LITMIR.BIZ

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Aren’t you and Ryder…friendly?”

      Ignoring him, she laid her hands on the bar’s rough surface. Beneath her palms she registered the bumps, dents and gouges worn into it by misuse, by the violence for which the Blood Bank was known in the undead world. Again the phantom pain came to her neck and she inched her hand upward.

      Foley ran the icy pad of his finger over the spot of the long-healed and invisible injury in a caress that made her skin crawl. “He’s bitten you, hasn’t he? More than once. And not just to feed. Yum.” He smacked his lips with pleasure.

      She yanked away from his touch, angry with his intrusion into her private life. “So what? Taking a survey?”

      “With each bite his control over you grows. Your need for him intensifies until…”

      You beg him to take you. To make you like him.

      Which scared the shit out of her.

      She prided herself on having learned control a long time ago. In the year following her father’s death, she had lost her restraint and her identity in the ambience of places like the Blood Bank. It was only after waking one morning facedown in vomit, her younger brother passed out beside her, that she realized she was on the road to oblivion and taking her brother with her. She had mustered the strength to deal with her pain, to restore her sense of self and honor. It had taken her a long time to control her rebellion, to choose what she knew was right.

      Lately she seemed to have less control over her emotions, over her choices, and worse, she didn’t have a clue as to whether her relationship with Ryder was right or wrong. Which only partially explained why she found herself here, in a bar catering to the undead. Sharing a drink with a vampire who would drain her, given the right circumstances. Avoiding the lover who made her plead for a passion so intense….

      That was the one thing she knew in her uncertain life. If Ryder was a drug, she was a Ryder junkie.

      When she had first met him, Ryder had been living his life as humanly as possible. The attraction between them had been that of woman to man, man to woman. She hadn’t known then just how hard it was for Ryder to control the beast within him. Or, worse, how much she would come to like the demon and what it made her feel.

      The spot at her neck tingled again. When Ryder had been mostly human, she could tell herself their affair was right, but now that he was finally exploring his vampire powers, now that he was becoming less human she could no longer avoid the truth.

      The change hadn’t happened overnight. It was only in the past year or so, when they’d become more involved with Manhattan’s other vampires, that Ryder had begun to change. She hadn’t noticed at first, but recently it had become impossible to ignore. Ryder was darker and more powerful than she could have imagined. Worse yet, she liked his transformation. Too much.

      And that was what troubled her the most—how much she wanted to share in his darkness, how much she craved the intense emotions only he could rouse. Was she losing herself to him?

      Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she half slipped off the high stool and tossed some money on the bar. Foley grabbed her arm, but she tugged free of his grasp. “Don’t.”

      “Afraid?” His feral smile held a hint of fang.

      But Foley’s toothy smile didn’t scare her. It only served to remind her of the vampire underworld that called to the darkness within her. A darkness she had thought she’d left behind after her father’s death. One she didn’t want to revisit.

      “Screw you, Foley.”

      She walked away, chased by his laughter. Or maybe it was Foley calling, “Change your mind?” that pushed her onward.

      She needed to be away from the Blood Bank and any other reminders of the surreal state of her life. She took a long walk before flagging a cab to go home.

      Home. She needed to go home. Grab a pint of ice cream on the way and settle down to try to find some inner peace. Today had been just too normal. Lunch with a friend. The happiness and joy of Sylvia’s coming child. The yearning for the contentment home and family could provide.

      Even before Ryder, Diana hadn’t thought much about that kind of life. Definitely not since becoming an FBI agent. Her career had taken up so much of her energy that she hadn’t considered that at some point she might want…more.

      But now she couldn’t refute the possibilities and impossibilities. She had at one time thought she’d have a normal life. A husband and kids. Growing old. Dying. Everyday stuff.

      She didn’t want a life of the abnormal—one hidden beneath the surface of the city. She had existed like that once before and it had nearly consumed her.

      Just as Ryder and his darkness would consume her if she didn’t find a way to let go.

      

      Monday was their night. His club was closed then, which meant they usually had the leisure of a long dinner, possibly a movie. Mortal things. Things that people who were dating regularly did.

      Like making love. A maybe-not-so-mortal thing with them.

      Was that why she had called tonight to tell him she didn’t want to see him?

      She’d been that blunt. Diana wasn’t the kind of woman who made excuses.

      And he wasn’t the kind of man to…

      But he wasn’t a man anymore, Ryder reminded himself as he perused the streets from the balcony of his apartment. Across the East River, the large red Pepsi and Silvercup Studio signs glowed. The erratic string of lights from the bridge and Roosevelt Island tramway twinkled. In the water there were a few scattered boats, not many.

      It was late, although in the city that never slept, the activity was incessant.

      Where was Diana in all that activity? Holed up in her office working on a case? Asleep in her apartment? Or somewhere else?

      The last possibility bothered him more than he liked to admit. He had never considered himself a jealous man. But then again, he had never met a woman as complex and independent and as deliciously dark as Diana.

      Ryder grew hard and his fangs elongated as he recalled their last bout of sex. She’d moved beneath him, pleading for his possession. For his bite.

      Her blood had been sweet, spicing his mouth as she’d cried out her completion. He had become nearly feral with feeding from her body as he’d driven into her. Her blood, providing him…so much life.

      He growled and shook his head to chase away the demon, the animal that had almost not let up the other night. He had come close to draining her. Had nearly made her like him, because she called to him like nothing else in his undead life. Now, he couldn’t just stand there, wondering.

      He sprung over the ledge of his balcony like a gymnast vaulting over a horse and landed on the balcony of the floor below, where Melissa—the doctor whose family legacy was to care for his vampire health and serve as his keeper—now lived with her husband.

      He caught but a glimpse of her, belly large with child. She stroked a hand across her extended abdomen with a beatific smile on her face. A moment later, her husband—Diana’s younger brother—Sebastian walked into the room, a similar grin on his features as he laid his hand over hers.

      Ryder couldn’t linger. The scene was too painful a reminder of the life taken from him so long ago. Of the life he would be stealing from Diana if they continued their relationship.

      Or if he sired her.

      After biting her the other night, he had been forced to acknowledge just how badly he wanted her with him forever. After more than a century of avoiding humans and their emotions, he had allowed himself to care for her. She had restored him. Made him alive again. Losing her…

      He knew pain. For close to one hundred and forty-three years, he had lived with the anguish of loved ones dying, of having everything familiar change. His response had been to shut himself off

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