“Lummox?” he muttered.

“It’s a word.” He sensed her shift on the bed. Gods. His jeans tightened painfully over his growing erection. “What are you doing?”

Don’t look. Do. Not. Look.

“I would think it’s rather self-evident.”

“I guess it is. Hard to miss a six-foot-plus sulking vampire. Or is it pouting? Difficult to tell,” she taunted. “I assume you’re leaving?”

“First I intend to go imp hunting.”

“And then?”

Pain ripped through his chest, nearly sending him to his knees. “Then I will return to Chicago.”

She breathed a shockingly vile curse. “So, you’re fleeing back to your prison…oh, I mean lair. It’s so much safer to watch the world through MTV and YouTube, isn’t it, chief?”

His hands clenched into fists at her accusation, refusing to consider the bitter truth of her words.

“Return to Styx, Regan. He’ll be able to track Culligan.”

“I don’t need him or you or anyone else to track Culligan,” she gritted. “I already found him.”

The defenses he’d been struggling to build were shattered as Jagr jerked his head around to stab her with a shocked gaze.

“What?”

Her eyes flashed, as if pleased at by his sharp reaction. “Where do you think I picked up that handy-dandy little amulet?” Her brows abruptly drew together. “An amulet, I might add, that was confiscated by your friend Tane before he would let me come down here.”

Jagr shook his head. Later he would thank Tane for ensuring that Regan couldn’t slip up on him unaware, but for now he could think of nothing but the realization that she’d found the imp who had tormented her for thirty years.

“He’s dead?”

She shrugged. “He was alive when I left the cabin, but his odds of living through the night are about zero to none. Not once the curs realize he’s just as pathetic at being bait as he is at being an imp.”

He stepped toward her, his bare feet sinking into the thick carpet, his damp braid brushing across his back. Not that he noticed. He was utterly consumed by the tiny female perched on the end of the bed.

“You found the imp and…walked away?”

“I had other things on my mind, as I have mentioned more than once,” she said.

Jagr frowned. She was behaving as if finding the demon responsible for her years of misery, a demon who she had risked her life to kill, was nothing more than a trivial encounter.

“Dammit, Regan, you’ve waited your entire life to have your revenge.”

The emerald gaze never wavered. “I’m well aware of that.”

“Then why didn’t you take it?”

“I told you.”

He growled low in his throat as he studied her stubborn expression.

Okay, it was official.

The woman was going to drive him right over the edge.

“There had to be more than just a need to find me, little one.” He folded his arms over his chest, refusing to back down. He didn’t understand why he had to know. Only that he did. “Killing him would have taken you less than a heartbeat. Tell me the truth.”

She abruptly rose to her feet, standing so close to him that his entire body was bathed in sweet jasmine heat.

“Christ, I don’t know,” she rasped. “I suppose a part of it was the fact that he looked so incredibly pathetic chained in that cabin. For so many years he was my personal boogeyman. He brutalized me for so long I began to think of him as invincible.” Her lips twisted as she gave a shake of her head. “But then I saw him as he truly is. A weak, cowardly idiot who crawled through the sewers because he didn’t have the talent or intelligence or spine to be a decent man. He just wasn’t worth the effort of killing.”

He trembled with the need to pull her into his arms as her eyes darkened with a vulnerability that cut through his very soul.

This was more than lust. More than an instinctive need to protect.

This was…

Gods, he didn’t know what to call it.

He only knew that it had buried so deep inside him that he’d never be rid of it.

“And the other part?” he demanded, his voice thick.

“I realized I didn’t need to kill him.” She held her arms wide. “The chains are already gone.”

A combination of emotions warred through him. Pride, relief, astonishment, and a treacherous sense of regret at the knowledge she no longer had need of him.

Unable to battle his need, he reached up to lightly stroke his fingers down her cheek.

“Regan.”

She stepped even closer, sending jolts of agonizing need through his body.

“I understand now,” she said, softly. “He wasn’t holding me in the past. I was. It’s time to let it go.”

He shuddered at the feel of her soft skin beneath his finger tips. A warm, satin temptation. His thighs clenched in response, his erection painfully hard.

“So you’re free,” he whispered, ignoring the desire clamoring through him. It was something he was going to have to get used to.

“No, I’ll never be completely free. The memories will always haunt me.” Her hand reached up to cover his fingers, pressing them against her cheek. “Just as they haunt you.”

Feeling as if he’d just been singed, Jagr yanked his hand away and stepped back.

“They do a great deal more than haunt me,” he pointed out, his voice harsh.

Her lips thinned with annoyance. “You reacted to your situation. Just like any other human or demon or fey would.”

“A blind, killing rage?”

“If it had been a blind, killing rage, you wouldn’t have stopped with the curs holding you captive. All of Hannibal would be dead.”

Jagr shifted. It was true. In his early days, the rage would consume him to the point he couldn’t halt. Only the threat of dawn could end the rampage and drive him back to his lair.

Still, he’d lost enough control to strangle Regan. And that was unacceptable.

His gaze lowered to her throat that was once again smooth and unmarred.

“I hurt you.”

She rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake, I’ve tripped over my damned feet and done more damage.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand that everyone has moments of insanity.” She deliberately moved forward, perhaps knowing he couldn’t form a coherent thought when she was so near. “Salvatore told me that Styx nearly destroyed the entire vampire race because he protected some crazed vampire he was sworn to, and your own clan chief tried to kill your precious king. Should they be locked up in their lairs?”

Again he couldn’t refute her words. Styx had protected the previous Anasso even when it was obvious the vampire was threatening to rip apart the peace they’d struggled for centuries to achieve. And Viper had been willing to sacrifice his own king to save Shay from death.

It was even rumored that Styx had been lost in bloodlust when he’d been attacked by a band of renegade vampires intent on taking his crown.

“Nothing you say will change my mind,” he forced himself to say, although the words didn’t ring quite true in his heart.

No doubt because he wanted his mind changed.

“Fine.”

Obviously wearied of his stubborn refusal to dismiss the dark fever that lurked deep inside him, Regan took matters into her own hands.

Literally.

Keeping her gaze locked on his tight expression, she grasped the hem of her too-tight shirt, and with one smooth motion had it yanked over her head and tossed on the floor.

Jagr grunted, feeling as if he’d just been hit in the stomach with a sledgehammer.

Against his will his eyes lowered, feasting on the slender limbs that were toned with muscle and covered with flawless ivory skin. She wore a flimsy bit of lace that covered her breasts, but it was no barrier to his greedy gaze. Not when the rosy nipples hardened beneath his hot gaze.

A roaring need to tumble her onto the nearby bed instead had Jagr backing away until he banged into the wall.

“Regan, what the hell are you doing?”

With a wicked smile, Regan casually reached up to snap the tiny clip of her bra, dropping it on top of her shirt.

“You said I couldn’t change your mind,” she purred. “At least not with words.”

His mouth went dry, his brain shutting down as his desire settled into the driver’s seat.

“So you think you can manipulate me with…”

The words lodged in his throat as she slid down the zipper on her jeans and shimmied them down her body. There was a moment as she halted to kick off her shoes, then the jeans were gone and she was standing there in nothing more than a pair of white panties.

Holy hell.

The things he could do to that exquisite, ivory body. Delicious, sinful, perhaps even illegal things that would include his lips and tongue and throbbing fangs.

As if fearing it might have been forgotten, his cock gave a painful jerk against his jeans, reminding Jagr of just how good it felt to be buried deep inside Regan’s heat.