Immortals After Dark 12 - Lothaire

her back outside to gaze down the lightless mountain. “Tell me where they are!”
    “Gone.” She breathed deeply of the country air, squaring her shoulders. “They’re out of your reach forever.”
    Back here on her mountain, she soaked up strength. This place had seen hundreds of years of struggle and hardship, of blood lost and pain found.
    Right now, Ellie believed she’d been honed by life here, as if she’d just been waiting to go toe-to-toe with a fiend like Lothaire.
    “Hmm.” She tapped her lip. “Can’t kill them. Can’t hurt me. Seems you’re holdin’ a shit hand of cards, Leo.”

    The last time they’d been at the doorstep of this trailer, Elizabeth had risked her life to kill Saroya, running into a hail of bullets.
    Now, after all he’d done to her, she was taunting him.
    Did I truly think her cowardly?
    “So what’s worse, Lothaire? The fact that I’m an ignorant hillbilly human?” She jabbed his chest with her forefinger. “Or the fact that you were just bested by one?”
    This boldness in her . . . delicious.
    No, you’re enraged at the slattern!
    And enthralled with her. Possessiveness and lust and something else he couldn’t define warred inside him.
    Then he remembered her kissing that boy years ago. How easily Lothaire could envision Thaddeus’s look of wonderment!
    Jealousy— seethed . “Hag would never let you call them.”
    “Nope.”
    “It couldn’t be Thaddeus.” Her family had been gone too long. “Tell me how you warned them!”
    “Or— what ?” She laughed derisively.
    “I will find them.”
    “They are hidden, as only mountain folk can get. Face it, Lothaire, you’ve lost this match. You play your offense; I play defense . I set this plan into motion half a decade ago.”
    Lothaire traced her back to the apartment. “What are you talking about?”
    Chin raised, Elizabeth tried to fling herself away from him. After a moment, he let her.
    “I reckoned you’d dole out that punishment you’d promised if I succeeded in killin’ your queen. So I made my mother swear to make herself and the entire family scarce for a spell.”
    To clear off an entire mountain of Peirces?
    Like scraping an anthill completely clean. Yet it’d happened.
    “You want your reputation as the Enemy of Old to precede you, to make your enemies fear you?” When she jabbed at his chest again, his gut clenched with want. “ My greatest asset is that I’m forever underestimated—by people like you.” She pinned his gaze with her own. “I’m the sucker punch that you never saw coming.”
    Unexpected Elizabeth, with her fierce gray eyes. Saroya might be vicious and lethal, but Elizabeth was cunning, beguiling.
    Quietly running circles around him at every opportunity.
    Because wasn’t unexpected just another way of saying underestimated ?
    Sucker punch? She’d left him reeling.
    “So no, Lothaire, there will not be any harm done to my family by you tonight. Or ever . Are—we—clear? ”
    Crystal, he thought as his lips parted. I know exactly what you are now. I know what you will be.
    It was apparent what he had to do. Even he could recognize that he was experiencing some unknown-before need for this mortal girl, something even more than desire. And it was despite the goddess inside her.
    “Lothaire, I asked you a question!”
    He narrowed his eyes as a dim thought occurred. “If you suspected your family was safe, why did you go along with my plans? Why did you act afraid for them?”
    She shrugged, casting him a queenly look that dared him to do something; a growl of lust burst from his chest.
    Her peccadillo forgotten—for now—he leaned in to kiss her.

41
    G et off me, freak!” Ellie futilely shoved at him. “I’m not kissin’ you! You were just about to harm my family!” And you took me away from my mountain yet again. . . .
    “I wasn’t going to harm anyone,” the vampire said. “I’d planned to get you outside the trailer and scare you. Then you’d see reason.”
    He can’t lie.
    “But it seems I am holding a shit hand of cards .” He stabbed his fingers through his hair. “You refuse to do as I predict.”
    “You’re one to talk about that.” He wasn’t homicidal that she’d gotten one over on him—he was impressed .
    And seeing that look in his eyes affected her. Coupled with the rush she’d just experienced from smelling the crisp air of her home—the woods, the very earth—she could almost feel . . . hope.
    He took me away from my