Chapter Three

      Once more the dream came.

      Although adrenaline raced through her body like wildfire, the gun was sure and steady in Eden’s hands. A call had come in about screams in a downtown alley, the second call in three weeks in the same area. Before, it had been some kids playing around in the Dumpster.

      This time it was a man holding a young woman hostage by knifepoint, and she was on her own until backup showed up.

      The man appeared agitated, unhinged, likely high on something. He had his arm around the woman’s neck, and held a knife to her throat. There was already blood on the blade and running down her neck. The front of her light-colored shirt was stained red. She was crying silently.

      “Let the girl go,” Eden said, her gun trained on him.

      “Never!” he shouted, then giggled. “She’s mine forever and ever. Master told me so.”

      The woman made a whimpering sound that put Eden’s back up. Then her head lifted and she caught Eden’s gaze, pleading in her eyes.

      “It’s going to be okay, ma’am.”

      “Of course she’s going to be okay,” the man said, “She’s been chosen.”

      It was then that Eden noticed the blood on his teeth and around his mouth. He’d been biting the woman and tasting her blood. Eden’s stomach lurched at that.

      “We can all walk away from this. Just let her go.”

      “No one gets out alive, bitch.”

      The tip of his knife dug into the woman’s throat. She tried to get away but couldn’t, the blade sliding even more across her skin.

      Without flinching, Eden took the shot. Everything moved in slow motion after that.

      The bullet ripped through his cheek, knocking him sideways. His hold loosened on the woman and she dropped to the ground.

      Eden rushed to the man’s side to make sure he was down. She pressed her fingers to his throat. No pulse. Vacant eyes stared up at her and he wasn’t moving. She holstered her weapon and crouched next to the injured woman.

      “I need an ambulance stat,” she barked into her radio. A siren could already be heard in the distance.

      Whipping off her jacket, Eden pressed it to the wound in the woman’s throat. The knife had definitely nicked a major artery—blood bubbled out of the hole with every breath the woman took.

      In reality, Eden had stayed there administering pressure to the wound until the EMTs arrived. But the woman had died on the gurney and they’d been unable to resuscitate her.

      However, the man Eden had shot and killed had disappeared. The only evidence of him was another blood pool in the alley.

      In her dreams, the woman always smiled up at her and begged, “Save me.”

      She did this now, then lifted her arm and reached for some unseen entity.

      Glancing around, Eden noticed a dark shape materializing through the veil of tears. She rubbed at one eye with her bloodied hand, but the shape was still blurry. In awe, she watched as a tall, dark figure approached her.

      It was a man dressed in black, with longish dark hair and pale skin. As he neared, she noticed the rugged features of his face and his full, sensuous mouth. Why she noticed these things as the woman died at her feet, she didn’t know. Eventually, the dark man stood over her, staring down, his eyes shining with emotion.

      As he smiled, he held out one long, elegant hand toward her. “I can make the pain go away, Eden. Just take my hand.”

      She wanted the pain to recede. Too long had she lived with the emotional turmoil that the woman’s death had induced. Daylight hours brought too many sobering feelings, and the night brought agonizing nightmares, just like the one she replayed almost every night.

      Eden wasn’t sure how long her mind could survive her inner torment. Not much longer, she was sure.

      Raising her head to meet his gaze, Eden felt a sexual tug. The man invoked sensations she had long ago dismissed as unimportant. She wanted him to take her pain. She wanted him.

      He grinned as she raised her arm. But before she could touch his hand, Eden saw red flames dance in the black of his eyes....

      “Eden.” His voice was a caress, touching her in places she hadn’t been touched in far too long. “You want to forget.” He smiled and she spied a pair of fangs jutting from his upper jaw. It sent a shudder down her body, but she didn’t pull away.

      “You want so many things. I can give them to you. Will you let me?”

      Her hand moved toward him as if it wasn’t her hand at all. No! She shook her head and snatched her hand back. Frantically, she looked around. Everything was wrong. Where was the woman she’d been unable to save? Where was the blood?

      Where was she?

      She was no longer in the alley surrounded by death and carnage—she was in a room, a bedroom, facing a bed with red satin sheets and candles. Hundreds of candles. Candles everywhere.

      Someone stood behind her—she could feel his presence and she both wanted to lean back into that solid mass and surrender to him and she wanted to spin around and shove her gun beneath his chin.

      “Eden.”

      It was him. The dark man. The one from the alley. She’d have recognized that voice anywhere. Deep, potent as the smoothest scotch, faintly accented. He had the kind of voice that spoke to her on more than one level.

      “Eden, I want you. Please, let me touch you, for both of our sakes.”

      His voice didn’t just sound like scotch—it had the same effect on her. Numbing her senses, dulling her inhibitions. She turned around to face him, fully intending to tell him off, but one look at him and all intentions evaporated.

      She’d been with men before but never with one who looked like him. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be. He was too perfect, standing there with his silk pajama bottoms riding low on his hips and nothing else. His feet were bare. His chest was bare and smooth and sculpted like that of an elite athlete. But it was his face—his rugged jaw, his patrician nose, his dark, dark eyes—that pierced her with desire and longing, that affected her most.

      And those fangs. They weren’t long—were almost invisible among the rest of his teeth—but she saw the curve of them, and the sharp tips.

      “You want me, too. I can see it.” He approached her with the fluid grace of a panther and Eden was mesmerized by the unconscious play of muscles across his torso as he neared.

      It took effort to lift her eyes, but she somehow managed, and when she met his gaze, she caught her breath. The intensity of his stare stole the air around her.

      “How badly do you want to forget?”

      “Very,” she whispered.

      He touched her face, the softest of caresses. “Will you permit me to help?”

      “How?”

      “Like this.”

      Up until that moment, everything had been happening as if in slow motion. But the minute the dark man said like this, time sped up. His hand whipped out to circle her neck, pulling her closer. His other hand lifted her chin, tilting her face toward him.

      One second he was looking down at her, the next his lips were on hers. No, not on hers—they were a part of her.

      If what he was doing was kissing her, it was like no kiss Eden had ever experienced. His kiss was hungry and desperate and controlling and possessive. She responded in kind, needing his mouth and his tongue and all of him. As if her life depended on it.

      Her