Fuck.

He was still alive.

Goddamn it.

With a numb, enduring frustration, he looked at his hand as it squeezed her forearm. Thanks to a fresh bite mark on her wrist, her blood, red and glistening . . . rivered down onto his grip.

That was the taste in his mouth, the heavenly taste that had lit him up, called him back, brought him to her like a dog summoned by its master.

And now? He had a decision to make. Kill her and take everything in her veins. Or let her go and leave right away. Because if he stayed and she was alive? He was going to fuck her while he drank her dry.

As Sahvage mulled over the polar opposites, he supposed the fact that he had to weigh the choice to let an innocent survive didn’t reflect well on his character. But after all this time, he had no character left. There was no part of who he had once been remaining. He was a death machine roaming the earth, and the tragedy for the female was that she had chosen to stay with him instead of run away with the crowd.

“Are you the Reverend?” she asked in a husky voice.

Or at least he thought that was what she was saying. He was distracted by that scent of hers, that taste . . . the fact that he was now fully erect.

“I need to know,” she said. “And you need to live. Take what you need, but no more.”

With that, she put her wrist against his mouth, pressing the puncture wounds to his lips—and instantly, he was as lost as he had been while dying, his mind floating on a sea of compromised senses, his body no longer his to order, his heart skipping beats, his lungs freezing.

He couldn’t swallow fast enough. He was a bottomless pit.

As Sahvage reclined back into her lap, he stared up at her as he drew against her vein. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, and he wasn’t surprised. He was not the kind of male a female like her should have had anything to do with voluntarily—and not because she was an aristocrat. He could tell by the clothes she wore and that handbag that she was a civilian, but that wasn’t the divider between them.

He knew very well what he was, and anything living shouldn’t be alone with him. Male or female.

And yet here she was helping him. For reasons that defied explanation.

I will not kill you, he vowed to her.

It was the minimum courtesy he owed her, wasn’t it.

On that note, Sahvage retracted himself from her vein, her wrist . . . and, with a grunt, her lap.

On a messy shuffle, he flipped himself over onto his stomach and then he dragged himself away from her, his palms and his heavy arms doing the work, his legs scraping along the concrete, his boots a pair of dogging cabooses. When he was outside the giant blood puddle he’d left behind, when there was a good six or seven feet between him and the female, he let himself collapse again.

The cold floor of the garage felt good against the hot side of his face, and he had a thought that his arousal was getting seriously crammed at a bad angle in his combats. But like he was going to worry about his goddamn dumb handle? As he panted and tried to get his bearings, his hand went back to the side of his neck.

The wound was sealed up. She must have—

“I, ah . . .” The female cleared her throat. “I tried to help close it.”

He looked over at her. “You shouldn’t have bothered.”

“Well, I did.”

Those eyes of hers couldn’t seem to light on anything, but really, what were her good options? Her bloodstained clothes? The pool of blood he’d left? The empty garage they both needed to get out of?

“How are you feeling?” she asked him.

“Fine. Just great.”

“Do you, ah, want to go see a doctor?”

Sahvage laughed harshly. “Sure. Great idea.”

That stare met his own directly. “Are you the Reverend?”

“Who?”

“Don’t lie to me. We’re not strangers anymore.”

Down below on the streets, the sounds of sirens wailed in the distance, and Sahvage wondered how many cops were on their way. Humans were like that, always showing up where they weren’t invited.

The female glanced away toward the noise, her brows lowering like she was attempting to count the number of blocks the police were covering per second. “They’re coming closer.”

“Yup.”

“I need your help.” She looked back at him. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You sure you want the kinds of things I can do?”

“If I had another choice, trust me, I would take it.”

With a groan, he sat up and tried to brush the dirt off his pecs. But drying blood was like glue. “That I believe. What do you need?”

“Are you the Reverend.”

Lowering his chin, he regarded her from beneath his lids. “Do I look like a religious figure to you?”

“Don’t toy with me.”

“I’m not, sweetheart.”

“This isn’t a game to me,” she spat. “I need to know if you’re the Reverend.”

As she jumped to her feet, Sahvage measured her up and down—and had a thought that she would look good naked. Those loose clothes did nothing to emphasize her assets, but she had plenty of them—and he liked the fact that she wasn’t the kind to put herself on display.

“And I need a Motrin,” he muttered as he put his bloody palm up to his aching head.

What the hell did a male like him have to do to die? Wait . . . he didn’t want the answer to that. Some things were best left to the hypothetical. And hey, at least he wasn’t thinking about sex anymore.

“Are you the Reverend!” she said again, her voice echoing around the empty garage level and overriding the sirens.

All of which were zeroing in on this bloodbath involving a pair of vampires, one of whom was on the hunt for some kind of Protestant with fangs, and the other of whom had made it a point to never, ever again get involved in other people’s drama.

Why had he bothered to swing through Caldwell again?

Oh, right. He’d been bored.

Are you the Reverend!”

You’d think Mae’d be yelling to be heard over the approaching police cars, but no, she was just pissed. And meanwhile, the huge male she’d given her vein to—yeah, ’cuz that had been on her list of things to do during this little adventure into downtown—was staring up at her with that bored expression of his, a twin trail of blood streaking from where he’d nearly died to where he’d dragged himself away from her.

The layout of it all looked like he was a rocket going into space, the big pool the explosion of liftoff, the streamers from his boots like the contrails of his fight.

Not that that made any sense at all.

And FFS, she could do without that tattoo on his chest pointing at her.

“My goddamn skull is pounding,” he groaned.

So don’t bare-knuckle fight with humans who have no honor, she bitched in her head. What did you think was going to happen—

“Whatever,” the male snapped as he glared up at her. “You were the one who distracted me.”

Shoot, she’d spoken that out loud. But whatever was right.

“Haven’t you heard of the no-fraternizing rule?” she gritted. “You shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

“Says the female who was also in the crowd.”