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didn’t see the point—at least not from her perspective. She would be influenced to forget the experience, and the supernatural world along with it.
    Personally, I preferred to remember my toe-curling orgasms.
    The vamp lengthened his fangs, stroking the blonde’s jugular while his stare lifted to meet mine as I neared. “Hey, Taran,” Hank said. “You look—”
    I batted my hand. “Yeah, yeah, good enough to eat. Save it for someone you can actually snack on.”
    I flounced past him and down the hall that led into the enormous French-inspired kitchen, stopping in the arched entryway. Just as Tim had said, there was Celia. I removed my coat and tugged on the hem of my sweaterdress. The scoop neck fell just above the swells of my breasts.
    My ensemble was sexy, and like most of my clothes, fashionable. But it didn’t matter. At least, not to Misha.
    Celia sat crossed-legged on a chair like a little kid, wearing her usual tank top and shin-length yoga pants. No makeup. No cute clothes. And long, wavy hair wrangled into a messy ponytail.
    Yet she held the hottest guy with fangs completely captivated. I smiled to myself. Celia was beautiful without even trying. Maybe it was her palpable strength or her kind heart. Or maybe it was simply the way her smile reached her green eyes despite the sadness that hovered beneath the surface.
    I shook my head. Her problem was that she never considered herself desirable. It wasn’t her fault. Her inner tigress scared anything human and made her unapproachable. That changed when a certain sexy vampire and a royal-among-werewolves crossed her path.
    Too bad that royal werewolf turned into a royal douche.
    Celia straightened and her face lit up when I stepped out from beneath the archway.
    “Hey. What are you doing here?” she asked.
    I shrugged. “Just wanted to surprise you.” Truthfully, I hadn’t called or texted because I wanted to catch her unprepared—see if she was really “all right” as she claimed. My sisters and I—and, hey, even our friends, too—were worried about Celia. Not just because of the whole Aric fiasco, but because of who she turned to during her lowest point.
    Misha caught the underlying white lie beneath my half-truth. He raised an elegant brow, but didn’t call me on it. “Good afternoon, Taran,” he said, the allure in his voice sweeping along my skin to cop a feel. He took in my appearance, giving a rather long and thorough glance.
    So, you’re not so enamored with Celia, are you, Drac?
    No sooner did the thought cross my mind than his eyes wandered back to her. I couldn’t help my laugh, knowing that short of standing there naked I was no match for Little Miss Golden Tigress.
    Misha rose, cutting Celia off when she was almost to me. Tim was suddenly there. Man, that super speed really wigged me out. “Nothing, Master,” he said.
    “You’re certain?” Misha asked him.
    “A full sweep was conducted. No presence of demons was detected.”
    “Demons?” Celia asked, her attention flicking back to me.
    I shrugged like it was no biggie, even though I struggled to keep from cringing. “We heard some flapping outside the gates. And, ah, a couple of eaten humans were discovered on the Nevada side. The
weres
suspect demons and such.”
    Yeah. That went over well.
    “It was probably a bird—an owl or something,” I offered when her tigress eyes replaced her human ones. It was a trick she’d pulled more than once, but it gave me pause every time.
    Celia lulled her tigress back to sleep, her normal eyes returning once more to meet Tim’s gaze. “The vamps didn’t see or smell
anything
unusual?”
    He waited before responding. “No. If anything was there, it’s gone now.”
    “Set up patrols outside the grounds,” Misha said in a tone that sounded easy, but was packed to the gills with command.
    “Yes, Master,” Tim responded.
    His disappearance seemed to lift the tension the word
demon
had stirred. For all their power, demons and