“Which won’t help anything—”

“No, but it would make me feel a hell of a lot better—”

“Demetrius, please—”

“You can’t expect dogs and cats to play nice together—”

“Alexi is not a dog!”

D smirked, and Eliana glared back at him. “He’s a dog, all right. I noticed him at the catacombs, Ana. He’s a pedigreed, pampered little yipper who likes to bury his bone all over town.”

Eliana’s mouth dropped open. Her face went pale and then flushed red. She opened her mouth to, no doubt, excoriate him, but at that moment the little yipper decided to show up.

He burst through a set of etched glass doors at the opposite end of the glistening foyer with his arms held out, worry lines bunching his golden brow. Blond and tanned and fit, he was one of those men who managed to look well groomed and wealthy even in bare feet, torn jeans, and a tight Rolling Stones T-shirt, which served double duty as an “I’m-too-rich-to-be-bothered” fashion statement and a showcase for his gym-hardened physique.

Without a glance in D’s direction, Alexi enveloped Eliana in a tight, possessive embrace.

D’s hate ratcheted up to a thermonuclear malignity. He did want to see this poser’s head torn from his body—torn from his body and impaled on a post. A growl, low and threatening, rumbled through his chest, and he stepped forward, bristling.

Eliana broke away from Alexi and angled her body between them. Alexi looked at D, and to his credit, he didn’t balk. He gave him a swift, disdainful once-over, as if just noticing his presence, and then said, “Ah. You.”

“The feeling is mutual, pretty boy,” D snarled, curling his hands into fists.

Without looking back at him, Eliana reached out and laid her hand flat on his chest. It had the intended effect. D stopped dead in his tracks, distracted—disabled—by her touch.

“What he meant to say was thank you,” Eliana said smoothly, “for what you’ve done. We’re in your debt.”

He’d be damned before he’d be indebted to this smug, priggish dilettante, but Alexi reacted as if he’d been stroked on his head. He purred his pleasure in lilting, flowery French.

“Bien sûr. Quelque chose pour toi.”

Anything for you. He’d said the same thing to her on the phone, and from the tone of his voice and the look on his face, D had no doubt it was true. Eliana sensed his growing fury and stepped back toward him, still with her hand on his chest, which Alexi noted with flattened lips and a fleeting glance at him that telegraphed, This means war. His gaze settled back on Eliana, and it softened.

“Your family is upstairs resting comfortably. I’ve prepared a bedroom for you, as well. You can stay as long as you like, of course—”

“Mel can take my bedroom. She’s downstairs in the car. We’ll bring her in now.”

“Mel!” he exclaimed, eyes widening. “Wait—you said she was shot.”

Silent, Eliana slowly nodded.

Alexi threw his hands in the air. “Why isn’t she in the hospital?”

“We can’t…we can’t go to hospitals,” she said lamely.

Alexi looked at her with narrowed eyes for a beat and made a little noise of disbelief or disapproval in his throat. Then—apparently accustomed to this kind of thing from her—he rolled his eyes and sighed. “I’ll phone my private physician. He gets paid enough to be on call. He should be able to be here within the hour.”

“A doctor?” Eliana whispered with something odd in her voice.

Through the fabric of his shirt, D felt her fingers tremble. He reached up and placed his hand over hers, an action not meant as anything but comfort, but Alexi took note of it, his mouth puckering as if someone had just stuck a lemon in it.

“Yes, a doctor, Butterfly,” he said sourly. “That is who normal people go to see when they’ve been shot. Right before they go to see their lawyer.”

Eliana said, “Lawyer. Um…”

Alexi crossed his arms over his chest and went into problem-solving mode. “What’s her condition now? Is she stable, conscious? Where exactly was she injured?”

“She was shot in the chest, and she’s still not conscious, but she’s stable, she’s been…operated on…”

Alexi’s golden brow crumpled to a frown. “I don’t understand. You said she hadn’t been to a hospital.”

“Er, no…”

“Field surgery,” D cut in abruptly. “I did what I could with what I had on hand.”

Alexi regarded him with new interest, his expression bordering on incredulous, his eyes keen. “Well. This just keeps getting better.” His gaze flickered over D’s shaved head and pierced eyebrow, the tattoos peeking out above the neck of his black shirt, his long black coat, and his boots and leather pants. “Let me guess—Harvard School of Medicine?”

D smiled. He withdrew the Glock from the waistband of his pants, pointed it in the general direction of Alexi’s crotch, and calmly said, “Harvard School of Another Word and I’ll Turn You from a Rooster to a Hen with One Shot, motherfucker.”

“Demetrius!” Eliana hissed. She snatched her hand from his chest and looked at him, a plea in her eyes.

Don’t antagonize her human boy toy. Right.

In what was maybe the third-hardest thing he’d ever done, D stepped away and stuck the gun back in the waistband of his pants.

Alexi, again to his credit and surprisingly, hadn’t twitched a muscle. D guessed it wasn’t the first time he’d been threatened with grievous bodily harm; the man really had a way of irritating people. But Alexi looked back and forth between D and Eliana twice before he spoke.

“Bring her in. I’ll call the doctor. And afterward, you and I, we’ll talk.”

He made the word talk sound like something they’d do in bed.

To Alexi he sent a look that said, I’ve got your number; touch her again and it’s up. To Eliana, D said, “I’ll get her.” Then he left the two of them standing in the silent opulence of Alexi’s grand foyer and headed for the SUV in the parking garage below.

“So are you going to talk to me or just keep staring out the window?”

This was said without rancor in that gently teasing way Alexi had that used to make her smile, but now it only made her head hurt. More than it already did.

They were in a room next to the one Mel had been ensconced in, some kind of sitting room on the top floor outfitted all in white with mod furnishings and a shaggy rug and a view of the city through the glass windows along the east wall. She’d made sure Mel was taken care of, spoken with Bettina and Fabi, and then allowed herself to be led here, though she wouldn’t take the hand Alexi had offered on the way.

The sun was rising, painting the city in shifting tones of lavender and blue and gold, and with every degree it rose in the sky, she felt it like an opposing weight in her body. She could not recall the last time she’d had a good night’s sleep.

“Have I said thank you yet?”

She turned to look at him. He was seated beside her in a chair identical to her own, an egg-shaped, plastic affair that might have been designed as a torture device for all the comfort it gave. She didn’t understand how something with no sharp corners could be so damn…pinchy. But that was Alexi. Form over function any day of the week. “If I haven’t—thank you. I’ll start by saying that.”

“You’re welcome.” He regarded her very seriously, though she knew he was pleased to have her here. Happy, even. It radiated from him in waves, thick as honey. As if to prove it, he said, “It’s nice to have company. I should have bought something smaller. This place is really too cavernous and lonely, even with Smithers.”

Smithers. The dour British butler who always pretended not to remember Eliana’s name. She’d been here dozens upon dozens of times when she and Alexi were an item, but he remained aloof, with an air of vague disapproval, though in all honesty the poor man must have quite the challenge, what with the revolving door of women Alexi presented him. At the moment he was in the kitchen, preparing breakfast for his bevy of unexpected, hungry guests.