Lisa pulled back, and looking Bennett squarely in the eye, Lisa drew her tongue over the punctures in Ruby’s neck. “Have fun.”

Ruby flinched when the bedroom door slammed and then backed away from Lisa. “You feel better now?”

“Yeah, actually I do,” Lisa said, taking a contented breath. “It’s quite a rush, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is, but I’m not talking about you feeding,” Ruby said, snickering. “Nice touch with the tongue.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lisa grabbed her wine glass and hurried into the kitchen for a refill.

“Of course, you do.” Ruby retrieved her glass and placed it on the counter next to Lisa’s. “But what you just did…the tongue thing…Bennett didn’t deserve that.”

“As far as I’m concerned, she deserves a lot more than that. If she wanted me dead, then what I do from here on out shouldn’t bother her in the least.”

“Oh, stop being so stupid. Bennett didn’t want you to die,” Ruby said, taking the bottle from Lisa. “I forget. What are you, twenty-nine? Thirty?”

“Thirty-two, and why does that matter?”

“Because you only have thirty-two years of memories and thirty-two years of mistakes, lessons, and regrets under your belt. Bennett and I have over four hundred years’ worth of all of that crap, and trust me, it weighs you down. You carry it around like baggage, and you think you may lose some of it along the way, but it’s never all gone, especially when someone’s hurt you. When your own damned brother does something so heinous you want to vomit every time you think about it, or when you’ve had your heart ripped out by women who you believed loved you, those things leave scars, Lisa. They leave deep, grisly scars. And the only difference between Bennett and me is that I only have one brother, but Bennett’s heart’s been broken way more than once.”

“And what does that have to do with me?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, what are you stupid? You’ve got to know she’s in love with you.”

Lisa’s mouth dropped open. For a split second, a smile formed before it gave way to Lisa’s annoyance. The woman standing next to her had been Bennett’s lover for weeks, and apparently, during one of their bedroom romps, Bennett had confessed something Lisa had longed to hear for years. Lisa stared daggers at Ruby. “Well, she has a funny way of showing it. If I’m not mistaken, she didn’t have the big, bad wolf sleeping in her bed for the past month,” she said, giving Ruby an icy once-over. “Then again, if we change the gender, big, bad bitch totally fits.”

“Call me all the names you’d like. I probably deserve a lot of them, but that doesn’t change the fact she’s in love with you, Lisa.”