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Death was already in the room with him, manifesting from out of the shadows behind him. The Minion blinked and saw that the illusionary gloom had cleared. Standing in its place was the enemy of his Master. The warrior who should have been dead at the hands of the police tonight. He was barefoot, water dripping from his snow-dampened hair and the sodden blue hospital scrubs that stretched tight and wet around his body. Blood splattered the front of him, though whether from the gunshot wounds he'd sustained at the police station or the spent lives of the men he'd killed on his way inside here, the Minion couldn't tell.
The Breed warrior took a step toward him, eyes throwing off vicious amber light. His fangs were huge, lethal daggers that could shred a body into pieces.
But the Minion wasn't afraid.
He was resolved.
This vampire had come to wring information from him, information he would never get, not even under the worst torture.
He knew that's what awaited him here tonight. Torture, and death.
"You will never defeat him," the Minion stated, devout in his faith of his Master's power. "You can't win."
But there was no uncertainty in the searing glower that leveled on him, only a wild fury that promised a hellish end.
His feet started moving beneath him, old instincts urging his body to flee this threat. He spun around and watched as a sudden stream of blood slashed in an arc across the wall and door in front of him.
His blood.
His hellish end, just beginning.
SHE WAS BURNING UP.
Tavia shifted in her bed, suspended in that thick veil separating sleep from wakefulness. The sheets and comforter were too heavy, her body too warm beneath them in her cotton camisole and panties. In the daze of her fitful slumber, she pushed the covers away, but the heat stayed with her.
It was inside her, not the rash of sudden fire that sometimes swept across her skin and nerve endings when she went too long without her medicines, but another kind of heat. Something slow building and fluid, a hot unfurling from deep within her.
Sensation tingled at her breasts, a sweet ache that traveled over each nipple and swell, then down toward her belly. Eyes closed, sleep still holding her in its web, she arched into the pleasure, wanting the feeling to linger in one place yet hungry to feel it all over her too. Deep inside, her senses were coming alive, reaching, the same way her body roused to its erotic demand.
The heat licked a trail that plunged lower now, playing at the flare of her hip bone. Then down onto the tender flesh of her naked thigh. Her blood rushed through her veins and arteries. She could feel it surging with each rising beat of her heart.
Anticipation simmered as the hot, wet heat stirred the small nest of curls between her legs. Yes. The silent plea echoed in the heavy pound of her pulse. Yesss ...
She knew it was only a dream. Her semiconscious mind understood that this phantom lover seducing her now couldn't be real. She'd never been with a man. Had never felt a questing, hungered mouth on her body. Not even on her lips. She couldn't. Her reality was too fragile, too constricted by fear and shame.
But not now.
Not like this, when she was dizzy with arousal from a dream she couldn't bear to leave. With sleep and pleasure enticing her to stay, she reached down to touch the part of her that was melting, alive with sensation. Her fingertips were his tongue, silky and relentless, kissing and stroking her in all the right places.
She pictured broad shoulders between her legs. Smooth skin and lean, hard muscle rubbing against her nakedness.
Surrender, let it all go. The low voice spoke inside her mind, the encouragements he murmured being so seductive she could feel his hot breath skating against her enlivened flesh. I want to see you, taste you, all of you. I want to make you scream my name.
But she didn't know his name, logic that tangled in the gossamer threads of the dream. She pushed away the intrusion of her conscience and sank further into her fantasy. She had no choice but to surrender, because the pleasure was coiling tighter now, her skin tingling, every inch of her on fire ... on the verge of disintegration. She writhed on the bed, unable to take much more. And then his voice was beside her ear. His mouth was wet and warm against her neck, his voice a deep vibration she felt all the way to her bones. Let me taste you, Tavia ...
"Yes," she whispered into the darkness of her bedroom. "Oh, God. Yes."
She felt his mouth open on her neck, his tongue and teeth pressing down onto the tender flesh, piercing it. She cried out at the pain of his sharp bite, shock and pleasure exploding at once and sending the flood within her crashing over its banks.
She was drowning in the dream now, helplessly adrift as her phantom lover rose up to look at her where she lay beneath him.
It was him.
The man from the police lineup. The shooter from the senator's party. The steely-eyed, deadly menace whose face had haunted her from the moment she first laid eyes on him.
Poised above her now in her dream, his gaze was no less cruel, still unflinching, devoid of mercy. His lips were parted, and his broad, sensual mouth - the mouth that had given her such pleasure - was slick and dark with blood.
Her blood.
