If only. “Look, mister, you’re the thing scaring me the most right now.”

His hand seemed so hot against her flesh.

“Please,” she was begging, she knew it. “Just let me go.”

The light from the lamp posts and from the back of the building bounced off his sunglasses. She was glad she couldn’t see his eyes. She didn’t want to see them.

In the next instant, his hand had dropped from her cheek and he’d grabbed her right wrist. He lifted up her hand, staring down at her palm. “Your rose. It marks you.” His hold tightened. “I know.”

Now he was obsessing over that weird red birthmark? Okay, sure, if you squinted, it did look like a rose, but so what? “Let me go,” Jane said again. Her desperation was making her voice shake.

“For now.” He released her and stepped back.

For now and forever.

She took a few frantic breaths. Hope stirred.

“I’m not what you think I am.” She had to convince him. Had to get the guy to walk away. “I’m not a vampire. I’m not some kind of monster.” Though you sure may be. “I’m just a normal human, okay? Your average woman. My name is Jane and—”

“It isn’t.” Snarled.

Okay. The guy obviously had quite a few issues.

“You think I don’t know you? You think I don’t know your scent? Your touch? Every f**kin’ thing about you?”

She took another careful step toward the door.

Another groan sounded behind her stranger. Sean. A fast glance showed her that he was trying to rise. Hurry, Sean. Hurry.

“You can’t know me,” she whispered, hoping to keep the stranger’s attention on her long enough for Sean to get more strength back. “We’re strangers.” Her frantic heartbeat seemed to be bruising her chest.

He smiled then. “Liar.”

That smile—it flashed actual fangs.

“G-get away from her!” Sean’s voice. The guy sounded winded, and when the stranger’s face tensed, she knew he was about to attack again.

“Don’t.” She reached for him. Curled her hands around his arms. “Don’t hurt them again.” Because she knew that he could.

Would?

But he nodded.

Voices rose in the wind then. Others were heading that way—maybe to the parking lot that lay a few steps behind him. Hell, maybe they were just walking that way in order to get some action in the dark.

Either way, their audience was increasing.

And her stranger, after one long look down at the hands that held him, tilted his head back. He nodded, as if he’d made a decision. “I’ll see you again.”

Not if I see you first.

He backed away and actually seemed to just…vanish into the night.

That was good. The whole vanishing bit was really good. Because in the next instant, Jane’s knees gave way and she hit the ground. Hard.

Vampire.

Oh, shit. Her secret was out.

***

He’d scared her.

Dammit, that hadn’t been his plan. He was there to protect her, to make certain that her blue eyes—still the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen—never showed a hint of fear again.

Only those eyes had been terrified.

Because of me.

She’d taken one look at him, and the woman calling herself Jane had paled. She’d trembled.

She’d tried to run.

The beast inside of Alerac had responded instinctively. After such a long hunt, there had been no other way for him to respond.

Chase. Claim. Trap.

Cage.

He’d wanted to grab onto her and hold her as tightly as he could.

But she’d stared up at him and acted as if he were a stranger.

Worse, a monster.

Well, what was f**kin’ new there?

“Did you find her?”

He turned at the words, not surprised to discover Liam waiting for him in the darkness.

They were both well used to the dark. “Yes.” The word snapped out from Alerac.

Liam waited on the edge of the small parking lot, his body reclining against the motorcycle behind him. “I don’t see her.”

Wasn’t he the observant one?

“We come all this way,” Liam murmured, “we look for so long, but we don’t take her?” He shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense to me.”

“She was terrified.”

Liam laughed at that. “When has fear ever stopped you?”

It hadn’t. Only…it’s her. This was different. This was the most important mission of his life.

The only thing that mattered to him.

Liam sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair. “We came here to see if she was the one.”

The one who haunted him. Obsessed him.

“If she was the one, then we were supposed to take her. That was the plan, right?”

Like he needed to be reminded of this shit. It was his plan.

Alerac marched toward his own motorcycle. Climbed on the bike. “There were too many eyes here.” He shouldn’t have approached her in that bar. He’d planned…hell, he’d just planned to walk inside. To get a look at her. To catch her scent. To see if she was the nightmare who chased him every time he slept.

Am I having a nightmare? Her voice, so different from what he’d expected, whispered through his mind. No accent lightened her words. Fear had made them breathless and husky.

Yes, he’d intended just to watch her that night. But once he’d actually crossed the threshold of Wylee’s Bar, when her head had snapped up and his eyes had locked on her…

Beautiful.

She was just as beautiful as he remembered.

Those high cheekbones. That heart-shaped face. The plump lips. The hair that was the color of the sun—a sun she’d once loved.

Barely five feet four, she’d always been small. Deceptively delicate, but curved in all of the right places. Places he’d touched and kissed.

One look and all he’d been able to think about was touching her again.

“But she f**kin’ feared me,” he muttered.

Liam whistled. “Is that why the lass is running now?”

And she was. He’d just caught her scent—woman, sex, temptation—drifting on the wind. He turned his head and saw her jump into a beat-up old truck. She gunned the engine and raced from the lot as if the devil himself were after her.