LITMIR.BIZ

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whispered. And he turned slowly, scenting the air, feeling for her energy, certain she was close.

      And she was. He began to move, barely looking, drawn by the feel of her. Like following the trail left by a comet’s tail, he homed in on her warmth, her light, the sparkling energy that was hers alone.

      He wouldn’t get too close. He couldn’t, not without running the risk of her knowing. In all these years, all this time, he hadn’t come close to her, despite the temptation he could barely resist. And as long as he’d kept his distance, Elisabeta had slept. She’d been dormant, deep inside Tempest. Somewhere. He knew she hadn’t left this plane. She hadn’t died or moved on. She was still there. He felt her there. But she hadn’t stirred.

      As long as he stayed away from Tempest, he thought, she wouldn’t. It was easier on Beta that way, or he hoped it was. Let her rest and bide her time. But time—God, time was running out for both of them. And now that he’d found the ring, he almost didn’t dare to hope there could be a chance. Yet he couldn’t help but hope.

      So he followed her trail as her presence hummed in his blood, stroked his senses like a bow over the strings of a violin, until his longing for her vibrated into a pure, demanding tone. It was more powerful now, he realized as he drew closer, than it had been before. Even harder to resist, perhaps because he was allowing himself to move closer to her than he had in sixteen years. It drew him, drove him, until he stood on the sidewalk beside a hotel, staring up at the room where every sense told him she was.

      God, it was all he could do not to climb the wall and go to her.

      Always before, he’d been prepared to resist his own urges. Always before, he’d had time to steel himself before getting within range of her energy. But this had been entirely unexpected. He hadn’t come here for this, for her. He’d come for the ring. His plans beyond that were uncertain. Without the scroll, the ring was useless.

      Why was Tempest here? Had she come for the ring, as well? Why? How could she know?

      He couldn’t let her obtain it, if that was her goal. For her to possess it would be far too dangerous.

      As he stood there, staring up at the room, Tempest stepped out onto the balcony, leaned on the railing and gazed out into the night.

      He couldn’t take his eyes from her. And his preternatural vision didn’t fail him. He managed to drink in every detail of her face in a way he hadn’t been close enough to do in far, far too long.

      The blush of youth had faded from the body of the woman in which his love lay sleeping. In its place were the angles of a female in the prime of her life. Her face was thinner, her eyes harder, than they had been before. Her hair was still blond but not as pale; still short but less severe. Its softness framed her face and moved with every touch of the breeze. She still bore a striking resemblance to Elisabeta, her ancestor. He longed to bury his fingers in those sunlight-and-honey strands, to bury himself inside her; to feel her shiver under the power of his touch.

      She wanted him.

      God, he could feel her wanting him. Yearning for him. And she knew he was close. She sensed him, perhaps not as powerfully and clearly as he sensed her, but it was there. And consciously or not, she was calling out to him. She wanted him still.

      He had to school himself to patience. He had to know why she was here, what she was doing. He’d waited sixteen years to be with her again—more than five hundred before that. Surely he could wait one more night. But not much more than that.

      He was hungry. He needed sustenance, blood to satisfy his body and perhaps calm the raging desire in his veins. To keep himself from going to her, for just a little while longer. And then, in the early hours just before dawn, he would go after the ring.

      And that was precisely what he did. But when he got to the museum, it was to find the window broken, the alarms shrieking, sirens blaring and the ring…

      Gone.

      Stormy woke to the insistent sun beaming through the hotel room’s windows and searing through her eyelids. She rolled over in the bed and hid her face in the pillows, but the memory of her dreams woke her more thoroughly than the sun ever could have.

      She’d dreamed about Vlad.

      But she hadn’t dreamed about the two of them making love—which was odd, because she’d dreamed of that many times over the past sixteen years, never sure whether it had actually happened, or if it was just part of her senseless yearning for him. Or something more sinister—perhaps the longing of her intruder or one of her memories.

      No. This dream had been more like a memory. Until the end. Then it had become a vision. He’d been standing there on the shores of Endover, where she had first met him. His castle-like mansion hovered on its secret island behind him, and the sea was raging in between. He’d been just standing there, staring at her.

      Wanting her.

      Calling to her.

      The wind had been whipping through his long dark hair, and she’d remembered—yes, remembered!—the way it felt to run her fingers through it. His chest had been bare, probably because, in her mind, that was the way she preferred to remember him. His chest. Next to his eyes, and that hair, and his mouth, it was her favorite part of him. She’d touched that chest in her dreams. She’d run her hands over it and over his belly. Had it ever been real?

      It felt real. More real than anything else in her life.

      She rolled onto her back and pressed her hands to her face. “God,” she moaned. “Am I ever going to get over him?”

      But she already knew the answer. If she hadn’t been able to forget Dracula in sixteen years, it wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon. He had a hold on her. Maybe it was deliberate. Maybe it was him messing with her mind, refusing to let her forget him, even while making her forget the details of their time together. Or maybe it was because of that other soul that lurked inside her. Because, though it had been dormant for a long time, Stormy knew that the other was still there. And if she’d begun to doubt it, Elisabeta’s recent appearance had driven the truth home. She lived still.

      But was that why she couldn’t forget Vlad? Or was it just because he was the only man who had ever made her feel…desperate for him. Hungry for him. Certain no one else would ever suffice.

      And no one else ever had. Or ever would. She couldn’t even climax with another man.

      He certainly hadn’t had the same issues, though, had he? He’d never made contact, not once in sixteen years. And it hurt, far more than it should. Some days she convinced herself it was because he truly did care about her. That he was keeping away to protect her from the inner turmoil Elisabeta would cause if he did otherwise. But most of the time she believed the more likely reason. It was, after all, Elisabeta, not Stormy, he loved. And since he couldn’t have her, he couldn’t be bothered with Stormy at all.

      She closed her eyes, and revisited, mentally, the initial parts of her dream—and knew it had been a memory. A snippet of the weeks Vlad had erased from her mind. He’d taken her to Romania, not North Carolina, smuggled her there inside a casket. She’d awakened in his castle, furious with him.

      But why? What had happened there? Why had he let her go? God, why had he ever let her go?

      Groaning, Stormy dragged herself out of bed, shuffled across the room and kicked the clothes she didn’t remember wearing out of her path. She went to the door and hoped, for the hotel staff’s sake, that her standing order had been delivered on time.

      It had. Outside the door was a rolling service tray, with a silver pot full of piping hot coffee and a plate with several pastries beside it. There were a cup, a pitcher of cream, and a container with sugar and other sweeteners in colorful packets. Beside all of that was a neatly folded—and hot of the presses, by the smell of the ink—issue of the daily newspaper.

      Her order had been filled to perfection—assuming the coffee was any good—and delivered on time. She’d specified this be brought to her room every morning of her stay between 7:30

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