A brow rose. "I had no intention of shagging Felicity. I only kissed her to prove that you care far more than you're admitting to."

I was so glad nothing more had happened with her that I almost smiled. Then I caught myself. "I don't care."

Bones snorted and gave another look around at the blood-smeared walls. "Right. Cool as a cucumber, you are."

He'd left his tuxedo jacket somewhere else but still wore the shirt and pants from the wedding. His tie was also missing, and his shirt was casually opened at the neck. Over that, he had on a black leather coat that trailed down to his calves...

"Holy shit, is that what I think it is?" I blurted.

Bones did a circle. "You like how it looks on me? After all, you kept your Christmas present. Only seemed fair to retrieve mine, especially since you took my other jacket."

The leather coat I'd bought him for Christmas over six years ago fit him perfectly. When I told him where it was the day before I left him, it never occurred to me that he'd go back for it. Then again, it never occurred to me that he'd search for me this long.

I shook my head to clear the images. I had to get away from Bones. When I was near him, I couldn't think straight. Work, concentrate on work.

"I have to call this in, you got a phone on you?" All I had on me was my underwear, blood, and some knives.

Bones pulled one from his pocket and passed over.

"Tate, it's Cat. I need a cleanup crew at the GiGi bar. Got a bunch of dead vamps and some victims who need medical attention and new memories. Couple of human bodies also, unfortunately."

"Why aren't you at the wedding? The GiGi bar was supposed to be with us, tomorrow."

From his tone, Tate was pissed, but I was in no mood to argue with another man.

"Are you going to berate me or get the crew?"

"What number are you calling from? This isn't your cell."

"I stole someone's phone," I lied. "I'm giving it back now. Hurry up, this place is crawling with people."

I hung up without saying good-bye. "You have to leave," I said for what must have been the tenth time. "The guys will be here soon."

"I'm in no hurry," he replied, his voice husky.

Belatedly, it occurred to me that I stood six feet away from Bones clad only my bra and underwear. Granted, I was covered in blood, but that never turned off a vampire. It was their equivalent of whipped cream.

He hadn't missed a thing, and his eyes slid over me with the intimacy of a touch. "You're exquisite, Kitten."

He came toward me, but I leapt back. Something flashed across his face and his eyes narrowed as he stared at my bared hip. Uh-oh. I'd forgotten about that.

"You really did duplicate my tattoo. Ian told me you did, but I didn't quite believe him. Yet there it is, etched on your flesh." There was faint wonder in his voice.

"Don't touch me. Don't." My voice quavered because I knew if he did, it would be all over.

"You want me to. I see it in your eyes, and your scent betrays you." Bones's flat, hungry tone frightened me. His next words did even more. "Yet I told you long ago, I don't come in unless invited. You'll be the first to lay hands on me, and I'm not going anywhere. You want to get rid of me? Then you'll have to kill me."

Oh, shit. He knew I couldn't do that. Hell, I hadn't known if I could kill him when I thought that he'd slaughtered an entire family.

"Then I'll leave," I said. "Don hid me once, he can do it again."

"I dare you to try," he replied menacingly. "We have unfinished business, and we will settle it, ready or not. After nearly seven bloody years, you've had enough time as it is. Set an hour, luv, finish up here if you like, but I'm not waiting another day. If I have to follow you home and have it out in front of Noah, I will. Won't bother me a bit to pull the wool off his eyes as to who he hopes to marry. What will it be? Private or public, take your pick."

He wasn't bluffing, he never bluffed, and there was no way I was letting him near Noah if I could help it. The fact he hadn't murdered him already amazed me.

"All right, you want me to pick a time? Dawn."

His lips curled at the spitefulness of my choice. A vampire was weakest at dawn. So was I, but in this one instance, my humanity would help me instead of hinder me. Take every cheap shot, every low blow. He had taught me that.

"Where?"

I thought for a minute. "There's an unfinished park outside Richmond called AdventureLand. Construction's been halted due to permits, so it's empty. Meet me by the bridge connecting the golf course to the far green. Don't be late-I won't wait for you."

He smiled and gave a last, long look down the length of my body. "I won't be late, Kitten. You can count on it."

Chapter Fifteen.

Bones and Cat, Revised Rekindled Passion

Author's note: In the published version of One Foot in the Grave, Bones and Cat go on several dates before giving in to their passion. At one point shortly after Bones returns, Cat even tells him something like "I'm not just going to fall back with my legs open while declaring my undying love to you." *grin* That line was me being a smart-ass to my editor, because in the original version below, that's pretty much what happens. Cat had never stopped loving Bones, and she'd made herself a miserable, self-destructive mess without him, so I couldn't imagine her putting Bones off for any length of time once he was back in her life. I also couldn't imagine Bones wanting to take things slow now that he'd finally found her. He's a patient man, but not THAT patient.

However, I did end up rewriting what happened when Bones returned because my editor reminded me that new readers who started with One Foot had never "met" Bones before, and thus had no background for their romance. Having Cat and Bones jump right back into bed would therefore diminish the sexual tension that could otherwise be used to introduce them to Cat and Bones's relationship. Since I'd written this well before I had any readers, that thought had never occurred to me, but I could see her point, so I revised. I did use some of the original sex scene below in the published version, but I changed the setting as well as what inspired Bones to bite her. So in this version, you'll get to see both an amended version of their first sex scene as well as some of Bones's temper with regards to Noah.

Dawn had just broken when I pulled up to the bridge. I hadn't slept a minute all night.

Bones was already by the bridge, waiting for me. Some idiotic part of me had hoped he would oversleep, but no. In fact, to my bleary gaze, he looked as rested as could be. He wore a navy sweater and blue jeans, and my heart began that damned accelerated beating when he met my gaze. I'd picked a place out in the open deliberately. Although it was deserted, it was hardly private.

He laughed outright when I got out of my car. Okay, so maybe I'd gone a bit overboard in an attempt to look dowdy. I'd even debated whether or not to shower or brush my teeth, but hygiene had won out. I had on loose-fitting overalls, a high-necked top with long sleeves, and three pairs of panties underneath the overalls. My hair hung in wild strands after I'd roughly towel-dried it following my shower. I hadn't even bothered to comb it.

"Where's your chastity belt?" he said in greeting, still chuckling. "You must be very concerned about your willpower. I'm flattered."

"Save it," I said shortly. "I'm here. Let's settle this."

"All right." He walked under the bridge. I didn't move. "Going to rain soon, I can smell it. Stay there if you like, I'm going to keep dry."

The air did feel moist, and gray thunderclouds were holding the sunlight at bay, but I held my ground and remained where I was. "I'll risk it."

That signaled the beginning of the showdown. "What you're willing to risk makes my hair stand on end," Bones snapped. "Taking off and hunting vampires with only humans as support. I can't believe you're still alive. How many times have you put yourself in danger to bail out your team? Must have been hundreds. Last night I could have picked them off one by one. Without you, they're just food."

"I'm glad we agree," I interjected. "My team needs me. Noah needs me. Don needs me. My mother needs me. You have to respect that and go. Let me handle my own problems."

"I don't give a rot about them." Brown eyes glared into mine. "I need you. That's all I bother about."

Last night lying in bed, I'd rehearsed dozens of arguments. Here went the first one. "I am not the same teenager you plucked out of a bar. I'm a grown woman. If Ian comes for me or mine, I will fight him. Frankly, I'm more concerned about you hurting Noah than about Ian coming after him to get to me."

He snorted rudely. "If I meant to kill him, I'd have done it already. I followed the sod to his office the morning after I found you, then picked him up by neck and told him my name. Of course, he had no idea who I was. Only took another minute to confirm he also had no bleedin' clue who you were, either. That's why your human teddy bear is safe from me. He's too soft, naive, idealistic, and weak. You got engaged to a man you knew you could never truly love, and God knows he wouldn't love you if he had a clue about who and what you really are. That bloke from your team has more to fear from me than Noah."

"Who?" I had no rebuttal for what he'd said about Noah. Maybe I was just happy that he had promised, in a roundabout way, not to hurt him.

Bones gave me a scathing rake of his eyes. "Tate. He's so in love with you I could smell it from a mile away. Interesting you didn't choose him as your playmate since he accepts you and has a bit of strength. No, you went right for Noah's Furry Ark."

I stomped closer to shout in his face. "First of all, Tate doesn't love me. He just wants to get laid. You and he have that in common."

"Too right he wants to shag you, but he'd walk through flames for you. After over two hundred years of watching men and women, I know real love when I see it."

"I don't love him."

"Of course not. Be too dangerous for you, wouldn't it? After all, you might have to trust someone then. Tell them the truth when you feel threatened instead of disappearing." Bones stalked over.

We were now toe-to-toe.

Then his voice softened a trifle. "Kept the car though, didn't you? Do you know how many people in America own a Volvo similar to yours? I do. That's how I had you narrowed down to three states. Don changed the year and make as well as the registration, yet even the government keeps service records of their vehicles. And fuel records for their aircrafts. Knew you weren't flying commercial with all your weapons, so after every scene you went to, I tracked the flight paths of nearby military planes. Do you know how many times I arrived only hours after you'd left? I could still smell your scent in the air, almost as clearly as I can now."

Bones had told me last night that he had searched for me, but I hadn't realized how extensively. My heart constricted.

"Bones, I'm sorry for leaving the way I did. It was cowardly, but I... I wasn't strong enough back then to look at you and tell you good-bye, even though I knew it was the right decision. It still is. If it makes you feel any better, I've cried every night about what I did to you. Literally every night." Bitterness crept into my tone, because it was true.

"No, it doesn't make me feel better, Kitten." Frustration and tenderness mixed on his features. "If anyone else hurt you like that, I'd kill them, yet you did it to yourself. What am I to do about that?"

"Please just leave." I forced the request out with willpower alone. "Please. I'm telling you this to your face, like I couldn't do before." I met those dark brown orbs I'd dreamed about incessantly and didn't falter. "Good-bye, Bones."

He gazed at me for several moments. I put all my determination, strength and will forward for him to see, not the quaking emotions underneath. Finally he blinked, and the stalemate was over.

"All right, Kitten. If you're sure that is what you wish, I'll go. I told you long ago that I'd never force myself where I wasn't wanted. Give me a hug, pet. Let us part as friends."

Part as friends, that was better than before, wasn't it? In fact, it would be downright insulting to refuse such a magnanimous offer. All these excuses sped through my mind and overruled the inner warning that told me not to do it. When did I ever listen to those warnings?

I stepped forward and put my arms around him, but as soon as I did it, I knew it was a mistake. A colossal one. Bones folded his arms around me, and it was like a match igniting across my every nerve ending. His body seemed to pulse with voltage begging to be let free, and his embrace was the only thing that had felt right in the past six and a half years. I should never, ever have touched him. He had always been my kryptonite.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, but it wasn't to Bones. It was to my mother, Noah, Don, and everyone else, because nothing short of my own death would stop me from what I did next. Impatient to feel his flesh under my palms, I grabbed a handful of his lovely blue sweater and tore it open.

I would have gasped when my fingers touched his bare skin except in that instant, his lips covered mine. He ravaged my mouth with blind need, tongue ruthlessly raking the interior. His grip on me turned unyielding, crushing, and he lifted me off my feet as I wrapped my legs around his waist. Only the pressure from our bodies kept his sweater on; I'd rent his sweater into strips in my greediness to touch his bare skin.

"Don't... ever... say that... to me... again," he growled while kissing me into mindless oblivion. My conscience slept, comatose from the flash beating it had just received by my lust. I couldn't get enough of kissing him, tasting him after so long, and I sucked on his tongue as if meaning to swallow it.

I moved my hand between our tightly molded bodies with the single-minded intention of destroying his pants. Then all thought fled as his fingers slid under my overalls and pushed into me. I arched back hard enough to hit my head on the wall behind us, harsh cries of need spilling from me. My loins twisted in pleasure from each new rub, the intensity inside me building-until his hand was gone, leaving me wet and aching.

"I can't wait," he muttered fiercely and dropped to the ground with me underneath him.

If speaking was still in my control, I would have immediately agreed. But all my vocal abilities were used in gasping at the unbelievable sensations his fingers caused. Bones shifted, I heard another rip, and then my overalls, shirt, and three pairs of panties split down the middle.

I cried out when he entered me in one hard stroke, my flesh ecstatically stretching to clutch his. He didn't pause to savor the sensation of our joined bodies but thrust forcefully into me while still tearing off my clothes. It only took the third thrust for me to shudder in frenzied climax, unable to handle the bombardment of my senses.

A growl escaped him that might have been a laugh. "Oh, Kitten, you did miss me, didn't you?"

My mind was seized with a single, jumbled rant: harder-faster-more-yes! It was all I could think as I clawed at his back. His muscles rippled with his movements, and his skin positively crackled with inhuman energy.

I was still in the throes of orgasm, nerve endings shredded with pleasure, and only the concern for oxygen gave me the ability to talk. "Can't... breathe..."

Between his ceaseless kissing and his iron grip, my lungs were deprived. He loosened his hold and tore his mouth from mine, leaving a hot trail down to my breast. A strangled moan tore out of me when he sucked hard on my nipple. I took in rapid breaths and then bit my lip at the intensity of his motions. He was rough enough for it to have been rape, except I strained toward him and reveled in the ravishment. No pain had ever felt this good. Strangled sounds escaped me and I punctured his back with my nails.

"Forgive me," Bones moaned into my ear. "I can't be gentle. It's been too long."

"Don't stop." I raked my nails down his back for emphasis, sparing him nothing in the gesture. The storm broke around us, rain pelting down in sheets. I felt more wild than it was, what with the passion that had my nerve endings contracting and twisting in a frenzy.

"I can't stop," he muttered as a twist of his hips shot rapturous torment into my loins. The muscles inside me clenched and unclenched in furious competition. I unleashed all control over myself, tearing into him with the same force he inflicted on me, and the thunder and downpour absorbed our cries. There was nothing tender in the way we took each other. We were both too desperate for that.

When Bones finally convulsed, tremors shaking him, I'd almost fainted. My heart pounded and my ears rang with the blood thrumming in them. He gathered me closer and let his mouth rest over my pulse, and I could feel its rampant beating against his lips.

"That took some of the edge off," he breathed into my neck.

I managed a wheeze of a laugh. "If that only took some of the edge off, you'll kill me before you dull the blade." It was true. I'd be black and blue by nightfall, and my walking abilities were in serious jeopardy.

I felt him smile against my skin, and I opened my eyes. His glowing emerald gaze held mine and the reality of him being with me, me actually inside his arms, struck me belatedly. The anguish I'd carried for so long eased bit by bit, reluctant to break its stranglehold. Tears came to my eyes, and I couldn't hold back the truth any longer.

"Everything I said to you before was shit. I still love you. I couldn't stop, no matter how hard I tried! Oh God, Bones, I've been so lost without you..." I couldn't speak anymore. I tried to fight the tears, but they came anyway, and a sob choked off my words.

"It's all right, Kitten," Bones said softly. "You're not lost any longer. I found you, and I love all of you. I love the narrow-minded teenager who tried to kill me when we first met because she thought the world had two categories: human and evil. I love the budding fighter who made a deal with a vampire to protect her family, and I love the sensual young woman who hid underneath. I love the lying bitch who left me because she thought she was protecting me. I love the hardened warrior you've become. I can even love you for getting engaged to that fluffy scrap of humanity you thought would change you into something you'll never be. I love you whether you're Cristine, Cat, Cathy, Kitten or even Catherine, and I will love whoever you become in the future too."

That did it; I burst into full, wracking sobs that shattered the walls within me. More than anything else, I'd longed to hear that he still loved me, and more incredibly, as he'd pointed out, he loved the real me, in all my flaws and forms. It was an inexpressible relief to break down, drop my shields, and be emotionally defenseless without fear of rejection. Bones held me the entire time that I cried, and when the storm of my tears finally passed, I kissed him with such fervor that I tore my lips on his fangs.

Bones made a guttural noise as he swallowed my blood. Then one hand tangled in my hair and his mouth sealed over my throat. I had a split second where I guessed what he intended, and tensed in instinctive defense.

"Don't be afraid," he whispered, then his fangs sank into me.

Just like that one time years before when he'd bitten me, what logic told me should hurt only felt good instead. Really, really good, and increasing with each pull from his mouth. I tried to talk and couldn't. There seemed to be an invisible highway connecting my artery to my loins, and I felt him there as if he were inside me again. The last time he'd bitten me hadn't been like this. It had been fast and explosive. This was slow and sizzling, both alarming and erotic. He wasn't draining me by inches; he was doing it by millimeters.

Another pull from his mouth curled my fingers and toes in delirious reflex. A hoarse sound left me when his tongue laved the punctures before sucking again. Heat raced through my veins with searing alacrity. My head fell back, and my fingernails dug into him while I trembled.

"How does it feel?" His voice was a growl.

I couldn't keep up with the deluge of new sensations. I was faint and exhilarated all at once. Goose bumps rippled over me, gray spots danced in my eyes, and I clung to him as my world tilted.

"Hot. F-feels hot. I think... I'm dying." Strangely, the thought of my demise had never bothered me less.