Just when I decided that there was nothing in the world but that skillful mouth, he started shaping my body with his hands, sliding over my hips and stomach, up to my breasts and shoulders, then to my throat and down again. The thin PVC conducted warmth almost as well as bare skin; every touch burned, every possessive sweep of his hands said mine without the need for words.

I'd been living with the hunger the geis caused for so long that I'd almost become used to it, almost forgotten how satisfaction felt, until the heat of his touch reminded me. His fingers tightened with bruising strength, but I barely noticed. Another teasing bite was followed by a slow, caressing kiss. My eyes slipped dreamily closed as I was marked with lips and teeth and the addictive slide of his hands.

His feelings resonated through the bond as loudly as if he'd spoken, and I could feel him hard above me. It hurt that we were still apart, still separate beings when the geis wanted us one. It was a deep, hollow ache, like hunger that has gone beyond starvation, past where the need is a pang to become a long, gnawing nothingness. I'd never known hunger like that for food, but I recognized it anyway. Hunger can have so many forms.

I'd spent my whole adult life starting over. I'd been constantly on the run from someone, Tony or the Senate or the Circle, never staying too long in the same place, never getting to know people because I'd soon be moving on again, leaving them behind. I'd learned not to want things, not to try to hold on to anything, because if I got used to it being there, it would be that much harder when I had to let it go. I'd watched person after person with paranoid eyes, keeping them all—potential friends, enemies, lovers—at a safe, painful distance. And all the while, the hunger grew, for someone who would stay, someone permanent, someone mine.

And now the geis was whispering, so seductively, that I could have it all: Mircea, a family, a whole world that I understood and that understood me. I might be human, but I didn't think like one. I hadn't realized how much I didn't until these last few weeks, when I'd been lost in a sea of human magic that made no sense, in human reasoning I couldn't follow and in human quarrels that might end up destroying me. I had a sudden, intense longing for cool skin, calm voices, and ancient eyes. For home.

Only I didn't have one of those anymore. It was just so me, I thought bitterly, stroking the sharp lines of his cheekbones with my thumbs. The only place I truly felt at home was the last place I could ever go.

My hands buried themselves in his hair, even while my brain tried to treat this like all the things I'd ever wanted and not been allowed to have. But my usual compartmentalizing and compromising weren't working. Nothing about me wanted to hear «later» or «wait» or "too dangerous," not with dark strands running through my fingers, wrapping like a silken restraint around my wrist, just as soft as they looked, and beautiful, so incredibly beautiful.

I explored his body while hunger and a deep possessiveness battled it out with a lifetime's caution. I wanted this, so badly. My hands shook as they rode the curve of his legs to the hollow of his knees, the crest of his thighs. It wasn't enough and it was too much. I badly needed to get out of there, but I'd never wanted to stay so much in my life.

I caught his shirt, shoved it down his arms. His shoulders were broad enough to make me stretch to bare them, the muscles knotted with tension as my hands slid over them, sweat slicking my palms. I could have this, I argued with myself, just for a minute, a few stolen seconds before I did the smart thing and got out of there.

I stroked up his biceps to the hard wings of his collarbones and the strong column of his neck. Mircea was all long, sleek lines, the angles softened by lean muscle, the classic body of a runner, a swimmer, a fencer. I reached his cheek and followed the line of his jaw, where a muscle quivered helplessly, to lips that opened beneath my touch.

His tongue slid across my fingers the way his voice had shivered across my skin as I traced the curve of that full lower lip. Our eyes met, and I felt like I could fall into that amber gaze for weeks if I let myself. I expected him to kiss me, but his lips found my collarbone instead, mouthing it lightly, his tongue sliding along the bone before moving back up to explore the vulnerable skin of my throat.

Teeth brushed against me, a small sensation precisely where a vampire would bite, but I felt no fear. Unstuck, unmoored, floating almost gravity-free, but not afraid. He withdrew slightly, his tongue making a slow, possessive glide, right over my pulse, and I once again felt teeth. They weren't the dull blade of a human's, but a razor-sharp reminder of what, exactly, was in bed with me. But I still wasn't worried. Because Mircea never bit me.

Only he'd gripped the flesh over the jugular, just hard enough for me to feel it, and he wasn't letting go. It was a light sensation, no pain, but my pulse was beating hard against the pressure of his lips and there was a claustrophobic ache when I swallowed. "Mircea," I began, and felt fangs slide into my flesh.

For a frozen moment, my heart stuttered in my chest, torn between pounding its way through my rib cage and stopping altogether. But I couldn't concentrate on what his lapse in control might mean because the pain was immediately followed by a weightless swell of pure need. He was grinding our hips together as his teeth sank deeper, bright agony broken by strobing flashes of intense pleasure, everything bleeding into a surreal wave of sensation that rose and fell with each sinuous move of his body.

I started making these sounds—high, strangled whimpers and faint little gasps that didn't sound like me at all. I arched as Mircea began to feed, the sensation rippling through me with an almost audible sizzle. It seemed to free some part of me that had been stretched too tight for too long, like an elastic band pulled beyond its limits. It finally broke with a snap I felt all the way to the bone, as if a dislocated joint had suddenly popped back into place. The sheer rightness of it caught my breath, hummed through my veins, telling me that I belonged here, right here, only here. I gasped in wonder, indescribable tension flowing out of me as I relaxed into Mircea's embrace.

I could feel my blood surging into him, warm and alive and pulsing hotly. I tried to push him away, but my hands found his shoulders instead, pulling him closer. Mircea locked one hand in my hair, bringing the other behind my hips, melding us together…

And then I was sitting seaside, the green-blue water lapping at my toes, half buried in the sand.

I looked around wildly, disoriented, expecting an attack from someone, somewhere. I rolled over and clutched the beach, trying to present a smaller target, and was momentarily blinded by the sun in my eyes. I froze, sure that someone would use the advantage to sneak up on me, but nothing happened. I blinked for a few seconds until I could get a clear view, but all I saw was sun and sky and sand—and, on the crest of a rocky hill, a small temple slowly crumbling to pieces.

Nothing continued to happen. After a moment, my heart stopped trying to thud its way out of my chest, and my breathing returned to something like normal. I lay there and watched a flock of little brown birds dive in and out of the temple's roof, where it looked like they had a nest. Other than the waves lapping around my ankles, they were the only things moving on the whole beach.

I finally sat up and, when nothing attacked me, got to my knees. Enough adrenaline had left my brain that I could think again, so I knew who it was that I should be seeing. The being who had once owned my power had shown himself to me before in a similar situation. He seemed to find it funny to pay his visits at the most awkward moments possible.