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Louis stood and held out his arms to her. “Si. Come here!
Dé Louis viejo un abrazo
.”

And just like that she was enfolded in the other man’s arms. Within an hour, she was surrounded by other members of Primos Sangre, new and old alike. Aware of Ty’s eyes on her, she bided her time. She slugged back a shot of tequila and forced herself to make meaningless, cheerful chitchat, about the old days as well as her time
in prison. Instead of treating her time behind bars as a joke or something to be envied, the others looked at her with expressions of compassion, making her wonder how much they actually knew about what had landed her there and what had happened afterward. No one actually mentioned Gloria or Miguel.

Another shot of tequila appeared in front of her and she threw it back, then allowed Louis to lead her to the dance floor. The band was playing a fast number and she danced wildly, letting the slight buzz of the alcohol go to her head, growing more aware of her body’s reactions. She danced three more songs with Louis until he excused himself to get more drinks.

Awkwardly, she stood on the dance floor, unsure whether to go back and join the others. But without Louis by her side, she was reluctant to do so. With no other choice, she danced by herself for a while, enjoying the music, not making eye contact with onlookers. With her friends around, no one would dare to grab her and grind.

She didn’t even glance at Ty. Didn’t want to give herself away in case someone was watching them. But she knew without a doubt that he was watching her.

She felt his gaze caressing her.

And she responded in kind. She let her inhibitions go. She swayed to the music, not with cheesy overt gyrations meant to titillate, but in a restrained, undulating dance meant to seduce. Communicate that she desired him. She’d never said it out loud. She might never be that brave. But in this way, she could tell him, and hope that he understood what she was really saying. She desired him in spite of what she knew about him. Body and soul.

I want you. So damn much, Ana
.

Ty’s voice echoed in her head and she stumbled, just barely able to keep her gaze from flying to him. She
swore she’d heard him but he was too far away. The music was too loud. She had to have been imagining it.

The air around her seemed to sizzle and vibrate.

Somehow, she knew. She
knew
.

It was him—it was
them
—that she was feeling.

Was she going crazy? How was it possible to feel so connected to another person?

Her movements became less restrained. More urgent. More desperate. She could practically feel the molecules in the air now, clinging to her body and caressing her in place of his hands. Her nipples tightened beneath her shirt and her core wept for him. She wondered if he could smell her or if he—

She heard a loud crash coming from Ty’s direction. Automatically, she looked up and just caught sight of his back as he was striding away. The table where he’d been sitting was leaning to the side, and part of the edge had been broken off, sharp pieces of wood jutting out at odd angles.

She stared at the table with her mouth agape before Louis came back and took her in his arms once more.

Despite Ana’s seductive dance—which had caused Ty to break the table he was sitting at and rush outside to get some air—he wasn’t gone long. He was acutely aware of the promise he’d made to protect her, just as he’d been aware of what she’d been telling him with that erotic display on the dance floor. Swiftly, he made his way back in and headed to the bar, positioning himself on a stool.

He was harder than an iron spike and all he could think about was striding toward the dance floor, ripping her from that man’s arms, stripping her naked, and taking her right then and there, for everyone to see. So everyone could witness that she was his.

His
, damn it. To fuck. To feed from. To love. For all eternity.

The thought of what his eternity was really going to look like, however, sobered him instantly. Ana was human. Even if somehow she truly did still desire him and could give herself to him as he was, she was going to die. So was everyone in this bar. Every human currently on the planet. That was what was supposed to happen. What was natural.

Ty wasn’t. He couldn’t forget that.

As an unnatural being with unnatural urges, he had changed mere seconds before he’d attacked that homeless man. Worst-case scenario, instead of protecting Ana as he’d promised, he might somehow lose it and end up taking her blood, or her body for that matter, against her will.

The very thought made him nauseous, and he closed his eyes, taking in deep, dragging breaths. When he finally opened them again, he searched the dance floor for Ana, relaxing slightly when he saw she was still there, smashed up flat against the Hispanic man’s chest.

He didn’t like it. Of course, she was only doing what she was supposed to. The man was obviously someone she knew from the gang, and she was getting close to him for the sole purpose of getting word to Miguel that she was looking for him.

But Ty still didn’t like it. He hated it, in fact.

The drumbeat picked up, intensifying the rhythm of the music. The wild crowd on the dance floor surged to the beat, merging to form a wall between Ty and Ana until he could no longer see her.

Shit.

Seconds ticked by.

Where was she? Why wasn’t she pushing her way toward him? She knew she wasn’t ever supposed to lose sight of him.

But she’d knocked back five shots of tequila while socializing with her old pals. Was she too drunk to remember what she was doing? Why they were there?

Fuck.

Ty moved toward the dance floor where he’d last seen Ana.

He froze when he heard Ana scream.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

Control. Ty knew he needed to maintain control. But
adrenaline coursed through his body, his instincts triggered by Ana’s scream. He moved through the crowd. Shoving people out of his way, heading in the direction of the scream, he paused at the edge of the dance floor. A narrow hallway with a blinking neon sign for the rest-rooms, ran to the left. A red emergency exit sign at its end marked it as the back exit.

He grabbed a burly man who’d stepped into his path, lifted him off his feet, and tossed him aside. No one was getting in his way. He had to protect Ana. He could hear her screams so loudly, so clearly.

Why were none of the other patrons doing anything? Was this what being human had been reduced to?

He reached the exit and shoved the metal door open so hard it flew off the hinges and clattered to the ground. There was no sound in the air, except for Ana’s continued screams.

Only she wasn’t screaming.

In the dimly lit and cluttered alleyway, he saw her, up against a brick wall, a distance away from the bar, next to a Dumpster and a pile of rubble. Her arms were wrapped around the same man she’d been dancing with and she was kissing him.

So why the hell could he
still
hear her shrieking the
word
no?
Was he going insane, imagining Ana’s cries of fear and pain?

The man reached down and palmed Ana’s breast.
Then
—with Ana’s mouth fused to the man’s, her cries turned bloodcurdling.

The sound was so loud and terrifying it ripped Ty’s mind and heart apart.

Her screams were silent.

I’m reading her mind, he realized. I can hear her thoughts. I can hear how much she doesn’t want this. He roared then, flying into action.

Fast. Ruthless. Merciless.

Exactly like the vampire he was.

Ana had her eyes closed, gritting her teeth even as she kept kissing Louis. The guy wanted her, and because he thought he was going to get her, he’d been answering her questions when she could get a word in. He was about to tell her how she could get in touch with Miguel when he squeezed her breast. Even though her body and mind rejected his touch, she let him do it. Just a few more seconds and she’d get the information she needed.

Then she could go back inside to Ty with something that could really help him. Maybe with the information, they could go see Miguel together. Maybe they wouldn’t even have to infiltrate Salvation’s Crossing.

A roar sounded, loud and angry and not quite human. Her eyes flew open in time for her to see Ty ripping the man off her and throwing him to the ground. She stared, shocked, at Louis, then whipped her gaze back to Ty.

“Ty, wait. What are you doing?” she said even as she moved to help Louis.

Instead of letting her help him up, however, Louis tugged at her, throwing her off-balance and tumbling her to the ground, knocking the breath out of her. She
lay there, in the muck and grime that littered the alleyway, clutching her bruised ribs and gasping for breath, panic setting every nerve in her body on fire.

Louis scrambled to his feet and grabbed an iron bar lying next to the Dumpster. He held it in front of him, then thrust it in Ty’s direction. “She wants it,” he sneered at Ty. “Just like she wanted it years ago. I’m just giving the slut what she wants.”

A guttural sound came from Ty, as if ripped from the very depths of his being. In a flash of a second he was right up close to Louis. He threw an uppercut, his fist connecting with the underside of Louis’s jaw, and Ana gaped as Louis went flying. He landed a good ten feet from Ty.

No human could punch that hard but Ty wasn’t human. He’d told her that. So had Carly. Now she was seeing more evidence of what that really meant.

“Ty!” she shouted, trying to get him to calm down. “Stop!”

Shakily, Louis got to his feet and dropped the iron bar. For a moment Ana breathed a sigh of relief.

Until Louis reached behind his back and pulled out a pistol. And aimed it straight at Ty’s heart.

“You still planning on fucking with me,
hombre?
” Louis spat out. He took a step forward. “I’m the one with the gun. Walk away and let me do this bitch in peace or you get a big hole blown in your chest.”

“Get the fuck away from her. From both of us,” Ty said, his voice deep and haunted and eerie. Hollow.

Louis let out a caustic laugh. “Why don’t you make me?”

Ty moved then, faster than Ana could even comprehend. He made it to Louis in under a second. He grabbed Louis and threw him in the air—five, ten, fifteen feet. Twenty feet. Higher than the roof of the bar. And then Louis fell.

On his way down, a gunshot exploded.

Ana saw it happen as if in slow motion.

Louis had shot Ty.

Directly in the heart.

“No!”

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud
. Ana heard the heartbeats coming from her chest. Counted them. Focused on them. She wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t.

She’d known. They’d told her that a vampire couldn’t die, but part of her hadn’t believed it. Hadn’t truly believed any of what they’d said. Not until now.

Ty had been shot. In the chest. In the heart. She’d seen him get hit. Blood had sprayed everywhere when the bullet entered, and now was spattered across his white dress shirt. Dots of red clung to her. Dripped off her face. And yet Ty still lived. Even now, he was getting up from where he’d fallen back on the ground.

He grimaced. Then hissed, baring his teeth.

But where she should have seen ordinary teeth, she saw his fangs. And the murderous look in his eyes.

“Ty?” she whispered.

“Puta,”
she heard Louis groan out. He’d hit the ground and lay moaning, his legs immobile but his head whipping back and forth between her and Ty. His body seemed paralyzed.

Not entirely. Ana noticed movement, and realized Louis still held his gun. He lifted it up and pointed it at her.

This is it, she thought.

She was dead.

She’d never get to prove anything to Ty or kiss him again.

Never get to see Gloria again.

She was going to die in a back alley and—

The shot cracked and she closed her eyes.

Waited.

And waited.

And opened her eyes to a horror far more bloody than anything she’d ever seen. Animalistic. Ferocious.

She saw Ty, bent over a struggling Louis, tearing into the man’s neck with his fangs.

She stifled a raw, rough scream, but it blasted through the alley anyway.

The sound hadn’t come from her. It wasn’t Louis. It had come from within the nightclub. People had heard the gunshot and were shouting as they ran down the hallway to the back entrance toward them.

“Leave! Now!” She flinched at Ty’s raw command. Her gaze snapped back to him and focused on his blood-soaked clothes and face. Her knees gave out but before she hit the ground, Ty was there, sweeping her up into his arms before she had time to react.

“Stop!” a male voice commanded.

A woman, maybe two, shrieked without stopping.

But though she looked, Ana couldn’t identify any of them. Ty, with her in his arms, was moving too fast, so inhumanly fast she knew no one would have clearly seen them, even if they had been able to take their eyes off Louis’s gruesome corpse.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

Ana was as scared as she’d ever been. Considering the
path her life had taken, that was saying something. Her heart thudded in her chest and her breaths came far too fast. In her mind, she could still see Louis and the man who’d killed him. Violently. Viciously. But not, it would seem, easily.

After carrying her away from the nightclub for what had to be miles, Ty had finally stopped in what appeared to be a deserted parking garage adjacent to the local mall. He’d set her down—gently, oh so gently—then scrambled away from her.

Crouched down on his heels, his arms wrapped around his head as if to hide or protect himself, his face turned away from her to the wall next to him, he looked … tortured. Even from where she huddled herself, she could see he was shaking.

Like a wild animal who’d fought past a herd of predators, he’d collapsed right when he was about to reach safety. As if he’d given up. As if the same horror she’d felt at watching what he’d done was eating him alive. He was whispering something she couldn’t hear, clearly in tremendous pain.