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She squeezed her eyes shut, willing her mind to replace the horror of that night with happier memories. The smell of tobacco and mint that always laced his jacket. The way he’d stroke her hair when he’d tell her bedtime stories.
And it had been a vampire who had taken him from this world. From Sara.
Full circle, she thought, drying her tears with the back of her hand. Today, everything circled around to vampires.
Vampires.
A vampire had murdered her father, leaving his daughter with only memories and a legacy of nightmares.
A vampire had seduced her, leaving her sweaty and satisfied and clinging to the illusion that she had met a man who was worth something. A man whose kiss had brought her to her knees. A man who’d left flowers along with a silent promise that he would be back.
What a crock.
She pulled the ribbon out of her pocket and twisted it around her finger, cutting off the circulation to the end of the digit. Her naïveté disgusted her. Even if Leviathan was right and she was insusceptible to a vampire’s mental tricks, she’d still fallen under Luke’s spell. The potent allure of a confident man who takes what he wants; the decadent pleasure of being the woman he desires.
Enough of that.
She released her tight hold on the ribbon, letting it fall to the desktop. Then she flipped open the laptop once again. Now, he stood at the glass wall, his hands pressed to the barrier. Even on the small screen, his presence was compelling, a man who didn’t merely occupy a space, but commanded it. Now he was quiet, pensive. And though his expression was no more revealing than it had been in the interview, Sara thought she detected a hint of sadness, of worry.
A bubble of concern rose within her, and she immediately quashed it. Of course he was sad and worried. He damn well should be considering the weight of the murder charge against him.
He moved across the cell to sit on the concrete bench that served as a bed, thighs straining against the thin material of the PEC-issued pants. She told herself she was unaffected by the view, insisting that the lazy curl of desire that eased through her was nothing more than residual lust. She couldn’t want him, this murderer, this beast. She was better than that. Had more control over her emotions. Over her damn hormones.
Yet she’d picked up the ribbon again, and now her fingers were tying themselves into knots. And when he tilted his head and once again looked straight at her—at the camera—she felt the heat swirl through her. It shamed her. Infuriated her. Not because of what she’d done with him that night, but because the memory of his hands on her skin still fired her senses, making her nipples peak and her sex tingle.
Even knowing what he’d done—what he was—her body still craved him. His hands. His lips. Even the scrape of danger as his teeth dragged over her bare skin.
She wanted it—a vampire’s touch—and she despised that weakness in herself. Despised him for being the cause of her folly. Slowly, purposefully, she looked down and opened the file in Division v. Dragos. She flipped to the crime scene photo and stared hard at the image of Braddock’s neck wound, so similar to the wound she saw night after night in her dreams.
The ripped flesh. The dried blood.
There was no room for lust here. No room for desire or longing or fancy wishes of different circumstances.
This was murder.
Luke had killed. She was a prosecutor.
It really didn’t get much simpler than that.
She stood up, then dropped the red ribbon into her office trash can. Time to get to work.
ChapterFourteen
Ural Hasik slammed through the double glass doors into the Quik-Stop Mart on South Figueroa, his nose twitching. He stopped, then looked around, silently daring anyone to give him grief. A human in a black leather skullcap and an oversized jersey kept his nosy ass looking in Hasik’s direction a second too long. Hasik growled, the sound starting low in his throat as he bared his teeth.
The human backed away, almost knocking down a display of breakfast cereals.
Fuck, yeah, you better run away, you worthless piece of human garbage.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and prowled toward the counter, where an ancient wraith of a man was working the cash register.
“Can I help you?” he asked, a definite tremor in his voice.
“You can point me toward the self-service section.”
The elderly cashier’s eyes went wide. “I—I don’t think you want to go down there.”
“You’re telling me what I want, old man?”
