her chin, she pivoted in his direction and waited for him to move so that she could.

His eyes glittered in the dark, although her vision once more warmed up the space, an effect of the chains, and he stood in full, naked relief watching her keenly. “First, I don’t like this any more than you do and I suppose I don’t owe you this, but I was raised to have some manners, so here goes: Thank you for giving up your lifeblood to me. You may have just saved my life, and I have no doubt you kept me from a bout of painful blood-madness. Thank you.” His nostrils still flared and his jaw ground his molars a couple of times.

Lily fought back the words because she really didn’t want to say them, but they slipped past her lips anyway. “You’re welcome.”

“Fine. Now here’s the slack you wanted.” The moment he stepped in her direction, she turned and moved swiftly into the hall, then into the bathroom. 

Half an hour later Adrien’s temper had eased a little as he flew Lily slowly in the direction of the Paris club called La Nuit, or The Night. He was still angry that he’d been forced to use his captor for his blood-and-sex needs, and even more so because she was human. But the chains had made the whole aftermath worse because he’d felt her humiliation, which then triggered a sense of guilt about the whole damn thing.

As for La Nuit, the club had a bad reputation.

Hundreds of vampires around the world owned profitable businesses, open at night to serve the clubbing clientele and to give those vampires disposed to either having fun at a night scene, or tasting humans, the opportunity to do so.

Paris had a few clubs, running the gamut from chic to seedy. And there was at least one sex club he and his brothers had raided, freeing a number of human slaves each time.

A variety of enthrallment skills kept the vampire clubs below the radar. Adrien often marveled that more incidences of vampire world exposure didn’t occur given how much interaction there actually was between the species.

Adrien had never cared much for the human-oriented clubs, since he preferred his kind, but there were many vampires who’d acquired a taste for human blood and sought it regularly.

And he had to admit that after Lily’s blood, he understood why. He still didn’t get it totally, though. He’d tasted humans before, once as an experiment but more often than not when he was stuck out in the world, policing some extremist group, and couldn’t get back to his kind for days on end. So yeah, he’d tasted human blood, but between his prejudice against the greedy human race and the usually weak nature of the blood, he’d never once been tempted to go back.

Now all he could think about was sinking his fangs into Lily’s neck again, or into other more exotic regions, and taking her once more. Desire rippled through him, but he clamped it down. The damn chains would expose him if he kept it up.

He’d been furious with Lily after the blooding, but only because the whole experience had left him craving more.

And the bonding chains weren’t helping, because each hour he stayed bound to her, he grew more sensitive to what she was feeling at any given moment. Sure, she felt a mountain of rage against the vampire world, but laced through her fury ran ribbons of pure desire, something that happened just about every time she looked at him.

He wasn’t exactly surprised. He knew what he looked like and he pumped iron to keep himself fit, so he understood her interest in the same way that her toned body, narrow waist, and full breasts kept his cock in a state of inappropriate movement.

As he flew her slowly in the direction of La Nuit, therefore, he focused on what he might find at the club. He packed a Glock beneath his leather coat, along with a couple of fighting chains and a dagger. He was sufficiently armed, but his greater concern was for Lily, keeping her alive if things went south, remaining free enough to move given the short functioning length of the blood-chains.

He set up a disguising cloak as he dropped to earth in a darkened side street and set Lily to walking as soon as he touched down. He said in a low voice, “Movement helps give the impression we’ve been here as the disguise dissipates.”

“I figured.”

Well, she didn’t lack for intelligence. He’d give her that.

“You feel queasy or anything?” he asked, because he didn’t sense anything from her.

“My head hurts a little, but otherwise I’m fine.”

“Good. And remember, if this gets ugly—”

“I’ve got it, Adrien. I’m to find a place to hide, preferably beneath a table or something. But do you really think we’ll face fanatics at this place?”

The club he took Lily to catered to the darker elements of the city. Rumors of drugs and rival gangs made it the last place he’d usually take a woman, even a human.