While it was clear Julian wasn’t speaking to her, he didn’t bother to lower his voice, and neither did Xavier.

“The only leverage I’m looking for is insurance,” Xavier said.

“What kind of insurance?”

“I want my people to live without fear of reprisal or some kind of revenge attack. I want Tess free and clear to do whatever she wants to do. Her life is in danger as long as Malphas believes she’s the only one who knows what he’s done, but if it were as simple as that, all we would have to do is go public with our suspicions. We have to take it a step further to make sure he doesn’t take vengeance on her—or on anyone else—like he did with Jackson’s son.”

As what he said sank in, she stopped breathing. She didn’t know what to do with herself, or with what she had just heard.

Xavier wasn’t just working with her to solve a dangerous problem. He was actively standing up for her.

Nobody had ever stood up for her before. Nobody, not for anything. Not one of her foster parents—certainly not the bastard who loved to hit kids with a belt—and none of the other children she had fostered with, either.

Tess was always the strong one, the one who had stuck up for them. Maybe that was why Eathan had gotten to her in the first place. He’d needed help, and so she had stepped up.

While she struggled to absorb the enormity of the concept, Julian refilled his glass and said, “I might have known you would be doing all this for one of your attendants.”

It was impossible to decipher the expression in Julian’s voice, and she didn’t even try. It was Xavier she was interested in, and she watched him covertly.

“She’s not my attendant any longer.”

Lit only by the fire and a few recessed lights, the room was filled with strong shadows, and Xavier stood in profile. He was slighter than Julian’s broad, tall figure, and more graceful, but no less masculine.

If Julian was a battle axe, or perhaps a trebuchet, built for battering and sheer brute force, Xavier was the rapier, elegant and deadly in single combat. With a simple, perfectly timed thrust, he could pierce the heart, while the rest of the body and soul stood amazed and dying.

Piercing the heart. She thought it over.

Yes. That was exactly how it felt as she looked at him and listened to what he said.

Julian shot Tess a quick, frowning glance. Ducking her head, she focused on the paper in front of her. He said, “While the Djinn might be notoriously reluctant to police pariahs, I think I’d better talk to Soren. I’m going to make the call in the other room.”

Tess didn’t know many personalities from the Elder Races, but she recognized Soren’s name as the head of the Elder tribunal. He was another first-generation Djinn, one of the most Powerful of his kind.

Xavier nodded, and as Julian left the room, he walked back to the couch to sit beside her. She set the pen and pad of paper facedown on the table and turned to him.

He asked, “Have you written down everyone you can think of?”

“Yes.” She didn’t question her impulse. Instead, she leaned forward, threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. “Thank you so much for everything.”

He held rigidly immobile, his lean, strong body like stone.

What she’d done sank in. She started to pull back. “I’m sorry. I just—”

The stone man in her arms thawed, and his arms came around her, holding her in place against his chest. He said in her ear, “What is this?”

“I don’t know,” she muttered. “I just know nobody has ever stood up for me the way you’re doing right now.”

His arms tightened, and he cupped the back of her head. “That is their loss, because you deserve it.”

She shook her head, whispering, “I don’t know that I believe that, but I’m grateful anyway. You’re doing all of this, while we haven’t even had that talk about whether or not I’ll still be your attendant.”

He drew back to look at her. This close to him, she could see the absolute clarity in the subtle color of his gray-green eyes. “We need to be clear about one thing, Tess. I do not want you back as one of my attendants.”

After feeling a series of emotional doors open, disappointment struck cruelly hard. Even though she tried not to, she felt herself flinch and attempted to mask it by nodding. “I understand,” she said tightly. “I withheld too much dangerous infor—”

Taking hold of her chin in long, cool fingers, he tilted her head and kissed her.

A clean bolt of shock struck her. It felt like mainlining tequila. His lips were firm and astonishingly sensual. As she froze and her mind stuttered, he slanted his mouth to cover hers more completely. He nudged her lips open and delved inside in brief, intimate exploration.

When he pulled back, she forgot to close her mouth. She stared at him.

“I would never kiss one of my attendants,” he told her. “You know that.”

“You never . . . You wouldn’t . . .” She said, “I, um.”

Cupping her face with one hand, he wiped her moistened lips with his thumb. “I have just one question for you right now.”

“Sure,” she murmured faintly. Her mind was still frozen on the moment when his lips had touched hers. “Shoot.”

He kissed her forehead and her cheek. “You’re not still afraid of me, are you?”

“What?” she said. “Pfft, no.”

His gaze gleamed with the most astonishing array of emotion, relief and pleasure foremost among them. With another jolt of surprise, she realized, he really cared what she thought of him.

“Good,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

Her gaze dropped to the refined, sensual lines of his lips. She had been in far too much shock to have really felt his mouth on hers. Hungry to understand what it all meant, to experience it again, she kissed him.

She felt his reaction in the quick shift of his body, and the intake of his breath. But he didn’t need to breathe, she realized. That was all superfluous, all for her. Their mouths fit together as well as if they were made for each other.

If that don’t beat all, she thought with a hazy astonishment. I’m having the sexiest kiss of my life.

With a Vampyre.

But not just any Vampyre.

I’m having the sexiest kiss of my life with the finest man I know.

• • •