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Whatever it was, Tess had no desire to question.

She nipped her way down his belly, to his narrow hip, then bent forward and took the head of his sex into her mouth. She sucked him deep, letting her teeth gently graze his shaft as she withdrew. He moaned sharply, braced before her as rigid as a column of steel. She felt Dante's pulse kick as she took him into her mouth again, felt the throb of his heartbeat traveling along the veined length.

She could feel the rush of his blood coursing through his body, scarlet-dark and ferocious, and for one startling, utterly insane moment, she wanted to know what all that power would taste like against her tongue.

The moonlit river was an undulating ribbon of black outside the tinted passenger window of the SUV. And it was quiet, no other cars on the empty, weed-choked stretch of concrete that used to be the parking lot for an old paper mill, condemned about twenty years ago. Ben Sullivan was guessing it was a decent place for a murder, and the stony silence of the intense, heavily armed man at the wheel of the vehicle wasn't giving him a lot of reason to hope otherwise.

As the SUV rolled to a stop, Ben prepared himself for a fight, wishing to hell he'd found a way to get his hands back on that .45 he'd lost at his apartment. Not that he expected he'd have much of a chance with this guy, even if he was armed. Unlike his dark-haired partner, who broadcasted menace in his voice and his actions, this one held his cards close to his chest. He was icy calm, but Ben could read the seething rage that ran underneath the surface of that polished Mr. Cool demeanor, and it terrified him.

"What's going on? Why'd we stop here? Are we waiting for someone?" The questions poured out of him, but he was too anxious to care if he sounded like a chicken-shit. "Your partner back there said he wanted you to take me to `the compound,' didn't he?"

No reply.

"Well, wherever that is," Ben said, looking around at the desolate lot, "I don't suppose this is the place."

With the vehicle idling in park, the driver blew out a long breath of air and turned a cold look on him. The guy's pale blue eyes were killer sharp, filled with barely restrained fury. "You and I are going to have a private talk."

"Am I going to survive it?"

He didn't answer, just stuck his hand into an inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. A photograph, Ben realized, catching the gloss in the dashboard light.

"Have you ever seen this inpidual?"

Ben glanced at the image of a clean-cut young man with tousled light brown hair and a broad, friendly smile. He wore a Harvard sweatshirt and was giving the photographer the thumbs-up sign with one hand, while the other held out a sheet of formal stationery emblazoned with the university's symbol on the letterhead.

"Well? Is he familiar to you?"

The question was a low snarl of sound, and while Ben was sure he'd seen the kid around, even dealt Crimson to him a few times this week alone, he didn't know whether or not that answer would be the one to save him or damn him right now. He slowly shook his head, lifting his shoulder in a noncommittal shrug.

Suddenly he was choking, his face caught in a bruising grip that crushed him so tightly he thought his jawbone would crack. God, the guy had struck like a viper--faster than that, because Ben hadn't even seen his hand move in the small space of the front seat.

"Have a closer look," Mr. Cool demanded, pushing the photo up into Ben's face.

"O-okay," Ben sputtered, tasting blood in his mouth as his teeth cut into the insides of his cheeks. " Yeah, okay! Shit!"

The pressure eased and he coughed, rubbing his screaming jaw.

"Have you seen him?"

"Yeah, I've seen him. His name's Cameron or something."

"Camden," he corrected, voice tight and wooden. "When did you last see him?"

Ben shook his head, trying to remember. "Not too long ago. This week. He was hanging with some ravers at a tech?trance club in the North End. La Notte, I think it was."

"Did you sell to him?" The words came out slowly, thick sounds that seemed obstructed by something in his mouth.

Ben flicked a wary glance across the seats. In the dim glow of the dash, the guy's eyes were throwing off a funky sheen, like his pupils were disappearing, stretching thin in the center of all that glacial blue. A chill entered Ben's bones, instinct kicking into high alert.

Something was off here, way off.

"Did you give him Crimson, you goddamn piece of shit?"

Ben swallowed hard. Gave a wobbly nod of his head. "Yeah. The dude might have bought from me a couple of times."

He heard a vicious growl, saw a flash of sharp white teeth in the dark in the split second before the back of his head smashed against the passenger-side window and the guy launched on top of him in an explosion of hellish fury.

Chapter Twenty-two

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