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She glanced down to the long fingers that were snaked around her wrist and holding on like a vise. His bodyguard moved forward as though prepared to step in, but Danika refused to be cowed by either of them. “Let go of me.”

Reiver’s smile became a thin-lipped sneer. “We’ve hardly had a chance to get acquainted. Stay. I insist.”

“I said let go.”

He didn’t. And in that next instant, the ballroom echoed with the sharp crack of her open palm connecting with his face.

It seemed as though the entire room froze in response.

Bodies ceased moving on the dance floor. The orchestra faded into quiet. Conversations halted, heads turned. Everyone stared at Danika and at the vampire who was seething in cold fury, blocked from delivering a return strike by the barricading wall of his bodyguard, who had placed himself between them.

“Danika!” Emma rushed over with James from across the gathering. They gaped at her as though she were a child who’d just poked a stick at a coiled viper. “Danika, what have you done?”

“Get my car,” Reiver snarled to his bodyguard. His fury was o"0es fury bvious, glowing in the amber transformation of his eyes and the thinning slits of his pupils. Behind the curled edge of his lip, his emerging fangs gleamed razor sharp. “This spectacle is over. I’m leaving.”

“Mr. Reiver,” James interjected, clearly anxious. “I cannot apologize enough for this … whatever this was about. Please pardon our cousin. She couldn’t possibly have intended—”

“No,” Danika said. “You don’t have to make excuses for me. I can speak for myself. And if I felt an apology was warranted, I’d give it.”

Reiver’s bodyguard muttered a curse under his breath while his employer’s glare burned even hotter. “The car, Brandogge. Now.”

As the big male moved off to carry out the command, Reiver raked Danika with a scathing look that practically stripped her bare. “Perhaps a little time in Scotland will help smooth the coarse edge America has left on you, Widow MacConn. For your sake, I hope so.”

Before she could tell him where to stick that suggestion, Conlan’s kin steered her away to let Reiver leave the party without further incident.

* * *

Bran swung Reiver’s black Rolls-Royce around to the front of the Darkhaven and put the sedan in park on the paved half-moon drive outside the entrance. His hands itched on the steering wheel, his pulse hammered hard in his ears. Every instinct was on full alert, telling him to get his ass back inside and make sure the situation didn’t escalate with his boss and the widowed Breedmate from Boston.

Not that he had to worry about Reiver. His reputation would insulate him from the worst of the gossip following his public rebuke and the attention it attracted from everyone tonight. Tomorrow it would be all but forgotten, or at least hushed into nonexistence. There were few members of the Breed nation in Scotland who didn’t know better than to invite the wrath of Edinburgh’s most sinister resident.

If Reiver wanted problems to go away, they tended to disappear quickly. True to the origins of his name, he had long grown accustomed to taking whatever he wanted. No one refused him anything, and no one dared stand in his way. When fat bribes and illicit favors didn’t suffice, Reiver had no qualms about resorting to less civilized tactics to ensure his interests were protected.

What might Reiver do if he suspected that his private discussion this evening had been overheard by the Breedmate with a longtime connection to the Order?

It wasn’t a stretch to imagine. Bad enough that she’d dented his ego and topped it off with a physical insult in the middle of a crowded ballroom. If Reiver worried that she might know details of his current business dealings, Bran hated to think how his employer would go about securing her silence.

Bran despised the son of a bitch. He felt that contempt simmer through his veins and boil into his vision with amber fire as he watched Reiver come out of the mansion and make his way toward the waiting vehicle. It took some effort to tamp down hid ntamp dos hatred and school