Page 91 of The Grave Artist

But he was wrong again.

The spike heel had broken in the onslaught, and she simply dropped the left shoe and pulled off the right.

Damon debated. She was intoxicated with bloodlust and if she carried the assault to its natural conclusion, she would likely end up in prison for murder. Ordinarily he wouldn’t care, but this woman was not only a kindred spirit but too beautiful and intense to waste her best years in a cell for zero reason.

Which would inevitably happen. Any claim she had of self-defense ended when her attacker passed out. And she was not done yet. She positioned herself to impale him with the equivalent of an ice pick once more.

What was the word that he was thinking of?

Ah, yes ... in Damon’s experience, the only reason for such excess waspassion.

He knew this because he had a curious relationship with the emotion himself: wholly absent in 90 percent of his life, it utterly possessed him when he was crafting a Tableau. He knew exactly what she was feeling.

But it was clear she did not have that magic element that made him so utterly dangerous: impulse control.

Damon stepped away from the corner of the building. The woman clocked the motion in her peripheral vision and looked up at him.

A sharp gasp of shock escaped her lush mouth.

Their gazes locked. He thought her initial reaction would be to cover her chest, but no. She scrutinized Damon and the surroundings, perhaps to see if he was a cop. Or another threat.

He cast his gaze down at the prone figure before he spoke to her. “These circumstances? If you kill him, it’s going to take a lot of work to get away with it. I’m not even sure you could, at this point.”

An array of expressions passed over her lovely face, but she said nothing. Then she seemed to process his words.

Breathing hard, she regarded him a long moment, composed herself and answered in a calculated tone. “I always figure something out.”

Her response caught him off guard.

“Always?” He raised a brow. “You make a habit of bludgeoning people to death?”

“Only the ones who have it coming.”

He should have been repulsed or even afraid—he was bigger and, after all, a shoe is not the most formidable of weapons, but she could do some damage if the rage returned.

At the very least the script called for him to walk away.

Yet just as she had chosen not to flee, he followed suit.

And to his shock, as he took in the bloody, barely moving victim, and the feral gleam in her eyes, he found himself, of all things, keenly aroused.

Watching her approach, he stepped fully from the shadows, unable to resist the image that came to mind: that she was one of the frightening yet beautiful Furies, out of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s paintingThe Remorse of Orestes, a work that managed to perfectly capture the unlikely combination of unholy retribution, reckless abandon and unbridled rage.

Chapter 44

Captivated by her magnetism and looks, Damon forced himself to give no quarter. He knew that retreating in response to her advance would only strengthen her position in the silent power struggle that had unexpectedly materialized between them.

And he wanted to establish equivalence, if not domination.

She stopped just three feet from him, well within his personal zone.

What came next was as surprising as the footwear assault.

Nothing.

No pleas, no excuses, no tears, no threats.

She simply looked him up and down with apparent amusement.