"I take it you aren't fond of that guy," Kade said as Alex weathered an inward shudder of repugnance. She grunted. "You know that video you mentioned to me, the footage of the Toms family that had been uploaded to the Internet? Well, that's the creep who did it."
Kade's eyes narrowed as they locked on to Skeeter from across the room. His gaze was more than intense--it was lethal. And as Alex watched him, she noticed that the pattern of tattoos on his forearms, part of them just visible under the pushed-up sleeves of his shirt, were not the henna color she remembered but a dark shade of deep blue-black.
Well, that was certainly odd.
Maybe she'd had one beer too many if she was seeing his tattoos change colors. Or maybe she simply remembered wrong. She'd been so gobsmacked by the unexpected sight of him at the Toms place earlier today, not to mention the fact that his incredible body had been half na**d besides, it was completely possible that she'd mistaken the color of his ink. Except she'd never seen such an amazing work of body art ever in her life, and the image of him standing there, buttoning up his jeans like she'd just roused him out of bed, was a sight burned indelibly into her memory.
After a long minute of searing Skeeter Arnold with his eyes, Kade finally looked back at Alex. "I'll deal with him later. What you have to say is more important."
Alex took a step back now, sensing the danger in the man even though he was speaking to her in the same gentle tones as before. But something was different. There was an air of menace about him that put her on edge.
And there remained the fact that when she'd asked him if he was good or bad, he hadn't answered her.
"I think I'd better go now," she murmured, retreating another step before making a quick dodge past him.
"Alex," she heard him call from behind her.
But she kept moving, cutting through the knot of people packed into the bar and desperate for some cold, sobering air--and freedom from her troubling, visceral response to Kade.
Chapter Nine
Kade exhaled a low growl as he watched Alex cut through the tavern and all but run for the exit. He had pushed a little too hard with her, a tactic he should have known would fail just from the brief time he'd spent around her, studying the way she operated. Alexandra Maguire only dug in her heels harder if someone attempted to lean on her.
And then, on top of that, he'd made everything worse by having the bad sense to touch her. He hadn't been able to resist, and some part of him acknowledged even as it was happening that she'd seemed to welcome the contact. Right up until the moment that greasy slacker with the burnout's gaze and thin beak of a nose came walking up and disrupted them. Kade had a serious urge to pound the guy for that alone, never mind the fact that the stoner had also been the one to broadcast visual evidence of a vampire attack all over the World Wide Web.
As for dealing with Alex, Kade had seen the fear in her eyes as he pressed her for answers. She'd been terrified to spit the words out, but he was certain he'd been very close to getting her to open up completely about what exactly she knew. And the cold-as-ice feeling in his gut was telling him that what she knew went a whole lot deeper than just the recent attack and slaying of the family in the bush. Could she possibly be aware of the Breed's existence?
Had she seen one of his kind before?
Jesus Christ, what if she'd found more than just an un-explainable footprint out there at the Toms settlement?
If she had information that might implicate Seth in the killings--or clear him, slim as that hope seemed--Kade had to know. He had to know right now.
And if she did, in fact, have any inkling about the Breed, Kade figured it would be a hell of a lot easier to strip the memory from her outside in the shadows of the dimly lit parking lot than in the middle of a crowded restaurant and bar.
He stalked out after her to the snow-covered lot. She was already halfway across the short span of plowed tundra, walking briskly past the couple of pickup trucks and the half-dozen snowmachines parked outside Pete's. She didn't even break stride as the clank of the bell on the door sounded behind Kade as he leapt off the squat, covered porch and fell in, hot on her heels.
"Do you always run away when you get scared?"
That brought her up short. She pivoted around, an odd look on her face, as though his comment hit too close to home. But then she blinked and the look was gone, replaced with a narrowed gaze and a stubborn tilt of her hooded head. "Do you never give up, even when you know you're not going to win?"
"Never," he said, zero hesitation.
She muttered a particularly vivid curse and kept on walking, headed in the direction of the street. Kade caught up to her in a few long strides.
"You were going to tell me something back there in the tavern, Alex. Something important that I really need to know. What was it?"
"God!" She spun toward him, anger flashing in her brown doe eyes. "You're impossible, you know that?"
"And you're beautiful."
He didn't know why he said it, other than that he found it too hard to keep the thought inside his head when she was standing there looking windblown and wild, her cheeks carrying the pink kiss of the Arctic chill, her blond hair framing her face in tousled waves beneath the fur ruff of her parka's hood. If Brock or any of the other warriors in Boston had heard him just now, they'd guess that he was just playing this female, plying her with flattery to get what he wanted from her. Kade himself wanted to believe that was the cause of his ham-handed blurt. But as he looked at Alexandra Maguire, her simple beauty lit up by the thin moonlight overhead and the multicolored glow of the neon bar signs in the windows behind him, Kade knew that he wasn't playing any kind of game here. He was attracted to her--fiercely attracted--and he wanted her to understand that he wasn't the enemy.