He’d waited more than two hundred years for her. How could she ask him to just let her go?

Feed

Her eyes were drenched in terror.

Raising a hand, the one-who-waited stroked her cheek as her throat worked, the scream swallowed up by the pungent miasma of her fear.

“Not tonight.” A rasp, its throat a ruin. “I have fed.” The hunger came often, but the one-who-waited had learned to discipline that voracious need, because without discipline it would become a slave to those urges rather than a master of them.

So it pressed its mouth to hers in a kiss that made her whimper, its lips cracked and papery against hers. Hers had been soft once, were no longer. A pity.

Releasing her jaw, the one-who-waited smiled and drew one last draft of fear-laced air before removing the temptation from view. “Soon,” it promised as the wood obscured her face. “Soon.”

19

Janvier was leaning against the wall by the window finishing off the last of the blood in his wineglass when Ash found him around ten thirty that night. Dressed in those sleek black jeans paired with red ankle boots that had a spiked heel, her long-sleeved black shirt tucked into her jeans and opened at the throat just enough to hint at skin, she looked sexy and dangerous and his.

The dangles at her ears were a cascade of hoops created with tiny beads of orange and yellow and red, the belt around her hips having a simple square buckle of gleaming silver. And her hair, that glorious hair, it was a waterfall down her back. He wanted to wrap his hand in it, arch her throat, sink his fangs into her.

Mark her.

“We should head out,” she said, eating a forkful of the chocolate fudge cake on her plate.

Janvier put his possessive hunger in a stranglehold and stole a fingerlick of frosting. “Any more news from the computer teams?”

“No. They’ve struck out in terms of identifying her either through the tat or through missing persons reports.” She stabbed her fork into the cake with unnecessary force. “Not surprising. With what we know from the signs of feeding on her body, she probably lived with her killer.”

“We will find her, cher.”

“Yes, we will.” An absolute statement as she finished off the cake.

He couldn’t help it. Leaning in, he caught a crumb clinging to her lower lip and brought it to his mouth. Sucking his thumb inside, he said, “Mmm, sweet.”

Her body had gone stiff at the contact, and now she moved with an unusual jerkiness to place the fork and saucer on a side table. “Let’s go.”

It wasn’t the response he’d been hoping for, but neither was it the light, flirtatious one he’d begun to find increasingly dissatisfying. He loved playing with Ash, but not when she was using that play to keep him at a distance. This at least was a sign he’d breached the armor she used to hold him at bay.

“Any particular club you want to hit first?” he asked, after getting into the car and starting up the engine.

“I say we start at the low end and work our way up. We have no way of knowing if she was beautiful enough to be invited into the exclusive clubs.” Beauty talked in the clubs, especially if sexual feeding was involved. “But if she had been a regular at one of those places, or over at Erotique”—the most elite club in the city and located outside the Quarter—“her disappearance would’ve created more waves.”

“I haven’t heard any rumors of such a disappearance,” Janvier confirmed.

“Did your contact have any success in reconstructing her face?”

“Yes, I received the image during dinner. It has no life to it so we’ll have to be judicious in how we utilize it.” Janvier tapped a finger on the steering wheel, the streets shadowed and dark around them. “She had to be in a one-on-one relationship.”

“Why?”

“You saw at Giorgio’s how the cattle cling to one another. If the victim was part of a group, her housemates would have reported her missing even if her vampire didn’t.”

“Unless she told them she was leaving him, and he kidnapped her after allowing her—and them—to believe he’d let her go. You know how many times that happens in abusive mortal relationships. Any reason it should be different for immortals?”

Face grim, Janvier said, “No.”

Blowing out a breath at the bleak ugliness of it, she ran a hand through her hair, having left it down for tonight. However, since she didn’t want anyone running their fingers through it in the clubs—it was creepy how many people thought that was okay—she reached back and began to braid it tight to her skull. “The situation with Giorgio is bugging me. You don’t think our victim could’ve been part of his harem, do you?”

Janvier shook his head. “I made it a point to check him out—all his cattle are accounted for, even the ones nudged out of the nest after becoming too old.” Distaste colored his tone. “Giorgio’s use of women apparently stops short of murder.”

“Damn, he made such a good, smarmy suspect.” She tied off her braid and considered whether to swap her heeled red boots for the hunter boots she’d left in the car. She decided to stick with the heels since this was about blending into the clubs.

“And you, cher—did you sense any disturbing memory echoes in his house?”

“No, but it’s new. The only time I’ve had an overwhelming reaction to a place rather than a person was at Nazarach’s home.” A shiver rippled through her. “I do get a hint of it now and then with older homes, but nothing like the screams in his walls.”