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Ask me to touch you, he said.
Why?
His demanding reply came swiftly. Because I need you to want me as much as I want you.
“Dios, Ryder. I need you.”
Slowly, way too slowly, he lowered his hand until it rested on top of the nest of curls between her legs. She pressed her hips up, urging him on. He breached the edge of her panties and unerringly found her center.
Beneath his fingers, Ryder experienced the pull of her. The scent of her arousal perfumed the air, so strong that the vampire within begged for a taste. He had lost the battle last time. He wouldn’t allow it to happen tonight. If the animal came…she might hate him—or herself—for surrendering to the demon.
He dropped a trail of kisses along her body. She opened her legs, knowing his intent and welcoming it. He slipped between her legs, brought his mouth to her sensitive nub.
Her hips arched in acceptance.
Her wetness—slick against him—and the smell of her…the heat…He groaned and she held his head to her.
He lost the battle.
The change surged over him. It was almost too much. The smell of their sexual musk. Her racing pulse reverberating in his ears. Her nether lips, wet and flush with blood. The demon imagined feeding there, at her most private of places.
He gasped at the roiling passion making his loins ache and looked up at her with his vampire face. Fangs exposed. Eyes glowing. Skin flushed and warm.
Diana stared at him. His arms were braced at her sides, shaking. Shoulders heaving from the force of his breaths. His rough, harsh pants reminded her of a lion at a zoo, caged. The human in him was barely keeping the animal behind bars.
In her mind, suddenly, she saw herself as he did. Her breathing. Sharp little pants. His teeth, sinking into her swollen flesh. Blood, rich with life. Passion. Flowing through both of them. Charging them. Her strangled cry of pain followed by pleasure that would rob her of herself.
She nearly climaxed from the images. The vampire in Ryder wanted her to desire his bite, so he could do as he wished. So he could control her as Foley had warned.
She shook away those thoughts and with years of self-defense skills, reversed their positions. She drove down onto him before he could continue messing with her mind. With her heart. Riding him to slake the burn, to draw out the human, to make him Ryder again and not the beast.
As she locked her gaze with his and moved on him, the demon fled. Ryder’s eyes became their intense dark brown once more, losing their demony glow. Only his fangs remained, as if he couldn’t muster that last little bit of command.
“I won’t bite again,” Ryder promised.
Long minutes passed before she finally answered, “I know.”
Without waiting for more assurance he flexed his hips and shifted upward, bringing her to the edge.
She followed his growl of release with her own cry of completion. After he cradled her in his arms. But earlier conflicts and fears rose up faster than the passion that had overwhelmed them.
When she had first met Ryder, she had sensed that he was a loner. A man who had suffered great loss and somehow endured. She understood such loss and the strength it took to overcome it. Like Ryder, she carried scars within her that hadn’t healed.
Back then she’d thought that two injured people didn’t bode well for a happy ending. And now, after tonight, she realized that continuing her life with Ryder…
“I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
A tremor ripped through his body again. He snatched up the clothes strewn across the floor and dressed, his movements stiff. Irate.
“Ryder?” She heard fear and indecision in her own voice. And an indefinable something…caring, possibly love. She was too confused to know anymore.
He didn’t answer. So she provided her own.
“I need some time.”
A barely perceptible nod of his head acknowledged her request before he returned to her open window and fled into the night.
Chapter 3
The alarm beeped furiously. Diana half turned and shut off the noise. She had been awake for some time.
Was it her imagination or could she still smell him on her pillow?
It was barely 6:00 a.m., but she tossed aside the covers and rolled out of bed. The barest hint of red in the morning sky promised a clear day ahead. She would have time for a quick run before work.
Work, where things over the last two weeks had become routine. Normal. As they had been before Ryder.
A load of cases waited for her to profile. Two others were actively being investigated. Later that day, she had a much-anticipated lunch date with her FBI partner. Afterward, if she didn’t get hung up too late with her active cases, she’d call Sylvia for a girl’s night. It had been too long since they’d had one. Their last lunch together had reminded her just how much she missed seeing her friend.
Just as having dinner the other night with her brother Sebastian and his wife, Melissa, had demonstrated how removed she had become from her family. For years she and Sebastian had shared an apartment and they had always been close. After the death of their father, grief had united them even more strongly. But Sebastian’s marriage to Melissa had complicated things, Melissa being Ryder’s keeper and all.
Their recent carefree dinner, however, made it clear that whatever happened between Diana and Ryder would have little impact on her relationship with her brother. She’d had a wonderful time and had even gotten to feel the baby move.
Now, she shifted her hand downward, laid it over the flat, almost concave plane of her abdomen. Imagined a baby within. Alive. Its tiny heart fluttering beneath the palm of her hand. Growing and being born. Suckling at her breast.
In her mind’s eye, the baby had Ryder’s dark eyes and hair, but she forced that impossible thought away. Instead she remembered how her little niece or nephew had rolled beneath her palm. Sebastian had smiled at her reaction, looking happier than she had ever seen him.
Things were working out for him. He was all right.
Just as she was beginning to believe everything would be all right for her one day. The weeks away from Ryder had been hard, but with each day that passed, with each day of a human routine, she felt her control returning.
Each day brought more lightness to her spirit, something she hadn’t felt in…forever.
She could imagine soon being back to a place where her life seemed in order. Where she could enjoy her friends and family. A good place.
Though more often then she cared to admit, Ryder slipped into her thoughts. Strange as it was, her life with him had in some ways made her believe anything was possible. But the unpredictability had kept her constantly on the edge. An edge that had grown difficult to walk.
Without him, however, a bit of emptiness existed that none of the routines of her day managed to fill. Routines that had, at one time, sustained her.
She told herself she just needed to relearn balance, the yin and yang of things. And that couldn’t happen in only a couple of weeks. It would take time. Something Ryder had plenty of, while she…Her time was finite. Unless she gave in to the call of the demon.
She drove that thought viciously away.
She knew how hard life was for Ryder and his vampire friends. How they battled to contain the demon’s desire for domination. How they suffered over and over again from the pain of who they had become, of losing those they loved.
Her father’s death had taught Diana what it was to live with that kind of pain. She couldn’t imagine living with it for eternity. She needed the everyday human world she had been struggling to reenter these past few weeks.
The cell phone on her nightstand vibrated. As she picked up the phone, the Caller ID indicated it was her friend, N.Y.P.D. Detective Peter Daly.
Whatever Peter had to say at this early hour couldn’t be good.
“You’re making a big mistake.”
The sound of her shoes on the hard tile of the police station hallway echoed as Peter escorted her to the interrogation room.
“Neighbors reported hearing a shot. Then we got Raul Rodriguez’s 9-1-1 call. When we arrived, he was incoherent. The gun was on the bed where he had supposedly been asleep. And his wife—”
“Stop.”
Raul’s wife was Sylvia, who Diana had been thinking about calling only a short time earlier. It was impossible to believe her friend was dead.
“Diana. I know you’re close to this—”
“She was one of my best friends. She asked me to be the godmother for their baby. Did you know that? Did you know she was pregnant?”
Peter had the grace to look chagrined. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Sorry!” Unable to control herself any longer, she faced the wall and pounded the rough cinder block with her fist.
Peter pulled her into a tight embrace as if to keep her from hurting herself. “I can’t imagine how tough this is.”
She held on to him, needing his stability because of all she was tempted to do. Sylvia’s life—her normal, happy, human life—was gone. Destroyed by violence. Violence like that within Diana, so strong she didn’t know if she could hold it back. And if the killer turned out to be Raul…
Dios. She would give in to the darkness and kill the bastard herself.
“Di? You need to get a grip if you’re going to talk to him.”
With a deep shuddering breath, she pulled herself together. Stepping away from Peter, she wiped at her eyes. “Do we have any other leads?”
Frowning, Peter shook his head. “Everything we have points to the husband. Maybe he found out the baby wasn’t—”
Diana silenced him with a pointed slash of her hand. “Don’t go there. Sylvia didn’t mess around,” she said, then stalked down the hall to the interrogation room, Peter trailing behind her.
Raul sat at a Formica-topped table, jailbird-orange clothing hanging loosely on his hunched shoulders. His bloodstained pajamas had been taken as evidence. He was hollow-eyed and obviously still in shock. “Tell me what happened, Raul,” Diana said.
“No se. We had dinner out. Un poquito de vino, but not much wine since Sylvia…” He stopped as tears spilled down his cheeks. He wiped at them with shaky hands and haltingly continued. “We went home. We were both really sleepy. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out.” His hands tumbled in the air. “No se que paso. There was a sound. A loud sound. I started coming to, but everything was fuzzy…” He stopped once more, buried his head in his hands. The tears fell more furiously.
Diana laid a hand on his shoulder. “I know this is difficult, but you have to try to remember.”
“I don’t know what happened,” he replied brokenly, and held out his hands as if pleading with her. “De verdad que no se. When I woke up, Sylvia was bleeding. I tried to wake her. When she didn’t respond…I called 9-1-1. I held her. She was so still. Then I saw the gun.”
“Did you touch the gun, Raul?”
He shook his head and wiped at his runny nose. “I don’t remember touching it.”
“Forensics will be able to confirm whether you did or not, Mr. Rodriguez. You may as well tell us now.” Peter moved to the table.
Raul snarled at the detective, “I did not kill my wife. I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. She was my life. Mi vida.” He jabbed at a spot above his heart to emphasize the point.
The sincerity in his words convinced Diana. She touched Raul’s clenched fist. “I believe you.”
He slumped into his chair. “Gracias, Diana.”
She glared at Peter. “I want to see all the reports. Anything you have.”
“You’re not assigned to this case. If the suspect hadn’t asked for you—”
“I would have found out and—”
“You don’t have jurisdiction here.”
He was right. Taking a deep breath to control her anger and frustration, Diana nodded and followed Peter out of the room. Peter wouldn’t refuse if she asked. So she did. “Ask me to help. I need to know what happened to my friend.”
Peter gave her a long look. “Unofficially and…whatever I say goes on this one. I’m the lead.”
“You’re the boss, Detective Daly.”
Peter let out a soft chuckle. “Right, Reyes. As if that will ever happen with any man in your life.”
“May I see the evidence, Detective? Pretty please?”
Peter chuckled again and shook his head. “Cut the shit, Di. You don’t do submissive very well.”
No, she didn’t, come to think of it. Maybe that was part of the reason her situation with Ryder troubled her so much. What she felt for him made her weak, made her surrender a piece of herself. She wasn’t good about not being in charge.
“Okay, so I’m asking straight-up. Show me what you’ve got.”
He motioned down the hallway. “CSU is processing most of it. But we can head to the M.E.’s to see the body—”
“Don’t call Sylvia that.”
Peter sighed and dragged a hand through his ragged sun-bleached hair. “I’m sorry. But you need to get perspective.”
“I will deal with it. But if it were Samantha—”
“Low blow, Reyes,” he said, his tone filled with anger at the idea of harm coming to his lover—who had sired Ryder more than a century earlier.
Ryder.
Like the intertwined strands on a web, everything in her life inevitably led back to him. Could she ever be truly free of him? Or would she be forever ensnared in that web, trapped by what she felt for him?
Had once felt for him, she reminded herself. As for those emotions and anything connected to them…she had to put them aside and focus on what was most important now—avenging her friend’s death.
Diana let out an exasperated breath and laid a hand on Peter’s sleeve. “I’m sorry. I will try to handle it better. Let’s go see Sylvia. Por favor.”
She would do what needed to be done to find Sylvia’s killer. And when she located him…
Living with vampires for two years had shown her just what she was capable of—fierce, swift action with no hesitation. Justice without the complicated rules of the human world.
