Titles by Christine Feehan

Ruthless Game

Street Game

Murder Game

Predatory Game

Deadly Game

Conspiracy Game

Night Game

Mind Game

Shadow Game

Hidden Currents

Turbulent Sea

Safe Harbor

Dangerous Tides

Oceans of Fire

Savage Nature

Wild Fire

Burning Wild

Wild Rain

Water Bound

Dark Predator

Dark Peril

Dark Slayer

Dark Curse

Dark Hunger

Dark Possession

Dark Celebration

Dark Demon

Dark Secret

Dark Destiny

Dark Melody

Dark Symphony

Dark Guardian

Dark Legend

Dark Fire

Dark Challenge

Dark Magic

Dark Gold

Dark Desire

Dark Prince

Anthologies

Hot Blooded

(with Maggie Shayne, Emma Holly, and Angela Knight)

Lover Beware

(with Fiona Brand, Katherine Sutcliffe, and Eileen Wilks)

Fantasy

(with Emma Holly, Sabrina Jeffries, and Elda Minger)

Fever

(includes The Awakening and Wild Rain)

Sea Storm

(includes Magic in the Wind and Oceans of Fire)

Dark Crime

Christine Feehan

INTERMIX

New York

INTERMIX

Published by Berkley

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2015 by Christine Feehan.

Excerpt from Dark Carousel copyright © 2016 by Christine Feehan.

Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

ISBN: 9780451488701

Jove mass-market edition / August 2015

InterMix eBook edition / November 2016

Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

Photographs: man © InnervisionArt / Shutterstock;

night club bar © graphicmaker / Shutterstock;

blurred concert © AstroStar / Shutterstock.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

For Joyia and Pat McGuire. Much love to you, my friends.

FOR MY READERS

Be sure to go to christinefeehan.com/members/ to sign up for my private book announcement list and download the free ebook of Dark Desserts. Join my community and get firsthand news, enter the book discussions, ask your questions and chat with me. Please feel free to email me at Christine@christinefeehan.com. I would love to hear from you! Each year, the last weekend of February, I would love for you to join me at my annual FAN event, an exclusive weekend with an intimate number of readers, for lots of fun, fabulous gifts and a wonderful time. Look for more information at fanconvention.net.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With any book there are many people to thank. Thanks to Slavica Ostojic for help with the terms of endearment Maksim uses for Blaze. I really appreciate your help.

In this case, the usual suspects: Domini, for her research and help; my power hours group, who always make certain I’m up at the crack of dawn working; and of course Brian Feehan, whom I can call anytime and brainstorm so I don’t lose a single hour.

ONE

BLAZE MCGUIRE PULLED her waist-length red hair into a high ponytail at the back of her head and contemplated the fact that she was going to die tonight—and it was of her own choosing. She was going to war with the Hallahan brothers and their mobster boss. They didn’t know it yet, but they would be walking right into hell. They thought they were going to have everything their own way, but they were wrong. Very wrong. She was a woman. She was young. They dismissed her as no threat to them. And in that they were making a very, very big mistake.

Her hair wasn’t just red hair, it was red. Her hair had been that vivid, insane color of red since the day she was born. Hence the name her father had given her, staring down at his newborn daughter who was already giving the doctors hell for dragging her out of her safe little world, kicking and screaming into the cold light, her hair blazing along with her lungs—and that should have given them a clue what they were buying when they murdered her father.

Most people didn’t know when they were going to die, she mused as she rigged the explosives on the door to blow, the charge precise, sending anyone in front of it outward with little blowback into her beloved bar, hopefully leaving it intact. Still, if the charge didn’t kill them all before they got inside, she would give up the bar’s interior in order to take the battle to them. Tonight, the four Hallahan brothers were going to come for her, and she would take as many of them with her as possible.

Sean McGuire had been a good man. A good neighbor. An even better father. The bar was successful because he had a reputation for being honest and was a good listener, because he genuinely cared about his customers, his neighbors and especially his daughter.

He knew everyone by name. He laughed with them. He attended funerals when they lost someone. He got them home safely at night if they drank too much. He cut off the ones that were spending too much and needed to be home with their families. He was just a good man. A good man some mobsters had pulled out of the bar and beat to death because he wouldn’t sign his establishment—the one that had been in the family for two—now three—generations over to them.

Sean had also served in the U.S. Marines and he knew his way around weapons, especially the making of bombs. He was a specialist in the field, so much so that he actually had helped out the local bomb squad the three times they’d gotten calls, because what he knew about explosives, few others did—and what he knew, he taught his daughter.

Blaze had been given an unusual education and she’d loved every minute of it. Her father made it clear he loved her and was always proud of her, and he’d always been patient with her, but he believed in teaching his daughter everything he would have taught his son. He was patient, but he didn’t make it easy because she was a girl. She was required to do everything—and learn everything—he knew about defense and offense. She’d soaked up the training.

It had always been the two of them, Sean and Blaze, after her mother left. Truthfully, she remembered her mother as a disconnected woman who was never happy—when she could remember her, and that wasn’t often. Her mother left when she was four. They’d never done one single thing together. Not one. She couldn’t even recall her mother holding her. It had always been her father.

Sean had been a boxer, a mixed martial arts cage fighter, and he enjoyed the lifestyle. He had always insisted his daughter work out with him. She had—since the time she was two. She grew up boxing her father. Learning martial arts. Street fighting. She learned to fall properly, and she knew all about joints and pressure points. More, Sean hadn’t neglected teaching her how to shoot or to use a knife. He certainly hadn’t neglected her training when it came to explosives.

Later, when she was ten, Emeline Sanchez came into their lives. Emeline lived mostly on the street, shuffled from one home to another, but mostly on the street. Emeline became a family member and spent a great deal of time crawling in Blaze’s bedroom window from the fire escape and sleeping inside with her. Sean pretended he didn’t know. Emeline, thankfully, was away from all of this and in Europe, where Sean had sent her to protect her. Blaze had called her, of course, but told her to stay where no one could harm her.

Blaze smiled grimly to herself as she laid out a grid pattern on the floor of the bar and then paused to glance out the window, looking down the street. This had once been a good, decent neighborhood, a place she had called home for twenty-four years. She’d grown up in the apartment over the bar. It was a big building, right on the corner, prime property. The building and three others on either side had been in their family for generations. Her family had taken good care of them and never sold, not even when property values had soared.

Her eyes narrowed as she returned her attention to the delicate job of setting wires throughout the bar. Low. Mid-calf. Thigh. Hip. She crisscrossed them, building a web. Yeah. They should have known all about that redheaded baby when they dragged her father out of his own bar and beat him to death. They’d broken nearly every bone in his body before they killed him. She knew, because the ME had told her.

Rage welled up. Swirled in her belly. Deep. So deep she knew she’d never get it out. She knew why they’d broken his bones. She’d heard about the “persuading” technique from a few of the other business owners. The mobsters wanted properties signed over to them. Her father had already signed his property over to her. She owned the bar. They’d gone after the wrong person. And now they were coming for her because she’d sent them an invitation. Not to buy her out, but to war.

She would have signed over the bar in a heartbeat to them if they’d called her and told her they had her father. They thought it was important to teach the neighborhood businesses a lesson: what they wanted—they got. They weren’t going to get what they wanted, not even after they killed her. She’d made certain of that. They wouldn’t touch Emeline, either. They wouldn’t get to harm the last person in the world she loved.

Blaze pressed her fingers to her eyes to stop the burning. She hadn’t slept, not in days, not since she’d come home to find her father gone, the door to the bar open and blood on the floor. She’d been frantic, running through the streets like a maniac, calling the cops repeatedly only to be told they couldn’t do anything for twenty-four hours, but they’d send someone by. They hadn’t. She’d sat alone in the apartment over the bar, arms around her knees, rocking herself, trying to tell herself that her father was strong and he knew how to take care of himself, but there was so much blood.

She taped a knife under the table closest to the stairs. If she lived through the initial attack, she would have to have an exit plan. She needed to rig the stairs. If she got to the apartment—and she knew the chances were slim to none—she could go out the fire escape and up to the roof. She did that often. She’d been doing that with Emmy since she was ten years old. Once on the roof, she could choose any direction. She would stash a couple of weapons up there as well.

Two factions of mobsters had moved into the neighborhood, the first and the most brutal one, a year and a half earlier. Four brothers—Irish, by the look of them, but Sean hadn’t known them and he knew every Irishman in the city—who went by the name of Hallahan. The four were always the front men for one of the crime lords, with their grim faces and their ugly demands, and all four were quick to dirty, extreme violence. And they owned the cops. The police, who had always spent evenings and sometimes days in the bar playing pool, had stopped coming around. She knew they worked for a man by the name of Reginald Coonan. Their boss always stayed in the shadows, but he liked blood, and his men liked violence.

A few weeks earlier, a tall, extremely good-looking man in a business suit came by the bar and handed a business card to her father. It had a number printed on it, nothing else. The man was soft spoken and simply told them if they needed protection, to call that number and someone would come. She found it significant that her father hadn’t thrown the card away, even though they both thought this was another crime lord intending to take Coonan’s territory from him. Sean had never discussed the incident with her, but he kept the business card safe, right by the phone.

Blaze had never moved the card. But she’d looked at it numerous times. She’d done a little investigating, and it hadn’t been easy to uncover the identities of any of the mobsters. She knew now the four Irish brothers. Each of them had grown up in Chicago and had moved to her city. The Hallahans were all short, muscular and very scary. They had come here because it had gotten a little too hot for them where they’d grown up and, she suspected, because Reginald Coonan, their boss, had moved from Chicago as well.

She had very little on the other mob faction. The man that had come so silently into the bar was named Tariq Asenguard. He owned a dance club—an extremely popular one in the neighborhood. He was quiet, only came out at night and owned a very kick-ass estate edging the water. The entire place was fenced—and he had multiple acres, a gatehouse and a boat. She didn’t know where he’d come from, and every avenue she’d tried to find out more had been shut down.

Everyone knew he had money—lots of it. He was also a very scary man. He could take over a room just by walking into it. She had heard mixed reviews about him. Half the people who had encounters with him thought he was the devil. The other half was certain he was a saint.

He had a partner. A man by the name of Maksim Volkov, whom no one knew anything about. He was the silent partner. He owned the property bordering Tariq Asenguard’s estate, but few ever saw him. He was partners with Asenguard in the dance club. Asenguard, who was there often, was clearly the face of the club, but few actually ever saw Volkov. There was something about his name that made Blaze shiver—and she wasn’t given to flights of fantasy. Tariq Asenguard was definitely a badass, but he was cool about it. Maksim Volkov was a question mark. She knew others worked for them, but it didn’t matter now. She didn’t care. They hadn’t murdered her father, so therefore, she was throwing in with them. After she was dead.

Methodically, Blaze positioned weapons throughout the room and around the bar, and then practiced getting to them. She didn’t want to hesitate. She’d need every second she could get. If nothing else, she wanted to take the Hallahans with her when she went. She felt calm. Nerves would come later. And then the kick of adrenaline.

She glanced at her watch. Outside, light was beginning to fade. The streetlights wouldn’t come on. Someone had shattered the old-fashioned gas-looking lights that lent character to the streets. The four brothers almost always came at night. She knew they didn’t care if anyone saw their faces and knew who they were. Everyone was far too intimidated by them to come forward.

She just plain wasn’t the come-forward-and-testify type, not when she didn’t believe for one moment that there would be a conviction. These men had killed her father. They’d tortured him first and then they’d killed him and thrown his broken body out of a moving car, in front of the bar like trash, right at her feet. She hadn’t seen them torture or kill Sean, only throw his body at her.

The brothers had timed it just right, coming into the bar at closing when Sean was standing just inside the door. The ME said he found Taser marks, puncture wounds where her father had been taken down, not by one Taser, but by four. The moment they had incapacitated him, they had struck brutally, leaving behind a good amount of blood. It had been Blaze who came home to find the bar unlocked, blood on the floor and her father missing. Even with the blood, the police had done nothing. They promised to send someone around to take a report, but no one showed up. That hadn’t surprised her. The cops had all but abandoned her neighborhood and everyone in it.

Blaze looked around the bar. The building—and the bar—was over a hundred years old. She didn’t understand why the mobsters spared some of the properties and went after others. Their takeovers seemed random. She’d tried to put together a pattern, but she couldn’t find one. It wasn’t the businesses they wanted, because after they acquired property, they never opened the business again. The dry cleaner’s six doors down was closed. The lovely little grocery store on the opposite corner remained closed, forcing all the residents to go out of their neighborhood to get food.

She made her way up the stairs, leaving a trail of weapons. She didn’t believe she would ever get to them, but still, she had been taught to plan for every contingency, and living was one of them. The apartment where she’d grown up was large. She loved it. It had been home all her life.

Home. Her father had done that. Given that to her. He laughed a lot. His eyes lit up when he laughed. So many times he’d whirled her around the living room floor, singing at the top of his lungs, making her laugh with him. He lived life large and he’d wanted her to do the same.

She knew her father dated women, but he never brought them home. She asked him a million times why he didn’t remarry, because she was always afraid if she found someone he would be lonely, and she didn’t want her father ever to be lonely. Sean simply told her there was no point in settling. It was either the right one or no one. He’d learned that lesson the hard way and he hadn’t found the right one, but he was still looking.

She had always wanted that for him. Wanted someone else to love him the way she did, but he’d never let anyone other than Emeline fully into their lives, and maybe that was what made her the same way. She dated, but she never gave herself to anyone, because she knew it wasn’t the one. Maybe there wasn’t really the perfect one. The right one. She’d never know now because she was going to die tonight.

She stashed a go bag with clothes and money on the roof by the fire escape, tucked out of sight. Two more guns and that was it. She was more than ready for war. She stood on the roof for a few minutes just looking out over her neighborhood, remembering the sound of laughter. There had always been the murmur of voices and the sound of laughter. Now there was just . . . silence.

Blaze sighed and made her way back down the stairs to the bar. It was a beautiful bar, all curved mahogany. Gleaming dark wood. The long mirrors and bottles and glasses stacked neatly. She was a good bartender. Fast. Efficient. Flashy. She could flip the bottles and do tricks with the best of them, and some nights her customers called for that. Her father would stand back, shaking his head and laughing, but his eyes were always alive with pride in her.

She’d nudge him out of the way with her hip, tell him, “Let me show you how it’s done, old man,” and perform a few outrageous tricks, getting the customers fired up. When she did that, they always had a spectacular night. It brought in crowds outside of their neighborhood, so the bar was nearly always full. They didn’t lack for money. Still, the mobsters who had murdered her father weren’t after the money. They wanted her home. The property. And they were never going to get it, not even after she was dead.

She caught up the phone and dialed the number on the business card, and then idly tapped the edge of the card on the surface of the bar while she waited as the phone rang. Two rings only.

“Talk to me.” The voice was soft. Male. Scary beautiful. Just plain scary. Definitely not the same man who had come by the bar and left his card. This man had an accent she couldn’t place. He sounded dangerous, like a man who didn’t have to raise his voice to command a room. Like a man you never—ever—wanted to cross.

“I’m Blaze McGuire. Someone with this number came by a couple of weeks ago. The Hallahan brothers killed my father and they’re coming for me. An envelope containing the deeds to the properties will be sent to you on my death. Tariq Asenguard and Maksim Volkov will inherit. You can deal with what’s left of the Hallahans after tonight.”

There was a small silence, and then that voice whispered into her ear. Low. Commanding. “Get. The. Hell. Out. Of. There. Now.”

She froze, her fingers curling around the phone. She felt every single word resonate right through her body. He was good with that voice. Even through the phone she wanted to obey him, and she wasn’t all that good at obeying anyone—not even Sean sometimes.

“Can’t do that,” she said softly. “I’m going to die tonight and they’re going to pay. If they don’t get inside, and I’m gone, be careful. The entire bar is rigged to blow. One wrong step and you’re dead. In the envelope you’ll receive instructions for disarming everything. Where you can safely step and what to avoid. How to get through the maze.”

“Blaze. Get. Out.”

He said her name as if he knew her. Intimately. As if he had the right to be worried about her. Protect her. As if she belonged to him. Blaze was a name that, to her, didn’t sound feminine. He made it that way, his accent caressing the name, making it something altogether different.

Her tongue touched her upper lip. Her breath caught in her lungs. She had to fight the pull of his voice.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “And you don’t need to. I have to do this. They aren’t going to get away with this.”

“No, sweetheart, they are not, but this is not the way to do it. Get out of there and wait for us. We are on the way.”

The way his voice moved over her body, stroking like a caress, rasping like a tongue, yet still commanded, sent a chill down her spine. More than anything she wanted to obey. Not because she was afraid of dying, but because the note of command in his voice was affecting her in ways she didn’t understand.

“Not going to happen,” she whispered, her heart pounding. She had the feeling that he was on the move and that he was moving fast. “They killed my father.”

“I know, draga mea.” His voice was even softer. More persuasive. Sliding into her mind so she felt warmth where there was darkness and cold. Where there was rage. Where she had to keep a hold of that rage and not allow whatever was in his voice to warm that cold. “We will handle this for you, and these men will pay. Get to safety. We are on our way.”

She pressed her hand hard to her heart. It was beating far too fast. Pounding. Her mouth had gone dry. Even her head hurt, as if by defying him, her physical body protested. It didn’t make sense to her. She’d always been her own person, able to stand up to anyone. She didn’t want to talk to him anymore, but she couldn’t pry her fingers loose from the phone. She just stood there, one hip to the bar because it was holding her up. Her body trembled when she hadn’t been trembling faced with certain death.

“I-I . . .” She found herself stammering. All she had to do was put the phone down, but she couldn’t. Her fingers were locked around it.

“You do not want your beautiful bar blown all to hell,” his voice continued to whisper in her ear. “Our way is so much better. You will continue to have your property. Your home. The neighborhood will be rid of a couple more of the monsters.”

So soft. So intimate. As if they were in bed together. Tangled up. Arms and legs. She could almost feel him moving in her. That intimate. And she couldn’t drop the phone. She should. But she couldn’t. She was mesmerized by his voice. She stared out the large window that took up nearly one entire wall. On the other side of the window were thick iron bars. She’d cried when they’d had to install them. She’d lived there most of her life in complete freedom, and then someone somewhere made the decision to ruin their neighborhood.

“People are dying.”

“I know, draga mea. We will stop them, but giving them your life is giving them another victory.”

“They killed my father.” The words broke from her. She hadn’t cried. She’d refused to cry, not even when she’d told Emeline. Not until after. Not until the men who killed him were dead. “They broke him into pieces and then they killed him.”

“I know, inimămea,” he whispered.

She had no idea what language he spoke, only that he spoke it with the most intimate accent possible. She didn’t dare look away from the window or she would have closed her eyes. To hold his voice to her. Wishing she had known him before she was a stone inside. Before her smoldering fire had grown into a wildfire burning out of control, for vengeance.

“Let us handle this. It is what we do.”

“After.” She tilted her chin. Straightened her shoulders. “You handle them after.” She forced her fingers to loosen their death grip on the phone. His voice was so mesmerizing, so hypnotic, she could almost believe he was a dark sorcerer bent on controlling her through his voice alone. But she wasn’t given to flights of fantasy. She had been raised to deal with any issue, and the murder of her father was personal. “After,” she whispered again. “You deal with them after.”

“Wait. Blaze. Wait for me.”

His voice. That voice. It seemed to be inside her. Inside her head. Stroking her from the inside out. She had always relied on herself or her father. Sean had taught her that. Given her that confidence. But his voice and the way it seemed to be inside her head made her feel as if without him, she wasn’t Blaze anymore. She was adrift.

“At least do that for me. Go up into the apartment. I’m about four minutes out. We can deal with them together. You go upstairs. I will come to you from the roof after we get rid of them, and we will make a plan. Together.”

Blaze closed her eyes and forced her numb fingers to work. She hung up. The moment she did, she felt sick. More, her head hurt. Not a little bit, but pounding, as if by hanging up, something inside her got left behind and set off little jackhammers tripping in her skull. She pressed a hand to her knotted belly and picked up one of the guns lying on the bar. Her hand shook and that shocked her.

She had absolute resolve when it came to bringing justice to her father’s murderers. Of course she was afraid. No one wanted to die. But she was confident. And utterly committed to her cause. Still, her hand shook when it never had before. That was how much his voice had shaken her.

A slow heat curled in the pit of her stomach, and a small shiver went down her spine. She would have liked to have met the owner of that voice. Then again, maybe not. She talked with men all the time, the bar separating them. She could laugh and flirt and know there was that boundary no one crossed. His voice had crossed it.

She slammed the magazine into her weapon and turned her attention toward the bar-covered window. She saw the flash of headlights as the car raced down the street toward her property, and she knew instantly it was them—the Hallahans. They had come. Her stomach settled. Adrenaline began to pump. She took a few deep breaths as the big SUV slammed into the sidewalk and screeched to a halt. All four doors popped open and the men spilled out.

She could see them all clearly, even in the waning light, because she’d changed the lightbulbs outside the bar to illuminate the sidewalk. She’d used a high-wattage bulb, uncaring of what the electricity would cost. She wasn’t going to be around to pay it. She studied them, these men—no, monsters—who had beat her father to death. They’d broken his bones on purpose to torture him. They could have called her, but they hadn’t. They’d enjoyed hurting him.

She didn’t take her eyes from the window, watching them come up the sidewalk, moving with confidence, their beefy frames rolling side to side as they moved together to approach the bar.

Everything went silent. Time tunneled, as it often did when a fight was close. Her attention focused on the door. She became aware of her heart beating. Each separate beat. Each pulse. The ebb and flow of her blood as it rushed through her veins. Everything around her went still. Utterly still. She didn’t hear insects. She didn’t hear traffic. There were no solid footsteps as the men with their steel-toed boots came closer. There was only Blaze and the gun in her hand.

Her hand was rock steady now, and she took a slow breath, watching the window, keeping an eye on the door handle of the bar. If they touched that, if they opened the door, it would set off the charge.

Without warning, the Hallahans backed up, moving toward their car, all four of them. Blaze took a step forward, her body hitting the bar. She shook her head. They couldn’t leave. She moved quickly around the bar and stopped dead, looking at the web of wiring. The entire room was a trap. She would have to spend an hour dismantling everything. What had tipped them off? They hadn’t even gotten close to the entrance. Damn. Damn. Damn.

TWO

CURSING, BLAZE RUSHED up the stairs, automatic cradled in her arms. She raced through the apartment for the fire escape. Slinging the weapon across her back, she climbed fast and made it to the roof before the SUV with the Hallahans in it was all the way down the street. It was moving fast, but still, as she leaned out over the thick cement wall that formed the railing, she counted all four of them inside the vehicle.

She closed her eyes briefly. She was going to have to take the fight to them, on their turf. Never a good idea. In the meantime, she couldn’t leave her bar rigged with explosives. If somehow, someone innocently found an entry point, it could be very bad. She sagged against the low wall and slowly pulled the gun from around her neck.

All that preparation and now she would have to start all over. She knew where the Hallahans holed up. They owned a strip joint just a few blocks over. Well, they didn’t own it. Their boss owned it. The faceless man who called himself Reginald Coonan. There were no pictures of Coonan. None at all. He owned a significant amount of property in her neighborhood as well as a few buildings between her neighborhood and the one where the strip club was located.

There were no properties in residential areas listed as belonging to either the Hallahans or Reginald Coonan, which meant she was going to have to work a lot harder to get to them. She’d start with the club Coonan owned, but she had no idea where they actually lived. She bit out a few more curses and kept staring down the empty street. Nothing moved. “Damn it,” she said aloud as she turned back toward the fire escape to climb back down to her apartment entrance. “Just damn it.”

Going to the mobsters’ lair would be really dangerous and would call for completely different tactics. She didn’t want anyone innocent to get hurt, especially the dancers and employees at the club. She couldn’t imagine that the Hallahans treated the strippers with respect and would mind if the dancers were caught in a cross fire.

She removed the magazine from her weapon and tossed it on the kitchen table. She had the blueprints for the club. It hadn’t even been that difficult to get them. There was an apartment over it, like she had over the bar, but they didn’t stay there. They only used it to take their women. So where did the Hallahans actually reside? She would have to do a little surveillance and follow them, find a way to take the war to them without endangering innocents.

With resignation, Blaze started down the stairs to the bar. She had a lot of work to do to remove all the traps and explosives she had rigged. She gathered up the weapons she had placed on the curved stairway and made her way to the bar. She’d taken two steps in when arms came around her, large male hands removing the guns.

Blaze whirled around, hands up, ready to defend herself, heart beating wildly, shocked that anyone could have penetrated the bar without blowing themselves up. Shocked that she hadn’t heard a sound, or sensed a presence. The man facing her was already a distance away, and she hadn’t seen or heard him move. He was utterly still, his arms relaxed at his sides, the guns loosely in his hands.

She drew in a breath, knowing, without him speaking, exactly who he was. This man had to be Tariq Asenguard’s silent partner. She’d never seen a more handsome man, not in the traditional sense of handsome. He was too rough for that. But he was undoubtedly sexy and all masculine. His shoulders were set wide. His hair was as black as night and long. He had it pulled back and secured behind his head. That wasn’t why she took a step back. Away from him. She wasn’t a coward. She really wasn’t. But this man wasn’t just dangerous. He was terrifying. His eyes were absolutely the blackest—and the coldest—eyes she’d ever seen in her life. There was no expression on his face at all. He was remote. Removed. Ice-cold.

His gaze moved over her and left behind a chill. He didn’t miss anything. He took his time, still, not moving a muscle, yet conveying a readiness to deal with anything. All with no expression.

She knew he wasn’t in the least bit like the Hallahans. They enjoyed violence. This man didn’t enjoy anything at all. He was too removed from it. Too removed from humanity. He didn’t seem capable of emotions. He would explode into violence, but he would do it all without even the slightest hint of feeling.

Time slowed down. Tunneled. Blaze couldn’t breathe for a moment, taking another step back—toward the bar. She let her gaze shift, just for a moment, to the room. The grid was gone. Something that would take her an hour or so to unravel, this man had done in minutes. How he had gotten in, she had no idea.

She had made a terrible mistake choosing Maksim Volkov and Tariq Asenguard to be allies. She’d told them about the envelope giving them the property when she died. The Hallahans had turned and gone away without so much as pulling a gun. Were the two factions of mobsters really allies, working the neighborhood?

She knew his partner was close, right there in the room. She could feel him, but he was somewhere behind her. She hoped not close. The gun was taped under the edge of the bar. She just had to get to it. They couldn’t have cleared out every weapon, not when they had to dismantle the explosives she’d rigged throughout the room.

“Do not try it,” he said softly just as she moved.

She ignored the compulsion to allow his words to rule her, already, thankfully in motion, diving over the bar in an aikido roll, tearing the gun from the tape beneath the edge of the bar. She felt the solid slap of the stock in her palm; her fingers closed around it, and then her wrist was caught in a fist so tight she couldn’t release the weapon, but she couldn’t use it, either. He pinned her arm across his chest, the barrel of the gun directed away from him.

She smelled him. All man. He smelled good. Too good. He felt like a rock, hard and unyielding, as if instead of skin he wore armor. Instinctively she held her breath, afraid to take anything of him into her body.

“I do not want to hurt you, Blaze,” he said, his mouth against her ear. “You clearly know what you are doing and I cannot take any chances. Release the weapon to me.”

There it was again—that need to obey him. She barely obeyed her own father. Why she felt such a need to do what this man told her—simply from the low, very soft sound of his voice, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t let him stop her. If she stopped, even for a moment, she’d have to face the sight of her father’s body, bloody and broken, thrown out of a moving car to roll onto the sidewalk and come to rest there beside the door of the bar, right at her feet.

Reflexively her fingers tightened on the stock, and she tried to shift her body weight in order to use his weight against him. There was no getting him off-center. He didn’t shift, not even when she did. His fingers didn’t move. Didn’t waver. He didn’t seem to even take a breath. She wasn’t altogether certain he was human. He was too still. Too confident. Too easily anticipating her every move, and she was very well trained.

“Blaze.”

A million butterflies took wing in her stomach. That had never happened to her before. Never. She didn’t have butterflies. She didn’t react physically to men. She especially didn’t react when the man was an enemy and her father’s body had barely been put in the ground. Still, she nodded slowly because she had no other choice. One arm, feeling like an iron bar, was around her belly, and he held her there, immobile.

She nodded again. Swallowing. Trying to get her brain to think past feeling like a captive, an immobile one, and come up with a plan of action. Trying not to feel what his body felt like against hers. Not to be aware of herself as a woman—and him as a man.

“Let go of me,” she hissed. She kept her voice low as well, but it didn’t come out commanding the way his did. She sounded shaky. She felt shaky.

“Release the weapon to me and I will step back. I am not going to harm you. Neither is Tariq. We came to help you. You asked us, remember?”

She relaxed her fingers, allowing him to take the gun from her hand. The iron bar disappeared from around her belly and he was gone, moving so silently she didn’t hear him, but she knew he was no longer pressed up against her. He’d taken all the warmth with him.

“I don’t remember asking you to come here until after,” she reminded. She turned, allowing her gaze to sweep the bar. She caught sight of the other one. Tariq Asenguard. Her heart accelerated even more, if that was at all possible. He looked as remote as his partner. She thought a nightclub owner would be all about fun and passion. These two men were ice-cold. “In fact, I’ve totally changed my mind and would like both of you to leave.”

“I am Tariq Asenguard,” the one to her left introduced himself. He waved a hand toward the other one—the one with the mesmerizing voice. “This is Maksim Volkov. We were very sorry to hear about your father. He was a good man.”

She winced. She couldn’t talk about her father. She couldn’t think about him. If she did, she would totally go to pieces, and the men who had murdered him would get away with it, just like they got away with murdering others.

“Mr.—er—Asenguard—I appreciate you both getting here so fast, but the Hallahans turned tail and ran. Now I’m going to have to take the fight to them . . .”

Maksim shifted his position, and her gaze jumped to his face. His expression hadn’t changed, but emotion flared in his eyes. Something dangerous moved there and was gone. He was back to ice-cold. No, glacier-cold. But his shift, as minute as it was, had moved him closer to her.

She could feel his heat again. Not in a good way. He was absolutely expressionless, but she felt fury radiating off of him. It sucked the air from the room and replaced it with something heavy and oppressive. She took a step back and bumped the bar. He took a step toward her and his step was a lot longer than hers. He was in her space. Both arms extended so that he gripped the bar on either side of her, effectively caging her in.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed? Is that your ultimate goal here?”

He bit the words out between very white teeth. Very white. She found herself staring at his mouth. At those teeth. Strong. Straight. But not perfect, not when two of them came almost to a point and looked—sharp. Her heart jumped at the sight of his mouth. Sensual. Hot. Defined lips. Straight nose. Aristocratic. Still, those eyes, so cold. So black. A dense glacier that had never been touched.

“Of course not.” She managed not to stammer, but he was too close. His body heat seeped into her pores. His scent swirled in her lungs. She held her breath, desperately trying to keep from inhaling him. He was invading. Taking her over.

“You. Are.” He bit the words out around his beautiful, clenched teeth.

She opened her mouth to protest and then closed it. Light dawning. Was she? She felt guilt that she hadn’t been home. She felt guilt that her father had signed the properties over to her. Her name had been on the deeds ever since she was born, but he’d quitclaimed them on her twenty-first birthday.

“I was out that night. It was my shift, but there was a class I wanted to take on bar tricks. Jimmy Mason was teaching the class and he’s the acknowledged master. I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity . . .” She trailed off, realizing she was blurting out private information to total strangers. Worse, something inside her was shifting. Breaking apart. She couldn’t let that happen.

She couldn’t think about the terrible night of waiting. Of knowing. Of trying to hope. Of utter despair. She’d been so desperate, she’d driven to the strip club, but the Hallahans weren’t there. Or if they were, no one was saying.

“Inimămea,” Maksim said softly. His hand came up to slide along her cheek. “I am sorry about your father. He was a good man. We were out of town. The moment you called, we were on the move.” The pads of his fingers, whisper soft, traced over her high cheekbone and then swept down to the curve of her jaw as if he was memorizing her. “These men will be taken down. But not by you. Let us handle this.”

His voice slipped inside her mind. So gently. So softly. Almost not there, but still she felt it—the compulsion to obey him. To give him what he wanted. Still, she shook her head resolutely.

“It’s too late for that. They murdered him and then they threw him out of a moving car like so much garbage right at my feet. I have to do this. You don’t have to understand. I don’t expect you to understand.” Nice girls didn’t plot revenge. They didn’t rig a bar full of explosives and hide weapons from one end of the bar to the next. Nice girls did what they were told. She hadn’t been born nice. She hadn’t been raised nice. She didn’t feel nice.

Blaze didn’t like the fact that she was showing this beautiful man just who she was inside. She knew he saw—saw the need for vengeance and her resolve that she would bring the fight to the Hallahans. She closed down all reaction to this man. She wouldn’t think about him or dream about him or fantasize. She didn’t care if he thought her the worst person on the face of the earth. And she didn’t care if he didn’t understand. It only mattered that she did.

“Then we do it together. You cannot take them down alone, and I think you know that.” The pad of his thumb moved to her lower lip. “We do it smart and we do it right. Blowing up your bar is not the right way to go about it, Blaze.”

If she wasn’t going to survive, it was. But living . . . that meant she kept the bar and her home. That meant she faced the fact that her father was dead and she was guilty because she’d insisted on going to take Jimmy Mason’s “cool” class on doing tricks while fixing drinks. Her father was old-fashioned, but he’d gone along with her learning because she’d had fun flipping the bottles in the air and juggling them back and forth with him. He’d done that—for her. He’d taken her shift—for her.

“Blaze.”

There it was again. Only her name. But the way he said it, as if he knew what she was thinking and he was comforting her.

“You have to know they would have found a way to take your father regardless of where or when they did it. The attack was not in any way random.”

She couldn’t think about that yet. His broken, bloody body. She turned her head away from his cold, black eyes. Eyes so black she felt she could see all the way into the very depths, and she didn’t dare look. She didn’t understand why she was so drawn to him. The man or the voice. Especially now.

“I know. They want the property, but I don’t understand why. They shut down the businesses the moment they acquire the buildings. What’s the point? They aren’t making any money from the businesses,” Blaze said.

Tariq moved closer and when he did, Maksim dropped his hands to his sides, but he didn’t get out of Blaze’s space. If anything, he took a step closer so that his body brushed hers, turning as he did so to face his partner. Blaze thought it might be the opportune time to try to slide away from him and the bar, but he wrapped an arm around her belly and tucked her front against his side.

Possessively. Protectively. There was no mistaking the gesture. Not even for her when she knew nothing about men. He was claiming her. No man had ever done that before. No man had dared to. She didn’t put up with it. She didn’t respond to it. At least not until she’d heard his voice on the phone. Not until he was so close to her that with every breath she drew, she pulled him deep into her lungs.

Not only was she aware of Maksim Volkov as all male, but she was suddenly aware of herself as a female. Her body, instead of being the body she’d trained for combat from her second birthday, was soft and pliant. Needy. Hungry. Aching. Her breasts hurt. There was a throbbing between her legs, and she felt every single pulse beat in her most sensitive core. Right there.

“I am going to do another sweep of the bar,” Tariq said, ignoring Maksim’s body language. “Get her upstairs and settled. We still have to track the Hallahans tonight.”

She sent the man a scowl. “I’m going after them, not you. No one else is taking out the men who killed my father. Not unless I’m dead. That was the point of the phone call, to tell you about the deeds, so hopefully if I fail you would take over.”

“Your plans are going to have to change, Blaze.”

It was Maksim who answered, not Tariq, and his voice was that soft command she recognized from her phone call. There was no doubt it had been Maksim who answered the phone. She found herself shivering, icy fingers traveling down her spine. He was not a man to cross. She got that. She got that neither of them wanted her to kill the Hallahans. She straightened her shoulders and lifted her gaze to Maksim’s. Forced herself to stare into the twin glaciers.

“Is there a reason you don’t want me to kill them? Are you allies or something in this takeover of the neighborhood?” She didn’t care if she sounded melodramatic or like she was quoting a line from a bad mobster movie. She needed to know.

Tariq ignored her. He turned his back to her and began a slow perusal of the bar. She had the feeling he’d lost interest in her and the conversation. He was wholly focused on what he was doing—and she couldn’t see that he was doing much.

Maksim’s fingers settled around her biceps. Gentle. Barely there. Still, she felt shackled, and the wild part of her wanted to fight.

“Do not,” he said softly. “If you fight me, you will not win and then you will be afraid of me.” He tugged gently and took a step toward the stairs.

“Do you read minds?” She was joking, of course. Clearly she didn’t have a poker face, and he could read everything she was thinking. She went with him because it was the least line of resistance. If he thought she was cooperating with him, then he’d go away and she could do whatever she wanted to do.

“Yes.”

She glanced at him as they moved up the staircase toward the apartment. His expression hadn’t changed, not even when he joked. She didn’t think he was human enough to joke and that surprised her. He still looked as remote and as cold as he had when she’d first laid eyes on him.

“I bet you can play poker,” she muttered, annoyed.

“I enjoy the game once in a while.”

“Do you win?” Distracting him.

She bent to retrieve a gun she’d slipped between the ornate dowels of the railing. The moment her fingers closed over the stock, his hand wrapped tightly around hers. His body covered hers, pressed her down so she couldn’t straighten.

She hadn’t realized he was a big man. He was so well proportioned, she hadn’t been able to tell he was so tall, or that he was so enormously strong. Wrapped around her like he was, she felt the muscles in his body. The sensation was like being enveloped in steel. There was no budging him.

“Relax,” she said, forcing the tension from her body. “I was just getting the gun so it wasn’t lying out in the open.”

His arm locked around her belly like a vise. He dragged her upright as he removed the gun from her hand. “Not only do I read minds, I hear lies. You do not know me yet, so there is no trust between us, but know I do not like lies. Especially coming from you.”

He was telling her something important, but she wasn’t certain what it was. His statement wasn’t just about lying. She let her breath out and tried not to feel his body. Willed herself not to react. She didn’t understand why her body had chosen him. Why her muscles went soft and her blood went hot when she was so close to him.

“I can hear your heartbeat,” he said softly. “I can see it, right here.” He touched her pulse on the side of her neck.

It was all Blaze could do not to jerk away from his touch. The pad of his thumb felt like a brand against her skin. She was aware that her heart pounded, raced even. Her breath felt ragged and labored, caught in her lungs in spite of her determination to remain impassive to him.

She went very still. “Please don’t touch me.”

“I am not hurting you.”

She steadfastly refused to look at him. She didn’t want to be alone with him in her apartment. “I know.”

“I will not hurt you. I give you my word that I will protect you with my life.”

She closed her eyes briefly; her heart jerked hard in her chest. Her stomach performed a slow roll, and deep inside where she shouldn’t even acknowledge him, she felt him and there was a reaction, a hot seep of liquid, a clenching that reminded her she was a woman and he was a very, very attractive man.

He meant that promise. She tried to tell herself this stranger was playing her for some agenda of his own, but she knew better. She didn’t understand what was happening, or why she was so drawn to him, but she had the terrible urge to turn her body fully into his and wrap her arms around him.

Intellectually, she knew the situation was intense. She had expected to die. She’d planned to die. She’d just buried her father. Only a few days before, his broken, dead body had been tossed at her feet. She could understand why she would be feeling raw and vulnerable—even needy, when she wasn’t a needy person.

Maksim’s hand transferred to the small of her back and he urged her to continue climbing the stairs to the apartment. “I realize that it’s difficult to wait, inimămea. The Hallahans have a master. One who sends them on his errands and decides who will live and who will die. And how. They are his puppets. We have to find the man behind them.”

She stumbled at the doorway, and his hands steadied her. “I have to go after them.” She sounded as desperate as she felt. She knew she did. But if she stopped, if she had time to sit down and process, she’d have to face her father’s death. She couldn’t do that. She just couldn’t.

Maksim reached around her and opened the door for her, waving her into the apartment. “We will get them. We will. But you need to be on your game, not grieving and ready to die. Willing to die.” He pulled the door shut behind them, closing them together inside her home. It felt—intimate.

The moment the door closed, Maksim shifted position. He glided. Or the floor moved. However it was done, she didn’t actually see him move. Suddenly he was standing in front of her. Close. The fingers of his hand curled around the nape of her neck and he leaned even closer.

“You are not going to die, Blaze. I will see to that. If you intend to be a part of this hunt, make up your mind to that. Because. You. Are. Not. Going. To. Die.”

THREE

WHEN A HUMAN male waited for years to find the right woman—and he found her—he guarded her as best he could and treated her right. When a Carpathian male had waited for centuries to find the only woman who could save him, he didn’t just guard her. He surrounded her with every protection possible. Maksim Volkov stared down at the woman who held the other half of his soul.

Carpathians rarely saw the outer shell of a person. For him, his lifemate was the only and the most beautiful. Always. He could see, though, even by human standards, that his woman was truly beautiful. She was also a warrior, trained to fight, and she had every intention of bringing that fight to the men who had killed her father.

Blaze stared back up at him with her amazing green eyes. She thought she was good at hiding her emotions, but he had been around for centuries, and even without the ability to read her mind, he was more than adept at reading expressions. There was defiance in the set of her mouth. That beautiful mouth kept his attention riveted to it. Defiance was in the set of her chin—the chin he wanted to taste. Her rebellion showed in the glitter of her green eyes.

There was something wild in her. Something untamed that matched the wildness in him. He was predatory. As high up on the food chain as it got. He didn’t know anyone who defied him. Or disobeyed him. Or looked at him with feigned innocence, all the while plotting to do exactly what she wanted—but Blaze was doing just that.

For his species, there was only one woman to complete a male. She didn’t have to be born a Carpathian. She could be a human psychic, they’d learned, and she could be born in any century, in any part of the world. It was a big world and there were many centuries to hunt in. Finding his lifemate was truly like looking for a needle in a haystack—but with even worse odds.

“Did you hear me?” he asked, keeping his voice pitched low. She was susceptible to his voice, although compulsions didn’t seem to work very well on her.

He had spent over a thousand years in a gray world. Without any emotion whatsoever. It was a void that few could stand and remain honorable. After the first few centuries, it was impossible to believe one would find a lifemate. He had lived a life of honor, changing as much as possible to fit into each century, but he lived in a bleak world where only his ability as a warrior was important—as a hunter of the vampire. The vampires were those of his own kind who had chosen to give up their souls. Every second he remained alive during those endless, bleak centuries, he was at risk to become the very thing he hunted—until he had picked up the phone and heard her voice.

“I heard you,” she replied, just as soft.

He crowded her body, but she didn’t move away from him. Blaze McGuire was no shrinking violet. She was afraid of him, but not because she thought he might harm her. She was too smart for that. She was afraid of him for all the right reasons. He was going to change her world and she knew it. She just didn’t know how or to what extent.

“I can get the information we need on Reginald Coonan,” Blaze volunteered and made a subtle movement to escape.

Maksim stepped into her, forcing her to take a step back. He did it again and she retreated a second time. That was as far as she could go. The door was at her back. “Reginald Coonan does not exist,” he informed her, still keeping his voice pitched low.

For the first time that he could remember since he was a child, he was uncertain how to proceed. She belonged to him. There was no denying that. The moment he heard her voice, he saw in color. Vivid, brilliant, overwhelming color. So bright he’d had to close his eyes against the blinding beauty.

Taming Blaze was not going to be easy, and one wrong move would set him back. He didn’t have time to make mistakes with her.

“Of course that isn’t his real name,” Blaze said. “I know that. I know he made up his entire history, but he’s still collecting properties in that name.” She looked him directly in the eye. “What exactly is going on here?”

He felt the impact of her gaze hitting him right in the gut. Green gems weren’t as beautiful as her eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d be so susceptible to a woman—even his own lifemate. He hesitated, unsure what to say. How much to say.

“Maksim,” she said quietly, “I don’t like surprises. You’re a huge surprise. I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel your pull, because I do, in a big way. But something is happening here I don’t understand, and if you’re feeling anything at all for me, like I am for you, it’s best if you’re just honest with me. If you’re not, this is going nowhere.”

He heard the ring of truth in her voice. He couldn’t help but admire her. She laid it out for him, just like that.

“A lot of people say they want honesty, Blaze, but they really cannot handle the truth. If I give you reality, the absolute truth, you could have a difficult time accepting it—and me. And you will accept me. That much I will tell you straight. You are not walking away from me, not when I spent lifetimes searching for you.”

She didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow at his carefully worded answer. She didn’t look away. She continued to look him straight in the eye, something most humans found uncomfortable. He moved in her mind. She’d heard the word lifetimes. She hadn’t even flinched. Not physically and not in her mind—almost as if she knew.

“Reginald Coonan is not human. The Hallahans are, but he isn’t. He’s using them because he cannot go out during the day and he has learned, over the centuries, if he wants to remain alive, it is better to stay in the background and have his pawns take the heat. That is one of the many reasons we interfered tonight. Aside from the fact that I do not want you dead, we need to find him. The Hallahans can lead us to him.”

She reached behind her for the wall. This time, her lashes fluttered and he felt her inhale. He felt it, because he’d moved that close. So close he could feel her breathing.

“You probably think I am crazy. Most humans who hear something like this would, but you asked, so I am giving you the truth.” But she didn’t think he was crazy. She had gone still inside. He stayed in her mind. She was waiting. So still. Knowing, not wanting to know, but knowing all the same.

“If he isn’t human,” Blaze said carefully, “what is he?”

“Have you been following the murders in the city? Mostly homeless and prostitutes, but a few have been business owners from this neighborhood. Not the ones the Hallahans beat to death for show, but the ones torn to shreds, as if a wild animal has killed and partially eaten them? The ones with very little blood left in their bodies?”

She put a hand on his chest and exerted pressure. “You can stop right there. We’ve already been approached and we said no. My father wasn’t about to be recruited by fanatics believing in vampires and hunting just about anyone they didn’t like. That kind of witch hunt belongs in another century, not this one.”

There was a bite of contempt in her answer. He didn’t flinch. He’d expected it, although he was a little shocked that she and her father had been approached. Although he shouldn’t have been, he realized. Sean McGuire and his daughter were both highly skilled—and Blaze was psychic. If that was common knowledge or if she had ever been tested, she would be on the society’s radar. He knew she had to be psychic because she was his lifemate.

“The ones who call themselves the Society for the Preservation of Mankind. I am not affiliated with them, and they wouldn’t know an honest-to-God vampire if the monster came up and bit them on the neck.”

“Move back,” she cautioned when he didn’t budge.

There was a threat in her voice. In a strange, perverse way, he liked that she felt confident enough to threaten him. He liked that she was a warrior and she didn’t hesitate to defend herself.

“Blaze, you wanted the truth. At least hear me out. Did you think I would tell you this and expect you to take it on faith alone? I have proof of the things I am telling you. But you need to understand, attacking me is not going to work. I have stated repeatedly that I do not want to hurt you. I have no intention of harming you. You asked for this and against my better judgment, I am giving you the stark truth.”

He studied her face. She was scared, but she wasn’t exactly not believing him. She didn’t want to know the truth. Somewhere, deep inside her, she was already prepared to hear this, but she didn’t want it.

“Please will you step back?” This time she asked. “I can’t think straight when you’re so close to me.”

Even as she softly made the request, her foot came down hard on his, and her open palm rushed toward his nose. At least that was her intent. Maksim shifted before she could complete the maneuver. Her foot came down where his had been and her hand shot out hard and fast, but he dissolved right in front of her eyes. Was gone. Blaze gasped and took two steps forward, frantically looking around her living room trying to find him.

Maksim locked one arm around her belly from behind and caught her head in a firm grip with the other. He sank his teeth deep, part in need and part to teach her a lesson. The instant he did, he knew it was a mistake. He had fed thousands of times and he had never felt anything when he did, not that he had memory of. This time, everything was different. So different, and he hadn’t counted on that.

He was vaguely aware of her gasp, the soft cry of pain when his teeth bit into her soft, exquisite flesh, her body struggling against his tight hold. He was enormously strong, and rather than aggression or fear on her part, he felt each movement of her body as erotic. The smoldering burn he’d felt, from the moment he heard her voice, flared into a bright, hot fire.

Feel me, sufletul meu. My soul. The very air I breathe. He didn’t give her the translation in her mind, but he meant every word. She was the other half of his soul. He had no time to court her properly. They were in a war and he needed to get her on his side, but more than that, he needed her to know he would protect her from anyone and anything—even herself. Feel us. You belong to me.

He didn’t try to soothe her. He didn’t need to. She felt the strength of the pull between them all on her own, without compulsion. A need that went so deep, that was so strong, Maksim couldn’t possibly resist—so how could she? He let himself feel everything. The beat of her heart matching the rhythm of his. The taste of her, bursting in his mouth like a fine wine, like the blaze of her hair, fiery and passionate, wild and untamed. It was all there in her blood. So rich. Perfection. He was instantly addicted and knew he’d never get enough of that taste.

Te avio päläfertiilam. You are my lifemate. Éntölam kuulua, avio päläfertiilam. I claim you as my lifemate. Ted kuuluak, kacad, kojed. I belong to you.

He whispered the vows that would tie their souls back together for all time, meaning every single word. The ritual binding words were imprinted upon him before his birth and he had thought, through the long centuries of gray, bleak, endless nothing, that he would never have the opportunity to say them to his woman.

Essentially, in the Carpathian world, they would be married, but so much more. They were tied for all time, one life to the next. Always together. Bound by their souls. Once bound, never able to be torn apart. He hoped to bind their hearts together as well.

Élidamet andam. I offer my life for you. Pesämet andam. I give you my protection. Uskolfertiilamet andam. I give you my allegiance. Sívamet andam. I give you my heart.

She began to struggle. Her body was on fire, just as his was. He felt the way her soft sank into his hard. She molded herself to him, but she heard the vows he pushed into her mind, and she felt the tiny unbreakable threads tying them together. He felt them, and joy burst through him. She felt them and panicked. Still, he couldn’t stop, even knowing her just from the exquisite taste of her blood.

The knowledge was there on his palate, in his body, soaking into every cell and organ. She was more than wild. She was feral, a woman who went her own way and made her own decisions but could ignite with the right man, turn into a storm of passion that would threaten to consume them both. And she was his.

He tightened his hold on her. Be still, Blaze. You have no need to panic. I could never hurt you.

What are you doing? You’re scaring me.

He was shocked at how strong the psychic connection between them was. She had no problem speaking to him, mind to mind. She was frightened, but not because he was taking her blood. She was frightened at the words he pushed into her mind and the way he made her feel. The bond that was already growing so strong between them. She didn’t understand the ancient Carpathian language, but he interpreted for her in English—in her language, so there was no mistaking what he was doing.

Maksim was determined that he didn’t deceive her. She had asked for honesty and he was being honest. This was the truth between them. She was his lifemate and there was no escape. None. No out. She had to learn to live with him and he with her. He needed her to survive. His soul needed her to redeem him. Without her, he had nothing and he never would. Everything that had gone before, his very honor, would be in jeopardy. And that was not going to happen.

Sielamet andam. I give you my soul. Ainamet andam. I give you my body. Sívamet kuuluak kaik että a ted. I take into my keeping the same that is yours.

“Stop. Stop right now.” She whispered the plea. “Maksim, you have to stop.”

He felt her slump against him and instantly swept his tongue across the twin pinpricks in her neck, his arms sliding behind her back and knees. He lifted her and carried her to her bedroom, to lay her gently on the thick comforter there. He didn’t know if she was pleading with him to stop because she felt the vows every bit as strong as he did, or if she felt weak and that frightened her.

She hadn’t lost consciousness, but she was very vulnerable. Her green eyes had gone from burning to glittering. That defiance was there, the need to struggle, to fight, but she had too much control. She knew she was helpless. He’d allowed her to feel his strength and he’d shown his ability to shift. He had begun the binding ritual and she felt that as well. She was dealing with shock and her mind trying to tell her that what she saw with her own eyes couldn’t be true. What she heard in her mind and what she felt, had to be impossible. But all along she had known the truth. She hadn’t wanted to accept it—however she’d first learned it—but she had known of his kind or at least of the undead.

Maksim had taken her blood and he hadn’t put a compulsion on her. He hadn’t calmed her. She had remained calm. He sensed the moment the pain was gone and erotic pleasure took its place. She felt that. He felt it with her.

“I am not a vampire, Blaze,” he reassured her. “Vampires kill their prey. They enjoy the rush they feel, like a drug addict’s high. The more they terrorize their victims, the more adrenaline is pumped into the blood and the higher they get. I am Carpathian. Without finding our lifemates, we are in danger of becoming the undead.”

As he gave her the explanation, he slowly unbuttoned his immaculate black silk shirt to expose his chest. Her eyes followed his movements, mesmerized by his actions, but she heard him. She was listening to him. Her tongue touched her bottom lip and he groaned. Need was on him—a need he had never experienced.

Like all Carpathian males, he had centuries to study every subject, to learn and acquire knowledge. He knew virtually everything there was to know about sex and how to please a woman—and how to teach his woman to please her man. Over the centuries he had had plenty of time to be familiar with the things that intrigued him and he knew he would want.

“You wanted honesty between us, Blaze,” he reminded gently. “I tried to tell you. You could not hear the truth, so showing you seemed a much better idea.”

He gathered her into his arms, ignoring the hand that fluttered against his chest as if she might find the strength to push him away. His fingers sifted through the fiery red silk at the top of her head, the feel of it against his skin pushing his hunger higher. Blood raced through his veins and centered in his groin. Hot. Full. Aching enough to be painful. He loved the feeling just because he could feel it. That was almost as addicting as her taste.

Her green eyes remained steady on his. “What are you doing? Tell me.”

“Claiming you. You cannot pretend you do not feel it, too. You know you belong to me. I am exchanging blood with you in the way of my people.”

She shook her head, and her tongue touched her lower lip again. “Maksim. I’m not one of your people. I can’t take your blood.”

“You are my lifemate. This is what lifemates do.”

Her eyes widened when he lifted his hand and showed her as he allowed his fingernail to grow into a longer, razor-sharp nail. She gasped as he drew it across his chest, a line over the heavy muscles there. At once beads of ruby red appeared. She shook her head again, her gaze clinging to his in a plea, and then dropping to the red line. Already, because she was his lifemate and there was no denying that fact, she felt the pull between them.

His palm fitted to the back of her head and he gently pressed her against him. She strained back, but there was no way to stop his insistence. The moment her lips touched his chest, fire shot through his veins. The rush was incredible. Her mouth moved, trying to avoid the ruby red line. He kept pressure on the back of her head, refusing to allow her to turn, so she had no option—her mouth remained against him.

Ainaak olenszal sívambin. Your life will be cherished by me for all my time. Te élidet ainaak pide minan. Your life will be placed above my own for all time.

She gasped and her tongue touched the line. He knew the instant his taste burst through her mouth like champagne bubbles. His blood was for her. He was hers. All of him, and his taste was just as addicting to her as her taste had been for him. There was no way she could resist, and she didn’t try to.

Blaze was tentative at first, using her tongue to lick delicately at his offering. Then her mouth was on him and she suckled, drawing his essence—his lifeblood—into her body. Taking him in. Accepting him. Taking what belonged to her. His body was on fire. She was in his lap, and he shifted her in his arms so that she fit more closely into him. His cock, full and throbbing with life, snuggled against her buttocks, and that brush, even through her jeans and his trousers, sent hot flames licking across his body.

“Te avio päläfertiilam. You are my lifemate. Ainaak sívamet jutta oleny. You are bound to me for all eternity. Ainaak terád vigyázak. You are always in my care.” He whispered the words aloud, finishing the ritual binding. He brushed a kiss on top of her head, looked around the little apartment and then down at her as she completed the first blood exchange between them. “Susu, I am home.”

When he knew she had taken enough from him, he gently slid his finger against her lips, between his chest and her mouth. He did so reluctantly because her mouth on his body felt like heaven. “Enough, Blaze.” He tipped her head up and brought his mouth down on hers.

He thought to be gentle, but the taste of blood was there, and then he passed that and into the sweet haven of her mouth. Her own taste was there. Just as wild, just as passionate as her blood. The promise of her body was there. Just as wild. Just as passionate. He wanted that. He even needed it.

His mouth was brutal and still she opened for him. Kissed him back just as savagely. Just as ravenous. As if she was just as starved for him as he was for her. He took her mouth over and over. Hunger swept through him. Shook him. His control slipped even more as her hands moved up his bare chest, taking in as much skin as possible. He felt her touch like a brand.

Maksim yanked at her blouse, ripping the material down the front. She didn’t so much as flinch as she glanced down at her breasts, cupped in a navy demi-bra. He saw the flare of heat in her eyes right before she slammed her mouth back on his. His hand went to the tie in her hair, and he dragged it off so all that fiery red silk cascaded down around them. Instantly he buried both hands in it, running his fingers through the fiery strands over and over, feeling the sensation vibrate right through his cock.

He needed to be free of the material stretching across his fierce erection. He shifted her again, still kissing her, setting her on her feet so he could stand. He was tall. Much taller than she was, and she had to tilt her head up to keep the connection with his mouth.

He walked her backward across the floor until he could trap her between the wall and his body, the heated, throbbing bulge in his trousers pressed tight against her stomach. He lifted his head, looking down at her, at the emerald of her eyes, and saw stark need. Intense hunger. That fiery passion she couldn’t hide from him.

He bent his head to scrape his teeth back and forth over her pounding pulse, that sweet, sweet invitation in her neck. His lips followed, soothing the tiny bites with a sweep of his tongue. Her body shuddered against his. Her lashes fluttered and then swept down, but not before he saw the heat filling her. He massaged her hips, light at first as he pulled her even closer, his mouth continuing a slow assault. Each time his teeth nipped her, she moaned softly and pressed into him, her hips rubbing against his thigh.

His hand came up and cupped her breast, thumb stroking over the lace-covered nipple. She gasped.

“Take your bra off, Blaze,” he whispered.

Her hands obeyed before her mind caught up. She reached behind her and unhooked it, letting it fall with the remnants of her shirt to the floor. His breath left his lungs in a shocked rush.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, his hands cupping the soft weight. He bent his head, eyes feasting on her body, so perfect. Lust rose, hot and fierce. So sharp he actually felt the slide of his teeth and he had to fight it back. She brought out the savage in him, the primitive. He bent his head, his teeth scraping over her left nipple.

She cried out, the sound heightening his pleasure. He drew her breast deep into his mouth. Hard. Rough. Suckling strongly, using the flat of his tongue to forcefully press her nipple to the roof of his mouth while his fingers tugged and rolled the other one. Her breasts were obviously as sensitive as her neck. She squirmed against him, her cries soft as she reached up to drive her fingers deep into his hair.

He kept at her breasts with his mouth and hands while he removed the rest of her clothes with his mind, leaving her completely naked. She didn’t seem to notice, or care. A surge of hunger tore through him, so powerful, so fierce, he could barely think with the blood thundering in his ears and his mind consumed with her. He hadn’t known, even with all his studies, that passion could be so strong, so intense, destroying all control so that there was only pleasure, only pure feeling.

Electricity arced between them, sparks he knew weren’t real, but still, they were there, like streaks of lightning sinking into his pores to whip through his body, taking every vestige of discipline with it. He lifted his head and she gasped at the look in his eyes. He knew she saw the darkened, lust-filled predator, and yet she didn’t back away; she reached for him, matched his uncontrolled hunger with her own.

He kissed her again, lifting her in his arms, his mouth rough, tasting her passion. It was the best thing he’d ever tasted. As her nipples dragged over the hard muscles of his chest, she gasped and let out a little keening cry. He drank it down his throat, kissing her over and over. Her tongue dueled with his.

“More,” she pleaded softly. Fiercely. “I need more.”

FOUR

ELECTRICITY SURGED THROUGH Blaze. Forks of lightning whipped through her bloodstream, lashing at her most sensitive of nerve endings until there wasn’t a square inch of her that wasn’t hypersensitive. She squirmed against him, her hips bucking. Hungry. Needy. Demanding. She couldn’t stop herself. She was going up in flames and only he could stop it.

She needed his hands and mouth to be rough. She needed the bite in her scalp when he tugged her head back to take her mouth again and again. She needed the way his teeth scraped over her nipples and he suckled so strongly. She heard her own mewling cries, and she didn’t care if she had to beg to get what she wanted. What she needed.

“Are you wet for me, Blaze?” he whispered.

He sounded like sin to her. Temptation. Wicked and forbidden. The wild in her rose until only need and hunger controlled her. Only pleasure. Every sharp tug of her hair, the feel of his fingers clenching her buttocks so hard, so demanding, even the graze of his teeth drove her higher.

He didn’t wait for her answer. He lowered her feet back to the floor and left a trail of kisses from her mouth to her throat, and then down to her breasts. Every tug of his teeth or fingers sent fire racing straight to her core. She felt the burn, so hot, scorching, between her legs, so she couldn’t stay still. Her feminine channel spasmed, clenched, wept with need.

“I want to see for myself,” he said softly, licking under her breast and then down along her ribs. “I need the taste of you on my tongue, sufletul meu.”

His whispered words shook her. Went straight to her core so that she felt another powerful spasm. She wasn’t certain she could survive. She wasn’t even positive she could stand up. His marauding mouth didn’t stay very long, but continued to journey down her belly, his tongue dipping into her belly button, his teeth tugging at the little gold hoop there. He went down on his knees, pushing her thighs apart.

“Put your foot up on the table for me,” he ordered, his voice a velvet rasp. Filled with dark command.

His voice sent a sharp glittering thrill through her, another pulse of hunger inside. There was no disobeying the edge in his tone. She tried not to whimper as she forced herself to look around. She hardly recognized her own bedroom. She hadn’t even noticed they were beside the small end table next to her bed. She did what he said without hesitation, even though it made her feel even more sinful and wicked and even decadent.

She would do anything for him right then. She had never felt so desperate or needy in her life. The feeling was so strong, so intense, her body shook with it. Her heart raced, blood pounding out a demand through her veins to center in her deepest core. His face was carved with a dark, erotic sensuality. Harsh. Brutal even. Wild and untamed and it called to something deep inside of her, something she hadn’t even known was there—until the moment she’d laid eyes on Maksim.

She was so hungry for him she could feel the hot liquid spilling down her thighs in anticipation. A small whimper escaped and she anchored herself with one hand in his hair, her breath ragged. She was completely open to him and she should have been embarrassed, but instead, she was all the more desperate for him to do something—anything.

“Yes, sufletul meu, you are so ready for me. So wet. So sweet.” He stared at the fiery curls, damp with heat, his eyes hooded and hungry. His voice was almost a growl.

He blew cool air straight into her heated center and she cried out, gripping his shoulder to steady herself, needing an anchor when she was already spinning out of control.

“All mine,” he whispered. “So long, Blaze. I searched so long to find you.”

She didn’t have time to process his words because he lowered his head to the feast between her shaking thighs. Her cry was shattered. Broken. Keening. He didn’t just give a tentative lick. Maksim took what he wanted like a starved man. He consumed her with a ravenous appetite. He devoured her. His tongue plunged deep to draw out the fiery taste of her. He suckled, he used the edge of his teeth. He took her over using just his mouth and nothing else.

Helpless to do anything but hold on, Blaze clung to both shoulders, obeying his hard grip on her thighs, keeping her wide open to his marauding mouth. It was good. So good. Better than anything she could have imagined. Her mind refused to work, centering on the absolute pleasure building like a tidal wave. The sensations were carnal, erotic, the intensity building the wanton need in her higher and higher.

He unleashed such a hunger on her, his tongue flicking, plunging deep over and over, stroking and caressing, she felt an answering hunger rising in her. His deep growls only added to the sensations whipping through her. Lightning was back, forking through her veins, a crack of electricity across her breasts and down her thighs, along her spine and deep, deep in her feminine channel.

She was close, so close, the tension coiled so tight she screamed with need when his mouth covered her most sensitive button, licking just enough for the sensations to overwhelm her, but not release her.

“Maksim,” she hissed his name on a plea. Begging. Needing. Knowing he would give her what she needed in his own time. Her body was his. He’d claimed it and he was making certain she knew it. “Please,” she whispered, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

He looked up at her and she felt the added intensity of his glittering eyes, so dark with desire, so intensely sensual her body shuddered and shook with need. Her hips bucked, pressing at him, so hungry for the sensations rushing her toward something just out of reach.

His mouth covered her sensitive bud once again, his tongue flicking, licking, pressing with broad, flat strokes and caresses, driving her up higher than she thought possible, until she was sobbing for release. The rapid strokes sent her over the edge, shattering her, fragmenting her with a kind of blinding frenzy.

She pulled him even closer. The wave after wave of excruciating pleasure only built her need, not assuaging it in the least.

“Maksim.” She sobbed his name.

He licked up the inside of her thigh and then down the other one, the gesture erotic, feeding that desperate, agonizing desire deep in her womb.

“What do you need, sufletul meu? I will give you the world, Blaze. Just ask for it. Just tell me.”

“You. I need you.”

“I belong to you,” he reminded, standing, his body bare. All his defined, flowing muscles sliding up her skin because he was so close.

She took a breath, carefully put her foot back on the floor and looked at him. Took him in. Drank in the sight of him. He was tall and very muscular. His hair was long and caught back from his face with a loose cord. His shoulders were wide and his hips narrow. His thighs were powerful columns, but her gaze centered on his pulsing, jerking cock. He was bigger than she imagined a man was.

Her mouth watered. Her hand slid down his chest to his belly and then wrapped around that thick bulge just to feel the heat of him. That only made the destructive sensations whipping through her worse. She needed. She couldn’t stop herself. She leaned into him, her tongue tasting his skin right over the thin mark on his muscle. She licked and then sucked. Then she bit down.

She actually felt the lightning whipping through him. Through her. He was violently aroused. His cock jerked hard. Pulsed in her hand. She used her thumb to slide through the pearl drops, coated the sensitive crown, eliciting a satisfying groan from him.

Maksim growled, his hand coming up to cup the back of her head, the other hand on her shoulder, pressing. A subtle command. She sent him a dark look. He was hers. His body. Hers. She could barely breathe, the need and hunger in her so sharp and terrible.

“More, Blaze. Give me everything.”

His voice was rough with command. With a hunger that matched or exceeded her own. She wanted that. Wanted him out of control, burning like she was burning. She bit him again and used her tongue to soothe the ache, leaving a trail of kisses down his chest and belly, her free hand stroking caresses while her fist slid up and down in a lazy pump. She was playing with fire. She could sense his predatory nature, the dark hunger that rose sharp and terrible in him.

His needs were not going to be met easily, but she wasn’t afraid. He would take what he wanted from her, but she knew the rewards would be great. She had the same well of darker passion in her, and she needed him to give her what she needed. She loved his taste. Loved the hard muscles rippling beneath his skin as she kissed and touched, memorizing his body, imprinting it in her mind.

She looked up at him, loving the look on his face. The dark stamp of sensuality carved so deep into the lines of his face. The hooded eyes, burning into her. The possession deep in his black eyes. True black. Unusual they were so black, but intense and very sexual. Her heart beat harder and she wrapped both hands around his cock and slowly began to lower her head.

His control was definitely fraying. She loved that most of all. That she put that look on his face. That she could shred his iron control. She felt him in her mind. Knew he had never really looked at another woman. Only her. That was power. This was heady power. Giving him this. She licked at the pearly crest, and his entire body shuddered under that light touch.

His hands gripped her hair tightly, stopping her, holding her absolutely still. She might think she was the one in control, but at the sharp bite of pain in her scalp, a thrill raced down her spine. Her gaze jumped to his. Her breath caught in her lungs at the absolute carnal lust she saw there.

“Maksim,” she whispered, knowing she sounded exactly as she felt. Hot. Needy. His voice was so rich, so commanding and dark with hunger. He touched her with his voice alone, stroking over her skin like a velvet rasp. Her feminine channel spasmed, and she thought she might have another orgasm just from the way he held her, looked at her and spoke with that absolute command.

“Draga mea,” he said. “Sweetheart. Kneel down right there.”

He didn’t loosen the grip on her hair and he didn’t move, giving her little room. She had to slide down his body to comply, and his hands moved a scant few inches to allow her to kneel in front of him. Her mouth watered. He was a temptation, and she’d already had a taste of him. Exotic. Dark forests. Masculine. Perfect. She wanted more.

“Put your hands on my thighs,” he said softly, his gaze burning into hers.

She took a breath. Shook her head. “I’ve never done this before.”

“I know.”

Those two words slipped inside her. Made her shiver. Made more hot liquid spill between her legs, to glisten in her fiery curls. He was so sexy. Everything about him.

“Give me this.”

She slid her hands up his thighs because right then, she would have given him the world. He wrapped his fingers around the base of his cock, guiding it toward her mouth, and it was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. She knew her own hunger was growing out of control, but it didn’t matter. She was lost in his dark spell, wrapped up in his hunger, tangled in her own.

He pressed the velvety crown against her lips. The sensation sent another spasm through her channel and she opened her mouth, licked at the drops there, taking the offering and savoring his flavor. His taste was addicting. So sexy.

“Keep looking at me, Blaze. I need to see you, to make certain you want this.”

In answer she licked at the drops spilling from his cock in anticipation. She wanted this. She wanted him. There was nothing else in the world but this man and his body and the pure sensual pleasure he had wrapped her in. She loved the husky groan that rumbled in his throat when he pressed the head of his cock into her heated mouth.

“Feel what I am feeling.” He whispered the temptation. “Come into my mind, Blaze. Feel all of me.”

She knew what he meant. A gift she had. She had always had. She took a breath and let go of all her sanity, reaching for him. Giving him that. Afraid of what she might find. But when she touched his mind, there was only pleasure there. Pleasure she was giving him.

The electrical current ran from her mouth, through his cock, lashing his spine and whipping through his head.

“Feel that, draga mea? Feel what you do to me? It’s so good. So very hot.”

She tried to draw him deep into her mouth, suckling strongly, her tongue working him, all around the flared head and underneath. Licking. Stroking. Hungry for more. Hungry to keep the devastating sensations whipping through his body. Whipping through hers, because, mind to mind like this, she felt everything he was feeling. It was thrilling. Decadent. Sexy.

He pulled back and she gave a cry of protest, but then he was sinking into her mouth, giving her what she wanted, and she gave him back. He moved slow and easy, each stroke taking him deeper until he was nearly at her throat, careful of her, but she felt the way his body reacted as she sucked hard. It was beautiful, the violent way his muscles contracted from the searing pleasure. Giving that to him made her feel more empowered than ever. Greedy for more. And her own body was going up in flames. Needing him. So hungry for him.

She felt wild inside. Needing so much more. She worked him, wanting to drive him over the edge, feeling her own body giving up control. Tension building. Coiling tighter and tighter.

He watched with those hooded, black eyes, watched as his cock moved in and out between her lips, the crown and shaft wet now from her mouth, glistening with the moisture. She loved that he watched. That his cock was so swollen and engorged. She could feel the heat of him, scorching her tongue, tasting sexy and exotic. Her hunger grew until she couldn’t think straight. Until her brain short-circuited. Until she was a flame burning out of control.

She couldn’t keep her hands still, couldn’t keep from the wild need as she tightened her mouth around him and used her tongue to lash and caress as he slid in and out of her mouth, shallow and deep, controlling the moves until she thought she would go insane from the desperate hunger threatening to destroy her.

She needed more and, determined to take back control, she slid her palms up his thighs, feeling the heated muscles contract and pulse as she moved her hands inside his thighs, between his legs, cupping his heavy sac, feeling the velvet there, the tightness coiling.

Maksim pulled back, sliding from between her lips, watching her mouth follow, his eyes smoldering as his hands tightened in her hair, and the bite at her scalp sent an electrical current whipping from her breasts to her core. He reached down to capture her wrists and pin them together with one hand, holding them above her head as he guided his cock to her mouth. She parted her lips and took him again.

He thrust deeper, feeling the tight suction, the vibrations surrounding his cock and sending spikes of pleasure torturing him as she made small, desperate sounds around him. Sweat beaded and ran down his back as he tried to stay in control. She was beautiful with her silken lips wrapped around him and her green eyes dazed with pleasure. Wild for him. Frantic for him. So ready. So in need. It was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen, and the pleasure was almost too much. He knew he wasn’t going to last more than another stroke or two. Still, he couldn’t stop, pushing his control as his cock sought another perfect moment in the moist heat and tight suction of her mouth.

“Enough, sufletul meu,” he murmured. The soft velvet of his voice had turned more of a rasping growl. She was destroying him with her wild, uninhibited gift to him. He would never get enough of her wild. Never.

Down through the long centuries he knew he would be so addicted to her taste, to her body, that he would never want to be anywhere else than right where he was. “Come to me, Blaze.” A demand. Rough. Harsh. He couldn’t help himself. He had to have her. The plea in her eyes, the pure fire burning in her, was too much to resist.

He used her wrists to pull her to her feet, catching her at her hips and lifting her to him with one arm. He used the other to wrap her leg around him. She wrapped the other instantly. He walked them to the bed as she circled his neck with her arms. Putting one knee on the bed, Maksim took them both down, keeping her under him. Her thighs were parted for him and he took advantage, lodging the wide head of his cock into that scorching-hot haven.

He growled at the feeling as her body took just that much of him, squeezing down, molten lava surrounding him, so tight he thought he’d explode right then. He began to exert pressure, little short surges that forced his way through those tight muscles. So hot. So perfect. Too tight. Strangling him in paradise. The sensation was pure ecstasy as around him, her body stretched and burned, slowly, reluctantly accepting his invasion.

He reached that thin barrier and held himself still with an effort, the sweat beading on his forehead as he fought to stay in control. To give her body the time it needed to adjust to his invasion. He wasn’t nearly in deep enough. It was a strain to stay motionless.

“Are you all right, sufletul meu, look at me.” He had to see her eyes. She had them closed and he needed to know he wasn’t hurting her.

Her lashes fluttered and then lifted. His stomach muscles contracted violently. His body shuddered and his cock impossibly thickened, throbbed, desperate for more. She looked so sexy.

“I need more,” she whispered. “Please, hurry. Please. I’m burning up. I need . . .”

“I know what you need.” His arm tightened around her hips, lifting her. Instantly her legs wrapped tighter around him, her ankles hooking at his waist, her fingers locking at the nape of his neck, eyes pleading. He took a breath because the sight of her was killing him, destroying all control. He surged forward. Hard. Taking her body. Claiming her as his. Driving past her innocence and powering through her tight folds, the scorching fire taking his sanity as her tight channel had no choice but to accept all of him.

She cried out at the lash of pain, but he felt liquid flames wrapping his cock tightly, dragging him deeper until he was lodged all the way. Her tight channel rippled around him, squeezing and milking like the tightest fist, or a hundred fingers, gripped and moved around him. He clenched his teeth, fighting for control again, trying to give her body time to adjust.

Her hips bucked. Her head thrashed. A small whimper of need slipped from her throat and stroked a flame over his cock. The need to thrust hard and deep over and over nearly drove him insane, but he breathed through it, holding on for her.

“Are you ready, Blaze? Breathe for me, sweetheart.”

Her green eyes met his. Wild. So wild his breath caught in his throat. He held her still while she kept trying to buck against him, desperate to move.

“Please,” she whispered again.

Her voice sent him over the edge. Raw. Arousal making the sweet fire hotter than ever. He moved then, drawing back and then plunging deep into her fiery channel. Her inner muscles, so much scorching silk, gripped his cock like the tightest fist imaginable. He felt the last of his control shred and he began to power into her. He was rough. Too rough for her innocence, but there was no regaining control once it was lost. The pleasure enveloped him, was so intense it actually bordered on pain.

His mind was in hers and he could feel her rising toward her orgasm. Rushing toward it. The sensation of a tidal wave threatening to engulf her. He gripped her hips hard, flexing his fingers and then digging in deep, holding her, for a moment, savoring the tight, silken, wet channel, and then he surged into her over and over with hard, deep strokes, letting the fire streak through his body. Feeling his balls tighten. Feeling the sudden, overwhelming convulsion in her sheath. The ripples surrounding him. Her cries filling his ears—his mind. Pleasure swamped him, took him. Took her. Each hard jerk of his cock spilling into her was a punch of pure pleasure.

Maksim buried his face in her neck, that soft, sweet neck, listening to the pounding of her pulse, the ebb and flow of her blood. Her body was soft under his, his cock still gliding and hard, but that dark lust that drove him so hard, so brutally since the moment he’d heard her voice, knew she was going to defy him and fight her battles alone, eased enough to allow him to be sated.

She was unlike most humans in that she had been able to resist compulsion, but they’d exchanged blood. She’d allowed him into her mind. She wouldn’t defy him so easily a second time.

He lifted his head and looked down at her, at the helpless, dazed pleasure on her face. Her lashes fluttered and before she could open her eyes all the way, he took her mouth. Gently. Tenderly. Completely at odds with his roughness earlier.

Sufletul meu, sweetheart, you need to let yourself grieve. She stiffened and her hands went to his shoulders to push him away. You are safe here with me. He slid the words softly into her mind.

All along he’d felt her grief. She had refused to face the reality of her father’s death. Her only living blood relative other than a mother who had left years earlier and never returned or bothered to find out if her daughter was even alive. Sean McGuire had meant everything to his daughter. He had been brutally murdered.

You need to allow yourself to fall apart. Just this once, when I am holding you close. Tomorrow night you can be strong again, but right now, holding me, me inside you, give that to me, too.

He tried not to use a compulsion, but he knew she needed to grieve. To finally let go. The hard knot inside her was never going to go away until she allowed herself to acknowledge he was gone. She would never accept her father’s death until she faced it and forced herself to realize he wasn’t coming back. She needed to begin that process. She would never look at the future, and the last thing Maksim wanted was for Blaze to be thinking about giving up her life for revenge. She was far too accepting of dying.

Their lovemaking had been wild. Rough. Intense. It was an intense situation, and he stayed there in her mind, waiting for her to give him that last gift. Her sorrow. Her tears. Her absolute grief. He was her lifemate and, although she didn’t yet know what that meant, she still felt their deep connection.

FIVE

THE HEADACHE POUNDING through her head made it difficult to emerge from a heavy sleep. Normally, Blaze woke quickly no matter the time. She didn’t linger in bed, or have to have three cups of coffee to clear her head, but the headache made it difficult to think. She felt disoriented and a little nauseated. Her body ached everywhere. Everywhere.

Heart pounding, her eyes flew open and she turned her head to see if someone else was in her bed. Clearly alone, she drew in a long, shuddering breath, the events of the night becoming much clearer in her head. She preferred the fog to reality. Groaning, because even the light hurt her eyes, she flung one hand over her face to protect herself from the bright light of day.

She had cried for hours last night. For hours. In his arms. Maksim. Virtually a total stranger. She groaned again, her face flaming. She’d done more than cry in his arms; she’d let him have her body. Not once. But again and again. In between her crying jags. She’d lost her mind last night. Totally lost it.

She couldn’t pretend Maksim Volkov away or the things she’d done with him. There was no denying awesome sex, and the sex was both intense and incredibly awesome. She wanted to regret it. The man was a total stranger and she’d all but torn his clothes off of him, but then the entire night had been intense. That was the only excuse, the only explanation she had. She had expected to die. She’d been prepared for it and truthfully, a part of her had been wishing for it, which would have made her father very, very angry with her.

She groaned a third time and rolled over onto her stomach, burying her face in the pillow. She was fairly certain everything had happened just as she’d remembered it, with the exception of the blood part. That couldn’t have happened, because blood didn’t taste like that. Addicting and hot and totally masculine. Her mouth watered at the remembrance. If blood actually was so good that she couldn’t even get the taste out of her mind and she craved more, people would be selling it on the black market and making a fortune.

As for vampires—she winced a little at the word—she didn’t want to go there. She knew about vampires. She’d known since she was ten years old and Emeline had come into her life. Of course, in the beginning, neither girl had believed. Whenever they were together, they had the nightmare. The same nightmare. It was powerful and ugly and scary. They were together a lot. The more they had the nightmare, the more it unfolded and became longer and more detailed.

She groaned again, trying to shut down her brain, not wanting to think about vampires or monsters she couldn’t control. Since she wasn’t going to see Maksim ever again, for as long as she lived, she could pretend, like she’d been doing for years, that she didn’t believe in any of it. In the meantime, she didn’t have the luxury of lying around her apartment feeling sorry for herself. She had work to do.

Her cell buzzed along the end table, vibrating across the wood surface. She snagged it quickly, trying not to remember how she’d put her foot up on it and what had happened after. Still, her body remembered, even if her brain tried to shut the memory down. She felt an answering twinge deep inside. At once a smoldering burn started.

“You got Blaze,” she answered.

“Where have you been? I’ve called you thirty times,” Emeline Sanchez, her best friend, burst out without even saying hello. “You turned me into crazy stalker woman. I’ve been worried sick. Thank God you waited for me. I totally have your back on this, honey. I got a job at the strip club. You know, The In Place. Seriously. They hired me right away.”

Blaze sat up straighter, shoving at the fall of hair cascading everywhere. “Em, are you insane? This isn’t a game. These men killed my father. You cannot go undercover at the strip joint.” She lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “You know why.”

“I may not be a badass like you, Blaze, but I can get information. I’m good at it. You know I am. I have always had that knack and I’m not letting you do this alone. I’m not. You and your father . . .” Her voice wavered and she trailed off. She cleared her throat. “If it wasn’t for the two of you, I wouldn’t be here. You know that. I’m not letting you do this alone.”

Blaze closed her eyes briefly. Emeline wasn’t a fighter in the sense that Blaze was. Sean had tried to teach her, and she was capable, but it wasn’t in her nature, in the way it was in Blaze’s. Emeline was quieter. She was gorgeous. Truly drop-dead gorgeous. Of course the strip club would hire her. She also appeared mysterious, elusive and, just walking down the street, she was sexy as all get-out. She rarely argued, although she had strong opinions, she just quietly went her own way. When she made up her mind to do something, no one could stop her. No one. Blaze had learned that early.

“Emmy, listen to me. It isn’t safe for you to be in this city. It isn’t safe for you to be in the country. It certainly isn’t safe for you to be in that strip club. Especially that strip club. What did you do? Go straight from the airport to the bar and apply for a job?”

“Well . . . yeah.”

As if that was perfectly reasonable. Blaze wanted to tear out her hair. Her life was out of control. Completely out of control. She should have known the moment she sent word to Emeline that Sean was dead and she was going after the killers, that Emmy would get on a plane, regardless of the danger to herself, and come back to help.

“Do you know who owns that club?” Blaze inquired softly. She glanced down at her body. She was naked. Completely naked. She never slept naked. There were smudge marks on her breasts. Like fingerprints. And a mark above her left one that looked suspiciously like a bite. She closed her eyes, remembering the way it felt when he sank his teeth into her. Her sex spasmed. Clenched. She felt the rush of liquid heat at the memory.

“No. And I don’t care.”

“Have you ever been in it before?”

“Of course not. I’ve never stripped before if that’s what you’re asking, but I took pole dancing to stay in shape and I’ve danced all my life. I have no doubt I can pull this off.”

Blaze sucked in her breath. “Wait. Wait. They hired you as a stripper? I thought you meant they hired you as a waitress.”

“Honey, how can I get close to the girls to get information if I’m not one of them?” Emeline sounded as if she was losing a little of her patience.

Blaze wanted to scream.

“Blaze.” Emeline’s voice softened. “I’m not walking into this with my eyes closed. I didn’t come back on impulse. I know the risk and, just like you, I accept it. You and Sean are the closest thing I have to a family. I don’t have anyone else, and living on the run doesn’t exactly give me the incentive—or time—to make friends. They murdered him. They took him from us. I’m not going to let them get away with it any more than you are. I can’t go into combat with you, but I can feed you intel.”

Blaze rubbed her hand down her face. She didn’t have an argument for that one. It was all true and she knew exactly how Emeline felt about Sean. Emeline had no real family to speak of. Her mother had died when she was three. Her father disappeared and Emeline had been shifted from home to home with apathetic relatives. Blaze met her by chance in an alley behind the bar, and they became fast friends. Emeline had been working in stores since she was thirteen for her various relatives, and she easily got a job and an apartment with Sean as her reference when she turned sixteen. Mostly, before that, she lived on the streets during the day and slept in Blaze’s room at night.

Sean had paid for her dance classes and anything extra she’d wanted to take as she was growing up. She went to school as if she had an adult watching over her. When Emeline came to them eight months back and told them she’d witnessed a murder and she was scared, afraid she was being followed, Sean had helped her leave the country.

“Em, you described the murder to the police . . .”

Emeline groaned. “I wish I’d never used the term ‘vampire.’ I said vampire-like and they didn’t believe me. I know there aren’t vampires. I even tried to backtrack and say that maybe he had that disease where he believes he’s a vampire and murders people and drinks their blood. He had receding gum lines, was pale, his hair was in strings, and all that is explained by the disease. Once I said ‘vampire’ no one believed a thing I said.”

“We both know it was a vampire,” Blaze said quietly. “We didn’t want to believe it, but that nightmare . . .” She sighed and pressed her fingertips to her pounding temple. “Emmy, hon, that nightmare is getting closer. You cannot go to work at that club. Some of the things in the nightmare are too real. We both know what happens if it all becomes true. You’re safer out of the country. I need you safe, Emmy. Please, go back to France.” Her throat closed. She knew Emeline wouldn’t go. Not if their nightmare was going to become reality.

There was a small silence. “Honey, you know I love you. You’re my only family. Sean was my father, too. I have to do this. I couldn’t live with myself if I wasn’t here helping you. I can’t give you that. And you know why. If only I hadn’t used the word vampire to describe him, the cops wouldn’t have dismissed me like I was a lunatic.”

“Emmy, listen to me. The cops believed you. They were dirty. Sean knew it and he got you out of here. Some of them work for this guy and his mob. His name is Reginald Coonan and he owns that club. Sean believed you and so did I. There are others who think . . .” She trailed off, reluctant to reveal anything about Maksim. It felt like betrayal, even with Emeline.

“Think what?” Emeline insisted.

“Think he kills like a vampire does. Whatever he is, we know the man calling himself Reginald Coonan murders and drinks the blood of his victims. You saw him.”

“Two of them,” Emeline reminded in a whisper. “I still have the nightmares every night. I’m afraid to go to sleep.”

“I know, honey,” Blaze said. “That’s why you shouldn’t go back to that club. If he sees you there . . .”

“I was hired under the name Sean gave me when he sent me to Europe. I’m doing this, Blaze. For Sean. For you. But most of all for myself. I’m tired of running and I want to come home. You’re all I’ve got.”

Blaze closed her eyes and threw herself backward across the bed. There was no stopping Emeline once she made up her mind to something any more than there was Blaze. “Okay, but we have to be smart,” she capitulated. “It’s really dangerous.”

“I practically lived on the streets, Blaze, I’m good at this. I’ve got mad skills in manipulating people into talking to me about things they’d rather not.”

Blaze took a deep breath, her lashes still firmly down. For some reason, the light seeping in from around the blinds bothered her eyes. Her headache was worse when she sat up. “A couple of months ago, a man came into the bar and handed Dad a card with a number on it. They offered to help with the Hallahan problem. I was shocked when Dad saved the card, because we both thought there was a rival mob who wanted to claim our neighborhood.”

Emeline remained silent, waiting.

Blaze sighed. “I called the number last night because I put the bar in their names in case of my death. I thought if I died, and the Hallahans were still alive, I wanted someone to kill them. What better way than a mobster, right?”

“You told them you did this? Now you’ve got two different mob families wanting you dead?” Emeline sounded shocked.

“Well. No. Not exactly. I slept with one of them. Accidentally. Well.” Blaze sat up again and looked down at her body. “Not slept. He had a lot of stamina. We went at it and then I cried over Dad. In front of him, Emmy. I couldn’t believe it. And then again, but slower and sweeter. And then again. And again . . .”

Emeline groaned. “I get the picture. Holy cow, Blaze.”

“I know. Right? He was unbelievable. I mean that. One kiss and I melted. Actually I think I melted long before that. Seriously, just hearing his voice. He has this way of talking. Very low. Soft. But totally commanding. He’s . . .”

Emeline continued for her. “Domineering? Arrogant? Bossy? Oh no, Blaze. And you slept with him? Honey. You just look at men like him. You don’t actually sleep with them.”

“Well, actually, Emmy, there wasn’t any actual sleeping going on. One look, just his voice, and I totally melted.”

“Um, honey, let me just tell you that dominating, super-sexy men are great to fantasize about, but you never, never actually try to have a relationship with one. It doesn’t work in real life. Now at least you know the kind of man you’re attracted to and you can watch yourself. I fall for the bad boy every time. The real deal. The more tats, muscle and motorcycles they have, the more I’m falling at their feet. But I don’t touch that. Why? Because no matter how good the sex, I know myself. My heart would be involved and I’d get kicked in the teeth. So I don’t.”

“Bad boys?” Blaze echoed faintly.

“One hundred percent. I like macho. Bossy. Arrogant. I don’t even feel a twinge without that, but I’m not dumb, Blaze. I’m not going there. You have to pull it together no matter how good this guy was in bed. You were vulnerable and he took advantage.”

Blaze cleared her throat. “Not really. I’m pretty certain I jumped him.”

“You were vulnerable, honey,” Emeline said softly.

Blaze ran her hand over her thigh. There was a bite mark on the inside, a strawberry up high. Her stomach somersaulted and she felt an instant reaction deep in her body. “Maybe, but I definitely participated.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. I woke up and he was gone.”

There was a telling silence.

“I’m not looking for a relationship, Emmy,” Blaze said. “It happened and I can’t say I’m not glad. It was amazing. I had no idea sex was that amazing, but I have things to do, and a relationship isn’t one of them. It happened. I’m moving on.”

“He’s one of these mobsters?”

“I’m not certain they are mobsters,” Blaze mused. “More like hunters.” Her heart pounded when she said it, and her hand crept up to cover her neck right where her pulse jumped and pounded. “But whatever you saw that night, Emeline, they’ve seen. We aren’t crazy. There’s someone . . .”

“There were two of them,” Emeline reiterated. “Not just one. Two.”

“Okay, two of them. But someone else has seen at least one of them. And they saw them kill. They are going after them.”

“Good. Let them. We’ll go after the Hallahans because I did some research on them. They can go out in the sunlight. We can get them, Blaze.”

“Just be careful. I’ll come into the club in a couple of hours and watch your back.”

“That red hair of yours is impossible to miss,” Emeline pointed out. “You can’t take any chances, and if you blow it and talk to me, then my cover is blown. As it is, I was lucky I never ran into one of them before Sean got me out of here.”

Blaze sighed very loud. Loud enough for Emeline to hear. “We aren’t in a spy movie, Em. Don’t get caught up in the drama.”

Emeline laughed. “Very funny, Blaze. I’m about the drama. That’s why you love me. I’m the girlie girl and always being dramatic. You’re the steady, no-nonsense, mess-with-me-I’ll-kick-your-ass girl. That’s why we’re friends. We both can’t be a drama queen.” She paused, and then lowered her voice. “I love you, Blaze. You’re my only family. I can’t lose you. I can’t. I wouldn’t survive. Don’t throw your life away.”

Blaze clutched the phone tighter, so tight her knuckles turned white. She had been doing that. She was so grief stricken, so determined not to allow herself to even think about those hours before her father had died, that she was willing to put herself in harm’s way. She would have—unfairly—left Emeline with no one.

She would be forever grateful to Maksim Volkov and Tariq Asenguard for saving her life. She knew she would have died. She was fairly certain she would have taken at least a couple of the Hallahan brothers with her, but Emeline was right. She had wanted to die rather than face the nightmare of what Sean had gone through.

“I wish I hadn’t gone out. I took a class on bartending tricks. Dad took my shift so I could attend the class. Now, it seems so silly.”

“It wasn’t silly, Blaze,” Emeline said. “It’s life. We live our life and things happen and we have to deal. We’re dealing. Between the two of us, we’ll find the best way to take out the Hallahan brothers, one by one. Hell, I’ll seduce them if I have to.”

“Emeline.” Blaze breathed her name. “Don’t you dare.”

“Just saying. Gotta go, hon. I’m staying at the Mark Charles Hotel. It’s kind of run-down, but I thought a down-and out-stripper might live there.”

Blaze clenched her teeth. “Emmy, you have to be safe. Are there good locks on the doors? A peephole? Are you protected there?”

“Sean taught me a thing or two, Blaze,” Emeline said, her voice serious. “I know how to be safe. I traveled Europe on my own. Just because I can’t kick butt like you do, doesn’t mean I wasn’t paying attention to the things you both taught me. I can do this. I think I’m safer than you are. If you come into the club, hide that hair of yours.”

“Yes, mama,” Blaze said. “I know a little something about being safe as well. I’ll see you in a couple of hours. But Emmy, if you’re dancing, I’m closing my eyes so I won’t go blind.”

Emeline laughed. Blaze forgot how beautiful her laughter was. Emeline had a beautiful voice. She had a beautiful body. Everything about her was gorgeous. She’d been blessed by the beauty gods, but cursed by the gods for that beauty.

“You do that, honey. Be safe.”

“Be safe,” Blaze echoed and snapped her phone shut. She threw it on the nightstand and covered her face. She’d come so close to dying last night. She couldn’t say she regretted a single thing that happened. She wanted Maksim Volkov and truthfully, she wanted him again. But she so wasn’t going there. She wasn’t the type of woman to mesh with someone like Maksim, nor did she think for one moment that she was his only in spite of the things he’d told her.

For one thing, her hand crept up to her neck again, and a slow flush spread through her body. There was the blood thing. Her face burned. His mouth on her had been erotic and her mouth on him . . . His taste was addicting. She wanted more. Blood didn’t taste like that. She knew. She was one of those weird people who, when they cut themselves, sucked at the wound. Blood didn’t taste at all like that.

Still, she’d seen him move. Or more precisely, she hadn’t seen him move. He was that fast. If his blood could make her that fast, she would be perfectly fine with being a little more like him because she was avenging her father’s torture and murder. She wasn’t leaving that in a stranger’s hands.

Blaze pushed herself off the bed. Instantly she felt dizzy and disoriented. The pounding in her head grew. If heads could explode, she was fairly certain hers would. It was far worse than any hangover she’d ever experienced. She pressed her hand to her rolling stomach and staggered to the bathroom. Every step was difficult. Her feet felt leaden, caught in quicksand.

She had the urge to lie back down and pull the covers over her head to block out all light. Instead, she turned on the shower and stepped under the cascading water, letting it run on her face and body in an effort to clear away the cobwebs. If her problems had only been physical, she would have been okay with it, but her thoughts refused to leave Maksim Volkov alone. No matter what she did, she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

She fantasized in the shower as she washed her hair, running her fingers through it, remembering the feel of his hands in her hair, the erotic bite of pain on her scalp. So good. So good that even the memory caused a spasm. She remembered the way his skin felt when she touched him. Hot. Hard. So beautiful, if a man could be described as beautiful. Her hands, as she washed her skin, followed the path of his. Her breasts, her belly, her waist, lower still. She heard herself moan and was shocked.

She wasn’t a sensual person. Really. She wasn’t. She had looked at a few men, but seriously, she just hadn’t been interested. It was weird to think she could go from being semi-frigid, to nearly ripping a man’s clothes off. There was no doubt she’d done that—and she wouldn’t take a single second back.

She also didn’t fool herself into believing everything he said to her. Men said things to get a woman in bed. She wasn’t naïve. Even if he was everything he’d told her—another species altogether and not a vampire—there couldn’t be only one woman for a man. It sounded awesome to be a man’s only one, but a man as hot as Maksim could have any number of women. And he had to have, or he wouldn’t have been so awesome in bed. No one could get that good without tons of experience. Not that she had done so bad herself.

Smirking, she rinsed the soap from her body, wishing the water running over her didn’t feel so sensual on her sensitive skin. Maksim had opened the floodgates on her sexuality. There was no doubt about that. She was craving him all over again. His taste. His body. His cock. Every single inch of him. She wanted to hear his voice. See his smile.

“Obsession,” she whispered aloud. She was doing exactly what Emeline warned her against. She wanted a relationship with Maksim, not a one-night stand. “I’ll settle for sex,” she told the hot spray of water. “Lots of great sex with him. And if he really is that fast, maybe a little of that as well.”

She rinsed her hair one last time and turned off the shower, reaching for a towel to dry herself off. Touching her body with the velvet softness of the material was a mistake. The moment the towel slid across her nipples, she felt the arc of electricity rushing to her core. Her sheath spasmed. Deep inside she throbbed with need. She clenched her teeth against the flames sweeping through her bloodstream and kept rubbing.

By the time she got the material between her legs where she was sore—deliciously sore—she was on fire. Just touching the towel to her pulsing button sent a shocking orgasm surging through her. She leaned against the sink, breathing hard, wishing Maksim was there with her. He’d given her this gift. She’d never had an orgasm—self-induced—so strong. Imagining his mouth on her, or his heavy erection in her mouth or in her body, sent another wave crashing through her.

Breathing heavily, she tossed the towel aside and caught up another to wrap her hair in before standing in front of the full-length mirror. The sight made her breath catch in her throat. She’d looked at herself hundreds of times, usually a cursory look to make certain her clothes weren’t on inside out or something equally as dorky.

Her skin had never glowed so much. Her eyes seemed larger, the green more brilliant, almost dazzling. Her lashes seemed thicker and longer. Her body looked . . . lush. She was cut. She worked out and she was used to her muscles being very defined—and they were—but somehow she noticed her curves. Mostly, she noticed the smudges on her body—the marks of Maksim’s possession. There were a lot of them, as if he had branded her, stamped his mark so deep it was in her very bones.

She let out her breath slowly. She looked beautiful. She’d never felt beautiful in her life. She knew she wasn’t plain, but still, not like this. Never like this. Maksim transformed her in some way, or at least made her aware of her femininity—something she’d never acknowledged. She dressed slowly, choosing her outfit with care. She dressed for combat. Jeans that stretched easily. Boots that were lightweight enough to allow her to move fast but would take someone down if she delivered a kick to them. A shirt that emphasized her curves, a vest that allowed her to hide a few weapons. She didn’t take a purse, but zipped ID and money in her vest pocket. She slipped a knife in one boot and a gun into the other.

Her hair took some time. She braided it and then donned one of several wigs she kept just for such purposes. Sean had taught her how to keep from being noticed, and the color of her hair had always been a detriment. When she’d shadowed him, he’d spotted her every time, so she’d purchased wigs. With the cheaper ones, he’d made her immediately, but when she paid good money for real hair, she’d managed to tail him a few times without getting caught. She put on a short, black wig, made certain it was secure and looked real before sliding on a pair of sunglasses, because the light was killing her eyes. She hurried out of the apartment. Surveillance first and then she would go into the club when there were tons of people.

SIX

BLAZE DIDN’T EXPECT it to be so difficult to be out in the light. Even behind her dark glasses, her eyes watered and burned. She parked her motorcycle in an alley behind the building opposite the club. It wasn’t difficult to leap up and catch the fire escape ladder, pull it down and begin the climb to the roof. Once there, staying low so in case anyone was watching they wouldn’t see her, she made her way across the roof to the four-foot-high wall surrounding the rooftop across from The In Place.

She made a face as her binoculars took in the flashing neon sign over the door of the building. The club was popular. The dancers were good. Rumor was, you had to be gorgeous and a great dancer to get a job there. The pay was good and the tips were even better. She could understand why they would hire Emeline on the spot. Emmy was both.

Blaze moved the glasses along the rooftop first, just to make certain the Hallahan brothers hadn’t posted guards up there. She quartered the area meticulously, just as Sean had taught her, and there was no one. Clearly the Hallahans didn’t suspect that she would come after them. She knew they had dismissed her because she was a woman. They hadn’t entered her bar because they clearly didn’t want to tangle with Tariq Asenguard, Maksim or any of their men—if they had brought some with them. She had the feeling they had. It had taken more than the two men to clean out the bar in that time frame, even if they could move at warp speed. The thought that there had been others she hadn’t seen didn’t sit well with her, but now that she thought about it, of course they had probably brought others. Men like them? Different? How many men like them were there?

She continued to sweep the building. It was two stories and took up a third of the block. The top story was mostly offices, but like her building, there was a large apartment above the bar. She was fairly certain the Hallahans didn’t live in the apartment, but they used it. She knew that because after they were threatened, both she and her father had done some surveillance. The Hallahan brothers didn’t bother to cover the windows; in fact, she was pretty certain they were exhibitionists, or they just liked people to see and maybe fear them.

More than one woman had been brought up to that apartment and shared if the rumors were true, and she was fairly certain they were. They had also brought men here to beat. And they had beat them right out in the open—in front of that window.

Sean told her that Reginald Coonan owned a company that made porn films, so maybe the women auditioned with the Hallahans first before making the films. According to what Sean had found out, Coonan’s company was extremely successful. No one knew where his studios were, and it was reputed that he made fetish films as well. She didn’t want to know what those were and Sean hadn’t told her. Still, she worried that Emeline would catch the Hallahans’ eyes. She was truly that gorgeous.

No one appeared to be in the apartment, and she swept the street and parking lot. The parking lot was filling up. The sun had begun to set, turning the sky all different shades of red and orange, bringing relief to her burning eyes. She was surprised that her skin felt burned as well. She was Irish, so she didn’t exactly tan, but when she went outside in the early evening she never had a problem.

She didn’t see any of the Hallahans’ vehicles. They normally parked their very fancy cars in the four spots clearly marked for their use. No one ever dared to park in their places, at least not in the last few months. Rumors of baseball bats taken to the owners and total destruction of vehicles that had crossed them before their reputations had spread kept anyone from taking chances now.

Where are you?

The velvet voice slid into her mind easily. Clearly. That edge to it only made her stomach plunge and then somersault. There was no denying the voice was real and it was Maksim.

You are not where I left you.

She took a breath and decided it was better to answer him. Not the smartest thing maybe, not if she didn’t want to continue fantasizing about a relationship with him, but still, a slow burn was starting, the tension coiling deep inside her—a burn only he could sate. No, it wasn’t smart, but she didn’t want to cut ties—yet.

I have a few things to do. She tried to act nonchalant, as if she were talking telepathically every day of her life to a man she had wild, rough, uninhibited sex with. To a man she wanted to have more wild, rough, uninhibited sex with. He might be the sexiest man in the world and drop-dead gorgeous, but he wasn’t going to dictate to her. And she sure wasn’t staying in her apartment waiting for him to come calling after he left her bed.

I looked for my woman in her bed where I wanted to put my mouth between her legs until she was screaming my name and then have her ride me wild like she does until she screamed it again. Then I wanted to ride her rough, hard and deep until both of us were exhausted. The bed was empty.

A shiver went through her body. It wasn’t just his voice. He talked sexy. No one talked like that, did they? She wanted his mouth between her legs. She wanted to ride him wild. And she really wanted him to ride her rough, wild and deep. Screaming would be optional, but good. She moistened her suddenly dry lips and tried not to fog up her binoculars with heavy breathing.

You didn’t leave me a note. I had no idea you were planning to come back.

There was a silence. In that silence, she felt a glacier pouring into her mind. She shivered, trying not to let his disapproval matter to her.

You had no idea I was planning to come back? What does that mean? You thought I used you and walked away?

Okay. That was exactly what she thought and clearly she was wrong. She caught a flicker of fire-engine red in the parking lot and turned the binoculars on the convertible that drove fast into one of the sacred Hallahans’ spaces. Jimmy Hallahan. The oldest of the brothers. He jumped over the door of his convertible and walked with long strides to the side door of the club that no one but management used, disappearing inside.

Well. Yes, she admitted, because there wasn’t much else she could do. I went to sleep with you and woke up without you. I don’t have tons of experience with men, so I thought maybe that was your MO.

The chill factor went to subzero. My MO?

Clearly she was not getting the better of the conversation. It was time to retreat. I can’t talk about this right now. I’m really into something here and it’s demanding my entire attention.

“‘Here’ would not be The In Place, would it?”

His voice sounded soft and silky. In her ear, not her mind. She was so certain she was alone she didn’t react at first, and then she felt his warm breath in her ear. Instantly a thrill went down her spine. She drew in her breath sharply and turned her head to look over her shoulder.

Maksim was close. Too close. He was beautiful. Gorgeous. Dressed casually in vintage blue jeans that clung to his body, and a tight black tee that stretched across his thick chest, showing the multitude of muscle, he was even hotter than she remembered—and her memory was really good. Her mouth went dry and she had to swallow a lump that had formed in her throat.

Her heart began to pound—hard. He looked more remote and ice-cold than he had when she’d first met him. His black hair spilled down around his face. It was thick. Luxurious. Her fingers itched to run through all that wild hair and tame it just as a part of her wanted to ignite the fire in him and melt all that ice away.

“I left you sleeping in your bed. What are you doing here?” he persisted.

The velvet rasp of his voice slid over her, both a demand and a caress. She had no idea how he managed it, but the tone was very effective. She shivered and sat back on her heels. Every breath she drew took him deeper into her lungs until she felt surrounded by him. She had no idea why, but she was relieved to see him alive and breathing. A part of her, from the moment she had awakened and found him gone, had been tense and worried. She put it down to secretly wanting a relationship she’d told Emeline she wasn’t looking for.

“Blaze.” He said her name softly. A warning.

“Was there a question in there?” She fell back on her attitude because, really, who could think when he was looming over her, looking so . . . yummy.

He reached down and took her wrist, forcing her to her feet with casual strength. Not stopping there, pulling her up against his body. He might look ice-cold, but the heat emanating from his body was anything but. He pulled her wrist around his neck, took the binoculars out of her hand, floated them—yes, floated them—down to the floor and wrapped her other arm around his neck.

“What are you doing here?”

He murmured the question against the side of her mouth, his lips skimming hers, sending a series of little quakes ricocheting through her pussy. Instant liquid heat dampened her panties. In reflex she threaded her fingers together at the nape of his neck, her body melting into his.

“Working,” she answered, turning her head just enough so that her lips brushed his. Seeking his kiss. Needing the feel of his mouth on hers. Right there out in the waning light on the roof of the building across from the nightclub she was reconning. She wasn’t a woman who went for public displays of affection, but she needed his mouth more than she needed air—and she had no idea why. Only that he was necessary to her.

His hand slid up her back, her neck, to cup the back of her hair. “I see. You were supposed to wait for me. We were going to work together. Right?”

She tried hard to search her brain, which because she was in such close proximity to him, was fast turning to mush. Had they had a conversation about working together? It was possible. “I woke up first, you weren’t there to talk things over with and, at the moment, I’m taking someone’s back. I couldn’t wait.”

His thumb stroked her bottom lip. “You have someone inside?”

She nodded. “I need information. She’ll get it.”

“You trust her?”

“With my life.”

His black, black eyes moved over her face. Brooding. Moody. “That is exactly what you are doing, Blaze. You had better be able to trust her, because I can read your mind. I know who she is to you and if she betrays you, I will kill her.”

He delivered the statement matter-of-factly, and she knew it wasn’t an empty threat. He meant every word. He didn’t raise his voice. He spoke very softly, just as he usually did, but she felt his words in her belly. Deep. Branded into her bones. She tipped her head back, searching his remote, icy eyes, looking for an expression.

“Why are you helping me?”

“You belong to me. I take care of what is mine. I searched centuries for you. No one is going to take you away from me.”

Again it was a calm statement of fact. She found herself shivering. She believed him. She believed he’d been alive for centuries and that he hunted vampires. She believed him because she’d been having detailed nightmares since she was ten years old and Emeline saw a vampire. Emeline didn’t lie and she didn’t exaggerate. And Maksim had shown her what and who he was. There was something very old world and courtly about him. At the same time when he moved into a space, the air around him electrified with danger, as if he was an extremely dangerous predator.

“Maksim, we barely know each other,” she pointed out, still pressed into him, too weak to move even when she knew she should. That predatory air was very much in evidence.

“You know me. You are in my mind. You know I speak the truth. You do not want to know, but you do. We are hunting something monstrous. You need to understand if I allow you to do this thing . . .”

That stiffened her spine and she jerked back, or tried to. His arms immediately locked around her like iron bars. “Allow?” She felt tiny sparks snapping over her skin and in her mind. “No one allows me to do anything, Maksim. If that’s the kind of woman you believe me to be, you have the wrong woman. You need to keep searching.”

His arms remained tight even though she bent backward to try to put space between them. His smile was anything but humorous. “I am not a human, Blaze, and I have immense power. The undead hides from me, and there are few things on this earth more powerful than he is, yet he hides and trembles when I am close. Do you really believe that I would search centuries, hundreds of years for the other half of my soul, find her and then risk losing her because she is strong willed and stubborn? You need to look deeper into my mind and really see me.”

She didn’t want to do that. She already had far too much to process. She realized there was logic to what he said. She knew little about vampires, other than what she saw in the movies and in her nightmares, and who knew how close to the truth that was. If she believed he hunted vampires through the centuries, and he lived that long, he had far more experience than she did. If there was one thing Sean had drilled into her over and over again, it was that her brain was her greatest weapon. Her greatest asset. He had taught her that she always needed to know her own capabilities and limitations. So maybe she could fight the Hallahans and have absolute faith she would be on equal footing, but vampires . . . no way.

“You may have a point, Maksim, but please don’t use words like ‘allow.’ I’m not going to kick you in the shins when you try to dictate to me; I’ll walk away.”

“We are past walking away. We talk things out. But first, kiss me. You have not kissed me and I think I woke up starving for your kiss.”

His mouth was close again. Tempting. He had nice lips. An invitation, and she knew exactly how he kissed.

“When I kiss you, I forget everything. I told you, I have a friend inside and I want to get in there and watch out for her.”

“Only Jimmy Hallahan is inside. His other brothers are working, doing what they do, being Reginald Coonan’s muscle. At the moment I also have a friend in there. Picture this woman and I will send him a message to keep an eye on her until we get inside.”

She took a breath. “It’s one thing to trust you with my life. It’s something else to trust you with hers.” She wasn’t being defiant, but really, things were moving altogether too fast.

“Draga mea, you know I will defend you with my last breath, and that means your friends are under my protection as well. I see you love this woman. That she is a sister to you. Look into my mind. There is no need to be afraid.”

But she was. Not because she feared he would hurt her. Or betray her. She was already far enough into his mind to know that much. She knew he was being honest, but still, he was taking her down a path there was no returning from. She knew that instinctively. Already she craved him. Craved his taste. Craved his body moving in hers. She was becoming lost in him very fast and there was no real explanation for him. She didn’t trust anything she couldn’t explain.

She felt him move in her mind and she should have protested, but she’d already given him that, sharing herself with him. She was open to him. Vulnerable. He took the information on Emeline out of her head. He didn’t pull away from her, allowing her to see him instructing his friend, sending him Emeline’s information, including the pictures of her Blaze stored close.

Guard her well, but do not approach unless she is in trouble.

That isn’t Asenguard, she protested.

She could tell he was Carpathian like Maksim and Tariq. She sensed his power, just as she felt Maksim’s when he was near.

“His name is Tomas. Tomas and his brothers arrived a few days ago and have offered to help hunt Reginald Coonan. We have known each other a very long time, and a few times, when we were on the same continent, in the same vicinity, we have hunted together. He is very good at what he does, as are his brothers. They are triplets. Where one is, the others are close by. Your friend is in good hands.”

“Emeline.” She cleared her throat. “She saw him. Or someone like him. Two someones.”

“She saw Tomas?” Maksim asked.

Blaze shook her head. “Coonan. I suspect it was Coonan. Emeline witnessed a murder. Two men, pale faces, gums receding, sharp teeth biting into a man and his wife. They killed the couple, nearly draining all the blood from both of them. It was messy and horrible to witness. She must have made a sound because one turned his head and saw her, but suddenly others came, men who approached the murderers, and they fled.”

“How long ago was this?” Maksim asked gently.

“You believe what she saw?”

He nodded.

“It was about eight months ago, right around the time the cops claimed there was a serial killer loose going after the homeless. They called him ‘Strike Twice,’ because he always struck twice in one night. He always took two victims. Because there are two of them,” Blaze said. “Emeline saw them, but the police wouldn’t believe her.”

“I was there. Tariq and I were there that night. We just missed them. We have been trying to find their lair ever since. It is a big city. When we realized that the Hallahans were doing Coonan’s bidding, we began to concentrate our efforts on protecting the remaining businesses.”

She took a deep breath, still leaning into him. Still circling his neck with her arms. She fit there against him. One of his hands slid up to her neck, fingers gently massaging as if he could ease the tension out of her.

“Do you know why they target certain properties?” Her eyes searched his. He knew. “You don’t want to tell me, but you know,” she whispered. Disappointed. She slid her arms to his shoulders to push away from him.

Before she could, he tightened his grip on her nape, fingers curling deep. “I do not want to frighten you with too much information at once about what it is we are. We acquire fortunes and properties and leave them to ourselves every so often so as not to raise suspicion. All Carpathians do this. I am Carpathian, a species that is older than you can imagine. We have certain gifts and one is longevity. Some say we are immortal, but truthfully, we can be killed. The male loses his ability to feel emotion or to see in color until he finds his lifemate, that one woman who holds the other half of his soul.”

He’d said as much before and she figured perhaps it was an ancient belief that still persisted. She nodded her head for him to continue.

“Vampires are Carpathian males who have chosen to give up their souls so they can feel the rush a kill provides them when they feed. Having been Carpathian, they have also acquired property and wealth. Most are too vain and too addicted to the adrenaline in their victim’s blood to think or plan, and that makes them easier to track. But some are extremely intelligent and they have learned through experiences, just like the hunter, how to recruit newly turned vampires and use them as pawns. Still others have gone further and created an army of humans by infiltrating their ranks. They are the most difficult because they have patience and the cunning to plot for centuries to get what they want.”

She frowned. “So you’re saying that these vampires could already own some of the properties in the neighborhood and are looking for the ones they don’t own?”

“It stands to reason. They would leave the businesses intact because it doesn’t matter to them one way or the other about the business itself, just the building.”

“Why?”

“I do not yet have an answer to that. But we are getting closer. Reginald Coonan is the name the Carpathian used to leave his property to, perhaps before he turned vampire. Tariq is right now researching to see who owns the other buildings, the ones they have not yet touched. If any of the families still own the buildings such as you do, we will also know who they will target next. Still, with all that, your friend should not be anywhere near a property owned by the vampires she witnessed killing that night. If they were able to catch her scent, they can hunt her. They cannot do so during the day, but they can send their human puppets after her, the way they sent them after your father.”

“Emeline isn’t going to give up any more than I am, not until they’re stopped,” Blaze said. “She loved my father. She won’t let this go. Even if I did, which I won’t”—she narrowed her eyes at him to make certain he knew she was giving him the truth—“she wouldn’t stop. She’s already got a job dancing.”

“Blaze. You do not know me very well,” Maksim said. “But know this. When a man finds a woman after hunting for so long, he has a jealous streak. A possessive streak. Dancing is out for you, unless you wish to dance for me.”

In spite of everything, she found herself laughing softly. Relaxing into him. “You don’t have to worry. I couldn’t dance even if I wanted to.”

He leaned closer, his teeth nipping at her chin, and then he kissed his way up to the corner of her mouth. She felt the soft brush of his lips like a brand, a trail of flames dancing over her skin. His mouth settled on hers. Gentle. Unlike any of the kisses the night before. Gentle scared her. Gentle terrified her. Gentle was about emotion, not chemistry. She couldn’t give this man more of herself than she already had, because he could destroy her.

He deepened the kiss as if he knew exactly what she was thinking and wanted to short-circuit her brain. He did so easily. She tasted hunger. Wild. Possession. She tasted need. His kiss went from gentle to hard. Wet. Demanding. She gave herself up without a fight, moving into him, tightening her hands at the nape of his neck, curling her fingers into his hair, her mouth as aggressive as his. Her need as wild and possessive, every bit as hungry as his.

He kissed her over and over until she was on fire. The world dropped away, the danger, the fear, the sorrow, everything, until there was nothing left but pleasure, passion and heat rushing through her veins. She forgot she was on a rooftop. She forgot what she was doing and what her name was, there was only Maksim and his fantastic mouth, his strong arms and hard body pressed so tightly against hers.

SEVEN

MAKSIM’S MOUTH TRAVELED from Blaze’s lips to her throat. To the side of her neck. Her heart began to pound in anticipation. Her sheath clenched and deep inside she felt a spasm of pure pleasure. She felt as if she’d waited a lifetime just to see him again, to feel his touch. To feel his teeth scrape gently over her pounding pulse.

Who knew that such a small gesture could feel so intimate? So erotic? Her fingers tunneled deep into his hair. Anchored there. She turned her head to give him better access. The wig was short, the dark hair brushing her chin as his tongue swirled over her skin, sending tiny streaks of fire rushing through her blood.

“Blaze.”

He whispered her name over her thundering pulse. Just that. His voice was sinful. Wicked. Stroking over her like fingers. Caressing. Tempting. She closed her eyes, drawing in her breath, taking the scent of him deep in her lungs as his teeth slid into her neck. The bite was painful. She heard her own gasp, and his arms tightened, enfolding her, his heart beating against her body so that her own beat found and followed the steady rhythm.

At once the pain slipped away to be replaced by something altogether different. Pleasure burst through her. Every cell in her body came alive, was aware of him. Of her. Of them. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to him. To the dark passion that ensnared her completely. She should have run screaming from him. Or used one of the many weapons she had on her. Instead she burrowed closer and gave herself to him.

There was no denying him. She didn’t want to. She knew exactly what he was doing, and deep inside excitement spread, right along with the flames building and the tension coiling.

Open your mind. Feel what I am feeling.

She didn’t stop to think. She obeyed his whispered temptation, letting him inside. Completely. He poured into her. Warm. Strong. Sensual. The feeling of him filling her was so beautiful her eyes burned with tears. She felt alone most of her life, different from others. She had never thought she might want to belong to someone. She felt complete and confident in herself, until the moment she laid eyes on Maksim.

Her legs suddenly felt weak and it was only his arms holding her up. She tasted herself as he drew her blood into his body, as he took her essence, that wild, exquisite addicting taste. So good. He would never tire of it. Never get enough of it. Without thinking, without effort, she poured herself into his mind, filling every one of those lonely places. Giving him—her.

She wanted him. She couldn’t have told Emeline why, but she knew. She was a strong woman, raised by Sean to be confident and take care of herself—and she liked that. But she was also a woman. She wanted a man to be strong and confident as well, a man who was every bit the warrior she was. Matching her strength for strength. She hadn’t believed there was such a man, not until she laid eyes on Maksim Volkov.

Blaze knew it was even more than that. He had incredible gifts—gifts that would allow him to take down men like the Hallahans, and killers like Reginald Coonan. She was warrior enough to want those gifts. She knew that first time with Maksim, when he had given her his blood, had changed her somehow. Her hearing was more acute. Her vision far better in spite of her sensitivity to the sun. She felt the way her body moved, so much more coordinated when she’d always had fast reflexes and extraordinary coordination.

Most of all, she didn’t feel alone. Even with her father—and she’d adored him—often she felt very alone. She knew that came from feeling different. She was different. The only close friend she’d ever had was Emeline. Emeline never had the family life Blaze did, but still, they worked somehow, filling those empty spots for one another. But all her adult life, Blaze was aware of loneliness spreading slowly through her.

She wanted a man of her own. A family of her own. She just didn’t relate that well to the men she met and as a rule dismissed them totally from her mind after she walked away. She thought about Maksim from the moment she’d opened her eyes—even when she was talking to Emeline and had come up to the roof for surveillance.

She felt a pull toward him that she had to admit—but only to herself—was more than sexual. She wanted to know him. To see beyond his cold eyes, and remote expression. She needed to be that person that could have all of him. She might tell herself and Emeline that she only wanted a sexual relationship, but she knew better.

You are going to join me in my world, draga mea, he whispered softly into her mind as if reading her thoughts easily.

She had forgotten she had allowed him in. That she was also just as deep in his mind. His tongue slid across her pounding pulse, a delicious, soothing, intimate gesture that stole her breath and maybe a little piece of her heart.

You will be strong. And fast. Far faster than you are now.

He was tempting her. Luring her to take a step further into his world, and he knew it. They both knew it. She held her breath as he opened his shirt. She couldn’t look away from his dark eyes. Eyes so black she could see shadows in them. Hunger was there. Dark and terrible. Beckoning.

She knew he was the devil tempting her, but she couldn’t resist. Already the taste of him was in her mouth. She dropped her gaze to watch as one fingernail slid across the heavy muscle of his chest, just above his heart. At once ruby beads welled up. She inhaled, taking the scent of him into her lungs. He smelled every bit as good as she remembered.

Maksim’s hand cupped the back of her head, urging her mouth toward those drops of tantalizing spice. She glanced up at his face. “If I do this, can I go back?”

He shook his head slowly, his body utterly still. “But I will always be with you. Always. You will never be alone again, Blaze.”

She knew she shouldn’t. She didn’t know exactly what she was getting into, but his body was hard and strong, and he smelled like a gift. And that thin line drew her like a magnet. She was mesmerized by it, unable to do anything but look at the sinful temptation.

She was lost and she knew it. Perhaps this wasn’t the way to find herself again, but there was no resisting, not when her body had already melted into his and the hand cupping the back of her head pressed her closer. Especially not when she licked at those ruby drops, brought them into her mouth where the taste of him swallowed her whole. Took her to another place. Sent fire rushing through her veins.

She had been so certain she could just take a small taste, just to see if the memory was real. The moment her tongue touched his chest, brought those ruby drops into her mouth, the craving became overwhelming. Not just for the exquisite, unique taste, but for him. For the hardness of his body. His strength. His scent. The sweep of his long hair and the feel of his hands moving over her, claiming her. Most of all because his mind was in hers, filling her, taking away fear and loneliness.

She drank when she knew it was something forbidden. She took everything he offered because there was no stopping. In that moment, everything he offered was real. What she had searched for. Waited for. Dreamt of.

Take off your shirt.

They were outside. She knew enough to know that much, even though she was lost in the rising tide of passion. The persistent throb between her legs became an urgent demand, and at his whispered command, she felt the growing dampness there.

Someone could see us. She used the more intimate whisper of telepathy. The need for him began to dance down her spine. The lure of the forbidden. He always gave her that, and for some reason she responded with a rush of heat surging through her veins, pounding through her clit, causing a spasm deep inside.

No one will see. Do this for me. I do not think I can go much longer without being inside of you. Carpathians do not dream, Blaze, but all through the day, I dreamt of you. Your soft skin. Your hair like silk. The taste of you. The way you surround me with fire when I am inside you. That mouth of yours. Sweet. Hot. I craved the feel of your hands on me.

She had dreamt of him. She had woken up with the taste of him in her mouth. With his name on her lips. Looking for him. Disappointed and hurt that he wasn’t right there in bed with her.

You left me. Her voice betrayed her. Shook. Just a little, but it was enough. He heard. He knew. He felt her hurt.

Very gently he tugged on the hair of her wig. Let his fingers caress the nape of her neck.

Carpathians must sleep during the day, sufletul meu. We are very vulnerable at this time. The soil rejuvenates us. I expected that you would stay asleep and I would be back before you woke. His hand moved over her shoulder in a caress and he deepened the kiss. Gentled it. Made her ache with need. Take off your shirt for me. I will keep all eyes away from you.

Before she could stop herself, her hands went to the hem of her tee and she dragged it off, hating to lift her head and stop taking what she needed from him. Still, she dropped the T-shirt on the rooftop and put her mouth on his chest once again.

His hands moved up her back, along her spine, found the catch of her bra and slipped it off. The night air teased her breasts. She shivered as fingers of desire danced down her spine. The moment he touched her she was lost. He swept his hands down her body, along her spine, over her rib cage, down to her bottom. His fingers dug deep, claiming her. Pressing her tight into him.

Give me your mouth.

Reluctantly she swept her tongue across the thin line on his chest and lifted her face to his. His mouth came down on hers, crushing hers under his. Hot. Hard. Delicious. His tongue teased along her teeth, the roof of her mouth, dueled with hers. Insistent. Making her light-headed. Turning her into a living flame. He trailed kisses from her lips to her chin. His teeth bit gently, causing an instant reaction. Tension coiled and the burn between her legs grew. She moistened her lips. There it was again. The forbidden. Undressing in the open with his hands caressing her body. The night breeze on her. Stirring her senses further. She found the idea aroused her even more.

He pulled back to look at her, his eyes burning over her body. Everywhere his gaze touched felt like the caress of his hands. He cupped her breasts, lifting them toward his mouth as his head lowered. “So beautiful,” he murmured aloud.

She felt the sweep of his silky hair against her bare skin. Her breath left her lungs in a long rush, and then his mouth was on her. His teeth scraped back and forth along her nipple, sending shards of desire pounding through her bloodstream. She couldn’t stop the excitement, the anticipation rushing through her like the strongest wave imaginable, sweeping her up into a vortex of need.

His mouth closed over her breast, suckling hard. Rough. Demanding. His hands bit into her, massaged, tugged and rolled, never stopping while she gasped for breath, clinging to him because her legs went weak. Anchoring both hands in his hair, she held him to her, needing his mouth, needing the hard suction and the brutal demands.

His hand slid over her hip and she felt the cool air on her bare thighs—between them as he inserted his leg between hers and pushed her thighs apart. The cool air fanned the smoldering fire until she thought she might burst into flames. Her breath came in ragged gasps, and lust rose sharp and terrible.

He kissed his way back up to her throat. Found her mouth. Took it. Over and over. Long, deep kisses while his hands moved possessively over her body. He lifted his head to look down at her, his gaze feral. A dark predator. Another shiver of excitement went through her, arousal burning high. Her need urgent. Before she could say anything, he kissed his way down her body. Over her throat. Her breasts. Her ribs.

Her breath left her lungs when she realized his intentions. She looked around her. Night had fallen. Stars were out. There was no building hiding her. No shadows out there on the rooftop. He crouched in front of her, his hands pushing her thighs farther apart, causing another spasm of pure hunger.

Someone can see us, she whispered into his mind. She should stop him but she couldn’t. She needed this. His mouth pushing the terrible, brutal burn into crackling flames that would consume her.

I would never allow that. I can shield our presence. No man sees you but me. Ever.

She knew he meant it. She had no idea how he could shield them from sight should someone from another rooftop or window happen to look over at them, but she didn’t doubt that he could. Still, even with that knowledge, she still felt the thrill of the illicit.

I want your legs farther apart, Blaze. His voice was a rough command, the sexy rasp and the hot breath directly against her wet, sensitive entrance.

She clutched his shoulder with one hand, his hair with the other, not knowing if she had the strength to drag him away from her. She could feel the warm spill of liquid in response. The bright, desperate hunger shooting through her like an arrow. Her fingers tightened in his hair.

He lifted her leg, pushing her calf over his shoulder, exposing her even more to him, to the night. A sob of need escaped her. He leaned into her and his tongue swiped through the wet, curling, jabbing, sending that burn into violent flames.

Slide your hand down your body. Slow. Feel the way your fingers touch your skin. Let me feel it.

There was no resisting the temptation of his voice. That wicked hunger. The dark promise of passion and beauty. At once she opened her mind further to him, letting him inside her where he could feel everything she felt, every emotion, every spectacular sensation his mouth was giving to her. With one hand she clung to his hair to keep herself anchored; with the other, she found her breast, cupping the soft weight, thumb sliding across her nipple. A streak of fire burst through her, raced straight to her pulsing clit. She threw her head back.

Harder, Blaze. You like it rough.

She did. She so did. Her fingers rolled and tugged her nipple, sending a series of white-hot arrows rushing through her body to find her deepest core. His mouth worked her, licking, sucking, even his teeth scraping. The world seemed to explode around her, fiery sparks raining down behind her eyes.

That is exactly what I want, he said. So beautiful. Bring your hand down to me, draga mea, slide it down your body. Feel how beautiful you are. Your skin so soft. The way your body is firm but soft. Exquisite. Perfect.

His mouth never stopped, not even through the wildfire storming through her. Blaze looked down at him, that sensual, predatory face, carved so deep with lust. His eyes were twin glaciers, but beneath all that ice, she could see that flames burned blue and white, consuming her just as his mouth was.

She had no idea arousal could be this brutal, or her body so on fire. The pads of her fingers glided over her satiny skin, and the flames streaked over her nerve endings with every touch. Her fingers dipped inside her belly button, moved lower still until she felt the brush of his hair. His hand reached up and caught hers, drawing it down farther, curling her fingers in, so that she stroked her own inflamed clit, while his tongue lashed deep. It was sexy. It was crazy sensual. It fueled her lust, drove up her passion and with his hand over hers, pushing her finger deep and then drawing it back so that she stroked that tight little bud repeatedly, she felt the wash of another strong orgasm devouring her.

His mouth kept moving, his hand continued to force her finger deep and then stroking. The sensations rolled through her. Danced down her thighs. Up into her belly, spreading like wildfire through her. It was unbelievable, so good. So perfect. She tipped her hips to give him better access, her breath catching on a little sob as he licked and sucked at her strongly, carrying her away on a tide of pure passion.

Her third orgasm hit strong and he pulled his mouth away, waving his hand to strip his body of all clothes as he stood. He wrapped his arm around her, starting to lift her and she shook her head, biting at his shoulder, licking down his chest.

“It’s my turn. You taste so good, Maksim. Let me.”

He closed his eyes, and she loved that look of sheer carnal pleasure on his face. The lines carved deep. The hunger in him. All for her. When he opened his eyes and looked down at her, the flames behind the ice burned brighter than ever.

“Get your mouth on me, draga mea.” His hand went to her shoulder. “But my famous control is slipping.”

She couldn’t stand anyway, so it was a relief to sink to her knees in front of him. The cushion under her hadn’t been there and she knew, even in the heat of the moment, he was seeing to her comfort. Her mouth watered, remembering the taste of him. She slid her hands up his thighs, watching the muscles bunch. Cupping his heavy sac, she leaned close to stroke the velvet balls with her tongue. She knew he wouldn’t give her much time; already he was thick and long and very hard. Very hot.

Blaze stroked her tongue from the base, up his shaft to the crown. She wasted no time, drawing him into her mouth, suckling strongly, pulling at that spicy, rich taste of him. She loved that he was rough and wild and it was there in his addicting taste. There in the way his fingers dug into the nape of her neck, biting into her flesh so that more damp honey spilled down her thighs.

She took as much as she could as fast as she could, driving him to the very brink of his control, loving that she could. Loving that she knew she did. She lavished attention on him, watching him, keeping her gaze glued to his, seeing the intensity of his pleasure—pleasure she gave him. She lashed him with her tongue, curled it around the underside of his shaft, suckled, teased, took him deep and then shallow.

He caught her under her arms. Enough. I need to be inside you.

She needed that as well. She let go of him, although she hated losing the feel and taste of him, but he lifted her high, her body rubbing along his so that her nipples felt the scrape of their joined bodies. She wrapped him up, arms and legs, nearly crying as she felt him right there, at her burning entrance.

There was no hesitation. He surged up as he slammed her down over him. All the way until she was seated fully on him and he had pushed through those tight, inflamed folds. She bit his shoulder to keep from crying out with the sheer pleasure of it. It was too much. Too good.

“Maksim.”

His name came out a husky whisper with far more emotion in it than she wanted, but she couldn’t control her body let alone her voice. Already she was breaking apart inside, fragmenting around his hammering shaft. The burn was different this time, even more intense, and she feared she knew why. She had dreamt too often of this kind of man, and now she was putting all of her hopes, all of her emotions that she’d held back for so long into him. On him.

I love when you say my name. When you know I belong to you. That you are mine. The things you do to my body, Blaze. Sheer paradise.

The things he did to her body were pure sin. She couldn’t stop moving through the powerful quake because his hands refused to allow it. He kept her gliding up and down his shaft while he powered into her. She had no idea if her orgasm continued or she just rolled right into another, but she felt him swell, the hard strokes driving deep, and then his face was in her neck and he was rocketing with her into that place they could only find together.

He held her for a long time while their hearts raced and their lungs burned. It was Maksim who lifted his head first, brushing kisses over her cheek and the side of her nose.

“Good evening, my beautiful soul.”

She didn’t lift her head from his shoulder but smiled at him. Physically, he was the most good-looking man she’d ever seen—not in the model kind of way. He was too rough for that—too masculine. “Good evening back. That was amazing. Hot and amazing.”

“I am very pleased you thought so.”

She felt the wind in her face and it cleared some of the fog, some of the daze of the aftermath of having wild, rooftop sex with him. She lifted her head, shocked at herself. At once he set her feet on the ground. She looked helplessly around for her clothes. She had no idea what she’d done with them.

He waved his hands and just like that both of them were fully clothed. Her breath hitched in her throat. She was clean as well. Absolutely clean and completely dressed—as if nothing at all had happened.

“How do you do that?”

“I will teach you one day soon. In the meantime, to relieve your anxiety, we should get moving.”

Blaze stared up at him, still shocked at his display of power. There was no explanation, not one she could think of, so she shut down her need for answers and pulled out of his arms abruptly. “I can’t believe I’m standing up here on the roof with you, doing whatever it is we’re doing and Emeline is in the club without backup.”

“She has backup.” His voice was a soft growl. “I told you, Tomas is in the club. He will not allow anything to happen to her.”

“Still, I don’t know him. I barely know you.” And that was just a teensy bit humiliating when she’d just had wild sex on the rooftop with him.

“You know me. We will walk in together, you on my arm. Will your girl recognize you in your wig?”

“You can’t walk in with me. Jimmy Hallahan is in there. He’d recognize you in a heartbeat.”

“He will not recognize me. I can certainly disguise my features.” There was a hint of humor in his voice. He bent down to brush his mouth over hers. “I will be your much older lecherous sugar daddy. Why else would a good girl like you go into such a club? Your sugar daddy has a lot of money to throw around and he likes women.”

She stared up at his face. “You’re going to draw attention to yourself.”

“Of course. It will give you a chance to slip off and talk to your girl.”

She could still feel him inside her. Deep down in her most private, feminine core. He was there. In her mind. Filling her. He was there. She could taste him in her mouth. He was there as well. In her. On her. Surrounding her. She wanted to move into him, into his heat and strength, but she stepped back.

Emeline was counting on her. So was her father. She had a mission to accomplish and as much as Maksim drew her to him, she knew she was getting lost in him. She pressed trembling fingers to her mouth.

“Why doesn’t your blood make me sick? Repulse me?”

He reached for her hand. There was unexpected gentleness in his touch, disarming her completely.

“You are the other half of my soul, Blaze,” he said simply. Complicating an already difficult situation. “I have tied us together using the ritual binding words, and we’ve had two blood exchanges. You are entering my world.”

“What does that mean?” She didn’t pull her hand away, but went with him when he tugged her toward the thick railing running the length of the roof.

“I will show you.” He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles before wrapping her arm around his neck. “Give me your other hand.”

She did so hesitantly, uncertain what she was getting herself into. They were right on the edge, so looking down, the ground was a long distance away.

“Lock your fingers behind my neck and hold on tight.”

She had barely managed to thread her fingers together when his arms came around her rib cage and he stepped off the edge. She cried out, but the sound was muffled by his shirt because she’d buried her face against his shoulder. When she didn’t have the sensation of falling, she opened her eyes and forced her head to turn just enough to see around her.

They were in midair. Floating. Not falling. Floating. In a controlled float. She looked up at Maksim’s face to catch him looking down at hers. His eyes were as black as night, as cold as ever, but very slowly, she saw the grin start. Mischievous. Playful. Full of fun. Something deep inside her responded. She found an answering grin starting. Once it did, she couldn’t hold it back, because truthfully, she could either faint—and that didn’t feel forthcoming—or she could embrace the moment. She was all about embracing.

EIGHT

THE MOMENT HER feet touched the ground, Blaze lifted her face and went up on her toes to capture Maksim’s mouth. He was incredible. A miracle. In the midst of terrible sorrow, he had made her smile. Made her forget for one tiny moment that inside she had broken apart and that she’d been left with nothing but her friendship and love for Emeline. Or that Emeline had once again been left alone just as she had been.

Maksim was extraordinary and even if something happened and nothing was really between them, she would be forever grateful that he had made her forget. That he had made her smile. He might be bossy and some weird species she’d never heard of, but that didn’t make him something to be frightened of. That made him all the more intriguing and as far as she was concerned, totally kick-ass.

He was offering her the things he could do. She knew he wasn’t making it up, because she was already evolving. Already her hearing was more acute, as was her vision. She felt the strength in her body and the fluid way she moved. She trained every single day. She studied anatomy. She kickboxed and boxed. She practiced falls and rolling. She drilled with weapons and ran daily. She had never felt quite as strong and as empowered as she did in that moment.

Her body melted into his as she kissed him. His arms locked around her tightly, holding her close to him, his mouth moving on hers, meeting fire with fire. Sweetness with more sweetness. He tasted hot and masculine and passionate, but there was something else now, something underlying she couldn’t quite put her finger on. The more they were in each other’s head, the more she felt she knew him. The closer she felt to him.

Still, she’d been careful not to look too deep. He wasn’t human. She knew that. She even accepted it, but that didn’t mean she wanted to know too much too fast. By going slow, she could accept the things she learned about him and not be afraid.

“Please be real,” she murmured against his mouth. His beautiful, fabulous mouth that could kiss like a dream. “I need you to be real.”

“I am real,” he assured, nuzzling the top of her head with his chin.

She continued to cling to him. “If you aren’t, I need to thank you.” She felt the instant tension coiling in his body, the rejection of what she needed to say. Her fingers bunched his hair in a tight fist. “No. I have to say this to you. You have to hear me, Maksim.”

She couldn’t look at him when she confessed. She was too ashamed. Her father would have been angry with her. Emeline knew her well enough to know what had been in her head or she wouldn’t have accepted Blaze having wild sex with a stranger so readily.

“I wanted to die last night. I intended to die.” She made the confession in a little rush. “I was supposed to work that shift and Dad took it for me. The police wouldn’t help me find him, and I looked everywhere I could think that they might take him, but I couldn’t find him. I was outside the bar in the early-morning hours, and they threw him out of a moving car at my feet. He was already dead. It was . . . unimaginable.” Pain broke through her voice. “I know I told you this, but you have to understand where my head was, what I would have done had you not saved me from myself.”

“Sufletul meu,” he whispered softly. Gently. His arms tightened around her, but the way he held her felt like comfort. Like shelter. “I am sorry I was not there to help you when you needed me.”

The hint of tenderness was nearly her undoing. She had to choke back a sob. “You saved my life.” He had to know. Whatever was between them, he had to know that if he hadn’t come along, if he hadn’t been so intense and passionate, making her feel alive again when she’d felt dead inside . . . “You were there when I needed you most.”

“You saved not only my life, Blaze,” he said, feathering kisses down the side of her cheek to her chin. “You saved my honor, and to a Carpathian, honor is everything. I would say we were more than even.” His fingers smoothed over her cheek.

Again there was a hint of tenderness in his touch that sent her stomach into a series of somersaults. She smiled up at him. “I just wanted you to know. In case. You know.”

He frowned. “In case, I know what? Clearly I don’t know.”

“Um.” Uh-oh. She didn’t like that look on his face. He could go from sweet to arrogant in the blink of an eye. Not just arrogant, but scary dangerous, don’t-mess-with-me gorgeous. “Just in case,” she persisted. But her voice stumbled. “Things don’t work out.”

His eyebrow shot up. “Things do not work out? What things? We will get those responsible for your father’s death. I already have men working on it. They are hunters. They have been hunting for centuries. Coonan will not escape and neither will his human killers.”

She really needed to leave it there. Honesty was only good when a man wasn’t looking down at you with predatory, glittering eyes, warning you to stop while you were ahead. So she stopped. But his arms didn’t loosen.

“I am not going anywhere. You are my lifemate. I realize we have not had the time to get to know one another or even to talk about what this really means, but know this . . . I. Am. Not. Going. Anywhere.”

She was getting that. Her stomach fluttered right before the somersaults started. He could do that to her without even trying. She cleared her throat. “I need to get inside. The club is filling up and Emeline is inside. If Jimmy Hallahan spots her before she dances, he’ll make a move on her. She’s that striking. Dancing, she’ll probably start a riot.” She wasn’t kidding about that, either. Emeline wasn’t merely beautiful. There was no way for Blaze to describe her adequately to Maksim. He had to see for himself.

“I am going to allow you to get away with that,” he said, his voice low as always. Still, she knew he was annoyed with her. There was the bite of a lash underlying his tone, making her shiver. “Remember I am your sugar daddy. Play your part.”

She felt the subtle difference in him immediately and she looked up, gasping at the change in his features. He looked much older, a good twenty or more years older than she was. His hair was short and definitely salt and pepper. His face had changed to that of a man who was definitely a powerhouse, but not so much in a physical way. He was corporate. His suit was worth upwards of a thousand dollars or more. His shoes were Italian.

She glanced down at her own clothes. Her jeans were gone. She wore a halter minidress. The front was two strips of material that barely covered her breasts, plunging below her waist with a bow and ruffle draping gracefully over the tiny skirt. There was virtually no back. The material clung to her body, showing off her figure. Her shoes were four-inch stiletto heels with dozens of straps going up her ankle. The dress was shorter than any she had ever worn before and far more expensive.

“You ever wear something like this without me right next to you, and we are going to have problems,” he said, taking her hand and leading her across the street to the club.

“Just pointing out, I don’t own anything like this,” she said, smoothing her hand down the silky material. It draped beautifully, but she could feel the breeze on her body as she took each step. “I think the thong is a little much,” she added. “The skirt barely covers my butt.”

“You have a great butt,” he pointed out. “We own a dance club and this attire is fairly tame in comparison to what quite a lot of the women wear. Besides, your sugar daddy is a total letch. Otherwise why would he bring his woman to a place like this? He will be touching you every chance he gets. The thong is something he probably wouldn’t want you wearing. I gave you that as a concession so I wouldn’t have to kill anyone tonight. You will not be leaving my side.”

A little shiver of anticipation went through her. The dress was beautiful and it fit like a glove. She wasn’t wearing a bra because it was impossible with the back and front, both nonexistent, totally bordering on indecency. She felt the material draping low, just above the curve of her butt, and with every step she took, it brushed over her skin like fingers.

Maksim’s hand was a brand on her back, low, right above the material, but sliding down every now and then to stroke the curve of her bottom. In her high heels, her body swayed with a subtle invitation so that the silk dragged across her nipples, sending little darts of fire straight to her core. The feeling was just plain sexy.

They turned heads as they walked in together. Maksim immediately leaned into the bouncer and spoke authoritatively in his ear. The bouncer nodded, signaled for a waitress and pushed the hundred-dollar bill into his pocket. It was done smoothly and Maksim’s hand never stopped stroking her bare skin and dipping lower to caress her buttocks.

They were led to a small, intimate booth raised so they could easily see the dancers onstage, but the lighting was low. “Perfect,” Maksim said, sliding another hundred toward the waitress. “Just what I asked for. See, honey, the table is draped. You need to slide under there and take care of me; no one can see a thing.” He said it loud enough for the waitress to hear. As he spoke, Maksim’s hand slid up her thigh, straight under the short hem of her dress to go up her hip.

Blaze stayed perfectly still, trying to control the heat in her body and the blush rising. The lights were low, and Maksim’s body was between her and everyone else, but still, it was a highly embarrassing moment. She was an object, there to serve him, and he was making that clear. The waitress flashed him a flirty smile, pushing the money down into her ample cleavage. She didn’t even look at Blaze, because clearly Maksim’s toy didn’t count, instead batting her lashes at Maksim and smiling huge for him.

He winked at the waitress and slid into the booth, pulling Blaze in after him. He ordered bourbon for himself and a blow job for Blaze. It was all she could do not to roll her eyes.

You don’t need to be so obvious.

Sure I do. The waitress will report the high roller obsessed with sex to her boss. I want his attention on me. They like high rollers here. They have a back room where the girls take customers for special shows.

They do? What had Emeline gotten herself into?

His hand dropped below the table to slide up her thigh, taking her skirt with it. All the while he smiled at the waitress. “Keep them coming, sweetheart. I heard the shows were great here and I think my girl is going to need to do a lot of work tonight, right, baby?”

Blaze leaned into him and licked up the side of his neck. “I’ll keep you happy, handsome. You know I always do.”

“Sometimes with a little help from your friends,” he said, and laughed coarsely.

The hand on her thigh traced patterns in her skin. His fingers were hot, branding those patterns into her skin. She didn’t want to be aware of him in such a sleazy place, but it was impossible. She knew he was playing a part and helping her to do the same, but she was already so aware of him, just the slightest touch sent little sparks of electricity surging through her bloodstream.

The waitress leaned close, giving him more of a view of her large breasts and just a hint of darker nipples barely hidden beneath her bustier. “We are very friendly here,” she assured in a purring voice.

Do you see Emeline anywhere? he asked.

There was a little note of worry in his voice, and that both pleased and worried her. She liked that he was anxious for Emeline’s safety but concerned that he felt the need to be anxious. She’d scanned the room the moment she’d walked in, but there were so many people. The room was dark so that she couldn’t see much but the raised stage where the dancers performed and the elevated cages where several dancers swayed, bumped and ground to the music.

She had thought of the club as a strip joint, but she could see it had been made into so much more than that. On the surface, the atmosphere would appeal to many young people as well as the men who came to see the strippers. Knowing there was a back room where other services could be bought explained the extreme popularity.

Emeline wasn’t near the stage, and even from their raised dais, Blaze couldn’t spot her anywhere. She searched the room for Jimmy Hallahan. He was near the bar, leaning down talking to their waitress. Twice he glanced toward their booth, and Blaze made certain her face was tipped up to stare at Maksim adoringly.

There was a shadow across her face, and she knew Maksim kept it there. No matter which direction she moved, her features were impossible to really see in the darkened room.

Hallahan is over by the bar with our waitress. He keeps looking this way. I don’t think he’s seen Em yet or he’d be all over her. She must be in the back with the other dancers getting ready for the show.

Just the sight of Jimmy Hallahan sickened her. She wanted to go to him, right there, press a gun to his chin and pull the trigger. When he’d thrown her father’s body from the car, he’d leaned out, laughing.

“Not yet,” he said softly, bending his head to put his lips against her ear. His hand rubbed along her thigh. The gesture wasn’t in the least sexual. He was comforting her. “We want information. Once you kill Hallahan, this place will go crazy. Especially if you do it out in the open. Have patience.”

That settled her stomach. She hadn’t even known until that moment her stomach was churning and bile was rising. Not until his soft, mesmerizing voice and the stroking caress of his hand calmed her.

“No one can really see my body, either, can they?” she asked with sudden insight. She turned her head and looked up at him. His jaw hardened, and it was already pretty hard. His black eyes burned, almost glowing in the dark.

“Do you really think I would expose your body to other men’s eyes? They do not see you. They see a woman with short black hair, in a white, not very decent dress, revealing what they believe is her body. It is not. Not even close.”

She should have known. He had created an illusion for himself; of course he would do the same for her. She saw herself, but no one else would. No one else could. Whatever body he had chosen, whatever face, definitely didn’t look a thing like her.

“I can feel your hands on my skin.”

“Because I can touch you. No matter what form either of us takes, we can always feel and see each other. If you look close enough, you will see past the form I created for me.”

“So do you see me in the dress, or do you see the form you created?” She was curious, because she could see her own body in the dress, the material teasing her nipples. She could feel his hand stroking up her thigh and over her bottom, sending a series of flames dancing through her core.

“Of course I see only you. I touch only you. You are beautiful, and in that dress—which should only be worn in a bedroom, not a club—I can feel a physical response. I do not have a physical response to other women. I am playing the part of a letch who cannot keep his hands off a woman. I have to make it look somewhat believable, and the only way I can do that is to see you and touch you.”

She liked that. She liked that a lot. She wasn’t certain, once the dancing started, that his assessment would hold true, but she liked that he thought it.

“I like that no one in the club can see me in this dress. More, I like that you don’t want them to,” she admitted.

“As long as I am close to you the illusion will hold. That is one of the many reasons you do not leave my side in this dress.”

“I will have to leave it in order to take care of Hallahan.” She looked right into his eyes. “It will be me taking care of him, not you. And not your friend.” She made it a firm statement, watching him the entire time. She wasn’t going to allow anyone else to avenge her father, and she wanted Jimmy Hallahan to know it was Sean’s daughter who took him down.

Maksim leaned into her, his body shifting slightly. At once she felt protected. Sheltered by him. His hand cupped her face gently, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw. “I know you now, lifemate. I see your need and as your lifemate, it is my duty to provide for you. I will not have you in danger, but when you can safely get to this man, I will shield you from the rest of the world and you can do what you have to in order to rid the world of a monster. Make no mistake, Blaze, Jimmy Hallahan was a monster long before Reginald Coonan got a hold of him, and now that he is under the influence of a vampire, he is worse than you can imagine. If your girl Emeline catches his eye, she will be in great danger.”

Blaze took a breath. “She’ll catch his eye. She’ll catch everyone’s eye.” Including his. Emeline was beyond beautiful and if she was dancing . . . Blaze had seen her moves on the dance floor of clubs and in the privacy of her home when Em and Blaze were having fun, drinking and showing off dance moves. No one moved like Emeline. She had always been super proud of Emeline, but now, she suddenly realized Maksim’s eyes would also be on her friend. He might believe he wouldn’t have a physical reaction to another woman, but once he saw Emeline, dancing or not, he would know he was wrong.

Maksim caught her chin in a firm grip, tilting her head, forcing her gaze to meet his. His eyes, so black she caught her breath at the emptiness she saw there, the endless black void. Cool. Remote. And then they blazed with life, with emotion, only for her. Only hers. Her breath caught deep in her lungs and she felt him there, inside of her. Moving in her mind. Deep in her body. Surrounding her.

“There is only you, Blaze. I realize it is a difficult concept to imagine that a man could be dead to all feeling, to all color, to everything but hunting until you walked into his life. Until I heard your voice and you brought me to life. That is the way our species is. You hold the other half of my soul. I cannot see other women. Not in the way that you fear. It is an impossibility.”

Her heart skipped a beat. He was telling the strict truth. She knew it by his voice. She knew it by the flaring of life in his eyes. She was in his mind and the truth was there as well. She moistened her lips. He was right. It was difficult to grasp the concept, even when he laid it out in front of her. She couldn’t imagine a man like him, a powerful, gorgeous all-male man going to a club and not reacting to the women and their bodies on display.

“Tell me your plan,” Maksim said. “I know you and your girl have got one. I have waited patiently for you to tell me.”

“You might not like it, but it makes sense.” Blaze found it strange and a bit thrilling to be sitting in a nightclub, seeing him, yet not seeing him, hearing his velvet hypnotic voice sliding over her skin—skin that wasn’t hers yet still was. She liked him sitting next to her. More, she felt safe. They were in the lion’s den and she felt safe.

“Tell me.”

She could give him that because already she knew his mind. She knew he kept his word, and she was beginning to know if something was important to her, it was important to him. “The Hallahan brothers have a reputation with women. They like to force their dancers to submit to them. The more high class the dancer, they more they’re determined to break her. Emeline is going to get Jimmy Hallahan’s attention, and he’s going to invite her upstairs to the apartment where they bring their women.”

“I figured that part out.”

His hand dropped to her thigh. Fingers splayed wide to take in as much bare skin as possible. He had big hands, and she felt he could almost wrap them around her leg right there. Her heart jumped and then began pounding like crazy, so hard she felt the rhythm of the pounding music surrounding them pulse in time to the beat of her heart.

“Jimmy will take her upstairs. I’ll find my way up there and he’ll get his chance to make peace with whatever god he believes in.”

“His god is a vampire, Blaze,” he said. “He has no mercy left in him. No goodness. He lives for others’ pain and for his own depravity. He has to hurt others because it is the only way the man can get off.”

She knew he was giving her a warning. He didn’t have to tell her that, though; she’d seen her father’s broken, torn body. The Hallahan brothers had taken their time torturing him. They’d kept him alive a really long time, and they hadn’t needed to. That meant they had prolonged his life—and his pain—for their own enjoyment. She felt that monster inside of her, opening. Blossoming. Needing. It was all she could do to force her body to sit in the booth and not walk right up to Jimmy Hallahan, shove a gun in his throat and pull the trigger.

“My man Tomas is watching your friend. I let him know to allow her to go up the stairs with Hallahan. I can cloak you so you can follow. But, Blaze.” His fingers bit deep into her thigh. “I am going to be right there as well. You will not see me, but if you get into trouble—either one of you—I take over and kill him myself. Do you understand?”

She knew he was asking more than the simple question. He was telling her she’d better stand down when he told her to, or there would be consequences. She wasn’t a woman who feared much but still, the steel underlying that velvet tone sent a shiver through her.

“I understand, Maksim. There are four of them. I want all four. And I don’t want Emeline hurt, so yes, if everything goes south, I welcome you bailing me out.” She looked up into his eyes to see if he got it. If he got her. She was giving him her trust. Walking another step into his world. Giving him something she hadn’t given any other man other than her father.

His eyes went hot. From cold to hot. For her. She leaned into him, put a hand on his chest and kissed his mouth. Hard. Wet. Delicious. Meaning it. His hand cupped the back of her head and his mouth took over hers. Harder. Wetter. More delicious than ever. Meaning it as well. So much so that she felt that meaning in every cell in her body.

Abruptly he lifted his head and pressed his forehead to hers. He is heading this way. Time for a show, Blaze. Are you up for it? Can you take it? Play the part? I do not want him close enough to see any detail of the real you.

She felt him moving in her mind, reassuring her. Filling her. Holding her in strong arms. She swallowed, nodded. Maksim applied pressure to the back of her head, and she let him ease her down so she was pressed with her mouth against his lower abdomen. She knew what to do, sliding her hands under his shirt, to lift it enough to press her lips to bare skin, effectively hiding her face.

“Jimmy Hallahan,” Jimmy said, his accent very thick. He slid into the booth on the other side of Blaze, his thigh touching hers. “The show’s about to start and I wanted to offer you anything you might need or want. Everything here can be yours if you want it. See you got your little skank in the right place. You’re going to need some relief after seeing what I got to offer for you.”

“Max,” Maksim stated. “And she’s a toy, not a skank. There is a difference, and if you do not know what it is, I feel sorry for you.” His hand stroked caresses over Blaze’s hair, calming her when the close proximity to the oldest Hallahan made her tense, sick and wanting to kill him all mixed together.

NINE

THE LIGHTS CAME up on the stage, and a small hush settled over the club. The dance music faded away, and men and women shifted eagerly in their seats for a better look in anticipation of what was to come. The oldest Hallahan brother leaned across Blaze’s body as if she wasn’t there, his concentration on Maksim.

“You’re going to love this,” he said. “And man, anything you want is on the menu.”

His hand dropped casually toward Blaze. Maksim caught his wrist. Showing teeth in a semblance of a smile, but his eyes were ice-cold. “Nothing here is on the menu.” The voice said it all.

I can’t stand it if he touches me. He’s so close I want to vomit. Or kill him. Blaze felt naked without her weapons. A knife. Anything. She could break his neck, but the scuffle—and there would be one—would attract the bouncers, and it was doubtful if she could snap it in time before help got to him. She had to be realistic, and it was getting nearly impossible to breathe. She’d been holding her breath since he’d slipped into the booth next to her.

Hallahan sent Maksim a toothy grin. His gaze dropped to the woman who had to mean something to the perverted man who had come to his club for playtime. A toy he’d said, but still, a treasured one or he wouldn’t care if Jimmy shoved her on the floor and used her mouth while he watched the show the other worthless skanks put on for the men. Teasing them. Showing off their bodies for money. He turned his dancers into what they were—whores. Worthless whores who were required to do whatever he or his brothers demanded. And they demanded anything they wanted. Anytime they wanted.

He glanced down at the woman again. Her face was pressed to the wealthy man’s bare belly. He couldn’t see her face, but her body was prime. He wasn’t used to being denied, but he smiled anyway. He would have the woman when he wanted her—right in front of the rich man. He’d make the old man watch for that insult.

He cannot put his hands on you, Blaze. Take a breath. All you will pull into your lungs is me, Maksim assured. The illusion of you is real enough that if he touches your thigh or your back or any part of you, he doesn’t actually feel you, but what I created. You think you feel him, but he is not touching you. I would never allow that.

Blaze took a moment more, her lungs burning. Raw. Needing air. She believed Maksim, but she couldn’t bear it if he was wrong and she allowed Jimmy Hallahan into her, even if it was just the same air. She had no choice but to breathe. She pressed her face—her mouth—hard against Maksim’s belly, down low, into the waistband of his trousers, and she took a shallow breath.

She drew Maksim deep. So deep she was almost dizzy. Her next inhale was anything but shallow because his scent, that perfect, wonderful masculine scent, obliterated everything that was Hallahan. She closed her eyes and took herself out of the club. She couldn’t be there with the man who had murdered her father pressed next to her, illusion or not. Her tongue slipped over Maksim’s defined muscles. She traced them with her tongue just to get his taste. To push Hallahan further away.

I can’t watch over Emeline in this position, Blaze said. Worried. She hadn’t expected Hallahan to approach Maksim and actually sit at his booth.

Maksim’s hand stroked a caress in her hair. Tomas is up close to the stage just in case your girl gets in trouble. One of his brothers arrived a few minutes ago. Lojos. He is standing beside the stairs leading to the apartment. Leaning against the wall, eyes on the stage. Both are like me. Carpathian. Nothing will happen to her.

The first dancer came out of the shadows into the spotlight, crawling like a jungle cat, her body in nothing but leopard paint. The paint was clever, hiding everything and nothing at the same time. It was her dancing that revealed her body to them, slow, teasing glimpses as she sensuously shimmied around the stage to the pounding music.

The entire atmosphere in the club changed. The sexual tension ramping up along with the music. Maksim’s hand tightened in Blaze’s hair.

They are pumping something through the ventilation system, Blaze. Some kind of pheromone that is subtle but with every breath these men and women take, it is affecting them just as a drug would.

Blaze kept her mouth pressed to Maksim’s bare skin. I understand now why they’re so successful. They don’t need the actual drugs to get the people stirred up to purchase the extras. The sex would be better than ever; at least they all think it is.

They are selling drugs as well, Maksim said, allowing his breathing to change so Hallahan would believe he was just as affected as everyone else in the club. Just as affected as Hallahan was becoming. It was there on his face, stark depravity. His hand had already dropped to his crotch.

“See what I mean, Maksim?” Jimmy said, all friendly, his voice tinged with need. “When you’re through with your woman, I could use a little relief myself.” Jimmy’s grin was full of confidence, now that the drug was being pumped into the club.

Maksim flashed him a quick, answering smirk, but didn’t reply out loud. He had to pretend the drug was affecting him as it was all the others in the club.

The music ended and the crowd went wild. The lights came down and the dancer rushed offstage. A woman dressed in the scanty uniform of a server picked up the money thrown on the stage and shoved it into a separate pocket on her apron.

“A thousand can buy you that dancer for an hour. She’ll do anything you want, and your girl can join in or watch or just stay and wait for you,” Hallahan offered. “I’ve had her myself and she’s a wildcat, just like her dance shows her.”

Maksim’s eyebrows shot up. “A thousand?”

“For an hour, and believe me, that’s cheap for what you’ll get. You want her all night, that’s ten large, but you’d better be able to keep up,” Hallahan said.

In between the dancers, the strippers in the cages were grinding and slowly taking off their clothes, as the music pumped adrenaline through the club. More and more, the audience was becoming as affected, and as uninhibited.

They have quite the racket going here. The drug everyone is inhaling is already affecting everyone, even without the strippers and dancers. Men are touching their partners openly. Women are beginning to respond by allowing more open public displays. Blouses open, hands on their men’s crotches. Two have already knelt down right on the floor and no one’s stopping them from what they’re doing. It is just adding to the already open, sexual atmosphere. Two uniformed cops are being serviced in the corner by two of the women serving drinks. Blaze, they have cameras in here. This place is a trap for anyone coming in. They drop hundreds on the strippers, then thousands for the extra time in the back room and the way they have everyone worked up, including the strippers and dancers, there is going to be a lot of action in that back room. They will certainly have cameras there as well. That means blackmail. Now we know how they own the police so quickly.

Blaze nuzzled his body. Emeline, she whispered into his mind. I can feel the effects and I’m not watching the show, but she’ll be dancing. She’s naturally sensual, Maksim. I don’t want anything to happen to her.

She was becoming affected. She could feel the compulsion to slide under the table with every breath she took. Her breasts ached, and a smoldering fire began between her legs. She was very grateful Hallahan could only see an illusion, the image Maksim allowed him to see, not her.

Three more dancers performed before the music changed altogether into a pounding beat—a beat everyone in the room could feel right through their already primed bodies. Men were kissing, touching, pushing partners to their knees, reaching under tables to put their hands up skirts.

They keep changing the angle of the cameras, Blaze. Zooming in. This place is all about blackmail. Hallahan is getting suspicious. Slide under the table and stay low, directly in front of me. I will do the rest. You do not move. Keep your hand on my leg so I know you are safe while I give him the illusion he is expecting. As the wealthy pervert in the room, I should be far more affected by the drug and the sights surrounding me. I am not in the least aroused.

She knew what that meant. She closed her eyes and let her hand slide over his lap, feeling the length of him. He wasn’t hard or even semi-hard, a state he had been in when he was alone with her. Her stomach churned. She knew Hallahan couldn’t see her, the real her, or even the real Maksim, but this was so insane. Trapped by the drug pumping through the air vents, Maksim had no choice but to respond like everyone else. He was shielding her, and taking the brunt of the disgusting close proximity of Hallahan. Laughing crudely with him. Assessing the dancers and strippers. Rating them. Being a sleaze—for her. She had forced him to come here with her, protecting her. Protecting Emeline. Not just him, but two other of his friends.

I’m sorry, Maksim. I didn’t know what it was like inside. I’ve scouted the place, but never saw it this way. I really didn’t know. Em didn’t know, either.

It is all right. I do not care about this man. He is already dead. He is letting little things slip while we talk. I am able to see the scope of this operation, and Blaze, it is large.

Hallahan suddenly hitched forward, his hand stilling on his crotch. The room went silent other than the heavy breathing. There were no more shouts of encouragement to the dancers, only enthrallment.

Keeping her hand on Maksim’s calf, Blaze lifted the corner of the tablecloth draped so conveniently, so she could see the stage. She knew the moment the hush fell over the crowd that Emeline Sanchez had stepped into the spotlight. There she was and she was gorgeous. Spectacular. Her hair was long and thick, shiny as a raven’s wing and a true blue black. The thick mass fell below her waist, caressing her body, a body that was all curves. Narrow waist. Tight belly with just the hint of a womanly curve, soft and inviting. Her body was covered in glitter, gold and silver. Glitter that picked up the lights and threw what appeared to be little sparks as she moved onstage to the music. She wore a tiny thong of gold, and two golden stars over her nipples, a thin gold chain running from one star to the other. Around her hips, low, was a second double golden chain, with small bells that added to the music as she became lost in the pounding beat.

She looked like a woman desperate, hungry, in so much need of a man, her hands moving down her body suggestively as her hips undulated and her breasts swayed. As she danced, she hypnotized her audience. She was sex personified. The kind of dangerous woman a man might kill for. Once he was under her spell, once he had a taste of her, he could never be the same.

Every single male in the room, and many of the women, followed the path of her hands as they moved over her body, so graceful, so sensual, the epitome of perfection.

Hallahan began to swear under his breath, and to her horror, he unzipped his trousers and pulled out his cock. At once Maksim slammed a barrier between Blaze and the man. She couldn’t see him or smell him. She huddled closer to Maksim’s protection, eternally grateful for him. Had she come into that club alone, she would have fallen under the spell of the drug as well. She had no idea what would have happened to her. She wasn’t as far gone as the others in the room, but she knew Maksim was somehow giving her as much clean air as he could, acting like a filter for her.

This has to end, Blaze said desperately. I don’t want Em to regret helping me.

That dancing is all your girl, sufletul meu; Tomas and Lojos are filtering the air for her. She is very aware something is wrong. They do not know how she is so aware. As a rule, we can read humans easily when we want, but there is something different about her. I have tried as well, but it is impossible.

“Her,” Maksim said aloud to Hallahan. “I want that girl.”

“No fucking way,” Hallahan said. Choking on his own desperate hunger. “That one is all mine. She isn’t up for sale.”

Blaze heard his breathing change, become labored, and she knew the exact moment when he relieved himself, but she didn’t smell it or see it. Still, her stomach lurched again. She detested that he could see Emeline’s body. That he thought he could touch her, have her, force her to do whatever he wanted.

Hallahan abruptly stood. “I’ll send your waitress over.” He kept his eyes on the stage. “She’ll take your order.” He strode away, straight for the stage.

Blaze immediately slid back to the seat and leaned in to kiss Maksim. She had to get rid of the terrible taste in her mouth. The feeling of having come too close to real depravity. Maksim didn’t deny her. He kissed her gently. Tenderly. Blocking out everything but the way he made her feel. Safe. Secure. Comforted. Close to him.

He pulled back, his gaze moving over her face, clearly checking to see if she was okay. “We are going to get up and walk over toward the stairs. The women’s restroom is located just beyond them. It will look as if you are heading there and that you disappear inside. You and I will follow Hallahan and your girl up to the apartment. We will have to stay close. He has guards on the stairway. Do not make the mistake of brushing against them as we go up. They will feel a presence, perhaps even the air moving, although all of them are jacked up on the drug, so they will have their eyes on your girl. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “I take him down.”

“He will not see me, but again, if something goes wrong, it will be me taking him down. Tomas and Lojos will remain downstairs in case anyone is alerted to something happening and they try to rescue their boss. It is important to remember, his brothers will turn up sometime this evening. Tariq and Mataias have interrupted one of their jobs, and they already blew it by not killing or acquiring you.”

“Acquiring me?” She was already up and sliding out of the booth, her eyes on the oldest Hallahan brother, who remained beside the stage on the side where the dancers exited on the way back to the dressing room. He hadn’t taken his eyes from Emeline. In truth, no one else had, either, other than Blaze and the three Carpathian males.

“They had no idea you were bringing the war to them.”

“I issued an invitation.”

He took her hand and pulled her tight against his side, moving her easily through the crowd toward their goal. He didn’t speak to or shove anyone, but they moved when they saw him coming. Even in his disguise, he had presence.

“Neither Tariq nor I believed they came to kill you. They came for you. Once we realized you have a psychic ability, we were fairly certain they were there to acquire you for their boss.”

They had made their way to the stairway. Maksim took them into the shadows just outside the women’s restroom and to the left of the stairs. Instantly, she found herself wearing her normal attire, dark jeans and shirt, and her soft-soled boots. Her weapons were all there, in her belt, in her boots, strapped against her back between her shoulder blades. The weight felt familiar, and she found herself breathing easier.

“How could they possibly know I have a psychic ability?”

“Did you ever go to a place that tested your abilities?”

The music was louder, leading to a crescendo. The mesmerized crowd seemed to be collectively breathing in time to the music, ragged and labored, very sexual, so that tension permeated the room. Blaze switched her gaze from Emeline to the crowd. Emeline seemed to be in her own world, a part of that music, a living flame of pure sensuality. She moved on the stage as if she was alone, calling a secret lover to her. Wanting. Needing. Her body undulating, hands moving over her curves as she danced. The crowd seemed just as hungry now, as if every movement Emeline made onstage, they felt in their own bodies. At last, because she had to, Blaze let her gaze rest on Jimmy Hallahan.

His face was flushed, eyes bright. He looked under the influence of drugs, and he probably was, but it was more than that. She knew it was. Something else drove him, and his sights were set on Emeline.

“My father, Em and I all went to this psychic testing center. We did it for fun. We all had these strange things we could do. Em tested the strongest. She was kind of off the charts. Somewhere along the line, all of us got these bad vibes, so we walked out without really completing the tests. Emeline especially was really upset, and for a few weeks she was always looking over her shoulder. She said she thought the tests were for something else. I just felt the bad vibe and Dad, well, Dad could be paranoid.”

“There is a database of women who took those tests. Vampires were after them. Carpathians recently got a hold of the database and we are sending out hunters to protect them. We just have to make certain we get there before the vampires do.”

Blaze still wasn’t comfortable with the term vampire. She believed him. She believed him because she had always believed Emeline. Emeline had described in detail exactly what she’d witnessed, and there was no doubt that two men with rotting flesh had sunk teeth into their victim and drained blood. She could see it smeared on their mouths and on their jagged, stained teeth. And of course, there was the nightmare . . .

For a short while, both women had tried to explain the vampirish-looking males as having a disease, but two with the disease? And there were killings of the homeless, of prostitutes, bodies torn and drained of blood. No one believed in vampires but secretly, she and Em, when they were young and Em lived mostly in the streets, creeping up to Blaze’s room at night through the fire escape, had believed in another world.

They had the same nightmare and in that nightmare, there were vampires, monstrous creatures chasing them through a long, dark tunnel. They would wake, both shivering, sweating, scared out of their minds. Emeline was always quiet and she stayed awake, curled into a protective ball, her knees up tight into her chest, her head resting on them, arms around her legs as she rocked herself back and forth.

Over the years, the nightmare became more vivid, the tunnel even more real. They could see the gaslights up high on the wall of the tunnels, throwing a strange, yellowish glow through the darkness. The tunnel walls were of brick. Old brick. The tunnel itself was musty and smelled evil, as if it had been used for a long time by malevolent beings for foul purposes.

There were smears of blood on the walls as they ran down them. On the bricks and on the floor. Dark and ugly. They raced through a room with ancient tools of torture and kept going. Neither spoke, but they touched hands occasionally to give each other strength and courage.

Below ground seemed to be a maze of tunnels, of dark, hideous rooms, none good, most empty, but the echo of screams had been left behind. There was a room that was all modern. Totally modern. Computers everywhere. Screens everywhere. They both knew this was the center of the maze, and they had to get out before they were seen. If they didn’t . . . They ran faster. Hearts beating wildly. Terrified. Terror grew beyond imagination as the tunnel they rushed through began to contort, the walls closing together, the ceiling lowering and the floor pitching. At that moment, as if by mutual agreement, they woke.

She didn’t know if Em still dreamt that terrible dream, but once Emeline had stopped slipping into her room through the fire escape and Sean had sent her out of the country, the nightmares had stopped.

“When this is over, we will have to protect your friend. They will keep coming after her.”

“Emeline won’t accept protection. She has major trust issues. Her life hasn’t been pleasant. She takes care of herself and she’s loyal to Dad and me . . .” Blaze trailed off. There was no more Dad. There was only Blaze. Now Blaze and Emeline.

“She will not have a choice.”

The music ended with a crashing of drums. The stage went dark. The crowd went wild. Blaze saw Emeline running toward the exit and Hallahan coming out of the shadows, shackling her wrist and jerking her toward him. Emeline struggled and Hallahan leaned in close and whispered something in her ear. She stopped struggling, but her gaze slipped passed Jimmy to scan the room.

“She can’t see me,” Blaze said, trying not to panic.

“No. If I allow her to see you, someone else might as well. Tomas and Lojos are sticking close. If we cannot get to her, if he takes her somewhere else, they will stop him.”

The Hallahan brothers were predictable. They used the upstairs apartment where they had their video equipment set up to record their perverse, depraved acts. They enjoyed hurting the women they brought there, humiliating them and forcing compliance. Still, Blaze didn’t like that Emeline might feel abandoned. Scared. She detested that Em might be frightened and afraid that Blaze hadn’t come to the club to protect her.

There were too many nights Em had climbed up to the roof and down to the fire escape, running from someone in the streets. Hiding from men who would hurt her. She’d had a shit life, even after Sean had tried to get involved. No one would consider him as a foster parent because he owned a bar, lived over it and was a single parent. A man. That left Emeline to her crazy relatives. Junkies and alcoholics. The worst. They used her as a slave in the store they collectively owned, although she preferred working there to being at home.

She was held at gunpoint four times. Shot once. Was back in the store working the night shift even when she was underage and they mostly sold liquor late at night. Sean kept an eye out, but he had a business of his own to run, so more than once she was in trouble. A young girl alone, men coming in drunk or jacked up on drugs.

Emeline, she whispered softly, trying to connect mind to mind. Don’t be afraid. I’m here for you.

Jimmy Hallahan gripped Emeline by her arm, and if anyone looked close, he had it locked high behind her back as he dragged her through the crowd to the stairs. Beside her, Maksim radiated heat. Energy. None of it was good. The power was so strong that she touched his arm to calm him, afraid Hallahan and his guards would feel the Carpathian’s buried rage.

Jimmy was so far gone, in the throes of the drug, he didn’t look right or left, but continued dragging Emeline up the stairs. He had a phone in one hand now, flipping it open, talking into it.

“Answer your damn phone once in a while. I’ve got a hot one. So hot, man. Get back here when you’re finished with your job. This whore is going to make the three of you happy.” He snapped the phone closed and thrust open the door to the apartment.

Blaze followed them up the stairs, right behind them, so close she could practically breathe on Emeline. She didn’t dare touch her, but she wanted to. Right behind her, Maksim followed. They slipped through the door as Hallahan shoved Emeline, sending her flying across the room. She stumbled, lost her balance in her crystal stiletto heels and sprawled out on the floor.

Jimmy slammed the door, locked it and turned back to her with a vicious, hungry smile.

TEN

JIMMY HALLAHAN STALKED across the room, reached down and hauled Emeline up by her hair. “You stupid little whore. I tell you to come, you come. You got that? You capable of understanding that when a man tells you to do something, you fucking do it?” He slapped her hard.

Emeline didn’t answer. She didn’t resist. She didn’t cry or make a sound. She simply looked at him. Right in the eye. That was Em. She didn’t back down. She wasn’t trained in warfare like Blaze, but she had courage. She’d grown up on the streets and she wasn’t afraid to die. She had never been afraid to die. Sometimes Blaze thought she was more afraid of living.

“I feel you in here, Blaze,” Emeline said. “You here?”

Can you muffle sound? Blaze asked Maksim.

Of course. He can yell all he wants, but no one will hear him.

“Yeah, babe, I’m here,” Blaze said as she moved into position behind Hallahan and kicked him hard with the toe of her boot right behind his knee. At the same time she fisted his hair and yanked him over backward, stepping to the side so that he toppled hard. The moment he was on the floor, she stomped his throat.

I want him to see me.

He will see you.

Jimmy rolled, swearing, his gaze jumping to her face. She stepped back and watched him stand up, his hand going to his boot to extract a knife. She smiled at him. “Welcome to the party, Jimmy.”

“Welcome to my party, bitch.” He brought the knife low, blade up, and circled her.

“Emmy, why is it that men always call a woman a bitch when she does the exact same thing as the man?”

“I think it’s a lack of vocab, Blaze,” Emeline said, stepping well back, giving Blaze room. “It isn’t like Jimmy Hallahan has much of an education. He dropped out of school to build bombs, and he wasn’t very good at it. He got caught three times and went to prison all three times. Didn’t learn much there, either.” She didn’t touch her swelling face, cover up or in any way act afraid. That was Em.

“Maybe he learned how to be a bitch, a prison bitch,” Blaze said. “That’s why he likes to use that word. He’s kind of describing himself.”

Jimmy roared with rage and stepped into her, using his size, expecting to intimidate her, thrusting upward toward her belly as he came. She slapped his wrist down hard, as she glided to the side, her speed taking her out of his path, her foot slamming hard into the side of his knee, driving it in so that he stumbled. She kicked his kneecap viciously, putting her weight behind it. She didn’t weigh all that much, but it only took eighty pounds of pressure to break the kneecap, and she used every ounce she had.

He went down screaming. Swearing. His face twisted in fury. He spat on the floor, eyes wild, as he tried to drag himself up, the knife still clenched in his fist.

“Your father screamed like a girl. Like a fucking pig.”

She raised her eyebrows, staying just out of reach. “Like you just did? Because that was you screaming, Jimmy, and a girl did that. Sean’s daughter. She took you out. No one can hear you. No one is coming to save you. Not your guards. Not your brothers. You’re going to die here, and you’ll die knowing a girl took your worthless, sorry ass down.”

She kept her voice even, although inside she was crying for her father. This man had tortured him. Even enjoyed it. She knew if he got his hands on her or Emeline, he would do the same to them. She half turned away from him, her gaze jumping to her friend’s, checking to see that she was all right.

Jimmy shrieked his fury again, trying to rise. At the last moment, he threw his knife straight at her. Blaze moved with blinding speed—speed she didn’t even know she had. She was out of the way of the poorly spinning blade. The four throwing knives she had concealed in the loops of her belt didn’t miss. She was deadly accurate with them, she had been since she was six years old. That was the last time she could ever remember missing, even by an eighth of an inch. Four silver hilts protruded, one from his throat, one from his heart, one from his groin and one from his belly.

“Overkill much?” Emeline asked.

“He tortured Dad; there is no such thing as overkill,” Blaze said, unrepentant. “I gave him his chance. He lost.”

Emeline pressed back against the wall, her eyes showing shock, staring down at Jimmy Hallahan. His head was turned toward Emeline, eyes wide open. “You should have heard the things that scumbag said he was going to do to me.”

Maksim materialized out of the corner, and Emeline gasped but said nothing at all as he crouched beside the body. Her gaze jumped to Blaze for reassurance.

“He’s with me,” Blaze said.

“I think I got that. What is he doing?”

Maksim put a hand on either side of Hallahan’s head. “I am going to read his memories, before all activity in his brain ceases.”

“No.” Emeline took a step forward, but carefully avoided touching Maksim. “You can’t. There’s something—someone—else in him. I don’t care if you believe me. I saw him. I think he was using Jimmy as some kind of conduit. He looked right at me. As he was dying, he turned his head and looked right at me.”

Maksim let Hallahan’s head fall back to the floor and he slowly stood. Blaze immediately went to Emeline and put her arm around her. Em had all the courage in the world, but she looked pale and shaky.

“It was him. The one I saw before, Blaze,” Emeline said, looking into Blaze’s eyes, willing her to believe. “I know it was and he recognized me.” She shuddered. “Just like in my dream.”

“We have to get out of here,” Maksim said. “Right now.” He waved his hand at the knives on the body and they were instantly gone, returned clean to the loops in Blaze’s belt. He removed all evidence of their presence in the room. “I need to take your girl’s blood.”

“No way,” Emeline clapped both hands over her neck and slipped behind Blaze.

Blaze felt her heart twist in a funny way. No one could resist Emeline. No one. Not, it appeared, even Maksim. She stepped away from him, her body protective of Emeline, feeling her trembling. Inside, her own body was shivering, and something precious was crumbling away, but she stood, ready to defend Em against the man she knew she was already irrevocably tied to. She had let that happen. She had gone into the relationship—if you could call it that—with her eyes wide open.

“Sufletul meu.” He whispered it.

Blaze knew it was an endearment. It was in the tone. In the way he said it. The way he looked at her. She shook her head, resisting his lure.

“Do you know what that means?” he asked softly. “It means you are my soul. The air that I breathe. And, Blaze, you are. You are both those things to me. Never doubt, not even for a moment, that the only woman I see is you.”

Blaze’s heart shifted. Melted. Her stomach did a slow somersault. He said the most ridiculous things to her, but they worked. He always sounded sincere. She knew he was capable of great violence. He might be very soft spoken, but he was dangerous. There was no doubt in her mind, but still, he said things like that and she was a puddle on the floor.

“We do not want anyone to see us leave. We want Jimmy Hallahan found in this apartment dead and no one to say we were ever here,” Maksim explained gently.

“Everyone saw Jimmy drag me up the stairs,” Emeline pointed out. “And there are cameras everywhere.”

“Tomas and Lojos took care of the cameras, and the woman Hallahan dragged up the stairs didn’t look anything at all like you,” Maksim said. “I am not going to hurt you. I need to see what you saw. I need to know you will not ever betray us. If I do not have your blood when I step out of this room, I cannot guarantee your safety.”

“I can,” Blaze said, anger creeping into her voice. “Don’t threaten her.”

“I am not making threats,” Maksim said, impatience beginning to edge his unflappable calm. “I am stating facts. Think about it, Blaze. I am Carpathian. We are hunted already by humans who believe we are vampires. We hunt the vampires they cannot. If the world knew of us, imagine the persecution of our people.”

Emeline kept her hand wrapped around her throat. “I am not going to say a word. I had to leave the country and the only two people in the world I loved because I used the word vampire in my statement to the police.”

“You knew for certain it was a vampire,” Blaze said with sudden insight. “Emmy, you knew. How?”

“We have to leave now,” Maksim said. “I have to shield you. Two of the Hallahan brothers just entered the club. Tomas says we have to move.” He gently moved Blaze out of his way. “I swear to you, I will not hurt your friend.”

Emeline kept her hands pressed to her neck. “I know what could happen. I know.”

“If you know the difference between a Carpathian and a vampire, you know I will not harm you. Let me keep Blaze safe. She will not leave you here to face them alone.”

“I want them to come in,” Blaze said. “It is my chance to get two more of his brothers.”

“We need them to lead us to their master,” Maksim said. “Cutting off the soldiers will not get us the head.”

Blaze looked into Emeline’s eyes. “You call it, honey.”

Emeline took a deep breath and slowly allowed her hands to drop, her eyes on Blaze. “Stay with me.”

“I’m with you.”

“Just like this.” She kept staring into Blaze’s eyes with trust.

Blaze knew there wasn’t a single soul in the world Emeline trusted other than Blaze. “Just like this.”

“If he kills me, you’ll kill him, right?” Emeline persisted. Her body shook.

“Yes, honey. He wouldn’t be the man I believe him to be. You’re my sister now. My family. There is just the two of us.”

“Three,” Maksim corrected. “I belong to you, Blaze, and you to me. She’s your girl, so that makes her mine as well. I would protect both of you with my life. My friends will do the same.”

“If you’re for real,” Emeline said, “you’ll need a lot of friends to keep us safe, because the vampire is going to come after me.”

“Any moment he will be here,” Maksim said softly. “We have to get you out.”

Emeline didn’t touch Blaze, leaving both her hands free in case Maksim was lying and was going to kill her. Blaze didn’t understand why Emeline was so certain she was going to die. Em didn’t move, but her entire body shuddered when he touched her. He blinked. Startled. Stepped back.

“Your mind is shielded. I cannot help you by calming you. You have to let me in.”

Emeline shook her head. “Just do it. I want to know.”

“I will be as gentle as possible,” Maksim said, not arguing. “You will feel a bite of pain and then it will not hurt. It will not feel the same as it does to Blaze, or if your lifemate were to take your blood, but it will not hurt.”

He bent his head and without further preamble sank his teeth into her neck. She gasped, but she didn’t move. Blaze stared into her eyes, giving her reassurance. Taking her trust. Maksim opened her mind to his so she could feel what he was feeling. So she could hear.

Get. Out. Of. There. A man’s voice whispering in Maksim’s ear. Lojos. Blaze knew because Maksim identified him for her.

If you cannot get them out, we will have to kill these two. Mataias already killed one of them. We have only these two to lead us to Reginald. That was a different voice. That was Tomas.

So two Hallahans were dead. Blaze would have killed the other two as they came into the room, but with the vampire after Emeline, she was going to have to have patience and allow them to live so they could lead the Carpathian hunters back to their master. She’d strike then and allow the hunters to kill their prey.

Maksim swept his tongue across the pinpricks at Emeline’s neck and waved the women to the side of the door as he lifted his head. “I will mask our presence. The moment the door opens and they are through, Blaze, lead her out. I will bring up the rear. They will not see you, but do not brush up against them or anyone on the stairs.”

Blaze nodded and gripped Emeline’s elbow. “We’ll be all right, Em. We’re just going to go straight through the club and out the door.”

Emeline’s face was stark white. “We have to hurry. Oh, God, Blaze. He’s close. I can feel him close now. Do you feel that? Like in the dream.” Her voice was a panicked whisper. Emeline didn’t panic. She was a street rat and she could disappear when she needed, slipping away through cracks in walls and over rooftops. She had mad skills in the streets, and she never lost her ability to think. Her brain worked at all times, solving puzzles and figuring out the next thing to do. Blaze knew she must be terrified to sound so close to panic.

Before Blaze could reassure Emeline, the door bounced open and Terry and Carrick Hallahan burst into the room. Before Carrick thought to close the door, Blaze hurried through, dragging Emeline after her, trusting Maksim to keep them cloaked from view. She didn’t look back, but she heard the shocked curses as she made her way down the stairs, right past the Hallahans’ guards. She kept one hand on Emeline’s shoulder, but Em didn’t hesitate; she moved through the crowd quickly, not even looking at the two men closing in on either side of them.

Tomas and Lojos? Blaze wanted their identity confirmed. She was certain she was right. Both men had the same dangerous look to them that Maksim did. They were tall with that long, dark, gorgeous hair. Clearly they were twins. Still . . .

Hurry, Blaze, Maksim insisted, telling her without answering that the two men were his friends.

She could feel it now, the swelling danger. The feeling of evil slowly invading the club. The air felt poisonous. She held her breath and knew Emeline was doing the same thing.

Around them, the crowd began to shift restlessly. A fight broke out near the front door. A shot rang out. A woman screamed. Two men rushed the cages and dragged a stripper out, throwing her to the floor. More fights broke out between them and the nearest exit. The smell of blood was strong.

Tomas moved up in front of Emeline.

Stay close to him, Maksim warned the two women, startling Emeline with telepathic communication. Do not speak aloud or even attempt an answer in your head. He is seeking you.

Something dark and oily slid by, jerked to a halt, and for the first time, Blaze saw him. Her heart nearly stopped beating in her chest. She could see why Emeline had been so terrified from the moment she had escaped this monstrous beast. At first glance, he looked to be a handsome, courtly man in a dark business suit. She stared at him intently and saw through the illusion. It took everything she had in her, every ounce of courage, not to scream.

This was her first real look at the undead. He was far worse than anything Hollywood could ever have conceived. His skin was white, pasty white. His gums had receded, leaving jagged teeth clearly stained with blood. His flesh appeared to be falling off his skull, with small tears where tiny parasites wiggled. His hair hung long in tufts and dank, dirty strands. Bald spots showed through the thin, frizzy threads, and she could see the same wiggling parasites boring through unsightly holes.

His eyes glowed red and his teeth snapped together. “I smell you,” he hissed as he reached long arms with bony fingers toward Emeline.

Tomas, the Carpathian guard closest to her, leapt to protect her, to insert himself between them as Blaze threw her body against Emeline’s, pushing her forward and out of the vampire’s reach. The terrible talons settled around her wrist, jerking her toward the undead. Tomas’s body blocked hers from Reginald Coonan.

Blaze screamed as the razor-sharp nails cut her wrist, burning her skin with an acid-like substance. Blood sprayed into the air. Tomas hit Reginald hard, driving him backward into the crowd. The vampire kept possession of Blaze’s wrist, his talon sawing deeper, opening the laceration wider. Maksim slammed his fist deep into the master vampire’s chest, seeking the heart.

Reginald screamed, still dragging Blaze backward, falling toward the crowd. The crowd could see his monstrous appearance as he leaned down and drove his teeth deep into Blaze’s shoulder, just missing her neck. Chaos erupted; people stampeded for the exits, knocking one another down and trampling the fallen.

Blaze felt the vampire elevating their fear. He twisted and raked Maksim’s face and throat with his claws. Swarms of parasites raced up Maksim’s fist and arm, eating the flesh, as he tried to burrow deeper into the vampire’s chest. It was impossible with the undead twisting and ripping at Blaze’s shoulder with his teeth as he did so. Maksim had no choice but to protect her. He withdrew his fist and used both hands to knock the vampire off of her, sending him flying across the room.

Behind them, Emeline screamed. The sound was chilling, filled with sheer terror. Blaze turned her head, trying to spot Emeline through the stampeding crowd. She caught glimpses of Lojos fighting with something every bit as evil as Reginald. The thing, once Carpathian, was now as monstrous as the master vampire, maybe more so, and it had Emeline locked in front of it, holding her as a shield by driving four talons from each hand into the flesh and bone of her rib cage.

Emeline hung suspended in the air, the razor-sharp stiletto knives embedded deep. She thrashed and fought, but the vampire backpedaled through the crowd, holding her off the ground by the blades as he deliberately stomped and kicked men and women lying on the floor like so much litter.

Reginald flew through the air, a dark shadowy figure above the crowd, descending straight toward Blaze, his arms lengthening as Maksim leapt to intercept him. Blaze’s wrist continued to spray blood. She felt burns right down to her bones, as if, when the vampire ripped her wrist open, he’d dumped acid into the wound. She could see the arm snaking around Maksim, although the two bodies collided in midair. Hastily she drew a knife from her belt loop, heedless of the blood loss. As the arm approached, the bony fingers stretching to reach her, she sliced down and across, putting every ounce of strength she had into the attack.

Reginald couldn’t actually see her because Maksim and he fought viciously, tearing at each other’s chests. She leapt back the moment the blade went through flesh and bone, severing the hand. Reginald screamed horribly. Black blood sprayed the room, bubbling on the floor and fallen bodies, burning right through everything. She hadn’t expected the hand to fall, but she had a newfound strength she couldn’t explain.

The hand didn’t remain stationary, but began to roll in an attempt to get back to its owner. She stumbled, terrified at what these creatures were capable of. Emeline’s screams drew her attention away from the fear. Her heart nearly stopped when she saw Emmy still suspended in the air by the razor-sharp talons driven into her ribs.

Trusting Maksim to deal with the vampire, Blaze ran toward Emeline, leaping over fallen bodies, ignoring the cries of those being sprayed by acid-like blood, and whipped out a gun. She was a crack shot even on the move. She’d been practicing since she was three years old. She fired five shots in rapid succession at the vampire suspending Emeline in the air. She hit both eyes, his nose, and drilled two more bullets into his gaping mouth.

Instantly the knives dissolved, and Emeline dropped to the club floor, Lojos cushioning her fall. He clamped both hands hard to the sides of her body and lifted her into his arms. Now that Emeline was safe, the adrenaline left Blaze’s body and she found herself sitting abruptly. Right there in the middle of the floor. A chill swept through her body. She felt numb, and cold. So cold.

“I am going to lift you,” a man’s voice said.

She could barely lift her head. He reached over her shoulder and removed the gun from her hand. She couldn’t keep a grip on the stock, even if she could summon the will to do so. The gun slipped from her nerveless fingers, and then he clamped his hand around her wrist. Hard. Like a vise. It hurt. Burned.

“I am Tomas.” Maksim, we have to go now if your lifemate will live. Let him go. Mataias will track them. She’s lost too much blood. Far too much.

Blaze found her head too heavy to keep upright and she let it fall against his chest. Emeline was gone, carried out by the man called Lojos that Maksim trusted. She had no choice but to trust him as well. Tomas hurried out with her, and she felt Maksim pouring into her mind. Strong. So strong.

Do not leave me, Blaze.

Tomas rushed through the door, leaving the club behind, and she must have been dreaming because she swore they were moving through the air, the wind rushing past her head. Still, the cool breeze didn’t clear the fog from her mind. She remained confused. She clung to Maksim’s mind, although it was Tomas holding her, keeping her from tumbling back to earth.

I am with you, sufletul meu. I will always be with you. I have no choice but to bring you fully into my world, or I will lose you, Blaze. Give me your consent. You have lost too much blood. You already are walking mostly in my world with me. Come wholly to me. Give yourself to me. You will be like me, and together we will find the undead who ordered your father’s death.

He didn’t need to entice her into his world. She’d already made up her mind. Only Emeline held her where she was, and Emeline seemed to know and accept the Carpathian world of the undead far more than she did. In any case, it was Maksim fading in and out, not her.

She tried to reassure him, but the effort seemed too much and she was cold. They shouldn’t be rushing through the clouds, so far from earth, because she just couldn’t get warm.

ELEVEN

MAKSIM CAUGHT UP with Tomas, slid his arms around Blaze and took her from the ancient Carpathian, making the switch right in the air. Make certain her friend is safe and attended to. Blaze definitely needed blood and she needed it fast. He could feel her slipping, but Tomas had stopped the blood loss and sealed the tear so she wasn’t losing any more.

Maksim used one nail, even in flight, to open a line for her. He pressed her mouth to the ruby beads. She didn’t need to be prompted or pushed. Blaze fed. She took his blood and she did it without hesitation.

Lojos says her friend has also lost a lot of blood, Tomas informed him.

Maksim was grateful Tomas stayed on his flank, protecting his lifemate. The vampires in the bar had acted out of character. Their focus had been to acquire the two women. Emeline, for certain.

Give her blood if she needs it. Keep her alive. Lojos, do not let her out of your sight until we figure out what is going on and why they want her.

This one is a powerful psychic. I can feel the energy pouring off of her, Lojos interjected. She does not like my touch and wants away from me. I do not feel her fear so much as her distaste.

Keep her alive, Maksim reiterated, although if she were psychic, each of the men would be very aware of the fact that she could be a lifemate to another Carpathian, and they would guard her with their lives.

He poured himself into Blaze’s mind while she fed, filling her with his warmth, reassurance and strength. She stirred, letting Maksim know she was aware of him, but she didn’t speak. She let him fill her, not trying to hold barriers between them, accepting him in her mind, allowing him to take control. He knew the things that drove her. He knew the good things about her as well as the bad. He knew the strengths and weaknesses of her character.

She took his blood, knowing full well she was taking that last step into his world. He only had to take her blood for the exchange, and the conversion would begin. He hoped to finish that quickly—as soon as he got her to his home.

He loved that he knew her far more intimately than anyone else on the planet. Her father had shaped her character very early on. She was a fighter. A warrior. She was soft inside, but she had a core of strength that was unbelievable. She was skilled and already she was moving through his mind each time they shared telepathy, in order to acquire his skills as a hunter of the undead.

Enough, Blaze. He couldn’t be too weak when he converted her. He would have to help her through what he’d heard was an extremely rough ordeal. His lifemate would die as a human and be reborn a Carpathian.

She obeyed him, again without hesitation, as if she knew how important this night was, and that he had to be at the top of his strength. Her tongue slid across the opening over his heart, and his body shuddered with the pleasure the tiny gesture brought.

He took her toward the river, where Tariq Asenguard had a huge compound. Maksim’s home lay behind the larger estate. He had less acreage because he didn’t need it, not so close to Tariq. They were neighbors, and few trespassed on their properties. The Asenguard property was set well back from the tall, iron fence, with its scrolls and sharp spear-like points at the top. Climbing over the fence was nearly impossible, and with the safeguards, humans avoided the place.

He tightened his hold on Blaze. She had agreed to come into his world completely. He searched carefully in her mind for any hesitation, and he found none. She believed in him. She could read his mind in the same way he could read hers. She didn’t understand their connection, not like he understood it, but she accepted it. He began the descent at the back fence of Tariq’s property. The forest was thickest there, a dark grove of trees, unexpected on the edge of the city.

Something came out of the sky just to his left, entering his vision from the south, over the river. It dropped from the clouds, plummeting fast and streaking right toward them. Tomas put on a surge of speed to intercept. The missile went through him with such force it continued on to strike Maksim in the calf. Fire burned white-hot through him, and instantly thousands of needles pierced his flesh and entered his bloodstream.

Tomas grunted and began to drop, forcing Maksim to get beneath him to stop his descent. He managed to wrap one arm around Tomas. To his shock, Blaze stirred, seemed to comprehend the danger, and she reached out and took hold of the Carpathian hunter with her one good arm.

Tariq, we are under attack. Where are you and Mataias?

Maksim’s voice was as calm as ever, but he knew the situation was dire. Tomas was in bad shape. The spear of fire had cauterized the wound, but it had also injected both of them with something poisonous. Blaze needed blood. A lot of it.

I have your blood in me, she reminded. I can feel it working to keep me alive. Tell me what to do for both of you.

They were close to the ground. Even if he burrowed deep, he knew they wouldn’t have been attacked in the air if there weren’t something worse waiting on the ground. He had no choice with Tomas so injured.

They will come at us, Blaze. Tomas has put himself to sleep. He will be unprotected and very vulnerable. I do not know what poison has been used, but I can already feel the effects.

Who are “they”?

Two master vampires attacked in the club. They will have lesser vampires and human puppets serving them.

Any special way to kill a human puppet?

They are hard to kill and once you have, you have to burn them. The heart of the vampire must be removed and incinerated for him to die.

He felt the steel in her. Yes, his blood was bringing her back but she was already a warrior, prepared to take on whatever came at them and protect both Tomas and Maksim should it be necessary.

I don’t have the strength to punch through their chest to get at the heart.

If you find yourself that close, Blaze, use a knife, go in fast and use a circular motion to cut out a path. Get back, dart in a second time and keep at it. They cannot get their hands or teeth on you. Their blood will burn like acid.

She nodded, taking a grip on Tomas with renewed strength. He felt it now, the Carpathian blood moving through her to continue the change it had already begun. He didn’t have time to worry that the conversion might start before the actual third blood exchange, but it stood to reason that the first-time exchanges had already prepared her body’s organs.

Maksim floated them to the ground, waving his hand to open the earth beneath them so he could fit Tomas’s body in the healing soil. He needed more than the earth might give him, but they didn’t have time.

Two of them, he warned Blaze.

She nodded, stepping out of his arms, turning her back on him, hands moving up into position with her weapons.

There is another in the tree just beyond the fence, she said.

That one is vampire, he informed her. I will see to him. The others are human, yet not human. They live on human flesh now. They seek blood. They will be ravenous and try to come at you with teeth to tear through your body to get at the blood.

Blaze laughed aloud, the sound unexpected in the circumstances. “Lovely,” she said, facing the two puppets as they came out of the trees close to them.

She studied the two creatures shuffling their way toward her. They were like most puppets Maksim had seen. A vampire had promised immortality and had taken their blood numerous times, feeding on them, bringing them to the point of death over and over. Sometimes they fed them a little of the burning blood they desired, but mostly, they corrupted the mind until it was rotting and so far gone they could only follow their master’s orders and hunt desperately for blood and human flesh to consume.

The burning obsession for blood and flesh was so strong in puppets, they salivated constantly. Long strings of saliva fell from the corners of their mouths as they shuffled forward, growling and snarling, red-rimmed eyes focused on Blaze. Hair hung in matted messes. Both had stains of old blood on their faces and clothing. They smelled like rotting flesh.

Blaze didn’t move. She kept her body solidly between the two puppets and Tomas, who lay as if dead in a shallow grave. Maksim had poured as much soil over him as possible in the short amount of time they had, but even with that, without blood and the necessary healing saliva and the removal of the poison in his system, he wouldn’t survive for long. The soil, at least, would give him a fighting chance.

I am ten minutes away from you, Tariq informed them.

I am about the same, Mataias added.

Maksim touched Blaze’s hip. Stay in my mind. If I go down, get out of here.

That will never happen, she stated firmly, glancing at him over her shoulder.

He caught just the flash of her green eyes, but she meant what she said, and there would be no arguing with her. His woman would stand. Even if the odds were totally against her.

We should get this done fast then.

She didn’t hesitate. She launched herself at the two puppets, streaking toward the lumbering humans, a knife in either hand. She was fast. She’d been fast before Maksim had given her blood, but with each exchange, she got faster and stronger. She moved so fast the vegetation under her feet whirled into the air and nearly covered her passing. She was between them, the blades flashing, sinking deep into their throats, twisting and turning and back out as she ran on past and stopped just behind them.

Maksim launched himself into the air, going for the lesser vampire who thought himself hidden from view. The vampire hit him, twisting at the last moment out of the tree, so they collided in the air. He drove the vampire back against the trunk, impaling him on a broken branch. The vampire tore at his neck and chest with sharp talons and teeth, desperate to pull his body off the wooden stake.

The vampire tore a chunk of flesh from his body and gulped at the blood. Instantly he spat, snarling, pulling back, recognizing the poison in Maksim’s system. His expression turned sly.

“You’re already dead,” he hissed.

“So are you,” Maksim said and plunged his fist deep into the vampire’s chest, driving a hole deep. The acid burned through his arm right down to the bone. He straightened his fingers, staring into the hideous red eyes, unflinching as his sharp nails dug deep to find the rotting heart.

The undead thrashed harder, trying to free himself. There was no way to shift with Maksim’s body pinning him against the broken branch and his arm buried deep. Slowly, Maksim extracted the heart, the sucking sound terrible, matching the shrieking protests of the vampire.

Maksim tossed the heart into the air and drew down the lightning, hitting the shriveled organ as it raced toward the ground. He threw himself backward, away from the flailing undead. He landed unsteadily, his legs unexpectedly giving out. Still, he had the presence of mind to send a fork of lightning straight to the vampire where he hung from the stake in his back. The body was instantly incinerated.

Maksim tried to rise to go to Blaze’s aid. The two puppets were bleeding profusely from a half dozen places, each cut so deep that the slashes should have been a kill, but the vampire’s wishes prevailed at all times. They moved like zombies already dead. Still, their bodies continued to work in spite of the blood loss.

“They aren’t going down,” Blaze stated unnecessarily.

Maksim hit the ground hard and dragged himself to where Tomas lay. He covered the other Carpathian’s body with his own.

Try fire.

She nodded, lifted her gun, fired two shots into the closest puppet, taking his vision and then doing the same with the second.

Slow your heartbeat, Maksim, so they can’t hear it. They’ll have to use sound and smell to find you. You can mask that.

He wasn’t certain if that was the truth. The poison was fast acting. He could slow his heart, or stop it altogether, slowing the spread of the poison, but that would leave Blaze without even the aid of his mind.

Reinforcements will be here in a couple more minutes, Maksim. Do it.

Blaze moved quickly to the right and then sprinted, running in circles around the two puppets to disorient them so they wouldn’t know the position of the two Carpathian hunters. She kept an eye on Maksim, willing him to do as she’d asked. She needed him to slow his heart and the poison until the two other hunters arrived and helped.

Hurry, she whispered. Maksim had been moving fast, expending energy. The poison had plenty of time to do damage.

She ripped at her shirt and wrapped it around a very dry fallen branch, forming a makeshift torch. It took two strikes of the match to get the thing burning. The two puppets had homed in on the sound of her heart beating. She let them come in close to her, and then moved back a few steps in order to draw them farther away from Maksim and Tomas.

They followed her one step at a time, their growls deep and constant. Blood ran down their faces from the holes where their eyes used to be. The sight turned her stomach. Bile churned and filled her throat, but she held her ground and let them shuffle closer. The first puppet stretched out his arms toward her. The flames weren’t burning enough and she slashed with her knife, cutting deep. The creature didn’t howl. His mouth opened wide in a silent scream, but the deep cut didn’t deter him in the least from continuing to come at her.

It was all she could do not to throw the torch before it was truly burning. The creatures seemed unstoppable. No matter what she did, they kept coming. Taking a deep breath, her hand burning, she counted slowly in her mind and then moved in fast, touching the flames to the puppet’s shirt, his matted hair and his jeans.

The hair and shirt caught fire and she jumped back. The creature continued to shuffle forward, straight toward her, on fire. She needed wind. Something to fan the flames. Her own torch burned hot, almost too hot to keep a hold of. As if hearing her desperate thoughts, the wind shifted, fanning the fire so that flames leapt high, engulfing the puppet.

He kept coming toward her, but now he was a wall of flame. The stench was horrible. She stared in horror, unable to think of anything else to do to kill the mad-driven creature desperate to carry out his master’s orders. She stumbled backward, keeping an eye on the other puppet that had shuffled dangerously close. Maksim and Tomas lay just beyond her, and she couldn’t leave them exposed. She couldn’t give much more ground, or the flaming torch of a puppet would be right on them.

Blaze took a deep breath, threw her small torch at the other creature. It hit his shirt, and the wind followed, fanning flames. She didn’t have time to see if she’d accomplished her goal. The fiery flames were close enough to her now that she felt the heat. She ran straight at the puppet engulfed completely in fire. Launching herself into the air, she kicked out with both feet, hitting him squarely in the chest.

The heat was intense, so intense, she knew her jeans had melted in a couple of spots right into her shins and calves, but the puppet fell back and writhed on the ground. Hideous noises escaped. He began to drag himself across the ground toward the two Carpathian hunters lying motionless. The other puppet seemed to have homed in on them as well. His chest and hair were on fire, but only smaller flames crackled, the fire just beginning.

Blaze did the only thing she could think of. She used the knife on herself, slicing across her palm and flinging the blood at the two desperate puppets. The droplets of blood spun in the air between them, as if they had a life of their own. Blaze took a cautious step to the right of the Carpathians. Both puppets turned toward her. Elated, she took a second step, and both turned completely toward her.

Step by step she led them away from the poisoned Carpathians. She kept breathing deep, deliberately slowing her heart so she wouldn’t panic. The one dragging himself on the ground repulsed her, even terrified her. She couldn’t stand the sight of the living torches following the blood trail she continuously flung into the air.

Fortunately they didn’t move fast, and that gave her time to consider her next move. The one on the ground suddenly let out a shriek as if he finally felt the flames consuming his body. He stared at her through the orange and red tower of conflagration. She froze. The eyes were black holes, no intelligence. Vacant. Gone. Not even red. Suddenly they were alive again, menacing, staring at her with malevolence. There was intelligence there and promise of retribution.

She blinked and the fire consumed the puppet, engulfing him completely so that there was nothing left but black ash. Still, she shivered and deep inside, for the first time, she felt absolute terror. The other puppet was close. His smell sent her stomach churning, and the heat told her the fire was building.

“Step back,” a voice said, and she whirled to face a tall man with long, streaming black hair and a grim, weathered face. He looked just like Tomas, only maybe a little scarier, although Tomas had the same look to him that warned others not to cross him.

She did what he said instantly. He moved fast, so fast she couldn’t really see the blur. He was like Maksim, one moment there, the next he tossed a blackened heart of the dying puppet to the ground. Lightning forked in the sky. Thunder rolled.

“I have to learn to do that,” she murmured aloud as she hurried around the big man to the two Carpathians lying on the ground. Crouching, she ran her hand over Maksim’s face, trailing her fingers down to his pulse.

“It kills them faster,” he explained.

Maksim’s pulse was slow. So slow she almost missed it, but she was patient. He’d trusted her to keep them safe and that meant the world to her. Lightning sizzled and slashed across the sky, jumped down in a long ropy whip and hit, first the heart with deadly accuracy, and then the remaining puppet. To her astonishment, the lightning whip hit dead center in the middle of the pile of black ashes from the other puppet. The ashes went gray and scattered with the wind.

“They both have some kind of poison in their system,” Blaze explained as the other Carpathian came up beside her and crouched low. He put a hand on his brother’s leg, but remained silent, his eyes on her face, as if expecting something from her. She did her best. “I don’t know what to do. Tomas shut down his heart immediately. He took the worst of the hit, but the spear or arrow went through him and hit Maksim in the calf. Maksim took out the vampire waiting here for us, and then he had to shut down his heart as well to slow the spread of the poison.”

“I am Mataias.” He motioned her to move out of the way. “Stay back. I need to analyze the poison and remove it from their bodies. In some cases, the poison used is a parasite that can jump from one body to another.”

Blaze nodded and gave him room, but she remained close enough to help Maksim if needed. She touched his mind. He was there. Alive, but far from her. She swallowed hard. It had taken all of the ten minutes to keep the puppets from the two Carpathians. She wasn’t certain if the poison had continued to spread through Maksim’s body while he lay motionless, covering the other hunter, still protective even in his hibernation.

A second hunter strode toward them. The first glanced up, blinking as if coming back from being asleep or a long way off. “Tariq,” he greeted. “You take my brother. I am already working on Maksim.”

He hadn’t touched Maksim. Blaze nearly protested, but then she realized Mataias was no longer there beside her. His body was. But he wasn’t. She held herself very still listening. Feeling. Waiting. Then he was there. Inside Maksim’s body. She was connected to Maksim and she felt Mataias’s presence. He was pure light. A white-hot light, all spirit. No ego. No sense of self. Only healing energy.

She didn’t move. Didn’t startle. But she watched and she followed the light through Maksim’s body. It didn’t seem possible, but she knew she was there with the hunter as he pushed the poison ruthlessly toward Maksim’s pores, forcing it out of his bloodstream. Out of every organ and muscle. He was meticulous, slow, taking time to check and double-check that not one single drop of the dark, thin streaks of sludge remained hidden.

She was shocked. Moved. She felt as though she witnessed a miracle. More than the ability to do such a thing, it was the sheer selflessness of the act. Mataias wasn’t there at all. He gave himself to his fellow Carpathian, turning himself into a tool to heal, without thought for himself. It was so beautiful, Blaze found tears in her eyes.

“I think we got it all,” Mataias said softly.

She blinked and found herself staring into his dark eyes. Mataias was back in his body. Maksim was already stirring beside them.

“I don’t think there was a ‘we’ doing that, but thank you. That was amazing. I wish I could do that.”

“You will be able to,” Mataias assured. “He needs blood.” He brought his wrist to his mouth.

“I have to give it to him,” she said softly. “I know I have to.”

He hesitated. “He needs strength and Carpathian blood . . .”

“I feel that I have to. Strongly.”

He held her gaze for a moment and then he nodded. Her palm was still dripping blood and she opened it and placed it over Maksim’s mouth, allowing the ruby drops to drip inside. His lips moved against her skin and unexpectedly, little butterflies took off, wings fluttering against the inside wall, traveling down to her sex. She felt him there. In her pulse. In the hot blood suddenly surging through her veins.

Maksim stirred in her mind. Filling her with his warmth. He took the aching hurt of her father’s death that she hadn’t been able to face and allowed her to grieve when she hadn’t. She felt his arms circle her body, and then one hand slid under her wrist, holding it gently to his mouth. The tears streamed down her face. He gave her his love, surrounding her with it, a wall to keep her safe and protected.

He was so gentle with her, yet he could erupt into violence so quickly. Mostly she loved that he gave her license to be who she was, who she needed to be.

Mine, he whispered into her mind. My lifemate. A warrior woman. You kept them off of us.

You believed in me. That meant the world. Not just trusting her with his life, but with the life of his friend. He had put himself to sleep, trusting she would keep both Carpathians safe.

I see you, Blaze, the core of steel running through you. You are already Carpathian. You just have not crossed to us fully. Giving me this blood will complete the third exchange.

She didn’t know if he was warning her or praising her, but she took it as praise. She had known all along she needed to be the one to give him her blood—that to be reborn as a Carpathian, wholly into his world, she would have to take this last step. She wanted this. Only Emeline held her to the human world. She loved Emmy. She would always love Emmy, but she could better protect her from her enemies as a Carpathian.

Maksim drank deeply and then slid his tongue across the wound, closing it. He sat up and took her into his arms.

“She held them off,” Mataias said. “Using her own blood to draw them away from you. No doubt she would have tried to cut out their hearts next.”

She knew that was high praise from a hunter because she knew Maksim was startled by the compliment to her—startled and proud.

“I knew she would do it,” Maksim said. “I have to get her to safety before the conversion starts.”

“I will take Tomas as soon as Tariq is finished healing him,” Mataias said. “Lojos reported he has healed the other woman. She is safe for the moment.”

“It will take some time for that wound to heal in Tomas,” Maksim observed.

Mataias nodded. “We will watch over him.”

There was something in the way Mataias made the statement that set off a series of chills throughout Blaze’s body.

TWELVE

MAKSIM LIFTED BLAZE in his arms and carried her to the large, sprawling two-story house set back on the property. The house was old, very old, but it had been carefully reconstructed, preserving the glory of the time while modernizing the windows, plumbing and wiring. The wood had been restored to a golden hue on the floors, and the walls were a light mauve. High ceilings, crystal chandeliers and ornate wainscoting added to the beauty of the old mansion.

“Is this your home?” Blaze looked around with awe. The floor had beautiful patterns of the night sky all in inlaid wood. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“I came here some centuries ago and found this spot. Later, I came back and purchased the land, had the house built, and from any of the windows, depending on where the moon is, you can see it and the stars. Upstairs there are moon windows in the ceiling. The open sky is always close.”

Blaze paced across the floor. There wasn’t a single creak. The house had a feel to it, one of peace and security. Home. She liked that. Still, she pressed a hand to her stomach. She felt hot, her temperature rising. “What can I expect, Maksim?”

His gaze met hers without flinching. “I have never actually witnessed a conversion, Blaze, but I have heard they can be brutal.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Brutal?” She repeated the word and waited for his slow nod. She was very aware he was watching her closely. Expectantly. She took a deep breath. “I suppose it’s too late to back out? ‘Brutal’ doesn’t sound good.”

“Back out?”

She nodded. “Seeing as how there wasn’t full disclosure,” she added. “Had you used the term brutal, I might have rethought my decision.” She was teasing, but then again she wasn’t. She didn’t like that word and all it implied. Brutal. What did that even mean?

He slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her to his side. Tight. That felt nice. Safe. Protected. But the heat moving through her body wasn’t the usual heat she felt for him. She swallowed down fear and tilted her head to look up at him.

“Even if you haven’t seen someone go through a conversion, can you at least tell me what to expect? I do better if I know what to do and what is going to happen ahead of time.” She kept her eyes glued to his.

Maksim didn’t look away from her, but there was wariness in his gaze—in his mind. She clung to his strength.

“This is going to be bad, isn’t it?”

He nodded slowly. “Your body’s organs have to be reshaped. It will rid itself of all toxins. I think it best if we go to ground and neither of us has clothes on.”

She swallowed hard and nodded. The first wave of pain was severe. Hard. Abrupt. No warning. Sweeping through her like a tsunami. The pain took her breath, and both hands flew to her stomach, where it felt as if shards of glass and hundreds of razor blades cut through her insides.

Her eyes widened, but she didn’t drop her gaze from his. There was sorrow there. Compassion. Fear even. He was afraid for her. Blaze forced air through her lungs and tried to relax her body, to put her mind far away where she couldn’t feel the pain. There was no stopping it as the wave took her, but she managed to ride it, stay on top of it, and the moment she felt it ease, she acknowledged it to herself so she would always know it came and went. One could endure anything for a length of time—her father taught her that.

“We’d better hurry, Maksim,” she whispered. “It’s starting.”

“Dragostea mea, my love, you are very strong. A warrior unsurpassed.”

She realized he felt the pain through the connection of their minds. She pressed her hand against his chest over his heart. “Don’t do that, Maksim. Don’t stay connected to me. I want you to remember this—I chose this. You didn’t force me. I wanted to come into your world, and I knew it wouldn’t be easy. This was my decision.”

He shook his head. “It is impossible not to love you, Blaze, but if we are being strictly honest, which all lifemates must be with one another, I didn’t give you a choice. I bound us together, soul to soul. I needed you in my world to survive. I have lived centuries, and the moment I met you, the temptation was far too much to resist. The ritual binding words are imprinted on the male before birth. I had to bind us.”

If his confession was supposed to make her think less of him, it didn’t succeed. She went up on her toes, pulled his head down and kissed him. “I like that you need me, Maksim, because I need you. Now take me to the ground, or wherever we need to be, because I can feel the heat inside growing and I’m uncomfortable.”

Maksim swept his arms around, pulling her wholly into his body. Tight. His hand slid along her jaw and he tipped her face up to his. “I love you, Blaze, more than I can possibly express to you. Whatever happens tonight, know I am with you.”

He kissed her, and the man could kiss. He kissed hard, and deep, pouring himself into her. She tasted the essence of him, that addicting flavor she’d never get her fill of, but more, she tasted love. Tears burned behind her eyes. Her father had died and practically a day later, she found a man to love forever.

Dad missed knowing you by a day.

He knew me. We talked. I had no idea his daughter was my lifemate, but he made it his business to know who was in his neighborhood. He was an exceptional man. It stands to reason he has an exceptional daughter.

He lifted her into his arms and took her through the house fast, heading toward the kitchen. The door to the basement was tucked in a corner. He waved his hand and it opened for them. They floated down the stairs in the dark. She could see everything, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but concentrating on the wave of pain, much worse than the first one, that shook her entire body.

She convulsed right there in his arms. Her teeth bit down so hard into her lip she drew blood. Her breath slammed out of her lungs. There was no way to control it.

Do not fight it, his voice whispered softly in her mind.

He was there. She wasn’t alone with the agony. It was hard to concentrate, not when her body twisted and jerked and the knives and razors slashed through every organ and muscle. Her head felt as if it might explode. Her spine curved, straightened, slamming her up and then down so Maksim had to work to hold on to her.

You have to give yourself to the pain. Let it take you. Let it consume you. Like in battle, Blaze. When you are hurt, you have to let it just have you so you can continue. Let this pain have you. I will not leave you.

She wanted to reassure him she knew he wouldn’t leave her alone. He was there with her even when she’d told him not to be. She knew. She relied on his strength and he would see her through this. She hadn’t expected such a physical battle, but he was right, if she were going to survive, she would have to give herself to the pain. And it was excruciating.

Her body stopped convulsing, but she felt sick. Her stomach protested the human toxins. She didn’t want to vomit there in his arms. She wanted her hair out of the way and him gone so she could do this in private where he couldn’t see.

You have to go and let me do this. Stay in my mind, but don’t watch. I can’t bear for you to see me this way.

Maksim opened the earth deep. The soil was cool as he laid her naked into the loam rich with minerals. I will be right here. His hands moved through her hair, loosening the thick mass and then sweeping it up on top of her head to secure it in a loose knot. There was finality in his tone, and she knew instinctively that Maksim wasn’t a man to argue. He wasn’t leaving her.

When you make up your mind, you’re every bit as stubborn as I am.

She tried to inject humor into her tone, but her stomach was churning. Heaving. She turned on her side. As fast as she emptied the contents, Maksim cleaned the dirt around them, keeping the air smelling rich and earthy. The scent eased her, as if somehow the loam, dark and sparkling with natural deposits, reached out to aid her. She felt the soil moving around and beneath her and that was soothing as well.

I guess there are a few good reasons for keeping you around.

His hand rubbed her back, down low, just in the curve of her spine above her buttocks. A few, he acknowledged.

If both of us are stubborn, we might have a few arguments.

I do not argue.

He confirmed what she already knew about him. Laughter bubbled up in spite of the situation. Of course he didn’t argue. They were in for some interesting times.

The pain hit again, coming out of nowhere. This time her body seized. Was picked up and slammed down. She curled into a ball, was straightened and thrown backward. There was no control. No breathing through the agony. No way to stop the humiliating shedding of the toxins. They poured out of every pore. Her mouth and nose. Her stomach and every other place as well.

In her mind, when she started to panic, she felt him there. Maksim. Her anchor. He calmly disposed of every drop of the poisonous toxins the Carpathian blood was pushing from her system. He didn’t shirk away from her. He kept one hand on her back, or moving up into the knot at the top of her head, his fingers sliding down her cheek. Breathing. Filling their lungs with air when she was incapable. A rock. Her rock.

His tranquility kept her sane. She could do this. She’d done worse. She’d been knocked over by her father’s tortured body. She’d pulled him into her arms, held him until the cops got there and they’d taken a long while to come. That had been true agony. Waiting with his mutilated body in her arms nearly all night for the cops and the coroner to come.

Sufletul meu. He whispered the endearment into her mind. Just that. My soul. My air. The very air I breathe. She understood because he was wrapped around her. There in her heart. In her soul. Most of all, she could feel him in her mind, speaking to her, interpreting for her, sharing his life with her.

She had no idea how long the waves came, the convulsions or how powerful each wave was, because she endured. She gave herself to the pain. To him. To the new world she was entering of her own free will. She heard nothing but Maksim’s voice, telling her of his life, of the world through the centuries he saw.

Swords. Horses. Battles. Beautiful places. The stars overhead and the moonlight in every stage. Forests. Cool meadows and blue ice caves. He gave her that, all in his velvet voice. His voice became her world and the only thing in it. The waves of agony twisted her body, picked her up and slammed her back into the welcoming earth, but she was so consumed by Maksim’s voice, she barely was aware of what was happening to her.

He talked to her about what she meant to him. The absolute beauty of finding her—his unexpected gift—his miracle. He told her of searching for her down through the long, endless centuries, the black void when his memories of his home and his childhood, of his family, began to fade. He spoke of hunting friends and once, a family member, taking his duty and honor seriously.

Maksim talked to her of new worlds and how he no longer could remember the beauty of seeing such things until she came into his world. The things he said to her about the way he felt were so beautiful she wanted to cry, but the tearing agony was too close, and she would have to acknowledge it if she did.

Some time later, Maksim held her in his arms, his lips whispering over her skin. “I can put you to sleep now, lubirea mea—my love. When you rise, you will rise as one of us.”

She was exhausted. The pain was still there, but the horrible convulsions had stopped. She managed to lift her hand to caress his hard jaw. Is Emeline safe?

“Lojos gave her blood and she is asleep. He guards her.”

Blaze gave herself permission to succumb to Maksim’s control. He sent her to sleep and she went without a fight now that she knew her friend was safe.

*   *   *

MAKSIM woke as he always did, instant alertness, scanning the area above and below him. It was a little too early for Blaze to rise. She needed more healing, so something else had interfered with his sleep.

I need a consult.

Tariq Asenguard. He wasn’t alone. Maksim glanced down at the woman sleeping in his arms. She was beautiful. Pale skin, red hair. Lots of hair. He smoothed his hand over the mass. He’d put her in the ground with a messy topknot, and the thick mass was still trapped by the cord he’d wound there, but there seemed to be so much more of it.

He couldn’t stop himself from rubbing his jaw along the soft, silky strands. He never, over the long centuries, ever really believed he would find her. The last few centuries had been bleak and never ending. A long, gray void. He accepted his life because Carpathian hunters endured. They lasted as long as possible. In the end all they had was honor, and that had to mean something. He had done his duty, but he never really believed he would find his reward. His gift. His own personal miracle.

Blaze amazed him; not once during her entire ordeal had she ever felt a hint of recrimination toward him. Not once. There was no fleeting thought that she hadn’t made a good choice or she wished she could take it back. She hadn’t made a sound. She hadn’t looked at him with trepidation or anger. She clung to his every word and allowed him to transport her away from the agony of the conversion. It was agony. He felt it every step of the way in his own body. In his mind. His muscles were sore. His joints ached. Even now, after a day in the rejuvenating soil. He couldn’t imagine how she’d feel when she awakened.

I will be right there. He couldn’t go too far from her. She was vulnerable. Their enemies could find them in the ground, and she was in a deep sleep. Defenseless.

Maksim found himself smiling. His woman was far from defenseless. He nuzzled her thick topknot again, the silky strands catching in the shadow along his jaw, tying them together. He had never imagined himself with a warrior. In his mind, when he allowed himself to think about a lifemate, she was always shy and demure. In need of protection. He found himself smiling.

Blaze needed him, just not in the way he thought she would. He certainly needed her. Not just her beautiful body, but her soul—her warrior’s soul. He admired her. Respected her. Believed in her. She had a protective streak as well as an independent streak. It would take her a little time to get used to having a partner. He would have to have patience when she forgot to consult with him, and he was certain that would happen often.

He waved his hand and opened the earth over them. The night sky was dark. No moon. No stars. Only roiling clouds. Black and angry. Churning. The wind blew hard, bringing the threat of rain with it. In the distance lightning forked. A few seconds later, thunder rolled. The weather was natural, not created by Carpathian or vampire. He liked storms. He always had, even as a boy. Floating out of the ground, he covered Blaze with a wave of his hand.

Maksim found himself reluctant to leave her, even for a brief meeting. Blaze was strong willed. If, in her sleep, she sensed him gone, or something wrong, she might wake. He didn’t want her to wake beneath the earth, thinking she was buried alive. She would still have her human reactions in spite of her intellect and acceptance of the world she belonged in now.

Tariq waited for him inside his home, in the great room where the moon and stars glowed gold in the wood on the floor. The clouds opened as Maksim stepped into the room, the rain pounding on the roof. The wind slashed at the windows, driving drops of rain into the glass. Tree branches bent down toward the ground, and leaves created small eddies in the sky as they whirled and tumbled with the force of the gusts.

“Reginald Coonan is only one of several master vampires creating an empire below the city,” Tariq greeted.

Maksim stopped moving, going completely still at the news. “Times keep changing,” he murmured. “Shows we have got to keep up with them. Centuries ago, the vampire wouldn’t tolerate another vampire in his territory.”

“It was only this century the master vampire began collecting newly turned vampires to serve them,” Tariq agreed.

“And now?” Maksim prompted.

“It seems the masters are conspiring together right here. The crime rate has quadrupled, but I never suspected it was because we were overrun with vampires. They are keeping a tight rein on their pawns,” Tariq mused.

“You are certain of this information?” Maksim said. “There have been a few messy kills but only a few.”

“We all thought Blaze’s friend was targeted because she saw a vampire kill. But she said there were two vampires. We thought newly turned. But she saw them. Reginald and the other one. I recognized him from our homeland. That was one of the Malinov brothers, Vadim, I am certain. He has to be the one running the show. If they are not the only masters here in the city, even with Tomas, Mataias and Lojos, I am uncertain if we can clean out this nest.”

Maksim’s heart sank. The Malinov brothers were notorious in the Carpathian world. All five had deliberately turned on their own people, plotting over and over to kill Mikhail Dubrinsky, the prince of their people. Most vampires reached a point after centuries of darkness to reach for a feeling, a fleeting rush. Just as a junkie might reach for a drug, they kill for the high in the blood. The Malinov brothers deliberately made the choice, and they did it immediately. Together. They conspired and plotted before they sought to become the undead, and they continued to plot after.

“You are certain that was one of the Malinov brothers?”

Tariq nodded slowly. “It was Vadim for certain. Kirja was killed by Rafael De La Cruz. Mikhail killed Maxim. Zacarias De La Cruz killed Ruslan. I have no doubt if Sergey is alive, then he is close by. The Malinovs traveled together as a rule.”

“Blaze shot him in the face. Vadim and his brothers were always physically beautiful and prided themselves on that.” Maksim made it a statement, but the worry was there. Vadim wouldn’t forget Blaze. He stiffened. “He did not kill the woman. Emeline. Blaze’s friend. If he wanted her dead, he would have killed her instantly, but he tried to take her out of there. Reginald was a distraction, attacking Blaze, opening her veins so we would rush to her defense. The target was her friend.”

Tariq shook his head. “You want the target to be her friend, but Reginald was taking Blaze out of the club. He opened her vein, but it was not enough to kill her right away. He knew she was strong. They wanted both women. The Hallahan brothers did not fight us, Maksim. When they came to Blaze’s bar, they turned back when they saw us. It was not because they recognized what we were.”

“They had orders,” Maksim whispered. One fist clenched. “They wanted her alive. They were going to take her to the lair.”

Tariq nodded. “Mataias followed Terry and Carrick. They went underground. It is a labyrinth down there. There is a command center somewhere, he is certain of it. They have electricity running and all the modern conveniences. He found a small area marked Research and when he entered, they had cells down there and are holding at least four prisoners there. He could not free them because there were too many pawns close, but he said we needed to get there fast.”

“It will take planning. That is why Reginald was after the properties. They do not care about the businesses above them; they want what is beneath them. If they had already secured some of the properties in the past, and Vadim must have, they have been preparing for this for some time,” Maksim mused.

“Vadim and his brothers were always smart and they were always plotting. Your lifemate is close to rising?”

Maksim nodded. “I need another night. I will wake her next rising and then we will go on the hunt. See if any other hunters are close enough to aid us.”

“We will need to plan our attack carefully. Especially if they have prisoners they can use as hostages,” Tariq said. “They will have the advantage down there. Mataias is trying to investigate enough that we can maneuver down there. Vadim and the other masters will have escape routes set up just in case.”

Maksim sighed. “There’s another thing, Tariq. When Xavier, the High Mage, was killed, two small pieces of him, shadow splinters, remained behind. Blaze fought the vampire’s puppet, but when he was on fire, dragging himself toward her, she saw intelligence in his eyes. Malevolence. She described it as sheer evil. If one of the Malinov brothers managed to get a shadow splinter of Xavier and has it in him, he will not only have the cunning and intelligence of the Malinovs, but also that of Xavier.”

There was a small silence as Tariq absorbed the information. “A master vampire could see through his puppet’s eyes, Maksim,” he finally reminded softly.

Maksim nodded, locking his gaze with Tariq’s. “That is so, but the puppet was in excruciating pain. Agony. Burning. No vampire would risk getting caught in the dying throes of a puppet. This vampire did. Only a mage could do that and come out unscathed.”

There was another long silence while the two hunters contemplated the nearly impossible task of going after a nest of master vampires. The impossible wouldn’t stop either of them. They had faced worse odds over the long centuries and hopefully would again.

“We need to put out the call,” Tariq agreed. “I’ve noticed the vampires seem to know when hunters move in. Since I made this area my home, the evidence of kills has become less and less.”

“Yet there are many of the undead here,” Maksim said.

Tariq nodded slowly. “I think they are becoming better at hanging on to their intellect. In the old days, once a vampire turned, he became cunning and savage, but his nature was so evil, the need for cruelty outweighed even safety.”

“The Malinov brothers have changed that,” Maksim said.

Tariq sighed. “I have no doubt it was them. Vadim is a genius. The problem was, he was always out for himself. He wanted power. He could have done so much for our people, but he believed we should rule the world. That humans should serve us.”

“He has more patience than imaginable for a vampire,” Maksim said. “To have acquired properties with the idea of using them a century later takes planning and patience.”

Again there was a small silence. Vadim Malinov was infamous in the Carpathian world, every bit a legend as Lucian and Gabriel, the twin hunters. Vadim was a thinking man, even in his youth. He was a fierce fighter—the Malinov brothers on par with the De Le Cruz brothers when it came to their reputation in a battle.

“Maksim? What is going on beneath this city?”

Maksim shook his head. He had no idea. If that many vampires had gathered in one place, there should have been a bloodbath happening above ground. His head jerked up. “Above ground we are not seeing the crimes we should. But we have no idea what is happening below us. They could be taking their victims there.”

“So we should be monitoring missing people as well. Homeless and prostitutes will be taken first. Anyone they know will not be reported missing right away,” Tariq said. “They have infiltrated the police department.”

Maksim nodded. “I examined as many as possible when I walked in there a couple of weeks ago and I smelled a few of them as ‘dirty’—taking money from a crime boss. Vadim has to be that crime boss. He is acting human and building a human organization above ground to aid him. They do not know he is vampire. After witnessing what went on in that nightclub, I think he has police and officials through blackmail as well.”

“The restraint it would take for him to pull something like this off is unbelievable.”

“Gather as many hunters as possible. We will have to take this fight underground, and they will have the advantage,” Maksim said.

“I will need at least two risings to prepare,” Tariq said. “Mataias will have to go back in for information. We cannot go into a hornet’s nest blind.”

Maksim shook his head. Mataias would do it. Either of his brothers would as well, even though it was most likely a death sentence.

“So be it,” he said quietly and grasped Tariq’s forearms in the traditional manner of the Carpathian people. “Arwa-arvo olen isäntä, ekäm—honor keep you, my brother.”

THIRTEEN

BLAZE WOKE TO the touch of fingers smoothing over her skin. Her lashes fluttered and she looked up to see the ceiling of the master bedroom in the house. The bed was a deep carved four-poster, very ornate and made of a dark, dense wood. The ceiling was high with a moon window directly over the bed. She could see the night sky and the small sliver of moon, a thin crescent valiantly trying to shine through the rolling clouds.

She breathed in, taking Maksim’s scent deep into her lungs. At once hunger gnawed at her. Real. Terrible. She heard his heartbeat. Strong. Steady. His hands moved over her body, just a whisper. His touch light. Cravings grew. Her sex clenched. She felt damp heat gathering.

“Maksim,” she whispered softly, her hand sliding into his wealth of hair. She loved his hair, all that soft thickness. Few men wore their hair long. Instead of making him look feminine, his hair seemed to accent his strong masculine features.

He lifted his head and his eyes met hers. Her breath caught in her throat. A million butterflies took flight in her stomach. He was beautiful. Breathtaking. Her entire body reacted to his, going soft, pliant. Inviting. Her lips parted. Her tongue touched her lower lip in a small sweep. His eyes followed the gesture. Her breasts rose and fell, and his gaze lowered intimately.

“How do you feel?” he asked, his hand once again skimming her body. Sliding over the curves of her breast down to her hip bone.

She felt his touch like a brand. When she’d opened her eyes, she’d felt the coolness of the evening; now she was hot. Inside hot. Outside hot.

“Hungry,” she answered honestly. Her voice didn’t sound in the least like her voice. She sounded sultry. Tempting. An invitation. She ran her tongue along her teeth. She could already taste him in her mouth. “For your blood. For your cock. I think I’m addicted to both.” She craved him. Needed. The need was dark and obsessive and more than a little terrifying, but she was honest with him.

He smiled against her breast, his tongue flicking at her nipple. His touch was light, yet she felt every stroke down her belly to her groin, like streaks of fire. Little darts that struck true, igniting something wild already smoldering inside of her. Those little caresses of his tongue sent a brutal ache spiraling through her.

“Maksim.” She whispered his name. “I need . . .” She broke off, wanting to ravage him. Wanting to roll him over, straddle him and take everything she needed. Her hands tightened on his arms in preparation.

“I know what you need,” he replied. “I just have to make certain you are alive and well. The conversion was brutal.”

She felt him move in her mind. Filling her with warmth. His presence. She hadn’t realized until that moment that she’d felt lonely. He was there with her. She knew him. Knew his needs. Knew what he wanted, yet until he was there, present in her mind, drifting into all those places that held sorrow and memories she couldn’t face alone, she hadn’t known exactly what she needed or why.

He saw the child whose mother drifted away. The father that was her everything because there was only the two of them. Emeline. What she meant. The sister she’d never had. The love they shared. The secrets that made them so different from every other girl around them. He took that. Those burdens. He lifted them and made them his as well. Shared.

She felt the rise of emotion. Pure and strong. He was a man’s man. Strong, not just physically, but in every other way. He accepted her for what she’d been shaped into from practically the time of her birth.

“You were already more Carpathian than human,” he said softly, “yet you were all human. A strong psychic, but not one drop of Carpathian blood in you. Your lineage is strong, Blaze, and you came through the conversion with almost no problem. You make me proud.”

He kissed his way up and over the curve of her breast to her throat. Her heart fluttered at his words, and her belly did a slow somersault. He ignited a fire in her that would never be put out, but there was that emotion as well, the one she never expected to feel for any man.

His mouth was on her neck. She felt the scrape of his teeth. Her sex clenched. Dripped. Hungered. Her hands caught in his hair as he lifted his head, his gaze moving over her face. She knew he could read her easily. The need there. The absolute desire. She could read it on his face. The lines were cut deep. Lust. Love. Hunger.

His mouth took hers and the light touch was gone. His lips were hard and demanding. She opened her mouth and let him pour himself inside, the way his mind had poured into hers. He tasted delicious. Perfect. She wanted to kiss him forever. Over and over. Hot. Commanding. Maksim had a way of kissing that transported her mind away from her body so she was all about feeling. Pure feeling. She lost whatever connection she had with her brain and just let him take her over. Let desire pour into her. Desire and hunger.

His mouth lifted from hers so that his lips whispered down her chin. Her throat. Lower to the swell of her breast. She couldn’t stay still. Already electricity seemed to arc over her skin everywhere his mouth touched. Her breath came in ragged, desperate gasps. Her breasts swelled. Ached. She wrapped her arms around his head, lifting her own head to watch as his teeth scraped back and forth, sending those little darts of fire straight through her bloodstream to her most feminine core.

With just that, tension was building inside her. Coiling tighter and tighter. Her hips moved restlessly. He shifted position, his thigh over hers. She felt his cock. Hard. Hot. Hungry. She swore she could count every heartbeat there as he pressed against her inner thigh. She wanted. He was just out of reach and no matter how much she squirmed, there was no way to impale herself on him. No way to relieve the building tension and get relief.

His tongue swiped over the swell of her breasts. Swirled. A groan escaped before she could stop it. She fisted his hair, tugging him closer—as if he could get any closer.

“Please, Maksim.” The urgency in her was beyond her comprehension. She knew she needed him desperately, and he had to do something. Right now.

His teeth sank deep. The bite of pain sent another spasm through her sex and then the feeling was purely erotic. Ecstasy. The bite sent her over the edge, the tidal wave taking her, engulfing her fast. The orgasm went on and on as his mouth pulled strongly and she felt the overwhelming pleasure in his mind. He was as addicted as she was. She could almost taste herself. His cock was harder than ever and leaked small, precious beads against her thigh that made her mouth water with her own hunger.

One of his hands shaped her left breast as he took her blood, sliding beneath it to cup the soft weight in his palm. His other hand slid lower. Just as her climax began to subside, his finger was there. Pressing in expertly.

Again, he demanded. I need that again.

He added another finger and then began to stroke and circle her hot little bud. Between his mouth and his hands working her body, he drove her up fast again. Taking her breath. Controlling her body. Her second orgasm swept over her so that she cried out, writhing beneath him, tightening her fists in his hair to anchor her. Already she was flying apart.

His tongue swept across the twin holes he’d made, and then his mouth covered the spot, suckling until she was marked. He kissed his way to her nipple and drew her breast into his mouth. That produced a streak of white-hot lightning sizzling through her body.

He rolled so that she sprawled on top, exactly where she wanted to be. She straddled him, pressing her hot, slick entrance over his hips as her hands ran up the defined muscles of his abdomen and chest. Hunger beat at her. Anticipation. His taste was there already, in her mouth, and she needed more.

She lapped at his skin, absorbing the way he felt with her tongue. She ran it over his muscles, tasting him. So strong. Physically beautiful. Her breath came in soft little pants and she couldn’t stop herself from hurrying, although she wanted to explore. She just needed so much. There was no beating back the hunger. She actually felt the slide of her teeth, and her stomach rolled in a good way. It felt sexy. Erotic. Not at all as she expected it to feel. She leaned over him and he tugged the knot out of her hair, allowing it to tumble around her face and down her back, cascading over his skin as she pressed her mouth to the heavy muscle just above his heart.

That steady beat accelerated. His cock jerked. Kept beat. She swept her tongue across his skin. She didn’t need his help when she thought she might. She wanted this. Just as she’d wanted to come into his world, she wanted to take what belonged to her without aid. Hers. He was hers. He always would be hers.

She found that strong pulse. Took it with a strong bite. Hers. He poured into her. His essence. Him. Maksim. Filling her in the way his mind filled hers. The exotic, masculine spice was amazing. An aphrodisiac that added to the growing hunger for him. Already, it was building and she shifted just a little, wanting him to fill her completely. Needing to be surrounded by him.

His hands moved over her back, down to her bottom, lifting her easily. She reached between them and found his gift, that strong, thick shaft, already pulsing with life. She squirmed, trying to impale herself, but he held her back.

Maksim.

Look at me.

She was busy. Her mouth took him into her. Her lungs breathed his air. Her mind accepted him into every dark corner so that he surrounded her. She lifted her lashes because he didn’t move. She was strong willed, but she already recognized that Maksim had a hard, implacable edge to him and she wouldn’t win if she came up against it. She lifted her lashes.

The look in his eyes burned through her. Ignited something wild and explosive in her. He looked exactly like what he was—a predator. He didn’t bother to hide it, and she knew he was showing her what she was—and what she was to him.

His fingers dug deeper into the hard muscle of her hips. Holding her poised over him so she could feel the burning crown at her entrance. She could feel the intense heat and her body clutched emptily, desperate to be filled by him.

“This is not only because you are my lifemate. My miracle. A gift beyond all price to me. This is because I have fallen in love with you. Who you are. What you are. You need to know that.”

She swept her tongue across the ruby red beads, instinctively closing the pinpricks and reached up to kiss him. He’d handed her the world. She felt the truth of his declaration spear through her straight to her soul. In accepting him, she knew she would never be alone and she would always have his loyalty and protection. She also knew he would accept her fully for who she was and not relegate her to the sidelines in a battle. More, she knew sex with him was off the charts. She hadn’t expected—love.

Her mouth moved over his, her tongue sliding over his lips. He opened his mouth and let her tell him what that assertion meant to her. She’d never been particularly good at the woman thing. She hadn’t been raised to be flirty or cute. She didn’t know how to be. She hadn’t been particularly attracted to anyone.

Maksim was different. Maksim was everything. He was all that she saw. Everything she needed or wanted. And he loved her. She kissed with everything she had and when he kissed her back, her body shuddered with pleasure, but it was her heart that turned over.

I love you, too, Maksim. You are my choice. Always. Because he was. She might not be able to say it aloud, but she could tell him telepathically and she knew that would be enough for him. He would know that she meant it, even before he’d tied them together, the moment she laid eyes on him—she’d known it was him or no one. She hadn’t worked it out in her mind, but somewhere, in the back of her brain, the knowledge was there.

Maksim felt his heart swell. His cock did as well, which should have been impossible. He was already full and hard and pulsing with his need for her. He surged up as he pulled her down over him, impaling her, driving through scorching-hot, tight, silky folds. Her inner muscles gripped and squeezed, fighting his entrance, an exquisite torture that sent streaks of fire burning through both of them.

He rolled her under him, lifted her legs as he came up on his knees, not allowing a break in their connection as he pushed her legs over his shoulders. His fingers caught her hips again and he drove deep. Into paradise. She ignited as if he’d lit a match. He took her hard and rough, even though he felt soft and gentle inside. Even though she’d turned his insides into mush. Or maybe she’d just melted them.

He took her up fast, staring down into her face when she came for him. He loved that look—the burst of shock and surprise—and he always wanted to see it there. He moved in her, slamming deep, needing to be there. Surrounded by fire. By scorching silk. Squeezed, nearly strangled, yet coming as close to ecstasy as a man could get.

He watched her face, drinking her in, absorbing what she was feeling there in her mind. Taking her was such a gift, the way she gave him her body, her soul, and now her heart. She was amazing. Her body was amazing. He had it all and he knew it.

He took her up again, loving the ragged breathing, the dazed look in her eyes, the way her body went after his every time he pulled out. The shudder of pleasure each time he surged deep. He gave up everything but feeling, allowing her body to sweep him away until he had no control. Until he hammered into her, rough and hard and deep with every stroke.

“More,” she breathed into his ear. More, she whispered into his mind.

He loved that, too. That she wanted him the same way he wanted her. He gave her more. He took more. He wrung two more orgasms out of her before he allowed himself the ultimate release, spilling into her, claiming her body for his own, triggering another hard quake in her.

He slowly lowered her legs to the mattress before collapsing over the top of her, burying his face in her neck. He loved the way she smelled now, with his scent all over her. He was too heavy for her, but he stayed where he was, pinning her soft body beneath his, his arms around her, locked inside of her, feeling every aftershock, every ripple. He began a slow glide. Gentle. Loving. Giving her that.

“I am going to roll us, but I want to stay inside you,” he said against her pounding pulse. He wasn’t ready to let her go yet. He was still hard. Impossible when he’d exploded with such force.

He tightened his arms around her and she circled him with her legs, keeping her body locked against his, just as reluctant to let him go. Maksim rolled so he was under her, Blaze on top, straddling him. Her breasts were pressed against his chest, her nipples hard little pinpoints, her breasts soft, her body pure heaven. He swept his hands down her back, shaping her, memorizing the feel of her. He loved her tucked-in waist and the way her hips flared out. Her skin was satin soft. Her bright red hair, tumbling around him like a fiery waterfall, falling on his chest and shoulders, so beautiful she robbed him of his ability to breathe.

Blaze pushed up slowly, sitting over his lap, her legs pressed on either side of him, her breasts swaying as he continued to glide gently in her. His hands went to her waist, holding her on him. He watched her. Her face. Her body. All his. He’d gone from an unrelenting gray void to this—the colors that would forever shape his life. The beauty she gave him.

“We have discovered that we are dealing with far more than we expected,” he shared, watching her small white teeth bite down as she threw her head back. One hand stretched behind her to rest on his thigh. She looked more beautiful than ever.

Blaze made a small sound, as if she couldn’t quite speak. Her moan was low and heated. He loved that she couldn’t. That what he was doing to her was keeping her right on the edge.

“We are still mapping out the labyrinth beneath the city. The head vampire is extremely dangerous. He will have layers of protection and that means he has created an army both human and of the undead. We do not know what he is up to and we need to find out. Until we do, sufletul meu, I want you to stay hidden and very close to Emeline. She is in great danger. We think the vampires were trying to acquire both of you, but in particular, her. Vadim Malinov should have sent lesser vampires against us, but he sent one master and came himself as well. You do not ever expose your hand like that, put one of your most valuable pieces in harm’s way along with exposing yourself to your enemies unless the end result is worth it.”

He couldn’t help himself. He was having a bit of trouble concentrating. Fire was beginning to streak from her scorching-hot core, right through his groin, up to his chest and down his thighs. She moved now, finding her own rhythm and riding him slow. The burn was back, hotter than ever and he found that slow, leisurely pace was beginning to do things to his control.

His hands tightened on her waist. “I am trying to tell you something important, Blaze,” he bit out between his clenched teeth, because suddenly nothing seemed as important as the heat in his groin. That silken sheath gripping and milking. He was already as hard as a rock, harder even, a steel spike, wide and thick, surging upward to meet her downward spiral.

“Tell me later, honey,” she encouraged.

His hands slid up her belly to her breasts. He used his hands and fingers, kneading and massaging, and then tugging and rolling. Each tug sent a wash of liquid heat over him, bathing his cock in hot honey. He caught at her body and brought her right breast to his mouth.

She cried out. Her breath left her lungs in a rush. Her body moved harder. Those inner muscles gripped him so tight he could barely breathe. His mouth was ravenous as he let her set the pace for as long as he could stand it.

“Faster, dragostea mea,” he whispered, his voice husky with need. “Or I take over.”

She didn’t change the pace and he took over immediately, jerking her off of him. Pulling her up to her knees and pushing her head toward the mattress. He took her from behind, sliding deep. So hot. So good. Each time seemed like nothing could be better, but it was.

He lost himself in her just like every time before. She liked it any way he gave it to her, her hips pressing back every bit as hard as he drove into her. Her breath coming in little sobs. His name on her lips when he took her over the edge and kept going. This night was theirs.

He was a Carpathian hunter. He knew the danger they faced. He knew what having a lifemate was now. The beauty of it. The overwhelming emotion. This. The fire racing through him. The flames burning scorching hot.

He pounded deep, letting the fire take him—take them both. The rush came fast and unexpected as her climax shook her, sweeping him up in the tidal wave, rocking them both. He dropped his upper body over her back to nuzzle the nape of her neck. He liked the position, her curled on her knees under him, his cock buried as deep as possible.

“I do not know how you do it, Blaze, but every time you stun me with your beauty.” He licked at the sweet spot just behind her ear, and then took her earlobe gently between his teeth, feeling her shudder in reaction, feeling the aftershocks rippling around him, squeezing him tighter.

“I don’t think it’s me,” she said, and turned her face to the side to stare up at his face from the mattress.

Her lashes were long. They framed her large, beautiful eyes. He could stare into those green eyes forever. He pressed against her back to lean down and kiss the sweep of her high cheekbones. Her body was soft and yielding, but she was made of steel. He wanted to look at her face—those eyes—forever. He would take the memory of this moment, when he was locked deep inside of her, his body crouched over hers, his eyes on hers, into battle with him. If it was the last sight he ever saw, those long endless centuries had been worth it.

“I love you,” she whispered. “Beyond that. You, Maksim. The man. Your honor and integrity is everything, but the way you touch me. The way you hold me. In my mind where I’m so broken. I feel as if piece by piece you’ve been gluing me back together again when I refused to even see I was so broken.”

“You are grieving, Blaze, not broken,” he corrected gently and nuzzled her nape again. He bit down on her shoulder, a biting caress. His tongue lapped at the faint marks. “You are made of steel, my warrior woman.”

“I’m still broken inside, Maksim. Without you, I wouldn’t still be alive and you know it. I was going to take the Hallahan brothers with me, but I didn’t expect to live through that battle.”

Blaze’s voice was tight as she admitted to him what he already knew. She’d tried to tell him before. He was in her mind. She hadn’t consciously made the decision, but still, it had been there.

“You provided an escape route for yourself on the roof, dragostea mea, so while it is possible you expected that you would not survive an all-out battle with four men, you still thought it possible you could live through it. Your traps were very extensive. I doubt any of the Hallahans would have lived through the night.”

He slowly, reluctantly left her body and turned her into his arms, pulling her close to him. Her hair was everywhere. All that bright red. Her green eyes nearly glowed and her skin seemed translucent. There was a subtle change in her appearance. She’d always been beautiful, but something about the Carpathian blood enhanced the looks of the women.

She smiled up at him, clearly reading his mind. “Men, too. You are gorgeous and I noticed your friends Tariq and Tomas are as well.”

“You do not need to notice them,” he pointed out, his hand smoothing back her hair and brushing it over her shoulder. He wrapped his palm around the nape of her neck, his fingers sliding along her cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. “You have eyes only for me.”

She laughed softly. “Women look at beautiful men just the way men notice beautiful women.”

“We don’t.” He knew his voice was clipped. She’d been human, so perhaps that was something he had to get used to, but the thought of her noticing other men didn’t sit well with him.

“You don’t notice beautiful women? You didn’t stare at Emeline?”

Keeping his gaze steady on hers, he shook his head. “No. I see the beauty in other women as well as creatures and even men, but it is impossible to be physically attracted to them, so there is little point in staring at them. Carpathian men do not judge beauty in the human way. We see that in our lifemates only.”

Her eyebrow shot up. Her lips formed a perfect round O. Clearly he’d shocked her. “Really?”

“Really. We are attracted only to the woman who completes our soul. Of course, every species has anomalies, and we are no exception. There are a few born with a sickness that grows in them, and they reject their true lifemate. That rejection ultimately kills both. It is a sad situation. Every male with that sickness turns vampire. There has been no exception. One cannot endure without a lifemate, not for all time.”

“That’s both good and a little scary. Can’t you become obsessed with your lifemate under those circumstances?”

“We are obsessed with our lifemates. We take their health and safety very seriously. You will not find many women going into a battle. Most men cannot accept the danger to their woman.”

He saw the change in her face and he leaned in to brush his mouth against hers. “Apparently I am one of those men who find it sexy and appropriate for my warrior woman to battle at my side. You already have good skills, and the information you need to kill the vampire is in my mind, easily accessible to you. I would not want you to battle a vampire alone. Not. Ever. No matter how good you get.”

He felt the shiver go through Blaze’s body at his tone. He knew he sounded scary and dangerous and he meant to. He wouldn’t like it. He wouldn’t tolerate it. And he would definitely stop her should she ever be that unwise. She read that in his mind as well and she didn’t like it much. She was independent and not someone who blindly followed the dictates of another—even her own lifemate.

“I am a male Carpathian, Blaze, and just as I am willing to compromise for you, you have to accept who and what I am and compromise as well. Still, I would want you to know how so you can protect yourself and our children.”

She took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “I would prefer not to go up against one of them anyway. It was hard enough to try to kill those puppets. And I have to tell you, Maksim, when those eyes stared at me through the fire, it was the creepiest thing I’ve ever experienced.”

He brushed another kiss over her mouth and trailed more down her chin before putting her aside. “I am going to have to go, Blaze. We need every man we have to gather information if we are going to wipe them out. Emeline will need protection. I will take you to her and the two of you can wait together. If they send someone to try to acquire your friend, you must call to me immediately. I will show you a few skills. Dressing. Cleaning. Even flying. I prefer you not use flying unless I am with you until you know what you are doing. Just wait it out until we get back and then, sufletul meu, we will form our battle plan together.”

“Where are you going?”

“All of us are taking points around the city to try to determine if there is another underground facility for them to escape to, and if they have established killing fields we do not know about.”

She nodded, already reaching back to braid her hair. He nearly groaned when the action lifted her breasts invitingly. He needed these battles to be over so he could spend time worshipping his woman’s body—a very long time.

FOURTEEN

BLAZE HUGGED EMELINE tight and then pulled back to sweep her gaze up and down Emeline’s body, looking for signs of damage. Emeline looked pale and her startling blue eyes appeared even bigger than usual in her oval face. Her thick black hair shone with blue lights every time she turned her head. Like Blaze, she had it in an intricate braid, a fishbone falling to her waist. She really was beautiful, and Blaze couldn’t imagine any man not falling under her spell in spite of what Maksim had said. He had to be the only man in the world who hadn’t lusted after her in the club. “Tell me you’re all right.”

Emeline touched her mouth with shaking fingers. “Lojos gave me blood. He thinks I don’t remember, but I do,” she blurted out. “The taste of it . . .” She trailed off. “I thought it would be horrible. It should have been horrible.” She looked around the room a little helplessly. “All those nightmares I have, they’re coming true, Blaze. Including the blood.”

They were in the apartment above the bar. Both had spent a great deal of their childhood there in the living room, looking out the window at the streets below. There was a certain comfort in the familiar, and as if by mutual agreement, they both crossed the room to stare out the bank of large windows to the street below.

“Emmy, they had to give you blood to save your life.”

Emeline nodded. “I know. I knew he would before he did it. This is all part of the nightmare.” She curled her fingers into her palm. “I always knew it was real,” she whispered. “So did you. We’re part of this world no one else knows about. I don’t know why, but we are.” Her hand came up to stroke defensively at her vulnerable throat. “I think your father knew. That was why he began training you as early as possible. He tried with me. It just didn’t take. I’m not equipped for violence.”

“Emeline,” Blaze whispered the name softly, hearing the guilt in her voice. “That’s a good thing. And you’re braver than anyone I know. You always have been.”

“I told him.” Emeline raised stricken eyes to Blaze. “Sean. I told him about the dreams. I told him they weren’t just nightmares, that I was afraid they were precognition. I know things before they happen. I told him about the tunnels and the two of us running in them. It is horrible down there. The things we saw in our nightmares, honestly, Blaze, it is all real.”

“You have precognition, not me,” Blaze said with sudden insight. “I was with you every time I had the nightmares. You projected them into my subconscious.”

“You’re such an empath, Blaze. You and I were always connected, and what I felt, you did. When we were asleep, we stayed connected.” She glanced at Blaze, once again meeting her eyes. “I knew all along if I came back this would happen. You with Maksim. Both of us in danger. I knew.”

“Did you know about Dad?” Blaze asked, trying to keep her tone as gentle and as unaccusing as possible.

Emeline nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. “I warned him. I told him to be careful when he was locking up. I drew pictures of the men he needed to be on the lookout for.” She ducked her head. “He asked me not to say anything to you. I’m so sorry, Blaze, I should have told you anyway.”

Blaze shook her head and turned her face back to the window. “Not if Dad asked you not to, Emmy. He didn’t ask for much, and he had his reasons.”

“He believed me.”

“Of course he did. Dad always believed both of us. And in us.” Blaze reached out and threaded her fingers through Emeline’s. “It’s the two of us now. And Maksim. We’ll come out of this alive. You’ve got skills whether or not you like using them. Dad made certain of that. I do as well. Maksim and his friends will help us.”

Emeline’s fingers tightened around Blaze’s. “I already know that in a couple of minutes, we’re not going to have a choice, Blaze. We’re going to have to leave this room and go down into those tunnels.”

Blaze stepped back from the window immediately, tugging Emeline with her. “How do we change what you see? There has to be a way. Whatever you saw, we just won’t go. We’ll stay here until Maksim comes back.”

In spite of the pull on her arm, Emeline didn’t go with Blaze, her gaze remained on the street below. “I have to go, Blaze. You can call Maksim and tell him we don’t have a choice, but whether or not you come, I have to go. If I could prevent this, I would.”

There was no way Blaze would ever allow Emeline to go into those tunnels alone. “We don’t even know where the entrance is.”

“I had lots of time to talk to the other dancers in the club,” Emeline said. “I was careful to pay attention to details, especially when they talked about any of the Hallahans. Apparently they often go into a room in the back of the club and disappear for hours. A few times, someone has gone in looking for them and they were gone. Then, hours later, they reappear, coming out of that same room. There are probably dozens of entrances, but that has to be one, Blaze.”

Blaze pressed a hand to her suddenly churning stomach.

What is it? Maksim was there instantly, pouring into her mind. Tell me.

I have a bad feeling. Emeline can see things that actually happen in the future. She sees us going down into the tunnels. Soon.

There was a small silence. She knew he was sharing the information with the other hunters.

She’s for real, Maksim. She knows things. When she says something is going to happen, I’m fairly certain it will.

Wait for me. I am a distance from you. Do not go near those tunnels without us. We will be returning to you as soon as we can.

That didn’t tell her anything. She clenched her teeth as Emeline suddenly stepped forward and pressed both hands against the glass. She heard her friend’s swift intake of breath.

“That’s how they do it,” Emeline whispered. “Blaze, they take children. We have to go after them.”

There was horror in her voice, and Blaze rushed back to the window. Below her, she could see what appeared to be a monster, a tall skeleton-like figure with bony fingers and glowing eyes wrapping his arms around two young girls. On the ground was a boy of about fifteen or sixteen, blood pouring from a head wound. Clearly he had tried to fight the vampire for the two children. One girl looked to be about fourteen, the other, maybe ten.

“There’s another,” Emeline barely breathed. “A toddler. I can’t see her, but she’s there, too.” Already she was on the move, heading for the door.

Maksim. A vampire has children. He’s taking them right now. Two girls. Emmy says a toddler as well. I’m sorry. I told you I wouldn’t leave the apartment, but we can’t let them have the girls without a fight.

The girls cried. Loud. The vampire hissed at them, dropped the youngest in order to strike the older one. She slumped over. He transferred her to his shoulder and reached down to grab the younger one when she tried to run to the boy on the ground.

“Emeline, wait for me. We need weapons.”

We are on the way. Do not go into the tunnels without us. It is far too dangerous.

Blaze heard the sudden trepidation in his voice. He knew she wasn’t going to wait. She couldn’t wait. The vampire would use the girls, draining them dry—or worse.

I’m sorry, honey. I don’t have a choice. Hurry, she replied.

“I’ll follow them while you get the weapons,” Emeline said, already yanking open the door.

“No. You wait for me. It will only be a minute and you need to be armed as well. You can’t kill these things with your bare hands, Emmy.”

Emeline turned back, her face a mask of anxiety. “He’s got both girls. I don’t see the toddler, but she’s in my dream. She can’t be more than two or three.”

Blaze didn’t hesitate; she gathered weapons and began stashing them in every conceivable loop in her belt, waist, shoulder holster and packs. She added as many of the explosives she still had from when she’d made them for her war with the Hallahans. Tossing a gun and a knife at Emmy, she added ammunition and then raced to follow Emeline down the stairs to the bar and then outside.

“The boy is still alive,” Emeline said, hurrying across the street to crouch beside the teenager.

He sat up, one hand to his temple, trying in vain to stanch the flow of blood. “He took my sisters,” the boy said. “A monster.”

Emeline caught his arm and helped him stand. “We’ll go after them, you get help. Call your parents and have them take you to a hospital.”

“Don’t have parents. My sisters only got me,” the boy said. “I’m going with you.”

Blaze was already rushing toward her motorcycle. Emeline could ride on the back. The boy was on his own. If they could move out fast, they’d leave him behind where he would be safe.

“I know where he’s taking them. He already got the baby,” the boy continued, raising his voice. “That’s where we were going, to try to get her back, and he came out of nowhere. There’s an entrance to an underground tunnel just under the dry cleaner’s. We use the entrance for shelter when the streets get too cold.”

Blaze skidded to a halt and turned back to the boy. He was pale and thin. His clothes were in tatters. If what he said was true, there was an entrance to the underground much closer than the club. “Show us.”

“What’s your name?” Emeline asked. “I’m Emmy and this is Blaze. I lived on the street for years, so don’t be afraid,” she added when he hesitated.

He eyed them both warily as he hurried down the street toward the dark dry cleaner’s. “Danny. My name is Danny. These things have been coming after us for the last year. They killed my parents. If the state gets a hold of my sisters, they’ll split us all up, so I’m keepin’ us together.” He said it defiantly.

“Do your sisters have any strange abilities? Something out of the ordinary?” Blaze asked, “Something you might call a psychic ability?”

Emeline flashed her a scared look, but she didn’t say a word.

“Yes. Amelia can talk to animals. I know that sounds crazy but . . .”

“It doesn’t sound crazy,” Blaze prompted. “The others?”

“Liv and the baby, Bella, both can perform telekinesis. I’m not that talented, but I can see auras and things like that. Mom and Dad did, too,” Danny admitted. Blood continued to pour from the cut on his temple between his fingers. It dripped down to his shoulders.

“Blood attracts them,” Blaze said. “You have to get that under control. It would be better if you stayed up here.”

Danny led the way through the narrow space between the two-story building housing the dry cleaner’s and the brick building where the flower and bike shops had been. Both had been abandoned for over a year.

“Seriously, Danny,” Blaze reiterated when the boy continued to ignore her and dropped down to crouch beside a metal grate near the ground of the building. “These things are difficult to kill. You don’t even have a weapon, do you?”

Danny didn’t even look at her. He pried open the door and crawled into the shaft headfirst, on his hands and knees. Emeline and Blaze exchanged a long look. Blaze followed him with Emeline close on her heels. Blaze understood him. She would have gone after Emeline no matter her age. Emeline would have come after her. That was family. That was the bond. That was love.

Hurry, Maksim, she whispered softly into her mind. They have three girls and this wonderful boy is risking everything to find his sisters.

You and Emeline are risking everything as well. Stay together. Remember, it will not be the undead that will come at you. First will be their humans and then their puppets. Maybe a lesser vampire. If we have not arrived, I will need to see through your eyes. Lojos gave Emeline blood. He can see through hers.

Blaze kept crawling through the narrow ventilation shaft, Emeline close on her heels. Danny clearly had come this way many times. There was no hesitation on his part at all. He moved with assurance in spite of the fact that the shaft was pitch dark. Blaze could see. Her night vision was extremely acute now, a by-product, she was certain, of the Carpathian blood running through her veins. Emeline didn’t complain, either, so she had to be able to at least see Blaze.

The shaft narrowed and teed. Danny immediately was on his belly, using elbows and toes to thrust himself forward, following the shaft that led to the right and began a downward slant. There was definitely fresh air coming from somewhere. She couldn’t imagine what these young children had coped with to drive them so far into the shaft to find out where it led. Emeline had been on the streets for years. She used the fire escapes and rooftops more than anything on the ground. She’d always said it gave her a sense of safety to be able to see anything coming her way.

Ahead of her, Danny tumbled out of the shaft onto cement flooring. Blaze followed, landing easily, looking around as she moved out of the way for Emeline. They were in a large tunnel. Very large. The ceiling curved above their head, and the hallway led in two directions. Sconces high up on the wall were lit, spilling light and shadow throughout the long, winding passageway.

“What’s down here?” she asked Danny. No way would he bring his sisters to this level without some exploring first.

“The tunnels run under at least three city blocks,” Danny said. Whispering. “We kept to the right and stayed just at the entrance so we could get back in the shaft as quickly as possible. Even the baby learned to be quiet down here.”

Blaze shivered at the sudden note of tension in his voice. She already felt the difference, the moment Danny had turned down the shaft leading toward the left. The air emanating from the right side smelled clean and fresh. Coming from the left, there was a strange musky smell. Repulsive. Not strong, just enough to keep anyone from wanting to travel down that wide corridor.

“They can smell you,” she told Danny. He needed to know, just in case they got the girls back and came out of it alive. She glanced at Emeline. “It’s interesting that after all that time when they could have taken the girls down here, they waited to kidnap them until tonight. And right under the windows of the bar and apartment.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Emeline said. “It’s a trap then. They wanted us to come down here.”

Blaze nodded slowly. Maksim, they lured Emmy and me down here using the children. Danny and his sisters have come here many times over the last year. Why would they wait if they wanted them? How could they know Emeline would be with me tonight in my apartment?

A scream filled the tunnels. High-pitched. Animalistic. One of the girls. Terrified. In agony. She had to grip both Danny and Emeline to prevent them from rushing headlong into certain trouble. Still, she had no choice. It was impossible to leave a child to the monsters. To allow the undead or their puppets to torture and feed off of them.

What they were doing was insane. Going straight into a hornet’s nest and they were waiting for them. She knew that. She knew it in her brain and felt it in her gut. Still, the scream didn’t let up. Now it was much more guttural. The throat shredded and raw.

I have to go, Maksim. I can’t hear this and not go to her. I can only hope they don’t want us dead. Get here soon. Hurry. Please hurry.

I could stop all three of you.

In spite of the implacable statement, she knew he wouldn’t. She was well aware of him there in her mind, hearing what she heard. Knowing she would have to do this. He was afraid for her, but he wouldn’t stop her because he knew and understood who she was. She couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t try.

I love you. She whispered the declaration to him softly. Intimately. Meaning it. Expecting to die, but hoping he would get there fast enough to save all of them.

If they waited and planned this, acquiring either you or Emeline or the both of you is their ultimate goal, Maksim stated.

Thankfully he didn’t sound so far away as he had when she’d first contacted him. Still . . .

They could have killed you in the club, but they did not. If they get you, they will know you are my lifemate, but Emeline has not been claimed.

Blaze was horrified at the implication. Can vampires have sex? Are you saying they are looking for a lifemate? That’s the most disgusting thing I can think of. No woman would want to have sex with rotting flesh.

They do not consider themselves rotting. Of course they can have sex, but to feel anything they would have to torture the woman and take her blood for the rush. To a vampire it might even be the ultimate high.

Blaze had begun to move slowly through the tunnel. The thought that Maksim could be right in his assessment of what the vampires wanted Emmy for turned her stomach, the imagery burned itself into her brain. She looked at Emeline. Emeline had a look of utter despair on her face. Her eyes were filled with sorrow. With trepidation. She knew something Blaze didn’t.

“Emmy, you and Danny should stay here. I’ll go ahead and try to get the girls. We can’t all be in jeopardy. That would be foolish. Watch my back. You have a gun. I’ll give one to Danny. Shoot the eyes and nose. That will at least blind them and hopefully make it so they can’t smell you. Set them on fire if you can. Whatever you do, don’t let them get their hands on you.”

“I have to go,” Emeline said softly. She pressed her lips together and then took a deep breath. “I can change things in my dreams, Blaze. I tried many different versions of this one, hoping to stop what I know is going to happen. If I don’t go, those girls die. The baby first. I have to be there to get the baby while you’re fighting off the guards. Danny has to be there as well to take the baby.”

Get here fast, this is a disaster.

We are coming, Maksim assured.

It seemed like it had been hours since she’d first called to Maksim, but she knew it was only a matter of minutes. It just seemed much longer. Blaze snapped her teeth together and set a much faster pace through the wide tunnel. The deeper they got into the maze of twists and turns, the more it felt as if eyes watched them. The more the stench grew. Small red eyes glowed at them as rats scurried to get out of their way.

Blaze had seen these tunnels before, and strangely, because she’d had the nightmare of running in them hundreds of times, she knew the way. She knew to turn left and then right. She knew when they neared the command center and the lights of the banks of computers and large screens would cast eerie green and blue lights across the ancient floors. She knew exactly where the room with dozens of cages was.

As they approached, she held up her hand to stop the other two from moving forward. This was her job. The prisoners were kept here. The ones used for food. The ones they experimented on. She took a deep breath, drew her knife and pushed inside. She’d gone over the scenario a hundred times. In her dreams she’d been killed over and over until she learned the exact sequence of events.

She saw the human first. A Hallahan. He was on his knees, a young girl on the floor, her clothes torn, her face swollen and bloody. This was Amelia, Danny’s older sister. Blaze had never seen faces clearly, but she wasn’t surprised to see a Hallahan assaulting a child. He looked up at her, shocked to find her there. She was on him in seconds, kicking him in the face, sending him flying off the girl.

“Into the hall,” she hissed at the child, not looking at her. Carrick Hallahan grinned at her as he stood, wiping the blood from his mouth where her boot landed.

“My sisters . . .” the girl protested.

“Into the hall. Danny’s there.”

Amelia scrambled on her hands and knees, sobbing loudly. Too loudly. Blaze hoped Danny and Emeline would quiet her. Blaze whirled around, transferring the knife to her left hand while she gathered her throwing knives with her right. She threw them as she advanced quickly on Carrick. The knives went true, sinking into flesh from his belly to his throat. Four of them. He hadn’t taken a single step toward her. He was still grinning macabrely at her. Her momentum took her past him and she kicked him hard in the back of the knee, taking him down, one hand reaching for his hair to yank his head back. Her knife bit deep into his throat and she shoved him away from her, already turning toward the door of the second room.

Another room for prisoners. Long tables covered in blood. Saws. Drills. Cages lining the room so the prisoners could see what would happen to them. He would be waiting above her. She couldn’t be distracted by the room. She couldn’t vomit at the stench of what she found there. She had to be prepared.

Blaze burst through the door, leaping into the air. She had forgotten she was fully Carpathian and her strength was enormous. Her ability to jump drove her straight to the ceiling, the knife unerringly finding the heart of the guard. Another human. Not a Hallahan, but she lost her knife when she’d pinned him so deep and she didn’t take the time to yank it free. A through and through straight to the ceiling.

She couldn’t look at the baby’s face, swollen with tears. A smear of blood on her cheek as she lay in a cage beside a mutilated corpse. Blaze kept moving, straight across the room toward the other Hallahan brother. Terry Hallahan was ready for her, bringing up a gun. Behind her, she knew Emeline had entered the room. She couldn’t look. She had her job and Emeline had her own. They had worked this scenario hundreds of times. Both knew what would happen; still, they couldn’t leave the children there.

They had never known what drew them into the tunnels because they were already in it when their dream started. She kept her eyes glued to Terry, the last brother. He aimed at her kneecap.

“I killed them, you know,” she said, her voice calm and matter-of-fact. She kept walking toward him. “All three of them. I was the one who killed them.”

His eyebrow shot up. The gun was forgotten for a split second while he tried to comprehend what she was saying.

She went in under the gun, sliding, taking out his legs in a scissor takedown, rolling so she was on top and he was pinned beneath her, the gun crushed between the floor and his chest. She leaned into him, her mouth to his ear, the knife from her boot in her fist.

“Your brothers. For my dad. It isn’t a fair exchange, but then you all are scum.” She drove the point of her knife deep into the base of his skull. And left it there. She only had one more knife and she drew it from where it lay between her shoulder blades.

Emeline was still crouched at the child’s cage. She had to trust that Emmy could get her out. There was a man slumped in a cage, alert, his eyes on her. She felt compelled to approach that cage. In the dream she hadn’t known why. It was a stupid thing to do when she needed every second to count, but now she realized he was Carpathian. A hunter. Ravaged. Drained of blood. Tortured. Maybe even mad.

Go, he whispered. Leave me and save yourselves.

It was an order. Arrogant just like the other hunters. She ignored him and crouched by the cage, because if he ordered her to leave, he wasn’t insane. “You need blood,” she whispered, her eyes, not on him, but on the door. The puppet would come next. Emeline and the baby had to be out of there by the time the puppet came. Emeline would be taken in the hall, but Danny would get the baby and Amelia out. That left Liv. It was up to her to get Liv.

She never knew what happened to Emeline after that. She would wake from the nightmare and Emmy would be huddled into a protective ball, her body shuddering, her fist jammed deep in her mouth and her eyes haunted. She always looked at Blaze with despair. With pain. With absolute terror.

Blaze always forced herself to wake after she shoved Liv into the hall so she could run to freedom. She forced herself awake because there was no way to win the battle beneath the ground. She died down there. Every time.

I cannot aid you. Leave this place. It is too dangerous.

The other hunters are coming.

Leave me for them.

She couldn’t. She’d left him several times and each time he’d died there in that cage, speared by a puppet cleaning up on his master’s orders. She shot the lock as she’d done so many times in her dreams.

Can you make it out by yourself? I still have one more child to get.

He nodded. She wasn’t certain of his fate. She couldn’t stay. She didn’t dare spare blood for him. She had to go into the next room where the puppet had Liv. Little Liv, the ten-year-old girl who shouldn’t know there were monsters in the world. Little Liv, whose screams had brought them all running in an effort to try to save her from the fate she’d suffered over and over in Blaze’s nightmares.

As she moved away from the cage and toward the door, she heard a whisper of movement. Of course. She should have known. Emeline came back. Emeline gave the caged Carpathian the blood to save his life. Brave Emmy who thought she was not a warrior. Who couldn’t fight with guns and knives but fought back with sheer courage. She was already kneeling by the cage as Blaze went through the last door of the prison.

FIFTEEN

LIV WAS BEHIND the door, just as she was in the nightmare that had plagued both Emeline and Blaze for years. In the dark corner, the puppet crouched over her, devouring the child alive. Unlike in the nightmare, this time the little girl had a face and a name, but Blaze knew better than to look at the terrified little face as the puppet fed on her, tearing great chunks of flesh from her body with his rotten teeth. His fetid breath blasted through the room as Blaze entered. He raised his head as she burst through the door, those red, burning eyes focusing on her.

Blaze sliced a small, neat cut in her forearm to lure him from his victim. Flinging her arm over her head, she sent droplets of blood toward the puppet. He sniffed the air, dropped Liv and turned toward Blaze, stumbling to his feet with jerky motions. She was Carpathian, and he would want her blood above all else.

“Can you get up?” Blaze asked the child, keeping her gaze wholly on the monster shuffling toward her.

The child didn’t answer. She didn’t make a sound. Not even to scream. Blaze backed away from the corner where the puppet had been feeding on the child, drawing the monster to her to give the child time to get to safety. There was movement. Still, Blaze counted her own heartbeats, breathing in and out, all the time her gaze glued to the monster she faced.

No gun, no knife, was going to end this puppet’s existence. She had to kill it, though, in order to get out into the corridor to save Emeline. She’d never done it. Not one single time and she’d tried hundreds of times, playing out various scenarios in the nightmare. By the time she’d dispatched the monster, Emeline was already gone—taken by the vampires.

“You have to get up now,” Blaze persisted, pouring steel into her tone. She couldn’t sympathize. She couldn’t so much as glance at the terrified child. She’d done that time and again, made that very mistake in the dreams and each time she had, everyone died. She knew better. So no sympathy. Pure steel. “Get up now and run to the tunnels. Danny’s there. Go. Right. Now.”

The puppet was nearly on her. His face was distorted, almost as if the skin on one side had melted and his flesh was sloughing off. One eye hung half in and half out of the socket. His hair was ratted and fell in long, dank dreads. He had the child’s blood smeared all over his mouth and chin. Up this close she could see flesh in his teeth. The smell and sight turned her stomach. Still, she had a job to do.

She moved the knife in a figure eight, her speed blurring, cutting arteries in his legs, arms and belly as she slid beneath him, coming up behind him. Before he could turn, she had his head jerked back and she cut him with the amazing strength of the Carpathians. It nearly took his head off.

Blood was everywhere, all over the room. She felt like she was drowning in it. She took two steps back and pulled the small bottle of accelerant from inside her jacket, flinging it over the puppet.

The door banged shut and she knew the child was gone. Thank God. She already had enough trauma for ten children, let alone to see this. Blaze scratched the match and threw it on the top of the puppet’s head. Instantly, the head was engulfed in flames. Blaze leapt back and hurried toward the door. She jerked it open, praying she was fast enough this time.

Something sharp and terrible stabbed into her ankle and she found herself on the floor, sliding straight toward the flames and that horrible, grisly, gruesome wreck of what has once been a human being. His fingernails were long thick talons, each sticking into her ankle. Deep, maybe a good three quarters of an inch. He dragged her back through the door toward his gaping mouth, a mouth that was surrounded by crackling flames. It was grotesque and insane. It made no sense that he could be on fire and still try to eat her alive.

Flames spread quickly over his body, but his eyes were on the cut on her forearm. Great thick strings of saliva hung from his wide-open mouth. Blaze refused to give in to the first reaction—to try to escape by flinging herself away from him. Instead, she went with the momentum of his strength. As he dragged her toward him, she hurled herself back at him, coming down across his wrist with the blade of her knife with every ounce of strength she had. She severed the wrist, kicked at his head right through the flames and scrambled backward.

Hard hands caught her under her armpits and yanked her through the door. It was the hunter—the one she’d rescued—the one Emeline had taken the time to give blood to.

“Emeline,” she whispered, looking up at him.

He didn’t answer. He set her aside and strode purposefully into the room with the burning puppet, ignoring her plea to leave her and save her friend. Blaze leapt to her feet and then collapsed when her ankle gave out. She glanced down and her stomach lurched. The hand was still embedded in her ankle. It took a few precious seconds for her to get the courage to rip the talons, one by one out of her flesh. Each time she tugged at one of the talons, her stomach rolled and bile filled her mouth.

She tossed the hand away from her, jumped to her feet in spite of the blood streaming from her ankle and ran back through the other two rooms to the tunnels. Like every single time in her dreams, Emeline was gone. This was where she woke herself up. There was no waking up from this. No do-over.

They have Emeline, Maksim. They took her deeper into the tunnels.

We are in the tunnels, draga mea. Every hunter we have available to us. Get out and let us take care of this.

She couldn’t. She couldn’t leave Emeline. The last of her family. She pushed down terror and followed her scent. Emeline always smelled like a combination of fresh magnolia and lily of the valley. Her scent was delicate and beautiful. Just like Emeline. She raced through the tunnels. Twice she shot a guard and kept going. Once she ran into a puppet, ripped herself out of his hands and continued. Behind her the hunter followed. Each time she shot a guard, he followed up, making certain of the kill. She glanced over her shoulder just as he plunged his hand into the puppet’s chest and ripped out the heart.

She was very thankful she had rescued him and that Emeline had given him blood. He was thin and pale and clearly had been tortured for a very long time, but he didn’t hesitate to guard a Carpathian woman. She turned the next corner and skidded to a halt. Emeline wasn’t there, but there was no getting past the two vampires clearly waiting for her. Grinning maliciously. Knowing she was coming.

Maksim. She breathed his name. Find Emmy. Please, please find Emmy.

Look at them. I have to see them, Maksim ordered, his voice calm. You have to concentrate on your fight, not on your friend. You know that.

She pressed her lips together. Maksim didn’t have a lot of give in him. There was no room for argument, nor was there time. She could only hope he was closer to Emeline than she was and that whoever had her kept her alive until the hunters could find her. She let out her breath slowly and kept her gaze glued to the two vampires. They separated and the one on the right crooked his finger at her.

“Come to me.” The vampire to her right whispered the command.

She recognized the compulsion, but her brain didn’t accept compulsion easily, and she remained where she was, shifting her stance, staying loose so she could move fast.

The moment he rushes you, and he will, run straight at him. Make a fist and use the combined momentum from your speed and his to drive your fist into his chest. Go for the heart. It will burn unlike anything you have ever felt. Ignore it and extract the heart. He will tear at you. You have to have patience and stay in position. The other will come at you, but get the heart. Try to keep the body of the undead you are fighting between you and the other at all times.

She didn’t have time to digest what he said, or protest. She had come into this knowing she might have to fight a vampire. In any case, she knew the Carpathian hunter she’d rescued was somewhere very close. She saw the vampire’s eyes and knew the moment he decided to rush her. She ran at him, at an angle, trying to do as Maksim had instructed, trying to put the other vampire on the other side of him. She slammed her fist into the chest wall, right over the heart, driving deep.

Pain blasted through her. Excruciating. Sheer agony. She kept driving forward, pushing pain to the back of her mind, although it wasn’t working so well. The vampire screamed and ripped at her shoulder and neck with long, curled nails. He tried to lean into her to get at her with his teeth, but she kept circling, her hand buried deep in his chest.

Maksim moved in her mind, helping her to cut off the pain so she could continue. She heard movement and glanced over the vampire’s shoulder. The other had moved toward her but he stopped abruptly. She knew instantly the other hunter had joined the fight. One moment the second vampire moved toward her, and then the hunter emerged between them.

Val Zhestokly. I thought him long dead. We all did. He is one of our ancient legends. Maksim breathed the name with utter respect. No one knew what happened to him.

She could have told him. He’d been in that dungeon a very long time. Years maybe. Enough time to drive him mad, but he’d endured like so many of the ancients did. She had no idea how. Her hand closed around the withered heart. She ignored the nails digging at her shoulder and began to withdraw her arm.

The sound was terrible. The feel of the withered organ pumping in her hand disgusted her. She needed to vomit. She didn’t. She kept pulling the thing from the chest until she had it all the way out. She threw it as far from her as possible. Zhestokly dropped his hands on her shoulders and moved her gently aside.

She bent at the waist, gagging. Still looking. One vampire lay motionless, but his eyes were open and he stared intently at the blackened organ lying only feet from him. The undead she’d fought with lay in a corner where Zhestokly’s powerful shove sent him flying. Flames arced in the air—and then leapt from the two hearts to the two bodies of the vampires.

She knew tears were running down her face, and she pressed her hand deep into her stomach. Zhestokly wrapped his arm around her waist. “You have to get out of here.”

“They have Emeline,” she whispered. “I wasn’t fast enough.”

“She gave me her blood. I can track her. You get to safety.”

Blaze, get the children out. I am close to her. Zhestokly will catch up. Mataias is on his way to help you guard the children.

Blaze looked into the ravaged face and beautiful but dead eyes of Val Zhestokly. She took another breath and slowly nodded. She had no real choice. She couldn’t fight vampires, especially master vampires, and she knew Emeline had been taken to one.

Draga mea, go. Hurry. I am entering the lair now. I need to know you are safe.

I’m on my way, she assured Maksim. Please be safe.

Relief swept through Maksim as he entered the hidden lair of one of the master vampires. Immediately he realized this was Vadim’s lair. It had been many centuries since he had encountered the Malinovs’ particular brand of cruelty, but his lair said it all. There were several humans chained to the walls. Most were women, and all hung limply, in various stages of decay.

There was a woman on the floor by a bed with a shackle around her ankle. Clearly she had been pregnant and she had died recently—very recently. Vadim had killed her by cutting the baby from her. The baby lay on the bed, a twisted corpse that had to have been stillborn. He started to turn away, and something about the baby’s features caught his attention. His breath caught in his throat as the truth hit him—confirming what he feared all along. Vadim was looking for a mate, and he thought he found her in Emeline.

He is trying to breed—to have children. That is why he wants Emeline. She proved to be a powerful psychic and he wants her to have his child. He sent the message to all the hunters.

The command center is for three things, Tariq said, obviously in the control room. They are tracking Carpathian hunters, telling one another where we are, when there are signs of us in an area and to lie low or get out until we move on. They have the database of psychic women. And they are going after the women.

Maksim stepped away from the dead woman and baby. No one imagined that a vampire could breed—or would consider it. The Malinov brothers were different—very different—and they were taking steps to incorporate humans into their war on the rest of the world. They were trying to own businesses and create the image of a crime lord family humans feared.

This cannot be their only base, Lojos added. This is far too big an organization. They have moved their operations away from the Carpathian Mountains. Before they were focusing on killing the prince. Now, it seems, they are trying to build forces and incorporate into the human world. We didn’t find evidence, but you know they have to have at least one more place of operation.

Maksim was on the move, following the scent of Emeline’s perfume. The lair had several exits, and Vadim had used one running beneath the city—a long, narrow tunnel with no torches to light the way. He knew Emeline had to be terrified.

Sergey is with Vadim, Val Zhestokly added. He was close behind Maksim, moving fast. They are experimenting with children. Seeing how much blood they must give them in order to change the children to become like them. They mostly use humans to guard them, but sometimes a puppet finds their way into the prison and they devour the children. Vadim retaliates, but they lose one or sometimes several and have to replace them.

Maksim kept his emotions away by reverting to the hunter he’d been for centuries. He couldn’t think about those children or what they had gone through. There was nothing he could do about it. Lojos and Tariq, circle around to the north side of the tunnels. Vadim has to come out somewhere with Emeline. He is heading in that direction. Split up and see if you can find other entrances to the north.

Maksim streaked through the tunnel, shifting as he did so, becoming nothing but molecules, moving fast without form so that he could add more speed to his hunt. Emeline couldn’t be alone with Vadim—not even for a moment. He would know they were after him. He would throw up obstacles to give himself time with her. He didn’t want her dead—he wanted her to carry his child. He couldn’t escape the tunnels with her, so he had to have time with her before the hunters found her.

Swearing in the ancient Carpathian language, he followed Emeline’s elusive scent. This was Emeline—Blaze’s friend. More, Blaze regarded her as family. A sister. All she had left until he had come into her life. Emeline had to be found.

Please, Maksim, Blaze whispered in his mind. Please save her. Please bring her back to me.

I will not let him have her, he promised. He shouldn’t promise her. One couldn’t predict the outcome of a battle with a master vampire, but he wouldn’t stop until he got Emeline back. None of the hunters would.

He stopped moving abruptly because the scent changed. It went from delicate and afraid to sheer terror. More, the scent was mingled with that of Vadim. His powerful scent had permeated his lair and there was no dismissing that the master vampire was close.

Behind him, Zhestokly closed ranks, guarding his back as he carefully moved to the door of a chamber. The door was heavy and wooden. Very thick and ancient. He felt the safeguards instantly. He had no choice but to shift into his real form and begin to unweave the shields on the door. It was a slow, painstaking process. He couldn’t make a mistake or he would have to start over, and Emeline didn’t have that kind of time. Fortunately, Vadim was in a hurry and he couldn’t have used a very difficult safeguard.

Emerging from the wall, Zhestokly whispered softly and shifted into his real form, facing the master vampire coming at them. Clearly he was the protection for Vadim.

He cannot run with her knowing he can get away. He will send everyone he has to slow us down, Maksim said. He must have an escape route there in his second lair. You are weakened by long years of torture and short on blood. Take down his safeguards.

Zhestokly didn’t pretend he hadn’t been weakened and that he was holding on by sheer willpower. He needed the rejuvenating soil that he’d been kept from. He needed the blood of the ancient Carpathians to help heal him and give him strength. He would take on a master vampire because it was his duty. He knew he had the skills and experience, but perhaps not the strength. He stepped up to the door, raising his arms, as Maksim whirled and rushed Reginald Coonan.

At the last moment Coonan disappeared to reappear behind Maksim, slashing at his throat with claws as he went by. Maksim had already dissolved, shimmered transparently, his back still to Coonan. Coonan took the bait and drove his fist hard through Maksim’s back. His punch was so hard, so brutal, that when there was nothing there but air, he fell forward, stumbling with his own momentum.

Maksim was already in front of him, the illusion of himself disappearing as he slammed his own fist home, driving through muscle and tissue to reach for the withered heart. Coonan didn’t wince, or scream. He simply leaned his head down toward Maksim’s arm and bit through it with his serrated, pointed teeth. His teeth met through the thick muscle, and he jerked his head back to try to tear a chunk of flesh away. Maksim moved into him, hard, using his strength to drive Coonan’s head back with the heel of his hand up into his nose, forcing Coonan to open his mouth.

With one hand still moving inside the chest cavity, seeking his prize, he kept punching with the other hand. Throat. Nose. Eyes. Back to throat. Over and over. Hard, chopping punches. So fast his fist blurred, but each punch knocked Coonan’s head back until the punches could include the mouth. He smashed at the teeth. Knocked them loose. Knocked them out. Sent them down the vampire’s throat.

All the while Coonan ripped at Maksim with both hands, tearing strips of flesh from his ribs, but unable to get loose. As Maksim’s fingers closed around the heart, Coonan realized he couldn’t get away. He opened his mouth to scream. He was the first line of defense, but there were others. He needed to warn Vadim. He needed to call for aid. He’d been certain he could take the hunter, but Maksim had been too fast.

He screamed and howled, but nothing emerged from his throat. Not a single sound. Worse, each time he tried to swallow, his serrated teeth dug deeper into his throat and vocal cords as if they had a life of their own and were sawing at him viciously, cutting his insides to pieces. His throat, his esophagus, his intestines, everywhere inside his body as if the teeth had multiplied.

Coonan realized he’d become complacent when he hadn’t fought hunters in over fifty years. He hadn’t considered an ancient would find him. They were protected. Sergey and Vadim had all kinds of guards around them. He reached out, using the telepathic communication of his kind—the path of all Carpathians.

He is killing me. I need aid. Come to my aid! Even as he sent the message, he knew Vadim wouldn’t release his other guards to allow him to live.

Vadim had a master plan, and he’d been working toward it for centuries. He found the woman he believed was strong enough to survive and keep his child alive. He wasn’t going to risk it all for Reginald Coonan.

In any case the hall filled with Carpathian hunters. Ancients. He recognized some of them from his childhood, but there was no appealing to them. They had dead eyes. Emotionless robots that dispensed the prince’s justice far and wide. He was caught and there was no escaping.

He felt his heart leave his body. No. No. He tried to moan. Even that didn’t leak out into the hall, not even that despairing sound. There was nothing left of him, not with his own teeth devouring him from the inside out. Not with the hunter extracting his heart and tossing it like so much garbage onto the floor of the tunnel.

Humans are garbage. Fodder for us. We are superior to all of them. He tried to reason with them, stretching his hand toward his heart, willing it back into his body.

We can rule them. Take their riches. Their women. Feed on them. Make them serve us. See what we could be. Listen to Vadim and Sergey. They both share a splinter of Xavier and have his knowledge, his ability. Keep me alive. Join us. Join our cause and become great.

He repeated nearly word for word the mantra that had ensnared him. That he had come to believe in. If he could just convince them. His body swayed and his knees suddenly couldn’t hold him. He smelled fire. Not just any fire, but white-hot, as if they had called down the lightning. That was impossible because they were beneath the ground, another layer of protection from the Carpathian hunters. Still, he smelled it. Saw the bright orange-red flames leaping from Maksim’s fingertips to his heart on the ground.

Coonan lunged toward his heart, crawling on his belly, trying to cover the blackened organ with his body to prevent the flames from reaching it. He was far too late. The flames engulfed his heart just as he flung his body over it. The fire burned so hot, the organ disintegrated almost instantly and burned through Coonan’s body at the same time so that orange-red tips danced across his back, bursting through the center of him macabrely.

The safeguards are gone. The room is filled with Vadim’s pawns. I feel them. Some are gleeful, others know to feel fear, but they face us to give him time to escape, Zhestokly told the others.

Maksim knew his use of the telepathic path for all Carpathians was deliberate—an announcement in the calm, measured way of the hunter. Vadim and his pawns would know the hunters were on them. Vadim would have to abandon the woman if he wanted to escape. Maksim finished incinerating the master vampire and turned with the others to the entrance.

They went in hard and fast, six of them. Maksim tried to stay close to Zhestokly. The ancient was weak, and Emeline’s blood wasn’t going to give him much strength. He’d been starved for years. It was a miracle and a testament to his honor that he had been able to keep himself from taking too much of her blood. He had stopped before he threatened her life or weakened her to the point of absolute vulnerability.

The chamber was large with a high ceiling. There were two arched doors with the same heavy wood. Maksim fought his way toward the door to his left, following Emeline’s scent and Zhestokly, who had taken her blood and would know where she was. The Malinov brothers had recruited an army of lesser vampires. Many had no idea of how to fight experienced hunters. Maksim kept a firm grip on his emotions, pushing them deep so he could fight without feeling the kills of so many of his kind.

Malinov was recruiting from young males, convincing them they had a better chance of finding a lifemate with him than with Mikhail—prince of the Carpathian people. Some of the lesser vampires couldn’t have been more than two hundred and fifty years old. They had no business turning. Nothing would drive them to that. Vadim and Sergey had to be very persuasive. They both had a splinter of the high mage Xavier in them. He was devious and cunning, but he also had a way of charming others, convincing them with his golden voice that he could rule the world and give to others what they deserved.

The slaughter was horrific. Bodies were strewn across the chamber floor. Maksim and Zhestokly fought through the lines to get to the door, and they made it with relative ease. Zhestokly went to work on the safeguards and Maksim fought off all attackers, to give the hunter the time to bring down the safeguards.

The undead appear to be nothing but cannon fodder, Lojos said. There are at least three master vampires, and there have to be many others capable of fighting. Not children untried on the battlefield, yet none have come forth to fight us.

They ran, Maksim said. Vadim and Sergey have lost their brothers, and they retreated from Europe and South America, coming here to make their stand. They have learned to retreat and set up elsewhere. They probably have several lairs set up in other cities just like this one. There is no reason to stay and fight. They know they will die eventually facing us. So they throw their raw recruits at us to slow us down, giving them time to disappear.

Maksim glanced down at the three bodies lying practically at his feet. The new recruits might be raw and inexperienced, but they were fanatical.

Safeguards are down, Zhestokly said.

Maksim went through the door first. Emeline was lying on the floor, her body wracked with sobs. Her face was swollen and bruised. Her clothes were torn and bloodied. She scrambled away from him when he approached her. He could see the evidence of Vadim’s feeding on her neck. She had black blood smeared across her mouth where he’d forced her to feed.

He held up his hand. “Emeline, look at me. See me. Blaze sent me to get you. I will take you to safety.”

The woman shook her head, pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, rocking herself.

“Emeline.” Maksim approached cautiously. “You know you cannot stay here.”

“Don’t,” she whispered. “He made me unclean. You can’t come near me. Blaze can never come near me.”

“I will take you away from here,” Maksim said. “Someplace safe.”

“He said he would come for me. He will. I know he will.” Emeline kept her chin on her knees, raising stricken eyes to Maksim. “He’ll be able to see all of you through me. I can’t get near any of you.”

The other hunters were there in the room. Silent. Watchful. Maksim waved his hand at them. “All of us will protect you from him. Let me take you out of here.”

Emeline took a deep breath, choked on a sob and nodded, but she didn’t move. Maksim walked to her cautiously, carefully, taking his time so as not to startle her or frighten her any more than she already was. He didn’t know all that Vadim had done to her in the short amount of time he had her, but now wasn’t the time to ask. Vadim’s scent was all over her.

With torn clothes and evidence of a terrible struggle, he could see that Vadim hadn’t been able to control her with his mind. That would frustrate and infuriate him because he had so little time.

Maksim reached down, again keeping his movements slow, holding out his hand to her. “Can you walk? Do you need me to carry you?”

She swallowed hard. “You’ll have to carry me. Can you really protect me from him? Otherwise I can’t go near Blaze and I need her.”

“We can protect you,” he assured.

She nodded slowly, tears running down her face. “Then please take me to Blaze. I need Blaze.”

Maksim lifted her gently. A shudder ran through her body and she held herself tight, withdrawn. She didn’t look at him, nor did she relax into him. The other hunters closed ranks around her, showing her without words their intentions to guard her. She closed her eyes and stayed very still, her fingers curled into two tight fists.

SIXTEEN

“IT’S BEEN A week, Maksim,” Blaze said unhappily, frowning at the door to the cabin on the Asenguard property. The house was more of a luxury guesthouse than a cabin, but it was made of logs, was two stories with a wraparound deck. “Emeline won’t talk to me about what happened. She barely says anything at all.”

Maksim reached for her hand, threaded his fingers through hers and drew her close, her front to his side, tucking her beneath his shoulder protectively. The moment Blaze woke each rising, before anything else, she checked her friend. The last thing she did before she went to sleep was reach out to her as well.

Blaze pressed her face against his chest, her fingers curling into his shirt. “I’m so worried about her. Emeline and the children. But it’s Emmy I don’t know how to reach.”

Maksim looked up at the closed door of the cabin. Emeline was safe on the Asenguard property. Tariq had a sweet setup. He’d been there long enough to establish himself. His safeguards were strong, and when Maksim had joined in his efforts there to fit into the world and the century they lived in, he had added his protection to Tariq’s property first and then, when he’d acquired the land bordering Tariq’s, his own. Together they bought and slowly renovated a nightclub.

“Tariq has provided a good counselor for the children. They were living on the streets and now they have a good home. Tariq’s boathouse is safe. I set up safeguards so the baby cannot possibly have an accident and fall into the lake. They understand that as long as they are on this property—or ours—we will protect them. Tariq is arranging for a teacher to educate them. They will have everything we can provide for them to be healthy and happy,” Maksim assured her.

He began walking her away from the cabin. She loved Emeline and he couldn’t reassure her that her Emmy was going to be all right. Only time would do that. Vadim could talk to her. Whisper to her. Try to draw her out into the open. None of them had the power to stop that. Eventually the master vampire would drive her mad if the Carpathians couldn’t figure out a way to stop him. They could protect the air around and above the compound, but they couldn’t stop a master vampire—one who had exchanged blood with his victim—from getting inside her head.

“I have no idea how to help her. I don’t know if it did more than take her blood because she won’t tell me.” Knowing they were doing their best, but even that might not be good enough, Blaze asked, “Honey, what should I do?”

“You have to keep doing what you are doing, draga mea, keep going to her every day. She does not want to leave her house, that is fine. Just keep insisting she see you every single day. Tariq and I will keep trying to remove Vadim’s blood from her system. We will take each day as it comes. That is all we can do for now.”

Blaze sighed softly. “I’m so grateful I have you, Maksim. Thank you for getting her back for me.”

“It was a team effort, Blaze. We had no idea Vadim and Sergey Malinov were anywhere close, let alone in our city. Their operation is enormous. It could take years to ferret them all out and destroy them. This will not happen overnight, and Emeline will not heal overnight, either. The children were traumatized. She was as well.”

“She knew what would happen to her and she still went into those tunnels,” Blaze whispered. Her fist tightened in his shirt. She pressed closer to his warm, hard body. “I couldn’t get out in time to stop them from taking her. Even being Carpathian, I couldn’t do it.”

“We prevented Vadim from taking her,” Maksim pointed out. “She is here in the compound. We have Danny, Amelia, Liv and little Bella. Val Zhestokly is in the ground being healed. So is Tomas. The ancients gather each rising and supply him with blood. Mataias is searching neighboring cities for signs of another lair. We’ve sent word to Andre to come here to help us. We will take care of her.”

“I didn’t get to her in time,” Blaze repeated.

“I think you did just fine, Blaze. We destroyed Reginald Coonan and all of the Hallahan brothers. You exposed all of us to a terrible threat, allowing us to do our jobs in the future. Emeline made her choice, and it was her choice. She has the respect and protection of half a dozen ancient hunters and hopefully more will come to aid us. She went into those tunnels to get those children out and she succeeded with your help. She took that chance and we got her out. At this point, Blaze, we have to call that a success.”

Blaze nuzzled his chest. He was right. The vampires were gone, but she knew they wouldn’t stay gone. All of them knew it. Vadim would be coming back at some point, when he determined he was strong enough to take on Emeline’s protection, or, hopefully, when he decided Emmy wasn’t worth his trouble and he moved on to a different plan.

“Tariq will have legal guardianship over the children in another few days. One of the Carpathian techs is making certain of that. No one will be able to dispute his claim. Danny and Amelia are very happy to stay within our protection. They know what is at stake,” Maksim said. “They are good kids and the girls have tested very high for psychic abilities. Vadim chose his victims carefully.”

“He was tracking hunters,” Blaze pointed out. “Warning other vampires to move out of an area if a hunter came into it. He’s very sophisticated and has really incorporated the use of technology into his plans.”

Maksim took a deep breath. “That was part of our downfall, Blaze. We studied the world around us, but we kept to ourselves. None of us believed that the vampires would be able to overcome their need for cruelty and selfishness in order to band together. Vadim recruits the very young. They do not want to wait for a lifemate. They see the ancients still do not have one and they want to take a shortcut. He exposed the weakness in our society and word has been sent to the prince. We need to correct our mistakes immediately.”

He wrapped his arms around Blaze and took them both into the air, back toward their home. I have need of you, sufletul meu, he whispered into her mind.

Intimate. Sexy. Hungry. Predatory even. She shivered. She loved that—the way he poured himself into her, filled her mind with him. Filled her heart with him. She wanted him deep in her body, connecting them.

Blaze turned her face up to his. Ready for him. Always ready for him. The future was a little dark, but she was a warrior and she would stand with him to protect Emeline and the children. He would always make her world bright no matter what was happening around them.

I love you, Maksim. Always know that. I love you.

His face went soft, his eyes warm. His mouth curved into a smile. I love you, Blaze. His voice was tender, and when his mouth took hers, she ignited for him. Because he was her world now. She was his everything.

Keep reading for a special peek at DARK CAROUSEL, on sale now, as the adventure continues for Tariq Asenguard!

There were all kinds of ways to hunt for his quarry. Tariq Asenguard stared down from the balcony at the masses of people below. He and his partner, Maksim Volkov, had long ago converted the palatial theater into a dance club to bring in the crowds. He could stand up above them and look down all the way through four stories at the gyrating bodies below him.

Tariq had drawn up the plans for the renovations himself, making certain that the center was open, so one could see each dance floor and bar when looking over the railings to the floors below. The arrangement was unique, and customers loved it and returned as often as possible. The only place he couldn’t see was the basement, which he’d renovated for use as an underground club for the goth, grunge and vampire lovers that came out at night to live their lives the way they chose, accepted by others like them.

Every floor had a different type of music and drew in a large variety of people. The more diverse, the better for him. The better his hunting. He could hear their heartbeats and the blood pounding in their veins, calling to him. It was easy to hunt in the confines of the building with so many bodies packed in close.

He could use the eager men or women for sustenance when he was in need. It was easy enough to portray the image of the city’s resident playboy with a woman on either arm. He was slowly building a reputation. A rich, eligible bachelor, co-owner of one of the hottest nightclubs in the city. Women flocked to him. That was exactly the result he’d wanted when he’d come up with the idea. He had four other clubs in various cities, and each had a different partner, one who watched over the club while he was at his main residence.

The design with the opening in the center of the dance floors was even more important now that he knew his greatest enemies had invaded his city. Vampires had gone underground. These weren’t the undead of old. They were thinking, technology-using, planning-a-war vampires. Sophisticated and organized. Tariq could scan minds for news of bizarre killings signaling the possibility of a vampire close, one taking over the humans in the area in order to create an army aboveground.

“Anything new?” Maksim came up behind him. He gripped the balcony and leaned down to observe the mass of bodies dancing on each floor below them.

“No. That worries me more than if I’d discovered someone tainted.” Tariq inhaled sharply. Frowned. “There is a scent . . .” He trailed off.

“Sweat,” Maksim said with a wry smile.

Tariq had no sense of humor. For him, there was no riot of color as he looked down on the men and women dancing. He saw only a dull gray. He felt . . . nothing. He lived to hunt. To kill. Even in the doing of that, he felt . . . nothing. He inhaled again, and once more, it was there. That scent. Calling to him. Making his heart pound. Pumping hot blood through his veins. He leaned out farther over the rail.

“It’s elusive. Faint. Barely there.”

The smile faded from Maksim’s rugged face. “What scent, Tariq? Vampire? There’s been no hint of activity since we discovered the underground lair. We’ve been patrolling . . .”

Tariq shook his head. “No. Orange blossoms and vanilla and something else. It is faint but it is there. You can’t smell that? Somewhere . . .” He broke off again, searching each individual floor for the source of that extraordinary fragrance. He inhaled again and caught the elusive scent, drawing it into his lungs. Instantly his body reacted of its own accord, something that had never happened. A stirring. His blood hot. Thick. Beginning to pool low and wicked.

He stilled as only a predator could, letting the wonder of feeling wash over him. Absorbing the shock of it. He didn’t feel. He couldn’t. He was ancient and long ago had lost all ability to feel anything. His body didn’t react to a scent. To anything at all. And yet . . .

Maksim inhaled deeply. He nodded slowly. “I can’t tell which floor she’s on. A woman.” He narrowed his eyes, his gaze sharp on his partner. “Interesting that the scent intrigues you when there are so many. Why focus on just that one?”

Tariq knew the answer, but he was afraid to voice it aloud after hunting for hundreds of years. His lifemate. The woman. His personal miracle. The fragrance wouldn’t leave him alone. He had exceptional hunting skills, well proven over the centuries, yet the woman, a human, time and time again managed to escape him. More than once in these last few weeks, he’d felt her close, a ripple in the universe, the ground moving beneath his feet, or the air around him suddenly coming alive with electricity, yet she had managed to slip away. Not this time, woman. I have you now.

He inhaled again . . . and knew for certain. That scent . . . Orange blossoms and vanilla continued to slip past his guard, until his blood thundered in his ears and rushed hotly through his veins. Until he felt obsessed with finding its owner. He didn’t feel emotions like obsession. He didn’t feel. It was impossible for an ancient Carpathian male to experience emotion unless he found his lifemate. Until he heard her voice.

“She’s here. In this club. Right now. I know she is. My lifemate.” He whispered it aloud. In awe. Knowing it was the truth. She was there, in the building somewhere. There was no other explanation. He had to be hearing a whisper of her voice. A thread among all the others. She was there. That close. The one woman he’d searched centuries for. The one woman who would restore color to his life, ending his gray world. She would return his lost emotions after his centuries of feeling nothing. He had searched the long, endless years, every continent, but she had remained elusive. At last he was close to her, feeling her, his soul, his lifemate, his other half.

His fingers gripped the thick, hand-carved banister, the enormous pressure leaving indentations in the hard wood. He leaned down to survey the dancers pressed so closely together on the various floors. His patience was growing thin. She was defying him. He knew she felt his calls. How could she not? He whispered to her night after night, soft words to draw her to him. He allowed the beat of the music to pulse into the air, sending a web of notes to lead her back to him, yet she eluded his every net.

“She has to be close, Tariq,” Maksim said, joining him at the railing. He gripped the wood as well, leaning down to listen, as if he could find her in the mass of bodies as they danced, drank and had numerous conversations.

There was the clink of glasses. The sound of laughter. Of arguments. Of flirtations. The whisper of lovers coming together in the dark. Both men tried to hear that one voice. The voice that would restore color and emotion back into Tariq’s life. He’d waited centuries for her, and still she eluded him.

She could be on any floor and they would hear that whisper. She could be in the underground “cave” club. They could hear the conversations from there as well. They’d designed the club to make the occupants feel safe. Secure. The underground club had separate entrances and exits. The music loud, the place dark with deep blues and purples shadowing the dungeonlike décor.

Tariq would never stop until he had her in his hands. She didn’t understand that about him. He was as relentless and as merciless as the raging sea. There was no stopping him once he had his prey in sight. He was Carpathian, hunter of the vampire, and he had survived when most of his kind had long ago succumbed to the lure of power. He had done his duty to his prince and people, keeping his assigned regions clean and safe from the stench of evil.

After all the long centuries, he knew she was close, yet she remained elusive, just out of his reach. He had turned his hunting instincts, honed by centuries of strategy, to finding her. He turned away from the blaring music and the scent of so much blood running hot in veins calling to him. It was a heady temptation he fought continually. Irritated at his inability to find her when she was so close, he wanted to roar his frustration to the night sky. He needed air, needed to go outside and breathe.

Tariq cursed softly in his own language, moving back from the railing into deeper shadows. Just the fact that he could feel frustration meant she was very, very close, and he could hear her voice, although he couldn’t recognize it among all the other voices. He knew she was somewhere in the building, just out of reach, by the way his emotions, long ago gone, slipped in unexpectedly to disrupt his calm, logical thinking. She had to have a strong mind to thwart his many scans of the city in search of her. She was very strong to be able to defy his commands.

He was a powerful being, one very used to getting his way with a minimal amount of effort. He had survived centuries of battles, centuries of no emotions, no color. Always the insidious whispers of the call to evil, to power tempted him, yet he had endured for one reason. A woman. The one woman. His lifemate. Other half to his soul. Only she could restore his world, his life as it was meant to be. He had long ago resigned himself to his fate, endurance in a bleak, harsh world until the temptation of power was too strong. Yet now, when he was so near the end, he sensed her presence, that ripple of hope in a world of emptiness.

“Mataias tracked Vadim Malinov to the harbor,” Maksim reported. “Vadim was always intelligent, even in his younger years. Now, as a master vampire with the splinter from Xavier, one of the most powerful mages ever born, in him, Vadim is proving to be a dangerous adversary. I do not like that he went to the harbor.”

“That would suggest he went out to sea?” Tariq made it a question. His mind should have been on the hunt for the master vampire. Vadim was, without doubt, the greatest threat to the Carpathian and human world since Xavier, the mage. Tariq was too distracted by that fragrance. Now that he’d caught the scent, he knew he had to turn his attention to finding the owner. “She has to be somewhere in the building.”

It was a big building. Enormous. Five stories plus the basement, four of them used for the various clubs and the fifth floor for his personal space. The basement was the underground club, so really, five clubs. Four bars on each of the club floors. Four dance floors on each floor with tables surrounding the inner balconies. Each floor was packed nearly to capacity. Still, he was Carpathian. He could cover a lot of ground fast.

“Go,” Maksim said. “You’re not going to be any good to me until you find that woman. Lojos and Mataias are patrolling tonight and if there is any indication that Vadim’s army is working in our hometown, they’ll find the evidence. It’s been very quiet these last couple of weeks.”

Vadim Malinov, a unique and gifted master vampire, was putting together an army of vampires. He was using the latest technology and even managing to recruit humans to do his bidding. It was unprecedented to do what Vadim had done. He’d fled the Carpathian Mountains, away from the prince of the Carpathian people and the ancient hunters there, to travel to the United States, where he clearly was amassing an army against both Carpathians and humans. He had to be stopped.

Tariq didn’t wait for further conversation. He cloaked himself and floated down from his personal space to the fourth-floor club. Salsa music pounded through the air. Hard-hitting. A driving beat. This club catered to Latin dancing and the atmosphere reflected that. It was upscale, trendy and extremely popular. Bodies ground against one another. The dance floors were always filled with every level of dancer, from beginner to competition expert.

He wound his way through the tables and then the dancers, inhaling. Searching. Being meticulous. It occurred to him that if his woman were on this floor she would be dancing hip to hip with another male. Why would the predator in him become more pronounced at the idea of his lifemate’s body rubbing against another man’s body if she weren’t close? If he hadn’t heard her voice—that magical voice that would change his world? She had to be there, the sound drifting to him through all the conversations registering as noise he tuned out on a nightly basis.

Because she has to be here, Maksim agreed, using the general Carpathian telepathic link.

Where are you? He whispered it, sending the inquiry out into the night.

When there was no answer, frustration edged with the need for violence. When his inquiry was met with silence. The fact that he could feel frustration only proved to Tariq that he’d heard his lifemate’s voice. He had to have crossed paths with her and heard the sound of her voice in order to begin to feel emotions. They were negative emotions and very faint, but at least he was recognizing that she was close enough to be affecting him. Changing him. Not for the better.

He had to have heard her voice blending with all the other noises, the pounding beats of the various bands as well as all the conversations on each of the floors. Now he had her scent, that wonderful elusive fragrance that had to be unique to her. He moved on from the fourth floor to the third, trying to follow the scent. Trying to listen for the sound of her voice that would fully restore his emotions and bring color back to his existence.

He sorted through the cacophony of sounds, listening to hundreds of threads of conversations, hundreds of voices, as he moved quickly through the third floor. He was certain she was heading away from him, almost as if she knew she was being pursued. He was an ancient Carpathian, his emotions long gone from him, yet he felt a kernel of excitement. A frisson of anticipation moved down his spine like the caress of fingers. Light. Barely there. The touch exquisite.

“Charlie restores old carousel horses,” a male voice said. “We know she has a strong psychic talent because her testing was off the charts, but her gift seemed to be for older things. Antiques. She couldn’t possibly have read anything from touching one of us or any object we’d handled.” There was doubt in the voice. “Could she?”

Tariq had no idea why he’d zeroed in on that voice, but the need to hear the conversation was almost as strong as the compulsion to move through his club to find his woman. Could “Charlie” be that woman? The man said she had a psychic gift.

“Why would anyone want to restore old broken carousel horses, Daniel? Isn’t that stuff manufactured every day?” another male sneered, as if he felt total contempt for anything old.

Tariq was old. Ancient in fact. He came from centuries earlier, and the thought that this man speaking wanted to throw away part of history bothered him. A first. To be bothered by an opinion of a human. A stranger of no consequence. Yet not only did the subject matter intrigue him, but now he understood why this conversation, among all the others, caught at his attention.

He dropped over the railing of the third floor and floated toward the ground floor, where he knew the conversation was taking place.

“Seriously, Bruce? What the hell are you going on about? We have to get out of here, follow them and figure out whether she knows. Stop bringing up bullshit and finish your drink fast or take it with you because they’re on the move.”

“You just want to fuck her, Daniel,” the one called Bruce sneered. “Hell, you were all over her all night. That’s what spooked her. And we can’t be too obvious following them. We have to give them time. It isn’t like we don’t know where they live.”

Tariq’s world stopped. The ground rolled beneath his feet. Something dark and ugly rose up to consume him. A man dared to try to encroach on what belonged to him. He’d searched centuries. He’d kept Carpathians and humans alike safe by holding on to his honor by a thread. He’d endured centuries of relentless loneliness. Of nothingness. Of a gray void that was endless.

His fangs lengthened. The need for violence hit him like a blow. Emotions were difficult to control when they hit all at once. Overwhelming. Centuries of discipline saved the man called Daniel. Tariq was able to take a deep breath and force himself under control.

In the blinding lights of the bar, he had to keep his eyes narrowed to slits while he worked at toning down the color so he could see properly. His woman’s scent was fading even as he dropped fast to the ground floor and began to streak his way through the dense crowd to try to reach her.

“Damn straight I want to fuck her. Don’t you? She’s gorgeous,” Daniel said.

Tariq could tell by the way this voice blended with the music and other conversations that he was on the move. Heading toward the exit.

“Like you don’t want the same thing, Bruce,” Daniel continued, laughter in his voice. “You were touching her at every opportunity. Just so you know, you aren’t going to get her.”

“We always share,” Bruce muttered, clearly annoyed.

“Yeah, well, not her. She’s special, and I’m going to recruit her. Get her to join us. You want a woman, share her friend with Vince,” Daniel declared.

“No way,” Vince snapped. “I told both of you the moment we laid eyes on them in Paris that Genevieve was mine and mine alone. I haven’t changed my mind.”

Tariq felt the edge of his teeth against his tongue. The blood ran hot in his veins, yet the predator was as cold as ice. They were talking about his woman with no respect in their voices.

Tariq was almost on them now. He had passed the table where three men and two women had been sitting together in the bar of the West Coast Swing room. Tariq paused, his heart beginning to pound in time with the rhythm of the music. His mouth went dry. He inhaled deeply. She’d been there. Orange blossom and vanilla. He followed the unique fragrance, weaving his way through the tables, putting on speed and yanking open the door to follow the three men into the night. He came up behind them. Her scent wasn’t on any of the three men and that saved their lives.

She’d been in his club, probably all evening. With them. Only a short distance away from him. Dancing with them. Drinking with them. The fire in his blood increased until he could hear the roar in his ears and feel it thundering in his veins. These men had laid their hands on her. He took a step toward them, coming up behind them in utter silence. A wind. No more. A dark swirl in the air that could suck the life out of them without their even knowing before they dropped to the ground dead.

Tariq. Maksim again used the telepathic link between them. He was already on the lower floor, but away from Tariq, down toward the doors leading outside. I feel a blank space. A foul stench is drifting in from outside each time the doors open. The undead is close. He’s hunting.

Tariq raised his head alertly. He’d been so locked onto his prey he hadn’t scanned before stepping outside. Mistakes like that could cost his life. Not only his, but those of humans and Carpathians he had vowed to protect. Feelings were not an asset to a hunter. His lifemate was out in the open parking lot with a vampire close and three men stalking her. Of course she would draw a vampire to her. She had to be psychically gifted in order to be his lifemate. No vampire could resist that lure.

You stay and protect those inside. I will go after the undead. I am already outside.

Tariq whispered a command to the three men he’d been stalking, coming up behind them so closely he could have driven his teeth into their jugulars. Instead, he ordered them to go to their homes immediately. He would deal with them later if he ran across them, but he had to ensure his lifemate and her friend Genevieve were safe.

He took to the air, streaking above the large parking lot toward the parking garage. It was four stories high. His lifemate and her friend had traveled in that direction. Orange blossom and vanilla left a faint trail and he followed it. Even as he did so, he was aware of the three men getting into their car, obeying his command.

Then he was inside and moving fast toward the second story. He got his first glimpse of the two women. The shorter one caught the arm of the taller one and stepped close to her. “Wait,” she hissed softly.

His entire world changed in the blink of an eye. In that one instant. It was so fast, so dramatic, he barely could comprehend, let alone adjust. The ground shifted beneath his feet. The air around him vibrated and quaked, nearly throwing him out into the open. Colors blinded him. Shook him. Made his stomach lurch and his eyes burn. He’d never believed colors could be so vivid.

There in the garage, in the dead of night with only dim lighting, he could see the tall woman had long, glossy dark hair the color of rich chestnuts. Her hair fell like a waterfall down her back. She wore dark blue jeans, a shirt with colors bleeding into one another and dark blue sandals with four-inch heels. The other woman—his woman—was small and curvy, with dark auburn hair that curled every which way, wild and thick; it looked silky soft and all he could think about was burying his hands in it. That was his woman. His lifemate. The miracle he’d searched long centuries for.

She wore soft blue jeans, so faded they were nearly white, and a shimmering coral top that clung to her generous curves. He stepped closer to her to inhale that elusive scent of orange blossoms and vanilla, taking the fragrance deep into his lungs. His world tilted for a moment as emotion poured in. Strong. Shaking him. His first instinct was to grab her and take to the sky to get her out of harm’s way. She was in danger. Very real, mortal danger.

A man stood lounging against the hood of a car. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Wearing jeans and a white collared shirt with a sports jacket. His ankles were crossed, and he watched the women approaching the car, not taking his eyes from them. His hair was combed back and short, spiked, with the latest GQ look. His attention was on the women and he failed to notice the small brush of wind disturbing debris on the floor.

“Ladies.” The voice was cultured. The man smiled, revealing white teeth, the merest hint of sharp points, just a little like fangs, flashing. He beckoned to the women with a curl of his fingers.

Tariq’s heart jerked hard in his chest before he took a deep calming breath and forced all feeling away so that only ice ran in his veins. He emerged from the shadows just as the dark-haired woman stepped toward the car.

The shorter woman, Charlie—his Charlie—caught her friend’s arm. “Wait, Genevieve,” she ordered softly and took a step to put herself in front of the other woman. It was subtle. It was protective, but there was no doubt what she was doing, and in spite of the fact that he couldn’t afford any emotion, he felt pride in her. He could feel her fear, but she still put herself in front of someone she obviously cared about.

“That’s our car,” she said, halting a short distance from the man.

She thought she was safe. Out of reach. Tariq knew better. He knew the monster she faced. The man looked just that, a man, but he wasn’t human. He was one of the most evasive vampires Tariq had chased through the centuries. He was cunning and fast and he ran with the Malinov brothers, twisted, highly intelligent siblings who very early on decided to give up their souls, turn vampire and seek to destroy the prince and all Carpathian hunters.

Tariq was surprised to see his old childhood friend, now an elusive foe. He had taken the name Fridrick Astor, although Tariq had no way of knowing if he was still using the name. Names meant little to the Carpathian people or those who had chosen to give up their souls for the rush killing while feeding gave them—becoming the undead. Fridrick had to know Tariq and Maksim resided there, and it was highly unusual to have a vampire hunt when Carpathian males were so openly living in the area.

The vampire straightened casually and widened his smile. “Ladies. So sorry.” His German accent was perfect, although he’d been born and raised in the Carpathian Mountains. He raised an eyebrow. “You’re looking beautiful tonight.”

His voice held a compulsion. It rang compelling and soft. Persuasive. He was wholly focused on the two women. Tariq knew Fridrick had utter confidence in his ability to destroy any human who might come to the rescue of the two women. In the distance, Tariq could hear the sound of various voices as people left the dance club and returned to their cars to go home. He knew Fridrick had to hear them as well, although the vampire didn’t take his gaze from the women.

Charlie stepped backward, forcing Genevieve to step back as well. She kept her body firmly placed between her friend and the stranger. “I’ve seen you before.” She made it a statement. “In Paris. You were in Paris.”

Tariq could hear her heart accelerating. He moved slowly, not wanting to draw Fridrick’s attention. The air was still in the garage and it wasn’t easy to allow himself to drift between Charlie and the vampire. For the first time in his entire existence that he could remember he tasted fear. Actually tasted it. It was on his tongue. Crawling down his throat to settle in tight knots in his belly. Fear permeated his skin, sank deep into his pores and into his bones. He knew he would always remember this moment. The way the parking garage smelled of oil and gas, and the scent of orange blossoms and vanilla mixing with the odor of his fear for his lifemate.

For a moment he was paralyzed, terrified that he might move too fast and give his presence away to the undead. Doubts flooded in. Would he be too slow to stop Fridrick before the vampire could kill her? He’d always had complete confidence in himself as a hunter, a renowned fighter, but this time, it wasn’t his life at stake—it was hers. His miracle. The woman born with the other half of his soul. He had no choice but to close himself off to all emotion. He dimmed the vibrancy of the colors around him and allowed himself to find that center without feeling that allowed him to function.

Fridrick smirked at Charlie. The vampire heard her heart rate rising fast as well. “Paris was beautiful and very . . . productive.” He beckoned with his fingers again, his voice dropping another octave. “Come here to me.” There was sure power in his voice now, a compulsion not to be denied.

Genevieve slammed her hands over her ears and shook her head. Charlie regarded the vampire with trepidation, but she didn’t move toward him, as he’d commanded; instead she moved another step back, her body colliding with that of her friend, forcing Genevieve to step backward as well.

Tariq drifted closer, nothing but molecules. The air around them was very still and he didn’t dare tip the vampire off to his presence.

“You were the one trying to get into our home. I saw you for a moment. And then again, right outside the museum where I was working.” Charlie’s voice was very soft. It trembled just a little bit, but she disregarded the compulsion in Fridrick’s voice. More, it was almost as though she was immune to it.

Genevieve knew the compulsion was there, and she combated it by trying to drown it out. Charlie didn’t even blink or shake her head to clear it. Instead, there was a belligerent note added to her accusation.

“That is true. You proved to be very resistant. Your friend was . . . so easy. Unlike you, he didn’t put up much resistance.”

“You killed Ricard Beaudet.” She stated it as a fact.

“Ah yes, your mentor. He was such a little whiner. And that ridiculous little mustache he was so proud of. Weren’t you just a little tired of his arrogance? He thought so much of himself.”

Tariq recognized the name, Ricard Beaudet. It should have shocked him to know that he’d written to the man and that at that time his lifemate was working for Beaudet. Ricard Beaudet was considered the foremost master of restoring carousel horses in the world, and Tariq collected them. Somehow he wasn’t surprised that Charlotte had already been connected to him. Their souls called to each other’s.

Charlie’s face paled as she watched Fridrick closely, drawing in a deep breath. “Did you kill my brother, too?” When he nodded slowly, still smiling, she went very still. “Why? You were in Paris. Why would you come all the way to the States and kill my brother? What did I do to you that you would want to kill everyone I care about?”

“Not everyone, my dear.” Fridrick shook his head. “I left you the child. I knew you would come here to protect the child.”

“You killed my brother so we would come to the States?” Clearly his admission was the last thing she expected.

Genevieve caught at the loop in Charlie’s jeans and pulled her a step back when it looked as if Tariq’s woman might launch herself at Fridrick. Just the way she leaned toward Fridrick instead of away from him told Tariq much about his lifemate. She had a temper. She had courage. She would be a fighter, not one to flee.

“What do you want with us?” Genevieve asked.

Fridrick straightened from the lazy pose he had, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet, his handsome, easygoing demeanor changing subtly.

Instantly Tariq solidified, as if he’d come out of the shadows, angling his body so that he was between the women, but slightly facing them as well as Fridrick. He flashed a smile at all of them. “Good evening. How is everyone doing tonight?” He kept his voice friendly and open, the owner of the nightclub greeting his patrons. “Ladies.” He bowed slightly toward them, an old-world, courtly gesture, before turning his attention on the undead. “Fridrick. How . . . unexpected to see you here.” His tone said the vampire wasn’t welcome and had made a very big mistake.

Fridrick smirked, seemingly not in the least bit intimidated. Tariq immediately scanned his surroundings. Fridrick would never, under any circumstances, willingly go into battle with him unless he had no other choice—or the odds were on his side.

“Mr. Asenguard,” Charlotte murmured.

Of course she knew his name; everyone did. He was in magazines and, as owner of the club, was often photographed for charity events, but still—Tariq liked that she knew who he was. She put a hand on his arm. Lightly. He felt her touch burning right through the material of his jacket and shirt. Through skin and sinew straight to his bone. Her fingers curled. Exerted subtle pressure. She urged him away from Fridrick. At first he was unsure what she was trying to do, and then it occurred to him that she was trying to protect him.

“Not so unexpected seeing you, Tariq,” Fridrick responded, confirming Tariq’s fears that Fridrick believed he was in a position to win in an actual battle.

Fridrick had known Tariq was close and it hadn’t fazed him a bit. Tariq needed to figure out what he was missing very fast. Making a mistake could be the difference between life and death for his lifemate.

He used the telepathic path he’d forged with his partner. Something is not right here, Maksim. My lifemate and her friend, another potential lifemate, are being threatened. Send out the call for anyone close to come quickly. I do not want to tip him off I have reinforcements in the area. Fridrick is a master vampire and I am certain he has brought others to aid him. Unlike with the undead, there was never ego with hunters. Destroying the vampire was merely a job, something they did in any way possible.

Fridrick’s smile faltered as his gaze dropped to Charlie’s fingers curled around Tariq’s forearm. “It will do you no good to cling to Tariq as if he is your savior, Charlotte. Yes, I know your name.” His gaze traveled over Genevieve, his stare insolent. “You are for someone else, so touch the soft little playboy all you want, but, Charlotte, you need to let go of him and come here to me.”

“Fridrick, you would not be threatening either of these women, would you?” Tariq kept his tone mild. Even amused. All the while he reached with all his senses to find the true threat. It wasn’t Fridrick. In a fair fight, the odds would be somewhat even, a scenario Fridrick would never accept. “Ladies, Fridrick sometimes forgets himself. He likes to think he is capable of far more than he really is.”

Charlie’s fingers started to slip from his arm. She looked very alarmed. In that moment he realized she would choose to save him and her friend by obeying Fridrick’s command. He turned his hand to catch her wrist, slid his palm down until he could thread his fingers through hers. The need to comfort her was a compulsion he couldn’t possibly ignore. He drew her closer to him. Fit her under his shoulder. He needed room to fight, but she needed care first.

He arched one eyebrow at Fridrick, allowing a slight smile of amusement to curve his lips. It was important to send the right message. Fridrick got what he was silently saying because his cocky smirk faltered for just a moment and his gaze shifted first right and then left as if to assure himself he wasn’t alone. Of course he wasn’t alone. Fridrick was a master vampire. He’d been around for centuries and was skilled in battle, but he would never face a hunter of Tariq’s skill without aid.

Tariq caught Charlie’s arm and brought it around his waist. To his astonishment, she didn’t stiffen or fight him. Her attention was on Fridrick. She didn’t seem to notice that she was clinging to Tariq, and he didn’t mind in the least. Nothing in his life had ever felt as right as the way her small body tucked so tightly against his did. Her skin burned through his clothes, sank through his pores to scorch her right onto his bones. He’d never felt better in his life or more alive. Perhaps that was the last thing he needed when going into battle with multiple vampires, but he allowed himself that brief moment to feel. To take it in.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I live on the beautiful Northern California coast. I have always loved hiking, whale watching and being outdoors. My camping days are over but I might consider glamping. LOL! I am surrounded by my family, my beloved grandchildren and my pack of dogs.

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