Page 4 of Deck the Skulls
His dark, sinful brown eyes caught her first. It took a while for her to take in the rest of his classically handsome face, shoulder-length, curly hair, and muscled build. It made her breath catch.
He was gorgeous.
“I didn’t expect you back so soon,” Anatoly said from behind her. He sounded… embarrassed? Who was this stranger to Anatoly? His boss?
Worried about getting him in trouble, she pulled out of his grip and moved away from him, toward the pass-through at the end of the bar.
The gorgeous stranger was staring at her with narrowed eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Leaving,” she said, pulling up the pass-through. What a perfect end to the day. She’d gotten fired and might have gotten this poor guy fired. Fuck!
“Zan, she’s—” Anatoly started to say, but Zan held up a hand and cut him off.
“No, Anatoly! What the hell? She’s hu–a stranger, and you don’t make her stop when she gets pushy? I’d never do that to you!”
Rissa froze, noticing a wedding ring on Zan’s left hand. Whipping her head around, she saw a heavy signet ring on Anatoly’s left hand. She couldn’t be blamed for not realizing he was married. This was all on Anatoly.
Righteous anger filled her.
“You’re married?” she shouted at Anatoly. Rage reignited in her, and she smashed the pass-through against the wall, putting it into the drywall and bending one of the hinges.
Without giving herself time to think, she stomped over to him and slammed her fist into his nose. He let out a startled gasp and rocked back, covering his nose with both hands.
“Rissa, no this isn’t—”
She wasn’t interested in his excuses. Turning on her heels, she strode out from behind the bar. She heard footsteps behind her, but Zan slid up, blocking the other man from getting to her.
“Let her leave so we can chat,” he growled.
“Gods be damned!” Anatoly cursed, his voice sounding nasally. Rissa didn’t hear Zan’s response because she was already out the door.
Chapter 2
Zan
Although Anatoly didn’t like it when he went off to do favors for one of the many friends he’d acquired over the years, Zan loved helping too much to say no. Even in the face of Anatoly’s disapproval and annoyance at having to run the bar for a few hours, Zan almost never refused a request.
Today, he’d helped a pixie pull a nesting opossum mother and babies from a crawl space under her house. The opossum mother and babies were adorable, but there was obviously something wrong with the mother. He’d volunteered to drive them to a wolf shifter who ran a rescue.
Turned out he was allergic to opossums, and he'd sneezed all the way to Titan’s place.
Then he walked into Sanguine to find Anatoly lip locked with a gorgeous human woman. Not a sight he expected to come back to!
“Catch her!” Anatoly growled, one hand still holding his nose. Zan could see a few drops of blood and felt a little guilty. The human had packed a punch.
Or at least he thought she was human; his sense of smell was off after so much time near the opossums.
“No way,” Zan said, blocking his vampire from leaving. “How about an explanation?”
For the first time, Anatoly looked confused. “Couldn’t you smell her? Didn’t your inner cat recognize Rissa as a mate?”
Shock made Zan drop his arms and draw his head back. “What?”
“Why couldn’t you feel it? Smell it? She’s meant to be mine—ours! She’s supposed to join our flock. I felt it the moment our eyes met. That explains why she was able to walk in despite the wards. The magic meant for her to be ours!”
Panic hit Zan hard. “What a night to find out I’m allergic,” Zan muttered, rushing out the door. A quick survey of the area didn’t reveal her.
“Allergic?” Anatoly asked, appearing next to Zan as if from thin air. Some vampires could do that, move so fast it was as if they could teleport.