Cyn scraped her fingers along his scalp and gave a hard tug on his hair, pulling him up to her mouth, tasting her own blood on his tongue as they kissed passionately. This was no longer a seductive dance of tongues. This kiss was demand and desire all tangled up in the deep love they felt for each other. It was a hunger they could never satisfy, and one they would never tire of. Their teeth clashed as their tongues fought for dominance, and Raphael wanted to roar with the sheer joy of the battle.

With a growl, he wrenched his mouth away from her lips and nipped at her neck. Cyn’s breath caught, and he felt the first clench of her sheath. He bit harder, still teasing, still not breaking the skin, but beneath him Cyn’s muscles tightened in excitement, and the hot grasp of her pussy began to shiver around his cock.

Raphael lifted his head enough to stroke his tongue over the taut side of her neck. He kissed the swell of her jugular once, a bare touch of his lips.

“I love you, my Cyn,” he whispered against her hot skin.

“Raphael,” she panted, then groaned as her inner muscles contracted.

Raphael’s fangs emerged, and he struck without warning, slicing into the velvet honey of her vein, her blood filling his mouth, his stomach, spreading heat and life into every inch of him, until it was hard to tell where she ended and he began.

Cyn cried out, her inner walls fisting his cock until he could barely move, her abdominal muscles clenched, the hard pearls of her nipples scraping against his chest as she climaxed, bucking beneath him. He knew he should retract his fangs, should stop the satin flow of her blood into his mouth. He was powerful and old, he didn’t need much blood to sustain himself, but this was more than nourishment—this was his Cyn. He took one more long, indulgent pull, relishing the sheer, sweet taste of her, then lifted his head enough to lick the twin wounds shut.

Her eyes flashed open, green and fogged with desire. Her tongue dashed out, and she licked her lips, meeting his gaze in a challenge of her own, as she flexed her inner muscles around his cock.

Raphael sucked in a breath as desire flooded every nerve, heating his blood and swelling his cock to almost painful hardness as it jerked deep inside Cyn’s sexy body.

He growled and cupped her ass with both hands, holding her open as he began fucking her with long, hard strokes, the friction of their bodies generating an almost volcanic heat that surrounded his cock and shot straight to his balls. It soared higher and higher, a wild heat that shot down his shaft, splashing against Cyn’s womb as she orgasmed yet again, the two of them thrusting against each other until they were both spent and breathless.

Raphael collapsed on top of Cyn, feeling the pulse of her heart beating against his chest for only a moment before he rolled to one side, taking her with him. It was a few minutes before either one of them could speak.

“How’s that for tucking?” she asked, the tease ruined by the jaw-cracking yawn she spoke around.

“Excellent tucking,” he agreed. “You should sleep.”

“No,” she insisted. “I need to get back to the homestead before there’s nothing left to find.” She yawned again, then groaned. “Jesus, I hope there’s coffee on this ranch somewhere.”

Raphael hugged her. “Lucas has the usual daytime staff, so I’m certain there’s coffee and breakfast, too. You need to replenish.”

“I need to drink water, you mean. That’s what I get for loving a bloodsucker.”

He slapped her ass.

“Hey! There’s no need to beat me.”

Raphael scoffed wordlessly, and she laughed.

“What’s your plan for the day, then?” he asked.

“Depends on what we find at the homestead. If there’s anything to follow, we’ll do that, but I’ll be back before dark.”

“Promise.”

“Yeah, yeah, I promise.”

“I love you, my Cyn,” he murmured.

She rose up enough to press her lips against his. “I love you back, my Raphael.”

Raphael closed his eyes against the searing heat of the rising sun that was blazing inside his skull. He fought it as long as he could, straining to remain awake, to give voice to the alarm bells clanging in the back of his mind. But this was one foe he could never defeat, and sleep claimed him before he could warn her that among vampires even friends could be enemies.

Chapter Nine

“Fuck,” Robbie muttered, as he climbed from the SUV and stood staring at the debris scattered in front of Lucas’s homestead house.

Cyn ignored him as two of Lucas’s daytime security guards walked over to join them. She recognized both of them from the previous morning, and smiled a greeting.

“Okay with you if we look around a little?” she asked, although the request was mostly for form, because the visit had been arranged in advance.

“Help yourself,” one of the guards said. “Lord Donlon cleared it already.”

“Thanks. You all haven’t seen anyone snooping around, have you? Maybe a vehicle headed this way in the distance that turned around suddenly?”

The guard shook his head. “See for yourself. Line of sight goes on forever here. We’d definitely notice.”

“Okay. We’ll poke around a bit, and get out of your hair.”

“Holler if you need anything.”

Robbie didn’t look up when she rejoined him. Eyes on the ground, he grumbled, “Whose idea was it to search through this stuff anyway? Oh, wait,” he continued, slanting a look at Cyn. “It was yours.” He leaned over to push aside a piece of tire, then grunted in disgust.

Cyn glanced over at what appeared to be a piece of human rib bone with bits of meat still attached.

“I’m surprised there are any body parts left,” she said absently, returning to her own search. “I thought the animals would have dragged it away or eaten it by now.”

“A visual I could live without,” Robbie groused. “You know, Cyn, when you called this morning, you said we were going hunting, not picking through some guy’s barely dead remains.”

“We’re not picking through remains, we’re looking for clues. And then we’ll go hunting.”

“You sure the big guy knows you’re doing this?”

“Absolutely, and he agreed it was necessary.”

Robbie sighed. “All right, what the hell are we looking for again?”

“I think our best bet is finding something from the truck. It looked like a personal vehicle to me. I had other stuff on my mind at the time, but I remember it as being fully loaded. Shiny paint, lots of chrome, big tires. Somebody’s baby.”

“Nothing from the plate?”

Cyn closed her eyes briefly, trying to replay what she’d seen in those few minutes of panic. “What’s the South Dakota plate look like?”

Robbie frowned. “Mount Rushmore, I think.”

Cyn stared at him without seeing. “Yeah, that could be it. Blue sky, with something gray. It might have been Rushmore.”

“Great. That narrows it down to only a few hundred thousand vehicles.”

“Don’t be snarky. It was dark, and he turned his lights on when he got closer. Not to mention the bomb he was carrying.”

“Excuses,” he tsked, shaking his head.

Cyn grinned despite herself. “Okay,” she said, scouring the scattered debris. “Our best bet—and I know it’s a long shot, so no smart ass remarks—would be even a small piece of the plate. The back end was loaded with explosives, not to mention the gas tank, so that probably blew all to hell, but the front plate might have been thrown out of the immediate blast range.”

“No problem,” Robbie said absently, reaching into his pocket and pulling on a latex glove. “I’ll get right on that for you.”

Cyn’s laugh trailed off as he held up a bloody piece of something.

“Unless you’d rather have this,” he said, grinning. “I do believe it’s a thumb.”

She hurried over. “I think you’re right,” she said. She retrieved a bottle of water from the SUV, and poured it over the gruesome appendage, washing away the dirt and grime.

“Could be someone else’s, I guess,” Robbie said.

“Nah, it’s too fresh. Let’s see if our guy’s in the system, shall we?”

She whipped out her cell phone, took the thumb in her own gloved hand, and pressed it to the screen, scanning it quickly before handing it back to Robbie. The image was automatically sent to her laptop, which would then query every fingerprint database she had access to, and that was most of them.

“Ain’t technology great?” Robbie commented. “Should we save this thing?”

Cyn dug a plastic baggie out of her pocket. “Just in case.”

“Speaking of cases,” he said, dropping the thumb into the baggie, “how come the local cops aren’t all over this? That explosion was visible for miles. We saw it from the ranch.”

“Kathryn says Lucas is friends with the mayor. He made a few calls, and voila, no police were dispatched. Your tax dollars at work.”

“More likely it’s Lucas’s political contributions at work. Corruption is everywhere.”

“Yeah, well, get over it and help me decide what to do next, because we have a winner, boys and girls.”

They both peered down at the ID displayed on Cyn’s cell phone. “Matthias Hoover,” she read. “He has an old DUI conviction. No surprise that one would hit first. There’s an address, but this record is old. Let me see …” She tapped the screen rapidly, accessing the local white pages, and found a listing under the same name, same address.

“I love people who stay in one place. Incoming,” she murmured and sent the address to Robbie’s phone, which pinged almost immediately.

“Got it,” he said. “What now?”

“We check out the house.”

“Cyn,” Robbie said in clear warning.

“If it looks like Magda or any other vampire is using the place, we won’t go inside,” she promised. “We’ll wait until sunset, and let the big guns handle it.”