Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

"I'm mistaken, am I?" She grabbed her long, loose hair and lifted it around to one side of her neck. "Look at this and tell me I don't know what I saw."

She bent her head, putting the exposed base of her neck - the patch of skin that bore her unusual birthmark - in plain view to him.

The silence seemed endless.

Then, finally, a hissed curse.

"What does it mean?" she asked him, lifting her head and letting her hair fall back in place.

Rio didn't answer her. He backed up as if he didn't want to be near her for another second.

"Tell me, Rio. Please...what does all of this mean?"

>He had no right to touch her - no good reason to sift the beautiful lock between his fingers, marveling at the resilient strength contained within so much mesmerizing softness.

There was no cause at all for him to bend his head down to where she lay, passive only because he made her so, and to breathe the appealing scent of her into his lungs. Saliva surged into his mouth as he held himself very still over her, his face mere inches from the side of her neck. His thirst rose swiftly, along with a hot, swelling need.

Madre de Dios.

Had he really thought her to look like no threat to him now?

Wrong again, he thought, recoiling from her bedside as her eyelids fluttered with waking consciousness. The lull of the trance was dissipating; it would fall away completely once Rio wasn't in the room to hold the effect in place.

She stirred a bit more and he turned away from her briskly. He'd better get out of there, before he revealed himself any further with the current, rather obvious presence of his fangs.

When he looked up, he found Andreas Reichen standing in the hall outside the open door. "Do you find the room suitable, Rio?"

"Yes," he replied, stalking over to take the backpack and pocketbook from the German's hands. "I'll keep these with me for now."

"Of course. As you wish." Reichen stepped back as Rio came out to the hallway and closed the guest room door. The German handed him a key for the lock beneath the antique crystal knob. "The window shades are centrally controlled, and the glass behind them is equipped with alarms. Outside, the estate grounds are secured by motion detectors and a perimeter fence. But these measures were designed to keep people off the property, not in. If you think the woman is a flight hazard, I can post a guard at the door - "

"No," Rio said as he turned the key in the lock. "It's bad enough she can ID me. The fewer inpiduals we bring into this, the better. She's my responsibility. I'll make sure she stays put."

"Very well. I've had the adjoining suite prepared for you. You'll find the wardrobe fully stocked with brand-new men's attire. Help yourself to anything you like. There's a bath and sauna in the suite as well, if you'd, ah, like to freshen up."

"Yeah." Rio nodded. His head was still pounding from the long ride in the back of the truck. His body was taut and edgy, hot all over, and he couldn't blame any of that on the trip or his rocky state of mind. Behind his closed lips, he ran his tongue over his still-present fangs.

"A shower sounds great," he told Reichen.

Preferably an ice-cold one.

If Dylan was confused before she and her abductor left Prague, their arrival in what she could only assume was somewhere in or around Berlin made things all the muddier to her. When she woke up in the middle of a large, silk-covered bed in a darkened room that looked like an upscale European bed-and-breakfast suite, she wondered if she'd dreamt the whole thing.

Where the hell was she? And how long had she been here?

Even though she felt fully awake and alert, there was a kind of cloudiness to her senses, like her head had been wrapped in thick cotton.

Maybe she was still dreaming.

Maybe she was still somehow in Prague and none of what she recalled had actually happened at all. Dylan turned on a nightstand lamp, then got off the bed and walked over to the tall windows on the other side of the luxurious room. Behind the beautiful drapes and curtain sheers, a tightly fitted panel shade covered the glass. She looked for a pull-cord or some other means to open it, but she couldn't find anything. The blind was completely immobile, as though it was locked in place over the glass.

"The shade is electronic. You won't be able to open it from in here."

Startled, Dylan spun around at the sound of the deep, but now familiar male voice.

It was him, sitting in a delicate antique chair in the opposite corner of the room. She knew the unmistakable dark, accented voice, but the man staring at her from the shadows didn't look anything like the filthy, ragged lunatic she expected to see.

He was clean now, and wearing fresh clothes - a black button-down dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves, black trousers, and black loafers that were probably Italian and probably very expensive. His dark hair gleamed from a fresh washing, no longer the dingy hanks that hung limply into his face but swept back now in glossy espresso-brown waves that set off the unusual color of his intense, topaz eyes.