Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom

silk shirt, and designer boots. But next to Roslyn’s knockout beauty, I might as well have been a piece of poor white trash wearing a holey potato sack. And the vamp’s face was just as attractive as the rest of her. Eyes and skin the color of dark, meltedtoffee. Cropped, feathered black hair that just brushed the edge of her jaw. A small, pointed nose. Blindingly white teeth capped off by two perfectly pointed fangs.
    Owen got to his feet and kissed the vamp on her cheek. “Roslyn. Good to see you too. Let me introduce you to my companion. Roslyn, this is—”
    “Gin,” the vamp said in a neutral tone.
    Owen frowned. “The two of you know each other?”
    I smiled. “Oh, Roslyn and I are old friends. Aren’t we, Roslyn?”
    “Of course,” she murmured. “Of course.”
    Owen sat back down next to me, but Roslyn stood where she was. She regarded me with her toffee eyes. After a moment, she sank her teeth into her lower lip. Thinking about something.
    Roslyn Phillips and I didn’t have the best relationship in the world. Once upon a time, I’d killed Roslyn’s abusive brother-in-law to stop him from beating the vamp’s sister and young niece. I’d done the job on the down low, but Roslyn had still figured out it was me. She’d whispered about my particular brand of services to one of her girls. That information had reached the wrong ears, which had eventually resulted in Fletcher Lane being murdered inside the Pork Pit. At the old man’s funeral, I’d told Roslyn point-blank that she owed me big-time for her loose lips, that anything I wanted or needed, she was going to give to me—or she was going to get dead.
    Roslyn had taken our heart-to-heart seriously. When I’d come calling a few weeks ago, she’d given me everything I’d needed to masquerade as one of her hookers and sneak into Mab Monroe’s exclusive party so I could getclose to Tobias Dawson—and she’d held up when Elliot Slater and his men had come to question her after the fact. I figured we were pretty much square now, but I wasn’t about to tell Roslyn that. Especially when she was staring at me like she was considering something important.
    “Is there something I can do for you, Roslyn?” I asked.
    Roslyn chewed her lip for a few more seconds. Then she nodded. “Yeah, actually there is—”
    “I thought I told you to wait in the back for me, baby,” a low voice cut through the crowd.
    Roslyn’s eyes widened, and she froze. Pure, undiluted fear filled her toffee eyes. The emotion rolled off her the way magic might an elemental. I could feel the cold chill of it just like I could the one emanating from the Ice bar several feet away.
    I looked past Roslyn to the man speaking. Seven-foot frame. Pale, albino features. Light hazel eyes. And fists the size of hams. Elliot Slater regarded the lovely vampire with a cold expression that indicated that she’d done something very, very wrong.
    Fuck. What was the giant doing here? I palmed one of my silverstone knives under the table. Beside me, Owen Grayson frowned, but he didn’t move or say anything. Smart man. If he even hinted to Slater that I had a weapon, Owen would find himself drinking through a straw for the rest of his life—at the very least. Despite the hot tingle of attraction that still sizzled in my stomach.
    Roslyn plastered a fake, strained smile on her face and turned to face the giant. I scooted a little closer to the edge of the booth, just in case I needed to get up and stab Slater in a hurry.
    “Hello, Elliot.” Roslyn’s voice was as silky as ever, but an undercurrent of fear and stress colored her tone.
    Before I knew what was happening, Elliot Slater reached forward, grabbed Roslyn by her neck, and yanked her up against his body. “I told you to wait in the back for me, baby. Not be strolling around out here for every dick to get a good look at you. You’re mine now. Or have you forgotten that?”
    His? Roslyn was his? What the hell was going on here?
    Roslyn tried to smile, but it didn’t come off very well. “Now, Elliot, we’ve talked about this. You know I have to come out into the club at night and mingle with people. It’s expected of me.”
    The giant shook her the way a terrier might snap a rat’s neck. “And I’ve told you that nobody sees that hot ass of yours but me. Understand, baby?”
    By this point, other people had noticed the confrontation, including Finn. He’d pushed away from the bar and the blond hooker and was headed