Page 23 of Bound

The door to Topher’s apartment was unlocked. I slipped inside, removed my shoes and slid the chain into place behind me.

“Toph?”

“In here.”

Moonlight streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting the apartment in stark shadows. Topher stood with his back to me. He was shirtless and barefoot, the air damp from a recent shower and faintly scented of body wash. I came to stand beside him, trying not to notice the way moonlight played over the dark tribal designs that swept across his arms and upper torso, or the way his abdominal muscles arrowed down to his hips just above where his track pants hung loose at his waist.

“So what did Brody want?”

I couldn’t look at him. “Nothing.”

His mouth turned down slightly at the corners. “That the line you’re going with?”

“It’s fine.”

“Uh huh.”

“You can’t take it personally with Brody. He takes a long time to warm up to new people. Occupational hazard for cops, and I’m not making excuses, but he sees the worst of what humanity is capable of come across his desk every time he clocks in.”

“He doesn’t like the idea of you with someone like me.”

“It’s not up to him.”

“I should be out there.”

“We’ve got a lead now. That’s huge.”

“Yeah, and we’re just sitting here like it’s business as usual.”

“That’s not true and you know it.”

“They’re out there now. I’m not sitting here when I could be doing something.”

“And if they walk away from the meet?” He held my gaze. As something raw and hungry rose in my blood, I was forced to turn away.

His voice was dark. “You look like hell, Caldwell.”

Ignoring the comment, I said, “Chances are the undeads out there don’t even know anything. A high value target like Kieran would be kept in a secure location. They’d want to keep information compartmentalized to prevent leaks.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You think I don’t know how they operate?” I studied his profile in the moonlight. “It’s been two years. River and my mom have turned every middle-of-nowhere hellhole in Texas inside out looking for our dad. Nothing. Not a trace. Every time they get a lead, it dries up. It’s like he disappeared into thin air that day someone abducted him on the road outside Blood Moon. But the thing is, he’s got to be alive. I’m sure of it. Why go to so much trouble to take someone and so thoroughly cover your tracks if you’re just going to kill them? Our best bet is to let this play out, let River and Brody work their sources, and show up to the meet in forty-eight hours.”

Topher clawed a hand through his hair, sending the dark waves into wild disarray. “I feel the undeads circling Blood Moon every night. They’re like this black veil shrouding the back of my mind. I can’t get close enough to pin them down. And I can’t get away.”

“This is the first solid lead we’ve had in months. They wouldn’t have asked for a meet if they didn’t want to deal.”

“It’s the Vampire Nation. This is what they do.” Topher lowered his head, angular shoulders vibrating with tension. “You have to let me out of here. I have to try to find him.”

I swallowed, taking in the hard, uncompromising angles of his profile, his dark lashes the only thing softening his features. “I can’t. Not when you’re like this.”

“Don’t,” he rasped. “You can’t look at me that way. Especially not right now, when I want to—"

He didn’t finish. Didn’t need to. I drew a shaky breath, feeling as if all the air had suddenly been sucked from the room. Topher met my gaze, his erratic pulse and darkening scent forcing to the surface everything we’d both been denying for the past year.

My vision blurred, those words sending an image of something elsejacking through my brain at ninety miles a second. Topher, slowly working himself, teeth gritted in delicious agony as he pictured—

I dug my fingertips into my temples.