He nodded and dropped his hands. Turning around, he stared down at the vampire. “It happens every once in a while.”
Richart raised his eyebrows. “Vamps turning someone who can actually challenge us in a fight?”
He nodded. “Ask Roland about the time a vampire turned a master swordsman in the fourteenth century. Roland was so caught off guard he nearly lost an arm.”
Lisette smiled. “I would think turning a human who was better skilled in fighting would backfire on a vampire.”
Seth laughed. “It did. The swordsman killed his maker as soon as he completed the transformation. I’m sure this one did, too.”
Lisette eyed the pile of clothes, all that remained of their fierce opponent. “I think he intended to pull a Dennis and raise an army. He seemed to despise his companions and intended to kill them when they no longer proved useful to him.”
Seth eyed her speculatively. “You gleaned that from his thoughts?”
She nodded.
He motioned to her phone. “Did you take pictures of him?”
“Yes.”
“Send them to Chris. Let’s see if his techno geeks can identify him.”
Chapter Two
Large warm hands slipped beneath the hem of Lisette’s sleep shirt. Tracing a path over her hips and up to skim the sides of her breasts, they eased the shirt over her head and tossed it aside. She hummed in pleasure as those hands returned to her breasts, stroking and teasing. Then lips tasted her, drawing a hardened nipple into a hot mouth to be tormented by her lover’s tongue.
She had hoped she would dream about Zach again, but hadn’t expected this.
A muscled thigh slipped between hers and pressed against the heart of her, sparking heat and need. Smiling, eyes still closed, Lisette buried her hands in Zach’s hair, combed her fingers through his . . . short locks?
Her eyes flew open. Stiffening, she glanced down at the chiseled body atop hers, the hand at her breast. . . .
That wasn’t Zach’s body.
And those weren’t her breasts.
Groaning, she realized she’d been drawn into Tracy’s dream about her home-improvement hunk.
Lisette separated herself from Tracy in a blink and stood beside the bed. Turning to leave, she glanced back at the writhing duo . . . and felt her mouth fall open.
“What?” she blurted.
Tracy’s eyes, closed in ecstasy, opened and met hers. Her lover raised his head and looked toward the door.
“Holy—” Lisette awoke in her pitch-black bedroom. She heard Tracy curse upstairs. The sound of a door being yanked open followed.
Shocked beyond belief, Lisette sat up.
Bare feet thumped down the stairs with quick steps and padded down the hallway.
A pause ensconced the house in silence. Lisette’s door slowly inched open, flooding the room with light from the hallway as Tracy peeked inside.
“Damn it!” Upon seeing Lisette’s no doubt wide eyes, Tracy shoved the door the rest of the way open and entered. She wore a different sleep shirt than the one in her dream. Both it and her hair were rumpled, her face full of dread. “It was you, wasn’t it? You were there?”
“Yes.”
“You saw . . . ?”
“Everything.”
Her Second flushed a bright red as she covered her face with both hands and groaned.
“I thought you said you were dreaming about a guy at the home-improvement store.”
“This is so embarrassing,” Tracy wailed, staggering forward a few steps and collapsing into Lisette’s favorite reading chair.
“You’re sleeping with Sheldon?”
“No!” Tracy nearly shouted, and dropped her hands. Pure misery hid among the red in her face. “No, I’m not. It’s just . . . dreams.”
“Erotic dreams. More than one. About Sheldon.” The youngest Second in the area. Possibly in the country. Chris Reordon rarely recruited men or women under the age of twenty-five, claiming he wanted to make sure they were past the party-their-asses-off-now-that-they-were-no-longer-under-their-parents’-roof stage and could be counted on twenty-four hours a day to take care of business.
Sheldon had been a teenager when he had begun to serve, at Richart’s request. Apparently Sheldon was the descendant of Richart’s first Second. Lisette hadn’t even realized until then that her brother had been keeping track of his friend’s bloodline.
“Sheldon,” Lisette repeated, trying to wrap her mind around it.
Sheldon was twenty-one or -two now, she thought. And so green. He was the kid brother everyone picked on and teased. The screwup. The prankster.
He wasn’t the no-shit, tough-as-nails kind of guy who usually attracted Tracy.
“Are you . . . interested in him?” Lisette asked hesitantly.
“No,” Tracy insisted. “No, of course not.” She chewed a thumbnail, brows drawn down in a troubled V. “I mean, that would be crazy, right?”