After centuries of pain, the unending torture of his existence, he’d found the only creature who could wake him from his stupor and return his soul to him. Immeasurable strength fueled every movement, and he was no longer the shade of the vampire he’d once been. The world melted away until there was only her. He’d found the one thing he needed to survive in this gods-forsaken world. He took off after her, his speed surprising even to him. It would be nothing to catch her, and once he did, he would never let her go. Her blood was the very essence of life, calling to him in a way that no other had in four centuries of existence. Stranger or not, she belonged to him now, and he would not rest until he tasted her again.
Hands reached out, voices calling out to him, rejoicing. He dodged, unwilling to let the eager dhampirs deter him from what he wanted. If they kept him from the female, he’d rip them apart with his bare hands.
“I swear, Mikhail, if you take another step, I’ll stake you myself.”
A familiar voice caused Michael to halt and he cursed under his breath. The only dhampir who could stop him in his tracks just so happened to be in this club. Coincidence? Not a chance.
“Ronan.” Michael turned, his teeth clenched to keep him from snapping his jaws around the other male’s throat, and faced the fair-haired dhampir. “Your timing is—”
“Perfect?” Ronan ventured with a cocky grin.
“Unfortunate.” Bodies pressed in as every dhampir in the club converged on him. Very unfortunate.
* * *
Claire burst through the doors of the club gasping for breath. She could feel him close behind, pursuing her like a beast on the hunt. She gripped the Patek tight in her fist as she kicked off the too-tight stilettos and raced down the sidewalk, ducking into the nearest alley. Thoughts of tetanus, or worse, threatened to send her back for her shoes, but she pushed the fear of cutting her feet and contracting something nasty to the back of her mind. She had to get the hell out of there. Now. Before he caught up to her. The last and most important rule of the hustle: Get while the gettin’s good.
Truth be told, it wasn’t the fear of being caught that had Claire’s heart thundering and her breath racing. She’d never let things get so out of hand with a mark before. Especially one as shady as Michael. There was more to him than met the eye and she should have been wary, but instead, she threw herself at him like some kind of sex-starved coed looking for a Saturday-night hookup. Classy.
Despite the prize she tucked into her pocket for safekeeping, she didn’t feel any sense of accomplishment. Instead, shame flushed her cheeks at the memory of his kisses, the sting of his teeth at her throat, and the soft touch of his skilled fingers as he drove her crazy with want. She ran out on him not because she had the watch and wanted to make a speedy getaway but rather because she was afraid that she’d shuck her pants right there in the middle of the club and let him do wicked things to her whether they had an audience or not. The truth hit her like a baseball bat to the forehead as she dashed across Sunset toward Clark and another back alley.
No man had ever given her an orgasm like that, and she and Michael had barely revved their engines. She could only imagine what he could have accomplished given a little privacy and an hour or three of her time. And what the hell kind of magic had he worked on her throat, anyway? Waves of desire pulsed low in her stomach at the recollection. The not-so-gentle bite followed up with a deep suction that sent a shock of searing heat through her bloodstream. She’d been on the edge of orgasm just from that contact. Her body literally ached for him by the time he finally went to work on her zipper.#p#分页标题#e#
Claire reached down to the front of her jeans and felt the rip he’d made below the seam. Talk about anxious to get into a girl’s pants. He’d torn the heavy denim as if it were tissue paper. He had to have superstrength to accomplish the feat. Then again, she’d seen people do some pretty inhuman shit while they were high.
Using side streets, she backtracked until she was a few blocks down from Diablo and on Sunset once again. Confident she’d managed to shake her pursuer, Claire slowed her pace, giving her tired, pavement-scraped feet a rest until she could hail a cab. “Four Twenty South Westlake,” she said to the driver.
“That’s out of my way.” The cabbie sounded more than a little put out.
No way was Claire going to hop two or three cabs with bare feet to get home. “I’ll make it worth your while. Promise.”
He grumbled under his breath but put the car in gear and pulled out into traffic. Money. The timeless motivator. Claire let her head fall back against the seat and her eyes drifted shut. A silver and turquoise blue stare haunted her thoughts, and his voice raw with emotion when he said, “We’re not done here. You’ve had your pleasure; now give me mine.”