Anger burned, giving me strength. Still having not caught my breath, I jumped her.

Ivy cried out in surprise as I landed on her back. Grinning savagely, my legs went around her waist. I grabbed a fistful of her hair and jerked her head back, sliding an arm around her throat to choke her.

Gasping, she backpedaled. I let go, knowing she was going to slam me against the wall again. I dropped to the floor, and she tripped over me. She went down. I grappled for her, catching her around the neck again. She bucked against the floor, twisting her body at an impossible angle, breaking my hold.

Heart pounding, I flipped myself to my feet, finding Ivy standing eight feet away—waiting. My exhilaration at having surprised her vanished as I realized something had shifted. She was moving from foot to foot with an unnerving, fluid grace, the first sign of her vamp background getting the better of her.

Immediately I straightened and waved my arms in surrender. "That's it," I panted. "I have to get cleaned up. I'm done. I've got to do my homework."

But instead of backing off as she always did, she started to circle. Her movements were languorously slow and her eyes were fixed to mine. My heart pounded and I spun to keep her in view. Tension laced through me, tightening my muscles one by one. She came to a halt in a sunbeam, the light glinting on her black body stocking like it was oil. Her hair was free, the black band lying between us where I had accidentally ripped it off her.

"That's the trouble with you, Rachel," she said, her soft voice echoing. "You always quit when it starts to get good. You're a tease. Nothing but a goddamned tease."

"Excuse me?" I asked, the pit of my stomach clenching. I knew exactly what she meant, and it scared the crap out of me.

Her face tightened. Forewarned, I braced myself as she lunged. I blocked her fists, driving her away with a foot aimed at her knees. "Knock it off, Ivy!" I shouted as she jerked out of my reach. "I said I'm done!"

"No you aren't." Her gray voice settled over me like silk. "I'm trying to save your life, little witch. A big bad vamp isn't going to stop because you tell him to. He's going to keep coming until he gets what he wants or you drive him away. I'm going to save your life—one way or another. You'll thank me when it's over."

She darted forward. Catching my arm, she twisted it, trying to force me to the floor. I gasped and kicked her legs from under her. We went down, my breath exploding out of me. Panicking, I pushed away and rolled to my feet.

I found her waiting her usual eight feet back—circling. A subtle heat had soaked into her movements. Her head was lowered and she was eyeing me from around her hair. Her lips were parted, and I could almost see her breath passing through them.

I backed away. Fear grew as the ring of brown around her pupils flashed to black. Damn.

Swallowing, I ran a hand over myself, foolishly trying to wipe her sweat off. I had known better than to jump her. I had to get her smell off me, and now. My fingers touched the demon scar on my neck, and my breath caught. It was tingling from the pheromones she was pumping into the air. Double damn.

"Stop, Ivy," I said, cursing the quaver that had crept into my voice. "We're done." Knowing my life hung on what happened in the next few seconds, I turned my back on her in a false show of confidence. Either I would make it to my room and its two locks or I wouldn't.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled as I paced past her. My heart pounded, and I held my breath. She did nothing as I neared the hallway, and my breath slipped out.

"No, we aren't," she whispered.

The sound of moving air pulled me around.

She attacked silently, her eyes lost in black. I fended off her blows by instinct. She wasn't even trying. Ivy caught my arm, and I cried out in pain as she spun me around, crushing my back against her. I leaned forward as if trying to break her grip. As her arms tightened and her body leaned to find our balance, I slammed my head backward into her chin.

Grunting, she dropped her grip and stumbled back. Adrenaline sang through me. She was between me and my spells. If I went for the front door, I'd never make it. This was my fault. Damn it back to the Turn, I shouldn't have jumped her. I shouldn't have become aggressive. She was driven by instinct, and I had pushed her too far.

I stood, watching her come to a swaying halt in a sunbeam. Standing sideways, she tilted her head and touched the corner of her mouth.

My stomach clenched as her fingertip came away colored in blood. Her eyes met mine as she rubbed the blood between her fingers and smiled. I shuddered at the sight of her sharp canines. "First blood, Rachel?"

"Ivy, no!" I shouted as she lunged.

She caught me before I had moved a step. Gripping my shoulder, she flung me to the front of the church. I hit the wall where the altar had once stood, slipping down to the floor. I struggled for air as she paced to me. Everything hurt. Her eyes were black pits. Her movements were smooth with power. I tried to roll away. She caught me, yanking me up.

"Come on, witch," Ivy said gently, her black, owl-feather voice in stark contrast to her painful grip on my shoulder. "I taught you better. You're not even trying."

"I don't want to hurt you," I panted, one arm clutched around my middle.

She held me to the wall under the shadow of a long gone cross. The blood from her lip made a red jewel caught at the corner of her mouth. "You can't," she whispered.

Heart pounding, I jerked to get away, failing. "Let me go, Ivy," I panted. "You don't want to do this." A cloying scent of incense pulled the memory of her pinning me to her chair last spring. "If you do this," I said frantically, "I'll leave. You'll be alone."

She leaned close, putting the flat of her free forearm against the wall by my head. "If I do this, you won't leave." A heated smile curved over her—showing a hint of teeth—and she pressed closer. "But you could get away if you really wanted to. What do you think I've been teaching you the last three months? Do you want to get away—Rachel?"

Panic lanced deep into me. My heart beat wildly, and Ivy sucked her breath in as if I had slapped her. Fear was an aphrodisiac, and I'd just given her a jolt. Lost in the blackness of instinct and need, her muscles went tension-wire tight. "Do you want to get away, little witch?" she murmured, her breath against my demon scar sending a surge of tingling through me.

My intake of breath went to my core, seeming to turn my blood to liquid metal as it conducted a pulse through me. "Get off," I panted, the delicious feeling coursing from my neck to fill me. It was my scar. She was playing on my demon scar as Piscary had done.

She licked her lips. "Make me." She hesitated, the hard hunger shifting to something more playful and insidious. "Tell me it doesn't feel good when I do this." Breath easing from her in a sigh, she watched my eyes as her finger ran a trail from my ear, across my neck, and down my collarbone.

I almost buckled at the sensation of her nail finding the faint bumps of scar tissue, stimulating the scar back into full play. My eyes closed as I remembered that the demon had taken Ivy's face when it ripped out my throat, filling the wound with a dangerous cocktail of neurotransmitters to make pain into pleasure. "Yes," I breathed, almost moaning. "God help me. It does. Please…stop."

Her body shifted against mine. "I know how it feels," she said. "The hunger racing from it to fill your body, the need it stirs, until the only thought burning in you is to touch the craving to fulfill it."

"Ivy?" I whimpered. "Stop. I can't. I don't want to."

My eyes flashed open at her silence. The drop of blood at the corner of her mouth was gone. I could feel the blood pounding through me. I knew my reactions were tied to the demon scar, that she was sending out pheromones to restimulate the pseudovamp saliva that remained in me to make pain into pleasure. I knew it was one of the survival adaptations vamps relied upon to bind people to them, ensuring that they had a willing supply of blood. I knew all of this, but it was getting harder to remember. Harder to care. It wasn't sexual. It was need. Hunger. Heat.