“I read the Movement files on him during my training. He was one of the best known outlaw vampires living in this area, so it seems impossible that he would not still have connections here,” Bella insisted. “Like your girlfriend, who lives here now.”

“She’s not my…” Max shook his head. “Listen, this is Plymouth. If I go that way, we’re going to Cyrus’s house.”

“Are there no other houses on that street?” She sounded so satisfied with herself, he almost dumped her on her ass.

He picked up the pace once more. “You’re gonna feel pretty stupid when you’re wrong.”

But she wasn’t wrong, at least, not right away. They walked a few blocks and got a dirty look from an elderly couple in evening clothes.

“You should have stayed home,” Max whispered as he lifted a hand in friendly greeting to the woman, who screwed up her face in a sour glare and hugged her fur wrap tighter to her chest. “They’re going to call the cops.”

“Then I will come back and eat their housecats,” Bella said close to his ear.

A completely involuntary—because he wasn’t at all attracted to her—shiver went up his back at the feeling of her lips brushing his skin.

She chuckled. “Oh, I bet you hoped I did not notice that.”

“It was from muscle fatigue, I assure you. Ever think of, like, Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig?” Another cheap shot. It was her fault. She reduced him to them.

The remark didn’t phase her. “So, I suppose I could do that again. Or maybe…”

As her voice died away, something warm and wet and rough and unmistakably a wicked, pointed tongue traced the outside of his ear. His knees buckled and he nearly crashed to the sidewalk.

“Don’t do that,” he said, a little more sharply than he’d intended, as he recovered his footing.

“Why not? Do you not like it?” She was teasing him, deliberately teasing him, when they were supposed to be working.

He blew out a frustrated breath. “Because I train my dogs not to lick. It’s bad manners.”

Her laughter was surprisingly feminine. He’d expected something throaty and seductive, like her voice. If he’d thought about it at all, that is, which he hadn’t.

She traced a fingernail down the front of his throat, then scratched beneath his chin affectionately. “You call me a dog as though you were trying to offend me. I know what I am.”

“A pain in the ass? A fat, heavy pain in the ass?” God help him, he was teasing her back.

Are you high, Harrison?

No, brain. But I wish I was.

“I am not fat. I have fat, where it is needed in human form.” As if to demonstrate what she meant, she pressed her breasts more firmly against his back.