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      To Tyler. I’m very proud of you!

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      First, I’d like to thank you, the readers of the SWEETBLOOD series. Without your enthusiasm, this would not be possible.

      Thanks to my critique partner, my sister Becky, who lovingly and gently tells me when I suck. And my beta readers, Janna, Mandy, Kathy, Shelley and Kandis, whose shrewd and thoughtful assessments have saved me a lot of heartache down the road. I love you guys!

      To my wonderful editor, Margo Lipschultz, who seems to “get” me even when I don’t “get” myself. To all the people behind the scenes at Mills & Boon^® Nocturne™, thanks for all that you do. And to the talented folks in the art department who make the awesome SWEETBLOOD covers: you rock!

      Much thanks to Cherry Adair, Delilah Marvelle, Larissa Ione and Alexis Morgan for your friendship and your words of wisdom. I am so very grateful.

      To the Cherryplotters, thanks for your creativity and inspiration.

      To my GIAM buddies, my friends at Romance

      University, my GWRWA chapter mates and the

      Bookinville ladies, thanks for all your support.

      And finally, to my husband, Ted, and two children: I love the three of you very much.

       Also available from Laurie London

      BONDED BY BLOOD

      EMBRACED BY BLOOD

      “ENCHANTED BY BLOOD”

      in A Vampire for Christmas

      TEMPTED BY BLOOD

       CHAPTER ONE

      WHEN ROXANNE REYNOLDS rounded the corner in her rental car, the last thing she expected to see in the headlights was a half-naked man stumbling on the side of the road.

      She slammed on her brakes, pulled the car to the shoulder and fumbled to find the emergency flasher switch. Not only was this section of the Sea to Sky highway a terrible place to stop, but it wasn’t exactly somewhere a sane person would be taking a walk, especially after midnight.

      With his shirt ripped down the front and one of the sleeves missing, the man held up a hand to shield his face from the glare.

      Her first thought was that he’d been involved in a car accident. But when she noticed he wasn’t wearing shoes, she nixed that conclusion. Maybe a wild animal had attacked him. Given how remote this area was—the last town she passed had to be ten miles back—it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine. She wasn’t certain what sorts of predators lived in this part of British Columbia, but surely a bear or a mountain lion would be capable of taking down a full-grown man.

      She found the switch and jumped from the car. But when she got her first big whiff of the cool night air, she knew instantly that it wasn’t an animal.

      Although some would argue that a vampire was an animal.

      The sweet smell of the man’s blood assaulted her senses, making her gums ache as her fangs prepared to drop. Running toward him, she automatically shut down her body’s natural instincts to his very rare and highly addictive blood-type and the sensation dissipated. Given her work as a scent tracker, she’d followed the trail of many sweetbloods, but unlike most vampires, she could control how they affected her without much difficulty.

      The guy stumbled and fell to his knees just as she got to him, his legs clearly unable to support his weight any longer. He must have been running on pure adrenaline.

      “Are you okay?” she asked, pulling him back to his feet. “What happened to you?” She’d come all the way from Florida to help out a friend, but this seriously wasn’t how she’d expected her stint in the Northwest to begin.

      Blood splatters covered what was left of his long-sleeved shirt, scratches crisscrossed his exposed skin—including his scruffy, somewhat pimply face—and an IV line dangled from a piece of tape on his arm. The fact that he was young, barely out of his teenage years, didn’t surprise her. Sweetbloods rarely made it past the age of twenty, thirty at the outside, before a vampire somewhere came across them. The Darkblood Alliance made buckets of money selling vials of Sweet on the vampire black market. With just one taste, even those who had never killed a human before were likely to get carried away. A fact she knew firsthand but wished she didn’t.

      “They tried…to kill me,” he choked, leaning heavily on her arm.

      She didn’t need to ask who—she had a pretty damn good idea who’d do something like this. “Where were you being held? How far away?”

      “I don’t know. It feels like… I’ve been…running forever.” He put his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “A few kilometers on the other…side of the creek…just past those trees.” Without

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