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  Smoke sniffed. “Well, if that’s the attitude you’re going to take, I hear an azalea bush calling my name. God knows what trouble the boy’s gotten into by now.”

  A cat-sized gate opened in midair, and he leaped through it with a flick of his midnight tail. Giada sighed and opened her own gate back to the hotel.

  Weary to the bone, Giada undressed and slipped into bed. She flipped the comforter over herself, lay back, and folded her arms under her head, staring blindly up into the darkness, her mind grinding through the events of the day. When Guinevere had asked her to take this job, Giada had hoped it would turn out to be a giant waste of time—that no one was actually targeting Logan after all. Maybe all those deaths really had been some kind of horrible coincidence.

  Today had revealed what a pointless hope that had been. Logan was definitely the target of a skilled professional assassin who meant business.

  Yeeeeesh.

  With a sigh, she rolled over onto her side, snuggled into the comforter, and closed her eyes. She’d better get some sleep if she meant to stay alert.

  She was going to have to stay on her toes if she wanted to keep him alive. While, God help her, simultaneously keeping her distance.

  Piece of cake.

  Yeah. Right.

  THREE

  “Mmm,” the male voice hummed in her ear, the sound as dark and rich as some particularly sinful chocolate.

  Giada lifted her head, only to realize she couldn’t see a damn thing. She lay on her belly, draped across something soft. A pile of pillows? Her hands rested across the small of her back. When she tried to pull her arms around in front of her, she found she couldn’t move. Thin chains clinked, and something cool and metallic circled her wrists.

  She was handcuffed. And, judging by the feel of silk against her face, blindfolded.

  She should have been terrifi ed. Yet all she felt was a kind of rich, erotic intrigue. As if some part of her knew exactly what was going on, and wasn’t worried in the least.

  “You smell delicious,” the man purred. She could sense the warmth of his body hovering over hers, almost touching, but not . . . quite. A strong male presence braced himself over her in the darkness. “And you look even better. All long and slim and beautiful.”

  Fingertips glided across the cheeks of her bottom, just a hint of warm contact, delicately teasing. She drew in a breath, impossibly aroused. Set her thighs the slightest bit apart in silent invitation.

  A male fi nger drifted down the curve of her butt, dipped in between her thighs, found the fi ne curls there. “So soft,” he breathed. “Like down.”

  That wickedly teasing fi nger slipped along the seam of her lips, not quite dipping between them. Yet the warmth and promise of his hand made her grow wet in swelling anticipation.

  Giada found herself arching upward, lifting her backside, pleading for more.

  Warm male lips touched her cheek. Opened. Teeth caught her flesh in a not-quite-bite, a wicked little promise of further pleasure. Giada groaned, her arousal spiraling.

  She’d never felt so deliciously helpless in all her life. Bound, blindfolded, teased by a man she didn’t know.

  “Ohhhh, yeah,” he breathed. “You’re getting wet, aren’t you? Ready for me.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “God, yes.”

  “You want me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want my cock?”

  The rough eroticism of the word made her shudder. “Yessssss.” A desperate hiss through clenched teeth. God, she wanted him so bad. Wanted his hands, his thick shaft, his strong, hot body grinding into hers. She craved him as she’d never craved a man in her life, craved him as a junky craves a fi x.

  “Good. Because I want you, too.” He breathed the words into her ear, his lips brushing delicate flesh as they moved in wicked promise. “I want your mouth and your pretty breasts and your wet little pussy.” His voice dropped into a growl. “And I want your blood.”

  “Oh, God!”

  His hands went suddenly, deliciously rough as he dragged her thighs apart and mounted her, lifting her ass, angling her upward. He drove his cock into her wet, swollen flesh in one hard stroke, even as his mouth found her leaping pulse.

  She felt fangs pierce her skin, the fi rst rush of blood as he began to drink in long, hungry swallows.

  Just as his hand found the length of silk that blindfolded her. Snatched the thin scarf away.

  Gasping, grinding up into his powerful thrusts, she met her own gaze in the mirror. And saw the man braced over her on muscled arms, eyes glowing vampire red as he fucked her in long, furious thrusts.

  Logan MacRoy.

  Giada jerked awake. A flick of will activated the bedside lamp, sent light spilling across her bed.

  The bed that held no one but herself.

  No Logan. No vampire lover with a taste for blindfolds and bondage.

  What the heck was up with that?

  Giada sat up and raked both hands through her hair. Her fingers caught in the tangled mass, and she tugged in sheer sexual frustration. She’d never had a dream that nakedly erotic.

  Had it been a dream? A product of her body’s attraction to Logan colliding head-on with Arthur’s orders? Or had it been something more?

  Something like, say, a vision of the future?

  Maybe it was just a dream. She fell back against the pillows and stared at the hotel room ceiling, nibbling her lower lip. Could have been. I’m attracted to him. It would be only natural to have a dream like that about a guy who turns me on. It didn’t have to be a vision.

  Yet she’d never had an erotic dream that intense, that vivid. Of course, she hadn’t had a whole lot of erotic anything . The vampire who’d made her a witch had been only the second lover Giada had ever had. Since then, she’d been so busy trying to learn to use her magic, there’d been no time to even think about sex.

  Well, she was sure thinking about it now.

  Not a good idea. Sex with a Latent could have serious implications.

  Like Logan, all Latents were descendants of one of the original knights or ladies of the Round Table. As such, they carried Merlin’s genetic spell in their DNA, a spell created when Camelot’s chosen few had drunk from the wizard’s enchanted Grail. If the spell was never activated, Latents eventually died of old age, just like any other mortal.

  But if a member of the Magekind made love to a Latent, the spell would be activated, triggering a magical transformation. The men became vampires, while the women gained magical powers. Apparently Merlin’s own alien race followed the same pattern—male vamps, female magic users.

  It took at least three sessions of lovemaking to activate Merlin’s Gift—sometimes more. Good thing, too, because the transformation could have unpredictable results. Giada had heard of Latents going insane from the transformation. As a result, it was strictly forbidden to Change someone without the permission of the Majae’s Council, which determined who could safely acquire all that power. Logan himself had already been cleared years before.

  Unfortunately, sometimes the council made mistakes. One of Giada’s fellow Latents had contracted Mageverse Fever, forcing the Knights of the Round Table to hunt her down and execute her. She’d been trying to murder another Latent at the time.

  Transforming people was definitely not something to screw around with. Especially not King Arthur’s beloved son.

  Better damned well not be a vision.

  She lay over the pile of pillows, her backside lifted in seductive invitation, pale and deliciously curving in the moonlight. Her delicate wrists were handcuffed together at the small of her back, and a silk scarf blindfolded her.

  Helpless. She was so deliciously helpless.

  Logan’s cock jerked in dark arousal at the sight of her lying there, long legs parted. Ready for him.

  He touched her, fingertips tracing the luscious curve of her bottom. The scent of her arousal teased his senses, rich and ripe, blending with the delicate floral scent of her hair.
/>   He could hear her heart beating, thumping strong and hard with her excitement. The sound made his fangs slide slowly from their housings in his jaw. Lust raked him with delicate needle claws.

  “Ohhhh, yeah,” he breathed. “You’re getting wet, aren’t you? Ready for me.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “God, yes.”

  “You want me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want my cock?”

  “Yes! Oh, yes!”

  Suddenly unable to wait any longer, he caught her slender hips, angled her upward. Entered her tight, wet body in one hard stroke that made her gasp and jerk her hips. Even as he began to thrust, she drove back at him, grinding eagerly. The sensation made his head spin.

  He braced himself on his arms and lowered his head as he fucked her, breathing in her rich scent, loving the hot beat of her heart. His fangs twinged. Unable to wait any longer, he dipped his head, found her banging pulse with his lips.

  Bit deep. She gasped in blended pain and pleasure.

  Her blood flooded his mouth, more delicious than anything he’d ever tasted, hot and seductive and impossibly arousing. Unable to resist, he drank in long swallows, greedy for her, loving the snug grip of her sex around his aching cock, loving the way she whimpered in breathless delight.

  The orgasm hit him in a ruthless, blinding fl ood, sweeping him up and away.

  When it was over, he collapsed against her, panting. “Oh, God,” he moaned, taking his fangs from her throat. “I never experienced anything like . . .”

  Blood covered her mangled throat. Panicking, he jerked the blindfold off.

  Giada’s beautiful gray eyes stared at nothing, blank and dead.

  Logan jolted awake with a strangled gasp of raw terror, his heart banging a kettledrum beat of panic. “Jesu!” He groped for the bedside lamp, switched it on.

  And collapsed in raw relief.

  A dream. Thank Merlin, it had only been a dream.

  But then, he’d known that. He’d been having variations of the same nightmare since he was fourteen years old, with whatever girl he was attracted to at the time playing the starring role.

  Though come to think of it, this nightmare had been more detailed than usual. More intense. Almost like a vision.

  Except vampires didn’t have visions. And anyway, he was just a Latent. Still.

  Thank God.

  In the inky shadows under an azalea bush, Smoke yawned. Gods and devils, he was bored. He could almost wish the boy would come pelting outside and roar off in his police car, lights and sirens flashing, headed to another of his damned arson investigations.

  Instead, it seemed Smoke was doomed to another night of agonizing ennui trapped under the row of bushes outside Logan’s sprawling brick split-level. Familiar territory, since it was the same house where Gwen and Arthur had raised the boy.

  Smoke had been a regular guest back then, having taken interest in Logan during his visits to court with his parents. Lonely mortal boy, surrounded by immortals, with a brilliant, questing mind Smoke had delighted in educating.

  The Mageverse was not, by and large, a good place to raise a mortal child. Exposure to all those magic-wielding immortals tended to encourage bitterness, if not psychopathy. Witness poor Bors’s son, Richard, who had tried to murder Arthur in an act of death magic last year.

  So Gwen had taken an eighteen-year sabbatical from the Mageverse for the child’s sake, with Arthur in and out as his duties permitted. The couple had bought the house here on the theory that the surrounding small town was a good place to raise children. Smoke gathered Logan had purchased it from them after graduating college. He . . .

  Something rustled, interrupting Smoke’s train of thought.

  Someone cursed. Loudly.

  “Shhh!” a drunken young voice hissed back. “We don’t want to wake him up!”

  Smoke lifted his head off his paws. Oh, now this sounds interesting.

  He stuck his head out from under the bushes in time to see four teenaged boys sneaking toward the massive oak that reigned over Logan’s front yard. All were dressed in black jeans and T-shirts or hoodies, apparently in some laughable idea of stealth. Each carried a roll of toilet paper.

  Ahhhhh, yessssss. Entertainment.

  Smoke slid from beneath the bush, casting a spell in a ripple of sparks and energy that rolled from his black nose to the tip of his twitching tail. Then he padded up behind the boys as they surrounded the oak.

  Black as he was, the boys didn’t see him until one of them wound up to cast his roll of toilet paper over the tree.

  “And what,” Smoke purred, “do you lads think you’re doing?”

  The boys wheeled. Four pairs of eyes widened, faces going bloodless in the light of the full moon. And to Smoke’s delight, the pranksters screamed in chorus like terrorized little girls. All four dropped their rolls and fled like all the demons of hell were at their heels.

  He watched them go, tail swishing lazily, and contemplated pursuit with a certain wicked glee.

  A door opened and the porch light flicked on, flooding the front yard. “Smoke, is that you?” Logan demanded, sounding sleepy and irate. “Jesu, what the hell are you doing? I almost shot you.”

  “Saving your oak from being festooned with toilet paper.” The cat turned.

  It was just as well Giada wasn’t here. Logan stood in all his shirtless glory, barefoot and wearing only a pair of jeans he hadn’t bothered to zip, his nine-millimeter in one hand. He shook his dark head in disgust. “Probably my neighbors’ kids, aka the Four Stooges. Those idiots try something at least once a month. I always run them off before they get started.” He grimaced. “I think I’ve become a challenge.”

  “Somehow I doubt you’ll have that problem again.” Smoke grinned, revealing gleaming fangs the length of daggers. Fangs that went with the rest of his eight-hundred-pound body. “Aren’t you going to offer me a saucer of milk?”

  Logan snorted. “More like a turkey platter. Unless you want to switch forms before you terrorize the rest of my neighbors . . .”

  “Oh, very well.” Another wave of magic, and Smoke’s tiger-sized body shrank down into house cat dimensions once more. He strolled up the brick steps and leaped easily into Logan’s arms.

  “What are you doing here, anyway? I haven’t seen you in months.” Logan gave him an absent ear scratch.

  “I was bored. I thought I’d drop by.” He cocked his head, eyes narrowing, as he enjoyed the sensation of those long fingers digging in. The boy had a talent for finding the perfect spot to scratch. He hummed in pleasure as Logan turned to carry him back into the house. “So, what have you been up to? Anything interesting going on?”

  “Well, there’s this new chemist I’m training at work . . .”

  Smoke sniffed in feigned disdain. “I’m not interested in the activities of some balding nerd.”

  One corner of Logan’s lips twitched up. “Believe me, she’s not a nerd, and she’s definitely not balding.”

  The cat gave him an innocent blink. “ ‘She’? Do tell, my boy. Do tell.”

  Terrence reclined on a stack of thin, dingy pillows on his sagging bed at a no-tell motel off I-85. He could have afforded better, but better meant maids. Maids who might be a little too nosy for his comfort. The Stay-N-Rest was a long-term occupancy motel that only afforded maid service between customers. Which meant he could leave his suitcase of bomb-making materials under the bed without having to worry some silly bitch would get curious.

  So, pencil in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other, he felt free to sketch an idea for another bomb on the pad propped on his knees.

  The encrypted cell phone vibrated on his belt. Terrence grimaced and dropped the slice of pepperoni pizza back in the Domino’s box. He wasn’t looking forward to this conversation.

  “Status?” the client demanded. He thought she was female, but it was hard to tell, given the heavy filter that distorted her voice.

  “No luck.” He winced as he said it
, feeling an unaccustomed sting of shame.

  “No luck? They said you were the best. Did they lie?”

  “No, they didn’t lie,” Terrence snapped back. “Somehow he disabled it. I have no idea how he realized . . .”

  “Was someone with him?” the client interrupted, her distorted voice gone even sharper. “A woman?”

  “Yeah, a blonde. But . . .”

  “Did your wristband get hot?”

  “Yes.” He leaned back against the lumpy pillows. “Mind telling me what that means?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do mind. I will contact you with further instructions. Keep your cell charged.” The line went dead.

  Terrence swore viciously, flipped the phone closed, and slid it back into its clip. What the hell was he dealing with here? Should he cut his losses and walk?

  What if she’d decided to cut her losses and call the cops? Report the mad bomber holed up at the Stay-N-Rest?

  Then she was one dead bitch, because the cops would never hold him. They never had. Then he’d find her, and he’d kill her. And he’d take his time. You didn’t cross Terrence John Anderson and live.

  On the other hand, she was paying him a hell of a lot of money to off the cop and make it look like an accident. Half a million. Exactly what MacRoy had done to piss her off that bad was a question he’d never asked. Mostly because it was none of his fucking business. All he cared about was the color of her money. Judging by the half she’d paid up front, it was his favorite shade of green.

  So he’d sit tight and humor the bitch a little longer.

  Picking up his pencil, he went back to work designing the bomb that would be the death of Logan MacRoy.

  Logan sat in the black leather easy chair in the living room, absently rubbing Smoke’s head and enjoying the soothing rumble of the cat’s purr. After that god-awful nightmare, a conversation with his old friend was just what he needed to calm down.