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I scented Zoe before I saw her, a springlike green spice that made my lungs squeeze and my stomach lurch.
Unlike the guests, Zoe had made little effort to conceal her identity. Her mask was a strip of black that barely covered her eyes, and the silky white slip-thingy she wore showed all but a few crucial inches of her smooth golden limbs.
Virginal white. The color of innocence and ice.
My mouth curled. The woman sure could rock that touch-me-not look.
I knew different. I’d seen her mouth kiss-swollen, hair mussed from my fingers, creamy breasts bared as I’d tugged her dress down to her waist…
In the candlelit ballroom, the seductive sheen of her vampire skin was more noticeable. Beneath the thin strip of her mask, her hazel eyes were long lidded, inscrutable, her mouth a shiny apple-red. Her blue-black hair fell in a glistening wave around her shoulders and she wore a simple gold band high on her left arm. More gold was draped in sexy strands around her throat.
My groin tightened. Gods, I wanted her…almost as much as I hated her.
She seemed unaware of the bodyguard hovering nearby. Jean-Michel, the dark-haired Frenchman who was the closest thing she had to a father-figure.
No, her smile was for the lean blond asshat looking down the front of her white slip-thingy. Étan, Victorine’s current lieutenant and former lover. He’d taken a special pleasure in working me over.
He angled his body closer to Zoe’s and fingered a lock of her hair.
A possessive fury surged up my spine, spearing into my brain.
No man but me could stand that close to Zoe. Touch her. Have her.
Jean-Michel’s head swung toward me. A vampire couldn’t read my emotions like they could a human’s, but my muscles had tightened, my stance shifting to the balls of my feet as I prepared to launch myself at the blond douchebag.
Zoe’s mouth hardened into a thin-lipped facsimile of a real smile. She pulled away from Étan, forcing him to release her and saving me from myself.
Rein it in, you ass. Or you’ll blow your cover.
I tore my gaze away, forced my shoulders to ease.
“Will that be all, M’sieur?” The server in the short skirt again. She’d set down her tray on a nearby table. She moved closer and trailed a finger down my lapel.
Definitely a thrall.
Hunger’s bony fingers clutched my belly. I eyed the woman’s throat. It was long and soft and tanned, with two healed-over puncture wounds.
She tilted her head to one side, indicating her willingness to be fed from. The hot tangle of emotions emanating from her—attraction, lust, excitement—said she’d be agreeable to sex as well.
Hunger thrummed in my veins. The two blood-wines had helped, but it was like eating a handful of nuts when your starving body cried out for a full meal.
Ineededblood. Especially fresh human blood.
Feed. Feed. Feed.
My fangs elongated. The effort of powering my glamour had taken its toll. My control was in tatters.
I glanced at Zoe and retracted my fangs. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to feed from another woman when she was this close.
“Some other time,” I muttered and turned away.
Jean-Michel was still eyeing me. The music changed to a fox-trot.
I caught the thrall’s hand. “Dance with me.”
* * *
The thralls at vampire balls traditionally took anonymous names so they could pretend to hide behind their masks. Of course, any but a newly made vampire recognized their thralls by a combination of scent and emotion.
