Only he wasn’t. He was staring down at her with an intensity she could only have described as…fiery.

Judging from his expression, she saw that he didn’t appear to find the situation the least bit amusing. Still holding Meena so that her feet dangled a few inches above the ground, he was looking deeply into her eyes.

“Spend the night with me,” he said in a passion-roughened voice.

Meena wasn’t shocked.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known he was going to ask. She’d felt the way their bodies had fit together. It was as if they’d been made for each other. She’d sensed the hunger in his kiss after the initial gentleness…it had matched her own. He wanted her every bit as much as she wanted him.

Still, the last thing she needed-the very last thing-was to fall in love.

And she was falling in love with Lucien Antonescu…and his kisses, which seemed to burn through her skin, down to her very soul.

She could feel herself slipping over the edge…that deliciously narrow precipice between admiration and friendship, and love.

It was silly-it was foolish. But it was true. She was falling head over heels, crazy in love with a man she’d only just met.

It didn’t make any sense. She barely knew him.

But how could she not fall in love with him, after what they’d been through together, after what he’d done for her?

And now she was helpless in the face of his kisses. They turned her to ash.

But what good was sleeping with Lucien Antonescu going to do her? He was just going to leave. He was in town for only a short time. She’d never had a chance to try one out, but Meena very much doubted she’d be any good at a long-distance relationship. He wasn’t going to move to New York.

And she certainly wasn’t going to move to Romania.

Or, to put it another way: she was going to try very hard not to follow him back to Romania.

So, the sensible thing was to say no to his invitation to spend the night with him. No. Two little letters. N. O.

She wasn’t a risk taker. Remember? “Okay,” she heard herself whispering.

What? What was wrong with her? Was she crazy?

Lucien, smiling, held her even closer-something she hadn’t thought possible-then swung her around in a circle until Meena, laughing, begged him to stop, while Jack Bauer barked. Lucien, laughing as well, put Meena down on her feet, his expression seeming almost triumphant.

“You won’t regret it,” he said sincerely.

Meena was by then kneeling down to calm Jack Bauer. She looked up quizzically at Lucien’s words.

She wouldn’t regret it? Of course she wouldn’t regret it.

Why would she?

Chapter Twenty-eight

3:00 A.M. EST, Friday, April 16

15 Union Square West, Penthouse

New York, New York

Lucien knew what he was doing was wrong.

But that didn’t mean he could stop himself.

She let him take her coat, then stood admiring the apartment Emil had found for him, a sleek, starkly decorated corporate penthouse with the most sophisticated security system available and a terrace that made Emil’s, on which twenty or so people could mingle comfortably, look like a postage stamp. The view, through UV-blocked windows-sliding glass doors to the wraparound terrace made up most of the walls-was of downtown Manhattan to one side, the Hudson River to another, Union Square Park to a third, and then the skyscrapers uptown, stretching out before them like brilliantly lit Christmas trees. In the distance, past the East River, one could see the red lights of planes flying low over Queens, landing at the various airports there.

“It’s amazing,” Meena Harper breathed, going to one of the glass doors and gazing out across the darkness at the bright lights and clear, moonlit sky. Her long slender neck, rising up from the back of her plain black dress, looked particularly vulnerable with her close-shorn hair.

She obviously hadn’t the slightest clue of the emotional maelstrom in which he found himself.

He’d known his behavior was reprehensible-quite possibly downright evil-from the moment he’d opened his mouth at Emil’s and asked the girl if he could come with her while she walked the dog.

Even the dog, who smelled what he was, knew what Lucien was doing was wrong.

He’d been berating himself for speaking the words even as they came out of his mouth.

And then when she’d slipped into her apartment, followed by the brother-whom Lucien had thought for a moment had gone to try to dissuade her from leaving with him-he’d thought, Good. Good for him. He’ll stop me. As a brother should.

But no. The brother, it turned out, was too self-centered to see what was actually happening. (Though Lucien supposed that was harsh. He’d been what he was for over half a millennium. The brother had been alive for only a little over thirty years. Lucien supposed he shouldn’t think so unkindly of him.)

Lucien had actually stood in the hallway telling himself to just go. Take the stairs, let her be. She was a good person, a better person than he was…someone who obviously tried to do the right thing. She didn’t deserve to have her life ruined by his kind. What was Mary Lou up to even getting her involved in the mess that was their lives?

Let Mary Lou make up some story about where he’d disappeared to. Allow Meena Harper to have her happy little life.

But he couldn’t do it. He was too intrigued. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been as curious about a woman, let alone a human woman.

Or as attracted to one.

But that didn’t mean he deserved to have her. Especially since everything he touched, he defiled.

That was the way of his kind.

He didn’t take his own advice. Even when he reminded himself that he couldn’t afford the distraction. There were too many other things that needed his attention at the moment: the fact that someone was draining young women of their blood and then leaving their nude corpses scattered across Manhattan like used tissues.

The fact that someone was trying to kill him.

The fact that possibly these two people were one and the same.

In any case, he needed to keep his head.

He’d been turning toward the stairs, determined to let her go, when her apartment door opened, and she came back out into the hallway.

And he knew he was waging a hopeless battle with himself. He wasn’t going anywhere. She looked as fresh as a newly wrapped gift.

And he wanted to be the one to open that gift.

The worst part was that it wasn’t merely a sexual attraction. There was also the puzzle of her mind. The cacophony he heard in Meena Harper’s head wasn’t, he’d figured out, due to the fact that she was insane. No. She was hiding something. Something she didn’t like to think about, something she’d become expert, over the years, at hiding from everyone…even from herself.

It was something, he could tell, that haunted not only her dreams but her waking hours, as well. He could barely read the mental pictures that streamed through her consciousness because she’d buried certain painful memories so deeply within it. And so her thoughts came to him only in fits and starts, like a radio station, fading in and out.

He had never made a habit of using his powers to discover the true feelings of a woman in whom he was romantically interested. That was neither gentlemanly nor sporting.

But in Meena’s case, he couldn’t help it. Her lively interior monologue-what he could understand of it-shone like the lights over on the Empire State Building, too bright to ignore.

And yet the view was obstructed.

This made her all the more fascinating. It was hard to imagine that beneath her vivacious personality-her flirtatious teasing and her love of happy endings-lurked something so dark that she could hardly stand to allow herself to think of it.