“No!” She pushed up with both hands. “It’s a piece of history. We need to remove whatever he did. I can restore it properly.”

Tariq’s hand went back to rubbing her bare skin. “You have no idea how dangerous Vadim and his brother, Sergey, truly are. Fridrick presents a terrible danger, but he is nothing compared to those two. You don’t ever take chances with vampires, especially master vampires. You kill them without hesitation and you keep the risk to yourself as little as possible. We have several experienced hunters here. I put the word out, and those in the area are coming here as well as watching all harbors. We know he’s been moving on ships out to sea in order to keep us from tracking him.”

“How in the world can he feed if he’s out at sea?”

There was a small silence. Her gaze jumped to his. “Tariq?”

“Lojos and Tomas have been watching them. They discovered that they meet up with human traffickers at sea. Ships bring them to him. All bodies are disposed of before they ever return to shore.”

She closed her eyes and slumped against him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “He has to be stopped, Tariq.”

“I know, sielamet, but it will take time. He has pawns like Fridrick. Fridrick isn’t the only master vampire under his command. They will be sacrificed before we ever get to Vadim. He should leave this area because there are too many hunters. We think we will be able to divide and conquer that way.”

Once again his fingers drew little patterns across her bottom, and it felt wonderful. She needed his intimate touch when they were discussing something as vile as Vadim Malinov. The thought of any part of a monster like Vadim being inside her was disturbing. She wanted him gone and she didn’t want to chance giving him a glimpse of the children ever again. “I see what you mean about the splinter, but Tariq, I do have a way of tracking him. The carousel is in your basement. If I touch it I can find him, now that I know what I’m looking for.”

Tariq frowned and the hand moving on her bottom stopped. “That might work, under the right circumstances, but Charlotte, don’t you dare try on your own. I mean that. I’ll know, and this time, the consequences are going to be severe enough that you won’t disobey me again when it comes to matters of your safety.”

She clenched her teeth and her entire body went rigid. So much for her gorgeous, perfect man. Not. So. Perfect. “Don’t threaten me, Tariq. I’m not five years old, and just a little FYI, I’ve been in your mind and you would never hit a woman or child. I think I’m pretty safe from your consequences.”

“It isn’t a threat, Charlotte; I don’t make threats. I am far more modern than most of my brethren, but living for centuries among humans has not made me human. I am a Carpathian male. There are things you will have to live with about me, just as there are things about you I must live with. When it comes to matters of your safety, rest assured, lifemate, I take that very seriously. When I tell you to do something, I expect it to be done. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to do it.”

Once again she attempted to roll off of him, but he held her in place. “Stop struggling. It is useless and rather foolish to be angry over something neither of us can change. I could word it gently and you may like the sound of it better, but it all comes down to the same thing. What is so difficult about treating your safety as sacred? Will we not treat our children’s safety that way? Or Genevieve’s safety? What of Emeline’s? Donald and Mary’s? Should we neglect them because they are older? They all need our protection.”

She huffed out a sigh of resignation. She was arguing over semantics. He was right even if she didn’t want to admit it. She hadn’t liked him giving what sounded to her like an order. Still, she’d already touched the carousel horse without him and was enduring the consequences. It stood to reason she’d learned her lesson without him going on about it.

“All right,” she conceded. “You won’t have to worry. You’re the expert in all matters vampire and the like, so I’ll follow instructions to the letter.”

His hand resumed making little lazy patterns on her skin, this time sliding up to her back and moving around to her sides so he was tracing her rib cage and the side of her breast. Her blood turned molten and liquid heat gathered between her legs. She found it amazing that he could do that to her with just his touch. Her heartbeat throbbed between her legs and pounded in her neck, where every now and then she felt the warmth of his breath.

“That’s my very smart woman. Your idea just might work, although I don’t like the notion of your having anything to do with Vadim, even remotely. And we’d have to make certain there was no way for another sliver to get into your skin. I’m going to remove it now. I’ll be heat, a white light you’ll feel within you. Be still for me.”

Charlotte subsided against his chest, letting her body go soft, melting into his. She wished he was still deep inside her, but at least he surrounded her with his arms, and one leg curved around her thighs as if he knew she needed to be wrapped up while he went after Vadim’s splinter.

Tariq didn’t wait. He didn’t like the idea of a master vampire having put a cursed splinter inside his woman. More, if others had died because the splinter was inside of them, he had to see what it was doing. So far, she hadn’t shown any signs of illness. She looked beautiful to him. A little wild. A little sexy. Just perfect. Her skin wasn’t unusually warm, which might have indicated a fever – the human warning signal that something wasn’t right. There was nothing at all to tell him there was something extremely dangerous in her.

He shed his body in the way of his people, becoming spirit without ego, a white, healing light that easily entered her body. He checked every organ for damage. The splinter was nowhere to be found in any vital organ. There was a subtle difference in her blood. Very subtle; at first he almost didn’t notice, but the absence of the splinter worried him, so he was even more careful, determined to draw it out into the open.

He moved through her with meticulous care, sending small sound waves through her body to loosen the splinter’s grip on whatever it had attached itself to. As he did so, he saw several of her white blood cells suddenly slide against a red blood cell and engulf it. He had to replay the scene in his mind several times to make certain he had seen it correctly. He watched for several more minutes but nothing else happened.