"I'm not. I'm dying." She looked down. "Could you let go of me now?" When he saw how tightly he was holding her, she added, "I have enough bruises from the last time."

He turned her right hand over to see livid marks his fingers had left. On the other side of the dream, he was doing the same thing. "Forgive me. I didn't realize I was hurting you." He took his hand away. "I cannot come into your dreams anymore, little cat. I cannot protect you."

"I can take care of myself." She looked down at herself as if puzzled. "Be great if you could tell me what all this is about, though."

She was emerging from the dream, ready to wake. He had to keep her with him, if only for a few more minutes. That meant making her desire to dream more urgent than her desire to wake.

"This is about you and me." He picked her up in his arms and carried her over to the billiards table, sitting her down on the edge of it, spreading her legs to step between them. He eased her back against one arm and pulled up the edge of her blouse with the other.

"Wait." She sounded shocked, but she didn't struggle. "What are you doing?"

"What I want, and what you want." He stroked her small breasts with his hand, cupping them, squeezing them until she made a soft sound. Then he deliberately reached under her skirt, expecting to find panties to pull out of the way.

He found her instead, and pushed two fingertips inside her.

"Look" at my hand," he told her. "Watch what I do to you." He shifted his hand so she could watch him work one finger into her sheath while he rubbed his thumb where her folds met. She was so soft and slick that she drenched his fingers.

Jema reached down to cover his hand, as if she couldn't bear to watch the erotic way they were joined. He brought her hand back up to rest it against her breast, and then pressed his gleaming fingers against her lips.

"Open for me, chérie." When she did, he gave her a taste of herself, spreading the silky fluid on her lower lip, teasing the tip of her tongue with it.

Her eyes were huge as his fingers left her lips and she looked up at him. That was when he thrust his hand back down between her thighs, cupping her sex and using the heel of his hand on her, doing with his fingers what he wanted to do with his cock.

She convulsed, releasing a cry so sweet it made his head pound. Then her eyes closed, and the darkness pressed in around them.

The dream, at least for tonight, was over. Thierry left her mind as gently as he had entered it, and came back to himself, kneeling by her bed in her room, alone with her sleeping form. At first what he saw didn't make sense, because the dream world wasn't real, and never intruded upon reality. But there she lay, the sheet pushed aside, her slender body naked to his eyes.

His hand, resting on Jema's bare thigh.

Thierry looked at his hand, and closed his eyes for the space of a heartbeat. Then he brought his damp fingers to his lips, and tasted her.

When Valentin heard about the hit-and-run attempt at the hospital, he summoned every hunter and tracker in his region and gave them what description of the killer Alexandra had been able to provide.

"I want the driver found. Do whatever you must to locate him and bring him to me. Alive." He could barely get the words out, so great was his rage.

That someone would dare attempt to assassinate the seigneur while he was in Jaus's territory was a blatant sneer at his authority, and he would not tolerate it.

"I don't believe the attack was meant for Alexandra or me," Michael told him once they had left the jardin briefing in the lists. "It may be a case of mistaken identity."

"I don't understand."

"While she was at the hospital, Alexandra picked up another woman's jacket by accident. This woman, Jema Shaw, was the intended target."

Jaus stopped. "Jema Shaw. You're sure about the name?"

"Yes, she was visiting Ms. Lopez while Alexandra was in her room, when the mix-up happened." He hesitated before adding, "Alex's talent enables her to sometimes read the minds of killers. She knew the man's thoughts as he was waiting outside the hospital. She didn't connect them to Miss Shaw until after the incident. If you would be so good as to help us locate her, she should be warned that her life is in danger."

"You have only to walk four hundred feet and you may knock on her door." Jaus gestured to Shaw House. "Miss Shaw is my neighbor."

"I see." Michael glanced at the house. "Perhaps this has more to do with you and Miss Shaw than me or Alex."

Jaus managed to dodge the rest of Cyprien's questions and excused himself on the pretense of contacting Jema. He tried her office at the museum first, only to be told that she had called in sick for the day. When he called Shaw House, one of the maids answered, and asked him to hold while she checked to see if Miss Jema was taking calls.

"Mr. Jaus," Jema's voice came over the line unexpectedly. "Is something wrong?"

He realized that he could not say someone was trying to kill her, or demand to know why. "No, Miss Shaw, I was only calling to… confirm that you will be attending the masque at my home on the thirty-first. I have heard that you have not been well."

"I'm feeling a little blah," she admitted, "but I think I should be back to normal in time for the party. I'm so glad you called."

She was glad to hear from him. Glad he called. He sat down. "You are."

"I needed to ask you a question."

Do I love you ? Yes. Do I need you ? Yes. Yes to everything and anything you ask of me. Yes, yes, yes. "Please do."

"I'm not sure what sort of costume to get for your party," she said. "Frankly, I've never been to a costume party. Would you be able to steer me in the right direction, tell me where I can find something suitable?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I can. In fact, I have just the costume in mind for you." He knew nothing of costumes; Sacher took care of such matters. "Would you permit me the liberty of hiring it for you and sending it to your home?"

There was a brief silence. "I couldn't impose on you like that."

"It would be my pleasure," he told her, "and I could assure you that our costumes complement each other. Or perhaps you think me vain for suggesting that."

"No, I think it's a lovely idea. I'll reimburse you, of course."

He almost laughed before he remembered modern females were very insistent on paying for things themselves. "As you wish."

"Terrific. Then I will see you on the thirty-first. Thanks for calling and checking on me."

"Until then, Miss Shaw." Jaus ended the call and cursed himself for being nine kinds of an idiot.

"Boy, I wish I spoke German. Or is it Austrian?" Alexandra Keller closed the door to his office behind her. "That sounded very sincere."

"It was." Jaus spared her a glance. "How may I serve, my lady?"

"You must not have seen how we wrecked the bridal suite upstairs." Alex dropped into the chair in front of his desk. "Point is, I'm not a lady. So you can drop that right now." She took the framed photo from his desk and studied it. "Cute baby. Can't be yours. Anyone I know?"

"No." He took the photo from her and put it inside his desk. "What can I do for you, Dr. Keller?"

"You can tell me how Jema Shaw relates to the Kyn. I already know she lives next door, and you've been sending her flowers on her birthday for thirty years." She smiled when he stared. "Sacher didn't say a word. The kid did."

"You take a great interest in my personal business," Jaus snapped.

"I take a great interest in anything that almost gets me squashed like a tomato thrown off the Sears Tower," she told him.

He should have had this woman killed when she was still human enough to die. "Miss Shaw and her mother have been my neighbors for thirty years. I send a bouquet on Miss Shaw's birthday out of courtesy."

"You send flowers to a funeral out of courtesy." Alex smiled. "You send flowers to a beautiful woman on her birthday to tell her you care. How much do you care for Jema Shaw, Valentin?"

He had never told anyone. Sacher had probably guessed—the old man was remarkably intuitive about Jaus's feelings—but no one knew. Jaus had no intention of telling anyone, until he heard the words coming out of him, spilling into what should have been a dignified, lofty silence.

"It happened on her first birthday, late in the afternoon," he told Alex. "Jema's nanny had brought her outside to play on the lawn and had then fallen asleep in the shade of one of the massive oak trees. Jema wandered away. At the time, the brick wall surrounding Shaw House had not yet been built. Somehow that child slipped past my guards and onto my property. I found her in the garden, crying. She had knocked over one of the tables, and the glass top shattered. She was sitting in the middle of the shards."

Jaus remembered how loudly Jema had screamed, and the state in which he had found her in his camellia garden, her hands bloody, and her small face wet with tears and mucus. The moment she saw him, she held up her small arms. It had struck him like a fist.

No being, human or Darkyn, had ever held out their arms to Valentin Jaus.

"I didn't know Jema at the time, and I had no idea that she belonged to my neighbor, Mrs. Shaw. All I knew of Meryl was that she was wheelchair-bound, and that an accident in Greece had killed her husband."

He told Alex how he had rescued baby Jema from the mess and brought her into his pristine, child-free home. How he had picked the shards out of her hands and cleaned the cuts, and arranged fresh clothing, a bath, and a bottle of warm milk.

"I wouldn't let anyone else care for her or take her from me." He was still not sure why he had been so adamant about that. It may have been the alarming size of her—she was no bigger or heavier than his lightest dagger—or the way she curled up against him, her cheek pressed over his heart, her small thumb tucked into her mouth. "While Sacher notified the police, I fed Jema the bottle and rocked her to sleep. I refused to put her down so that my tresora could take a photograph of her for the jardin files—we photograph all humans we come in contact with—and that is how I ended up in the picture."