The erotic knowledge made her moan while his mouth coaxed her out of an unremembered dream and into the rush of sensation. She put her hands over his, helping him massage her breasts as she surrendered to it. As she’d learned last night, with Sean resistance was futile.

Rowan spiraled out of control, and then she was free-falling through some intense, dark cascade of joy framed in bliss. Another man might have pushed her past the point of pleasure and into pain, but God, Sean seemed to sense exactly how much she could take, even after hours and hours of endless, mindless sex.

He kissed her down there as she drifted back to reality, a chaste brush of his lips before his tongue swept out to give her pulsing clit one final caress. That last zing made her curl against him after he crawled up her body and rolled onto his side to hold her against him.

“Trying to kill me?” she asked his collarbone.

“No one dies from a kiss.” He sounded smug, and idly caressed her shoulder and arm. “And it was my turn.”

She lifted her head. “No second thoughts? No postcoital regrets?”

“Nah,” he said, shifting her a little closer. “I don’t do the girl thing.” He tucked in his chin to have a look at her. “You were something last night. Did you like me?”

Did she like him? After her little experiment with her hand mirror, she knew she was in love with him. “You were good.”

His eyebrows rose. “Just good?”

“All right,” she sighed. “You suck. I totally had to fake it. All nine hundred and seventy- five times.” She giggled when his arm around her tightened. “Okay, okay, maybe I enjoyed number nine hundred and seventy-four a little.”

He pretended to think. “Was that the time you were screaming my name, or promising to have it tattooed with ‘Forever’ on your keister?”

“Johnny Depp did that before he broke up with Winona,” she warned him. “He had to get the tattoo fixed to say ‘Wino Forever.’ ”

“These are something else.” He traced the coiling spiral of the dragon on her forearm. “What made you pick dragons?”

“Something I read in a book once.” She stared up at the ceiling. “This thing about dragons being princesses in disguise. I liked it.” She eyed his arm. “So what’s your excuse?”

He examined the S-shaped red dragon wrapped in a circle of its own tail. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Very decent ink job.” She touched the sapphire eyes, which had been rendered so realistically they seemed to glitter. “I’ve seen this before.”

“It’s a taijitu.”

“God bless you,” she teased. “You get it done somewhere local?”

He shook his head. “When I was over in Italy. I knocked around Europe for a couple years after school.”

“I’d love to do that.” She felt sleepy. “So, you ever think about”—she yawned—“moonlighting as an alarm clock?”

“You said you needed one.” He pulled the covers up over her. “It’s okay, it’s still early. Go back to sleep, baby.”

Like a light, she was already out.

“The latest test results are back, Mr. King,” the physician told him. “There is no change. It would be best for you to consider making your final preparations.”

Gerald King took the chart from the oncologist and studied the lab slips clipped to his chart. The numbers, dismal as they were, were holding. He still had a few more days. “You can go.”

“Mr. King—”

He threw the chart at the doctor and roared, “Get out.”

The oncologist retreated from the suite, leaving King to fume in solitude. He knew he could not allow the situation to continue longer than a day or two; the painkillers were no longer having any effect and soon his nervous system would begin to fail. Once he fell into the final, inevitable coma he would be as good as dead. At best he had forty-eight hours left to find her.

“Mr. King?” his assistant said. “Ms. Carroll is calling on the private line for you.”

King could no longer leave his bed, so he summoned his nurse to wheel the secured phone over to him. After she departed, he answered the call.

“You were supposed to report in hours ago,” he told his operative.

“Ms. Carroll will no longer be reporting to you, Mr. King,” a man with a deep, rather unnerving voice said.

He frowned. “Genaro? Is that you?”

“Listen carefully.”

The man spoke at length about GenHance, their transerum, and the hunt for Kyndred. While King was tempted to interrupt several times, the authority in the man’s voice seemed to command his attention. Sometime later he realized that the annoying hum in his ear was a dial tone, and that whoever had called him had hung up.

King frowned. He couldn’t remember the entire conversation, but two things came back to him: Nella Hoff was dead, killed in a tragic car accident on her way to work, and there was no longer any need to replace her with another operative. Naturally he wouldn’t waste his resources by planting another informant inside GenHance, not when his daughter was coming home.

If she came home.

King dialed another number. “Mr. Meriden,” he said as soon as the other man answered. “Have you found my daughter?”

“I have some new leads,” the bounty hunter replied. “I’m going out this morning to follow up. The rest you’ll get in my report tonight.”

“I’m afraid your term of employment is coming to an end more rapidly than I had anticipated. You will deliver Alana to me in forty-eight hours, or your contract will be terminated.”

Meriden uttered an ugly laugh. “Then kill me now, King, because I haven’t found her.”

“Perhaps you need some additional motivation.” He picked up the latest surveillance report and scanned through it quickly. “Did you enjoy your evening with Ms. Dietrich? I could make you the last man she ever invites into her bed.”

His voice turned to stone. “You leave her out of this.”

“Then find Alana, Mr. Meriden,” he snapped. “You have two days left, and then Ms. Dietrich dies.”

Rowan woke up to find herself alone, and frowned as she sat up and looked around the room. She was back in her apartment and there was no sign of Sean. He hadn’t even bothered to leave her a note.

“You don’t call, you don’t write . . .” she sighed as she got up, limping a little as she went out to the kitchen, where she found a small bag of powdered-sugar-covered doughnuts, a Coke, and a pile of folded clothes. The clothes turned out to be every stitch she had been wearing when she’d gone over to Sean’s apartment last night.

“I love this man.” She grinned as she tore open the bag and helped herself to one of the minidoughnuts that were among her favorite secret pleasures. “And I think he is psychic.”

Feeling a little sore from last night’s frolicking—and this morning’s, she reminded herself—Rowan retreated to the shower, where she stood for a good thirty minutes under a hot spray. It was ridiculous, how good feeling sore felt. She had whisker burns all over her breasts, finger bruises blooming on each hip, and something that felt like a bite mark on her right shoulder. Her limbs weren’t stiff, but loose, with that faint, satisfying ache left over from sex.

If she could call what they’d done to each other mere sex, she thought as she dried off, and saw in the mirror some other marks he’d left on her. She’d bet good money he had a nice set of matching scratches running along either side of his spine, and a couple of nip marks inside his thighs and along the curve of his jaw. It was silly, but for the first time in her life she couldn’t remember exactly how many orgasms she’d had. From the stupid smile that seemed to be permanently plastered on her mug, she was sure it was somewhere in the double digits.

Of course, part of it was because she hadn’t shifted last night.

Rowan had known it was wrong to pry into his brain, but after their last bout of lovemaking she simply had to know. She’d gotten up to get the hand mirror she carried in her bag and then had come back to Sean, kneeling down and holding his wrist while she looked into the hand mirror and shifted.

Only she hadn’t shifted.

For the first time in her life, the dreamveil hadn’t fallen over her. Her body had simply refused to shift. She stayed in her own form, not a single muscle popping or bone stretching. And there was only one reason that would happen.

She was Sean Meriden’s ideal woman, and he was in love with her. Her, Rowan Dietrich. Not someone else she’d become with the dreamveil.

Tonight, after her shift, she’d have to do something special for her guy to show her appreciation. Maybe throw together a midnight feast for the two of them after closing. Sean might think he was happiest with pizza and beer, but he’d never tasted what she could do with lamb and white beans.

The thought of cooking for Sean made her own belly rumble, but the only fruit she had on hand were some plums, which she devoured in a couple of bites. Seeing that she didn’t have time for much else, she made a quick sandwich and carried it downstairs.

Lonzo was already in the kitchen, standing and inspecting her station. He eyed her sandwich with a frown.

“You’re the sous-chef in the best French restaurant in the city, and you’re eating PB and J?” He sniffed.

“Best PB and BB in the city.” Rowan held out one half, which he took and cautiously examined before taking a bite.

“Not bad.” He chewed. “What’s this BB?”

“Banana-pecan butter,” she said, finishing her last bite. “I make it myself. The ground pecans give it more texture.”

“I’ll have to try it on my wife,” he said. “She’s a nut for the PB.” He handed her an apron before tying on his own. “Kind of sudden, him moving you up like this. I know Danz; he thinks you’re ready ’cause I taught you good. Me?” He waffled his hand.