the strip. The food selections were varied, from the expected Cuban offerings to traditional Italian and an assortment of Asian-fusion choices.
She’d had her taste of Cuban last night. The murderous happenings in Manhattan before she had left had her swearing off Asian. That cuisine would remind her too much of the Kiang-shi vampire that had killed a number of the undead and nearly revealed their vampire underworld to the humans.
Italian possibly? she thought, noticing a fine-looking specimen lingering near one establishment. Tall and lean, the young man was dressed in tailored black slacks and a designer shirt that caressed the elegant lines of his body. A mop of artfully highlighted dark blond hair shifted as he bent to review the restaurant menu, straining the cloth of his pants against a lovely rounded bottom.
She approached, the thrum of her vampire desire riding high, and he lifted his head and swiveled it slowly in her direction. His blue-eyed gaze brightened, welcoming her.
Success, Stacia thought.
Chapter 4
She’s here, Alex realized, catching a glimpse of her through the crowd in the Widget.
The captivating woman from the night before.
As he moved to the edge of the dance floor, he finally had a moment to see all of her. All mouthwatering woman in a sexy red dress that displayed her lusciously curved body. A petite body, he realized as he neared.
Up until then, there had been something so larger-than-life about her that he hadn’t appreciated that she barely reached midchest.
He walked the few steps until he stood before her, tilting his head down to meet her inquiring gaze. A deep, almost fathomless gaze, and this close, he confirmed his earlier suspicions that she looked totally like the demon in his dreams. That realization was so powerful that he almost reeled back as if struck, but somehow he controlled his reaction.
Her gaze narrowed and skipped across his face before the ghost of a smile came to her lips.
“Do we know each other?” she said, but a bright stain of color erupted on her face, and she shook her head and looked away.
He didn’t know what to expect from his demon’s doppelgänger. Certainly not such embarrassed femininity that was so at odds with the attitude he had witnessed from the vampire in his dreams and on the night he had almost died.
But then he reminded himself that one was a figment of his imagination while the woman standing before him …
The woman before him was real and sexy and not a monster.
Almost as if to verify that, he touched her, tucking his index finger beneath her chin, but as he did so, a jolt of preternatural power surged through his body, making him pull back.
She lifted her head then. Slowly. Regally, as if his simple touch had somehow violated her rank or station in life. The earlier blush vanished and hardness crept onto her features.
“Do we know each other?” she asked once again, and this time her voice held a determined note of command.
A stain of power difficult to ignore.
“I’m not sure,” he answered honestly, uncertain of whether or not meeting in his dreams would count. He was sure that she couldn’t be the vampire he had met on the night he had almost died.
The answer seemed to satisfy her, since she gave a quick dip of her head. With a flick of her wrist, she sent a very obvious suggestion to her young date to disappear, which he did, scurrying away like a whipped dog.
Alex watched the young man leave and said, “Harsh.”
The end Stacia had envisioned for her date later that night was far more callous, but she contained that reply and instead said, “Would you like to dance?”
She surprised herself by asking. By the lame way she had responded to him, stammering and tossing out the most inane of questions in much the same way she had been approached hundreds of times during her long life.
And then there had been that simple touch of his hand on her chin …
His touch had reached deep into her core. As if a connection had existed between them in some other time or life. Unlikely that there was a tie, but the depth of her response was unusual.
Men rarely affected her so. Maybe “never affected her so” might have been more accurate.
Since her fateful engagement to Cassius, she had closed herself off to the wiles of men. But there was something about this man that was both familiar and demanding.
“I’d love to dance,” he finally said.
Without further prompting, he took a step closer to her, began to shift to the music. Moving his body to the pulsing beats, he teased her with an occasional brush of his body until she had to have more. She eliminated the distance between them, pressing against him. Delighting in all his hard muscle and the beat of his heart. Inhaling his enticing masculine scent.
She buried her head against the gap of skin exposed by the V of his shirt to savor that scent. Took a quick lick of his skin because she needed it, as if she’d had a bite of him in the past and been denied sustenance for too long.
As the taste of him registered, vivid images came to her of where she had seen him before, lying nearly dead in an abandoned Manhattan apartment. How they were bound to each other.
His blood.
His sweat.
The tears dashing down his face as he believed that his beloved Diana was dying. That he was dying.
Only he wasn’t dead, and neither was Diana.
He had survived that fateful night in New York. The night she had given him her vampire kiss and provided the possibility of surviving what should have been mortal wounds.
She sucked in a breath and jerked away, shocked by the insight. Losing her normally unflappable restraint over the power that allowed her thoughts, her visions, to wash over him.
He stiffened beside her as the turbulence from her mind bathed him in her memories. Shaking his head as if by doing so he could free himself of their dominion, he then relented and met her gaze.
“It wasn’t just a nightmare,” he said.
Stacia reined in her emotions, wrenching back the memory of that night. The taste of his blood and sweat. The too-human tears that she had thought she no longer could shed and the love for another that had been visible on his face even as he lay dying.
No, not dying, she cautioned herself and forced a wave of her vampire power to control him and curb his emotions, but surprisingly, she sensed him pushing back. Fighting her dominion.
“I want to know the truth,” he said, daring to place a hand at her waist once more.
“No, you don’t,” she said, finding herself in a rare situation. Those conjoined memories involved caring beyond which she was capable of either understanding or giving.
“I need to know,” he repeated, the strength of his conviction strong.
So powerful that it challenged her rule over him.
She wasn’t used to being defied. Only the most powerful of vampires would dare, and those who had done so in the past had usually ended up dead, but she didn’t want to waste this intriguing man.
At least, not just yet.
Leaning close, she allowed the tips of her breasts to brush against his chest and got on tiptoe until her lips were barely an inch from his.
“You want to know?” she said and released only a scintilla of her elder power, rousing desire in him in order to both punish his disobedience and entice him into cooperating.
A shudder worked across his body at her actions and awakened a sharp arousal. His erection pressed into her belly, and he wrapped