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Curt stared at her for a moment. Then he tilted his head to one side and opened his arms. She sighed and allowed his embrace. “Still not sleeping nights?” His voice came smoothly, softly.
She shook her head against the damp fabric of his coat.
“I’m worried about leaving her alone,” Daniel said, as if she were not there.
“I have experiments to finish in the basement lab,” Curt offered. “I could hang around here, if you want to do the surveillance alone.”
“I don’t need a baby-sitter,” she snapped.
Daniel ignored her. “I think that’s a good idea,” he said. He leaned over to plant a dry peck on her cheek. “I’ll be back around dawn.”
She pulled from Curt’s arms and shook her head in frustration. “Daniel and I know what we’re doing, Tam,” Curt told her, his tone placating. “We’ve been in this business a lot longer than you have. DPI has reams on Marquand. It’s not legend.”
“I want to see the files.” She sniffed and met his gaze.
His lips tightened at the corners. “Your security clearance isn’t high enough.”
It was the answer she’d expected, the same one she got every time she asked to see the data that the Division of Paranormal Investigations had on the alleged vampire, Marquand. She lowered her head and turned from him. His hand on her shoulder stopped her. “Tamara, don’t be angry. It’s for your own—”
“I know. For my own good. My tub is going to run over.” She stepped away from him and closed the door. Curtis would sequester himself in the basement lab and not give her a second thought, she was sure of it. He didn’t worry about her the way Daniel did. He did seem to feel he had the right to boss her around more than usual lately. She shrugged, vowing not to worry anymore about Curt’s proprietary attitude toward her. She stopped the water in the bathtub and stared down into it for long moments. No hot bath was going to help her sleep. She’d tried everything from warm milk to double doses of a prescription sleep aid she’d pressured her doctor into giving her. Nothing worked. Why go through the motions?
With a frustrated sigh she padded to the French doors. On a whim, she flung them open and stepped out onto the balcony. A purple-black sky, lightening to silvery blue in the west, dropped snowflakes in chaotic choreography. The sun had set fully while she’d been arguing with her insane guardian and his stubborn cohort. She stared, entranced by the simple grace of the dancing snow. All at once she felt she had to be a part of it. Why waste all this nervous energy lying in bed, staring up at the underside of the white canopy? Especially when she knew sleep wouldn’t come for hours. Maybe she could exhaust herself into oblivion. How long had it been since she’d been able to put aside her gnawing worry and enjoy some simple pleasure?
She hurried back inside, eager now that the decision was made. She yanked on tight black leggings and a bulky knit sweater, two pairs of socks and furry pink earmuffs. She grabbed her coat and her skates from the closet, dropped them into her duffel bag, shoved her purse in beside them and opened her bedroom door.
For a moment she just listened. The hollow dinosaur of a house was silent. She tiptoed through the hall and down the stairs. She paused at the front door just long enough to stuff her feet into her boots, and then she slipped silently through it.
Crisp air stung her cheeks and her breath made little steam clouds in the falling snow. Twenty minutes of walking and snow-dance watching brought her to the outskirts of Byram. Childish delight warmed her when her destination came into view.
The rink sparkled from its nest amid the town park’s shrubbery and carefully pruned elms. Meandering, snow-dusted sidewalks, wrought-iron benches with redwood slatted seats, and trash cans painted a festive green made a wreath around the ice. Tamara hastened to the nearest bench to change into her skates.
When he woke, Eric felt as if his head were stuffed with wet cotton. He’d swung his legs to the floor, landing with unusual clumsiness. He hadn’t needed a window to sense the pale blush that still hung in the western sky. It hadn’t been the coming of night that had wakened him. Hadn’t been that for weeks. Always her cries echoed in his head until he could no longer rest. Fear and confusion were palpable in her wrenching pleas. He felt her need like a barbed hook, snagged through his heart and pulling him. Yet he hesitated. Some preternatural instinct warned him not to act hastily. No sense of imminent danger laced her nightly summons. No physical weakness or life-threatening accident seemed to be the cause. What, then?
That she was able to summon him at all was incredible. No human could summon a vampire. That anything other than mortal danger could rouse him from his deathlike slumber astounded him. He longed to go to her, to ask the questions that burned in his mind. Yet he hesitated. Long ago he’d left this place, vowing to stay clear of the girl for her own sake. He’d hoped the incredible psychic link between them would fade with time and distance. Apparently it had not.
He relaxed for an hour in the comfort of his lair. With the final setting of the sun came the familiar rush of energy. His senses sharpened to the deadly keenness of a freshly whetted blade. His body tingled with a million needles of sensation.
He dressed, then released the multitude of locks on the heavy door. He moved in silence through the pitch-black hall and pushed against a heavy slab of stone at the end. It swung inward easily, without a creak of protest, and he stepped through the opening into what appeared to be an ordinary basement. The door, from this side, looked like a well-stocked wine rack. He pushed it gently closed again and mounted the stairway that led to the main house.
He had to see her. He’d known it for some time, and avoided the knowledge. Her pull was too strong to resist. When her sweet, tormented voice came to him in the velvet folds of his rest, he felt her anguish. He had to know what troubled her so. He moved into the parlor, to the tall window, and parted the drape.
The DPI van sat across from the front gate, as it had every night for two months now. Another reason he needed to exercise caution. The division had begun with a group of pious imbeciles, intent on the destruction of any and everything they did not understand, over a century ago. Rumor had it they were now under the auspices of the CIA, making them a threat not to be taken lightly. They occupied an entire office building in White Plains, according to Eric’s information. It was said they had operatives in place all over the United States, and even in Europe. The one outside seemed to have made Eric his personal obsession. As if the front gate were the only way out, he parked there at dark every night and remained until dawn. He was as bothersome to Eric as a noisy fly.
He shrugged into a dark-colored overcoat and left through the French doors off the living room, facing opposite the front gate. He crossed the back lawn, stretching from the house to the sheer, rocky cliff above Long Island Sound. He went to the tall iron fence that completely surrounded his property, and vaulted it without much effort. He moved through the trees, gaining the road several yards behind the intense man who thought he was watching so well.
He walked only a short distance before he stopped, cleared his mind and closed his eyes. He opened himself to the cacophony of sensations that were usually denied access. He winced inwardly at the bombardment. Voices of every tone, inflection and decibel level echoed in his mind. Emotions from terrible fear to delirious joy swept through him. Physical sensations, both pleasure and pain, twisted within him, and he braced himself against the mental assault. He couldn’t target an individual’s mind any other way, unless that person was deliberately sending him a message—the way she’d been doing.
Gradually he gained mastery over the barrage. He sifted it, searching for her voice, her thoughts. In moments he felt her, and he turned in the direction he knew her to be.
He nearly choked when he drew near the ice rink and caught sight of her. She twirled in the center of the rink, bathed in moonglow, her face turned up as if in supplication—as if she were in love with the night. She stopped, extended her arms with the grace of a ballerina and skated slowly, then faster, carving a figure eight into the ice. She turned then, glided backward over the ice, then turned again, crossing skate over skate, slowing her pace gradually.
Eric felt an odd burning in his throat as he watched her. It had been twenty years since he’d left the innocent, raven-haired child’s hospital bed after saving her life. How vividly he recalled that night—the way she’d opened her eyes and clutched his hand. She’d called him by name, and asked him not to go. Called him by name, even though she’d never seen him before that night! It was then he’d realized the strength of the bond between them, and made the decision to leave.
Did she remember? Would she recognize him, if she saw him again? Of course, he had no intention of allowing that. He only wanted to look at her, to scan her mind and learn what caused her nightly anguish.
She skated to a bench near the edge of the ice, pulled off the earmuffs she wore and tossed them down. She shook her head and her hair flew wildly, like a black satin cloak of curls. She shrugged off the jacket and dropped it on the bench. She seemed unconcerned that it slid over the side to land in the snow. She drew a breath, turned and skated off.
Eric opened his mind and locked in on hers, honed his every sense to her. It took only seconds, and once again he marveled at the strength of the mental link between them. He heard her thoughts as clearly as she did.
What he heard was music—the music she imagined as she swooped and swirled around the ice. It faded slightly, and she spoke inwardly to herself. Axel, Tam, old girl. A little more speed…now!
He caught his breath when she leapt from the ice to spin one and a half times. She landed almost perfectly, with one leg extended behind her, then wobbled and went down hard. Eric almost rushed out to her. Some nearly unheard instinct whispered a warning and he stopped himself. Slowly he realized she was laughing, and the sound was like crystal water bubbling over stones.
She stood, rubbed her backside and skated away as his gaze followed her. She looped around the far end of the rink. That’s when Eric spotted the van, parked in the darkness just across the street. Daniel St. Claire!
He quickly corrected himself. It couldn’t be St. Claire. He’d have heard the man’s arrival. He would have had to arrive after Eric himself. He looked more closely at the white van, noticing minute differences—that scratch along the side, the tires. It wasn’t St. Claire’s vehicle, but it was DPI. Someone was watching—not him, but Tamara.
He would have moved nearer, pierced the dark interior with his eyes and identified the watcher, but his foot caught on something and he glanced down. A bag. Her bag. He looked toward Tamara again. She was completely engrossed in her skating. Apparently the one watching her was, as well. Eric bent, snatched up the bag and melted into the shadows. Besides her boots the only thing inside was a small handbag. Supple kid leather beneath his fingers. He took it out.
An invasion of her privacy, yes. He knew it. If the same people were watching her as were watching him, though, he had to know why. If St. Claire had somehow learned of his connection to the girl, this could be some elaborate trap. He removed each item from the bag, methodically examining each one before replacing it. Inside the small billfold he found a plastic DPI keycard with Tamara’s name emblazoned so boldly across the front that it hurt his eyes.
“No,” he whispered. His gaze moved back to her as he mindlessly dropped the card into the bag, the bag into the duffel, and tossed the lot back toward the place where he’d found it. His heart convulsed as he watched her. So beautiful, so delicate, with diamondlike droplets glistening as if they’d been magically woven into that mane of hair while she twirled beneath the full moon. Could she be his Judas? A betrayer in the guise of an angel?
He attuned his mind to hers with every ounce of power he possessed, but the only sensations he found there were joy and exuberance. All he heard was the music, playing ever more loudly in her mind. Overture to The Impresario. She skated in perfect harmony with the urgent piece, until the music stopped all at once.
She skidded to a halt and stood poised on the ice, head cocked slightly, as if she’d heard a sound she couldn’t identify. She turned very slowly, making a full circle as her gaze swept the rink. She stopped moving when she faced him, though he knew she couldn’t possibly see him there, dressed in black, swathed in shadow. Still, she frowned and skated toward him.
My God, could the connection between them be so strong that she actually sensed his presence? Had she felt him probing her mind? He turned and would have left but for the quickened strokes of her blades over the ice, and the scrape as she skidded to a stop so close to him he felt the spray of ice fragments her skates threw at his legs. He felt the heat emanating from her exertion-warmed body. She’d seen him now. Her gaze burned a path over his back and for the life of him he couldn’t walk away from her. Foolish it might have been, but Eric turned and faced her.
She stared for a long moment, her expression puzzled. Her cheeks glowed with warmth and life. The tip of her nose was red. Small white puffs escaped her parted lips and lower, a pulse throbbed at her throat. Even when he forced his gaze away from the tiny beat he felt it pound through him the way Beethoven must have felt the physical impact of his music. He found himself unable to look away from her eyes. They held his captive, as if she possessed the same power of command he did. He felt lost in huge, bottomless orbs, so black they appeared to have no pupils. My God, he thought. She already looks like one of us.
She frowned, and shook her head as if trying to shake the snowflakes from her hair. “I’m sorry. I thought you were…” The explanation died on her lips, but Eric knew. She thought he was someone she knew, someone she was close to. He was.
“Someone else,” he finished for her. “Happens all the time. I have one of those faces.” He scanned her mind, seeking signs of recognition on her part. There was no memory there, only a powerful longing—a craving she hadn’t yet identified. “Good night.” He nodded once and forced himself to turn from her.
Even as he took the first step he heard her unspoken plea as if she’d shouted it. Please, don’t go!
He faced her again, unable to do otherwise. His practical mind kept reminding him of the DPI card in her bag. His heart wanted her cradled in his arms. She’d truly grown into a beauty. A glimpse of her would be enough to take away the breath of any man. The glint of unshed tears in her eyes shocked him.
“I’m sure I know you,” she said. Her voice trembled when she spoke. “Tell me who you are.”
Her need tore at him, and he sensed no lie or evil intent. Yet if she worked for DPI she could only mean him harm. He sensed the attention of the man in the van. He must wonder why she lingered here.
“You must be mistaken.” It tore at his soul to utter the lie. “I’m certain we’ve never met.” Again he turned, but this time she came toward him, one hand reaching out to him. She stumbled, and only Eric’s preternatural speed enabled him to whirl in time. He caught her as she plunged forward. His arms encircled her slender frame and he pulled her to his chest.
He couldn’t make himself let go. He held her to him and she didn’t resist. Her face lay upon his chest, above his pounding heart. Her scent enslaved him. When her arms came to his shoulders, as if to steady herself, only to slide around his neck, he felt he’d die a thousand deaths before he’d let her go.
She lifted her head, tipped it back and gazed into his eyes. “I do know you, don’t I?”
2
Tamara tried to blink away the drugged daze into which she seemed to have slipped. She stood so close to this stranger that every part of her body pressed against his from her thighs to her chest. Her arms encircled his corded neck. His iron ones clasped tight around her waist. She’d tipped her head back to look into his eyes, and she felt as if she were trapped in them.
He’s so familiar!
They shone, those eyes, like perfectly round bits of jet amid sooty sable lashes. His dark brows, just as sooty and thick, made a slash above each eye, and she had the oddest certainty that he would cock one when puzzled or amused in a way that would make her heart stop.
But I don’t know him.
His full lips parted, as if he’d say something, then closed once more. How soft his lips! How smooth, and how wonderful when he smiled. Oh, how she’d missed his smile.
What am I saying? I’ve never met this man before in my life.
His chest was a broad and solid wall beneath hers. She felt his heart thudding powerfully inside it. His shoulders were so wide they invited a weary head to drop upon them. His hair gleamed in the moonlight, as black as her own, but without the riotous curls. It fell instead in long, satin waves over his shoulders, when it wasn’t tied back with the small velvet ribbon in what he called a queue. She fingered the ribbon at his nape, having known it was there before she’d touched it. She felt an irrational urge to tug it free and run her fingers through his glorious hair—to pull great masses of it to her face and rub them over her cheeks.
She felt her brows draw together, and she forced her lips to part. “Who are you?”
“You don’t know?” His voice sent another surge of recognition coursing through her.
“I…feel as if I do, but…” She frowned harder and shook her head in frustration. Her gaze fell to his lips again and she forced it away. The sensation that bubbled in her felt like joyous relief. She felt as if some great void in her heart had suddenly been filled simply by seeing this familiar man. The words that swirled and eddied in her mind, and which she only barely restrained herself from blurting, were absurd. Thank God you’ve come back…I’ve missed you so…please, don’t leave me again…I’ll die if you leave me again.
She felt tears filling her eyes, and she wanted to turn away so he wouldn’t see them. The pain in his flickered and then vanished, so she wondered if she’d truly seen it there. He stared so intensely, and the peculiar feeling that he somehow saw inside her mind hit her with ridiculous certainty.
She wanted to turn and run away. She wanted him to hold her forever. I’m losing my mind.
“No, sweet. You are perfectly sane, never doubt that.” His voice caressed her.
She drew a breath. She hadn’t spoken the thought aloud, had she? He’d…my God, he’d read her mind.
Impossible! He couldn’t have. She stared at his sensual mouth again, licked her lips. Had he read her mind? I want you to kiss me, she thought, deliberately.
A silent voice whispered a reply inside her brain—his voice. A test? I couldn’t think of a more pleasant one.
She watched, mesmerized, as his head came down. His mouth relaxed over hers, and she allowed her lips to part at his gentle nudging. At the instant his moist, warm tongue slipped into her mouth to stroke hers, a jolt went through her. Not a sudden rush of physical desire. No, this felt like an actual electric current, hammering from the point of contact, through her body to exit through the soles of her feet. It rocked her and left her weak.
His hands moved up, over her back. His fingertips danced along her nape and higher, until he’d buried them in her hair. With his hands at the back of her head he pressed her nearer, tilting her to the angle that best fit him, and preventing her pulling away as his tongue stroked deeper, kindling fires in her belly.
Finally his lips slid away from hers, and she thought the kiss had ended. Instead it only changed form. He trailed his moist lips along the line of her jaw. He flicked his tongue over the sensitized skin just below her ear. He moved his lips caressingly to her throat, and her head fell back on its own. Her hands cupped his head, and pressed him closer. Her eyes fluttered closed and she felt so light-headed she was sure she must be about to faint.
He sucked the tender skin between his teeth. She felt sharp incisors skim the soft flesh as he suckled her there like a babe at its mother’s breast. She felt him shudder, heard him groan as if tortured. He lifted his head from her, and his hands straightened hers so he could gaze into her eyes. For an instant there seemed to be light in them—an unnatural glow shining from somewhere beyond the ebony.
His voice, when he spoke, sounded rough and shaky. It was no longer the soothing honey that had coated her ears earlier. “What is it you want of me? And take care not to ask too much, Tamara. I fear I can refuse you nothing.”
She frowned. “I don’t want—” She sucked air through her teeth, stepping out of his arms. “How do you know my name?”
Slowly the spell faded. She breathed deeply, evenly. What had she done? Since when did she go around kissing strangers in the middle of the night?
“The same way you know mine,” he said, his voice regaining some of its former strength and tone.
“I don’t know yours! And how could you—why did you…” She shook her head angrily and couldn’t finish the sentence. After all, she’d kissed him as much as he’d kissed her.
“Come, Tamara, we both know you summoned me here, so stop this pretense. I only want to know what troubles you.”
“Summoned you—I most certainly did not summon you. How could I? I don’t even know you!”
One brow shot upward. Tamara’s hand flew to her mouth because she’d pictured him with just such an expression. She had no time to consider it, though, since his next odd question came so quickly. “And do you know him?”
He glanced toward the street and she followed his gaze, catching her breath when she saw Curt’s DPI van parked there. She knew it was his by the rust spot just beneath the side mirror on the driver’s door. She could barely believe he had the audacity to spy on her. On an indignant sigh she whispered, “He followed me. Why, that heavy-handed son of a—”
“Very good, although I suspect his reason for being posted there is known to you full well. This was a trap, was it not? Lure me here, and then your attentive friend over there—”
“Lure you here? Why on earth would I lure you here, and how, for God’s sake? I told you I’ve never seen you before.”
“You call to me nightly, Tamara. You’ve begged me to come to you until you’ve nearly driven me insane.”
“I don’t think it would be a long trip. I told you, I haven’t called you. I don’t even know your name.”
Again his gaze searched her face and she felt her mind being searched. He sighed, frowning until his brows met. “Suppose you tell me why you think that gent would follow you, then?”
“Knowing Curt, he probably thinks it’s for my own good. God knows he tosses that phrase around enough lately.” Her anger softened a bit, as she thought it through more thoroughly. “He might be a little worried about me. I know Daniel is…my guardian, that is. Frankly, I’m worried myself. I don’t sleep at night anymore—not ever. The only time I feel even slightly like sleeping is during the day. In fact, I’ve fallen asleep at my desk twice now. I take to my bed the second I get home and sleep like a rock, but only until dusk. Just at nightfall I have terrible nightmares and usually cry out loud enough to convince them both I’m losing my mind, and then I’m up and restless all night lo—” She broke off, realizing she was blurting her life story to a perfect stranger.
“Please don’t stop,” he said at once. He seemed keenly interested in hearing more. “Tell me about these nightmares.” He must’ve seen her wariness. He reached out to her, touched her cheek with the tips of his long, narrow fingers. “I only want to help you. I mean you no harm.”
She shook her head. “You’ll only agree with me that I’m slipping around the bend.” He frowned. “Cracking up,” she explained. She pointed one finger at her ear and made little circles. “Wacko.”
“You most certainly are not…wacko, as you put it.” His hand slipped around to the back of her head and he drew her nearer. She didn’t resist. She hadn’t felt so perfectly at peace in months as she felt in his arms. He held her gently against him, as if she were a small child, and one hand stroked her hair. “Tell me, Tamara.”
She sighed, unable to resist the smooth allure of his voice, or of his touch, though she knew it made no sense. “It’s dark, and there is a jungle of sorts, and a lot of fog and mist covering the ground so I can’t see my feet. I trip a lot as I run. I don’t know if I’m running toward something or away from something. I know I’m looking for someone, and in the dream I know that person can help me find my way. But I call and call and he doesn’t answer.”
He stopped stroking her hair all at once, and she thought he tensed. “To whom do you call?”
“I think that might be what’s driving me crazy. I can never remember. I wake as breathless and exhausted as if I really had been running through that forest, sometimes halfway through shouting his name—but I just can’t remember.”
His breath escaped in a rush. “Tamara, how does the dream make you feel?”
She stepped away from him and studied his face. “Are you a psychologist?”
“No.”
“Then I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.” She tried to pull her gaze from his familiar face. “Because I really don’t know you.”
She stiffened as her name was shouted from across the ice. “Tammy!”
She grimaced. “I hate when he calls me that.” She searched the eyes of her stranger again, and again she felt as if she’d just had a long-awaited reunion with someone she adored. “Are you real, or a part of my insanity?” No, don’t tell me, she thought suddenly. I don’t want to know. “I’d better go before Curt worries himself into a stroke.”
“Does he have the right to worry?”
She paused, frowning. “If you mean is he my husband, the answer is no. We’re close, but not in a romantic way. He’s more like a…bossy older brother.”
