Page 75 of Marked By Moonlight

She was right. But, crap. Doing the right thing meant telling her about the mark I’d left on her, and I hadn’t done that either.

She shook my hands a little, forcing me to look up. “All I ask is that you talk to me. Please.”

I opened my mouth. Crap. Where to begin?

“I love you. I mean it,” I managed. “But everything is a mess right now, and I keep getting pulled away. First, Gordon… Then that threatening text… Now, this job…”

I decided to leave out the mark I’d left on her neck for the moment.

“I know what you mean,” she said. “But once we get past all that…”

Getting past all thatwas the day I lived for, but it always seemed further and further away.

“Besides, we’re in this together,” she said.

I gripped her hands tighter. “There’s a lot I want to be in on with you, but not when it involves predatory vampires and Gordon’s sketchy business deals.”

Her face hardened. “Trying to protect me is one thing. Assuming I’m stupid or helpless is another.”

“You’re not stupidorhelpless. Not by a long shot. But we could be up against some really dangerous thugs here.”

She snorted. “Like Anastasia?”

I shook my head. “Like Szabo. Like Gordon. Like half the buyers on his list.”

She grimaced but ceded my point.

Roux motioned at his watch impatiently. “It’s five minutes to ten.”

“Seven to ten,” Mina snipped, then turned back to me. “All I ask is that you talk to me.”

“When? Here? Now?” I motioned around. “Or in a hotel room with all the other guys? When have I had the chance?”

A fair point, I thought, but Mina stuck a finger at my chest. “Makethe chance, dammit.”

I gritted my teeth. Clement had probably been making chances every opportunity he got — and he got plenty as a cop in Auberre, a town with zero crime to speak of. So I wasn’t competing on a level playing field.

But that was the story of my life, and if I wanted Mina, I would have to earn that privilege, wouldn’t I?

Damn right,my dragon agreed.

I sucked in a long breath, steeling myself for all the obstacles that lay ahead. Then I kissed her knuckles softly. “I will. I swear.”

You’d better,her expression warned me.

“Nowit’s five to ten,” Roux grumbled, tapping his watch.

Mina dropped a kiss on my cheek and turned to him. “Coming.”

* * *

Anastasia, as expected, wasn’t enthused by the candidates Mina presented — not even the ones at the very bottom of our list. That led to a long phone call to Gordon on an old-school rotary phone that came straight out of the seventies. Anastasia ended the call with a slam and a great deal of pouting.

“Fine,” she muttered after fuming for five minutes. “I’ll meet them tomorrow. The Bulgarian and the Latvian.”

“And the Swiss art foundation?” Mina tried.

“As if they appreciate art.” Anastasia snorted and whirled out of the room.