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  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” said Valerie, plainly amused.

  “You’re not interrupting anything,” Luca said, his voice like dark silk. “You must be Chloe’s friend Valerie.”

  Valerie nodded, as if dumbstruck. Chloe knew the feeling. She hadn’t yet managed a single word.

  “I’m Luca. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” Valerie said, as she self-consciously ran a hand through her short hair, which was too short to get mussed but some gestures were ingrained.

  “I’ll let myself out,” said Valerie, backing away. “It’s really nice to meet you, Luca.” She smiled and closed the door behind her.

  Chloe glared at him, which didn’t seem to bother him at all. He looked so smug she wanted to slap him. Even worse, he looked completely comfortable, as if he belonged in her bed. “What are you doing here?” she asked sharply. “You couldn’t have slept on the couch?”

  “No,” he responded simply. “You have blackout curtains.”

  “I—Oh.” What was there to say? She’d been thinking he’d jumped at the chance to get naked with her, and instead he liked her curtains. She supposed blackout curtains would make a vampire happy.

  Besides, she wasn’t naked. She peeked under the sheet. Yup. She was wearing exactly what she’d put on before going to bed—a T-shirt and boring underwear—so he evidently hadn’t even tried to get naked with her. She was thinking that she was either very lucky or completely unattractive when she glanced up and saw the way he was looking at her, his expression so intent and male she might as well have been wearing a teeny slip of silk, or worse (better?), nothing at all.

  That expression cut deep to her bones, in an entirely sexual way. It made her breath come short, made her want to turn in to his arms and let whatever happened, happen. She fought the impulse away, because sleeping with a vampire struck her as an inherently stupid thing to do. She supposed, though, that given the existence of vampires, a lot of people had slept with them both knowingly and unknowingly, and if there had been an epidemic of people dying from being bled out the news agencies would have been all over it, so presumably vampires could have sex without sucking their victims dry. And wasn’t that a cheerful thought?

  “Exactly when did you get in bed with me?” she asked suspiciously, though she couldn’t have said why it mattered. When she’d gone to bed, he’d been sitting on the couch. She’d assumed—foolishly, as it turned out—that he’d remain there.

  “Not long after you went to sleep. I was tired from the fight, and I needed to rest. There was too much light in the living room, so I got into bed with you. You never knew, and I didn’t touch you. I thought about it, though,” he finished with a devilish gleam twinkling in his eyes.

  “You can think about it all you want,” she retorted. “Just don’t do it.” She needed to get up, she needed to go to the bathroom, but she was reluctant to get out of bed and let him see, well, probably nothing spectacular, if she was honest with herself. She was obviously braless under the T-shirt, but her boobs were on the smallish side, her panties covered more than a bikini, and he could see more by going to a park and watching some of the joggers.

  Well, hell. She might as well get up. On that thought, she threw back the covers and got out of bed, still grousing. “First you stop by the restaurant, and now this. Valerie will tell everyone at work that I have a boyfriend.”

  “No, she won’t,” he said calmly, sitting up so the sheet fell to his waist. His bare chest was sculpted and hard, essentially mouth-watering, if her own mouth was anything to go by. She swallowed. Was he wearing anything? She glanced around the room, looking for his clothes, but they were either on the floor on his side of the bed or he was an extremely neat vampire and had hung them up somewhere. Oh, shit. Could he tell that her heart was now beating like a drum in a marching band?

  “You don’t know. This kind of gossip is too juicy to keep to herself. She’ll tell everyone. Maybe not everyone, and if I ask her she’ll try to keep it to herself, but one way or another it’ll slip out,” she said glumly.

  “I don’t see why you care what others think,” Luca said, supremely unconcerned. “So what if you sleep with me?”

  “For one thing, I don’t make a habit of sleeping around, so finding out that I have a sex life at all would get them interested. Maybe Valerie can just not mention your name. The last thing I need is all my cooks and waitstaff Googling your name to see who the boss is sleeping with. What the hell are they going to find?”

  “Nothing important,” he said simply. “It certainly won’t say: vampire. I have all the necessary paperwork for traveling, but for the most part I fly under the radar.”

  “In more ways than one,” she muttered, and left him lying there, looking very much at home in her bed—too relaxed, too comfortable, too tempting. She didn’t need this complication, she fumed to herself as she shut herself in the bathroom. When a man—even one who was of another species, or magically enhanced, or cursed, or whatever the hell Luca was—ended up in a woman’s bed, sooner or later he’d expect more than sleep. Probably sooner.

  She didn’t bother with a shower, just dragged a brush through her hair, hastily brushed her teeth, then pulled on the robe she seldom used, but kept hanging on the back of the bathroom door just in case.

  She found Valerie in the kitchen, pouring herself a cup of freshly made coffee. “I hope you don’t mind,” Valerie said when Chloe came in. “I’m in desperate need of caffeine, the more the merrier. You have the night off, but I have to be at work in a couple of hours, and my head is killing me. Whatever possessed us to make margaritas? And so damn many of them?”

  The glamour really worked. Chloe hid her reaction. She’d love to tell Valerie there had been no margaritas, but in this instance the lie was a gift. It was better that Valerie remember a pitcher of margaritas and a hangover, rather than vampires and fang marks. She studied Val’s pale face. The lack of color could definitely be attributed to a hangover rather than a bloodletting. As for the fang marks … they were gone. Not even red spots or bruises marked where Sorin’s fangs had torn into her flesh.

  Chloe took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Listen, about Luca—” She should’ve practiced this speech on her way to the kitchen, but it had happened so fast she wasn’t sure where to start.

  Valerie took a sip of hot coffee, leaned her hip against the counter, looked Chloe in the eye, and asked, “Who’s Luca?”

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  Sorin strode down the stairs into the basement of the Potomac mansion. His little witch upstairs was completely unaware that her family was in the basement, but the area was used for other things than their prison. The basement walls and ceiling had been fortified and secured against both invasion and eavesdropping. Even more, there was an underground entrance through which they could come and go without being seen. The size of the grounds was what made the tunnel possible, because otherwise they’d have run into the same problem they had at Council headquarters: properties too close together, water and sewage lines, underground cables—all things they hadn’t had to worry about in the past, but now seemed to frame almost every waking minute.

  He wasn’t in a good mood. The fight with Luca had left him more drained than he liked; damn, that bastard could fight! It had been a long time since Sorin had been in a battle that came even close to testing his mettle; he’d enjoyed the exercise, but the suspicion that Luca had just been playing with him really pissed him off.

  Now she had come here, which was far too risky. Luca’s presence at the conduit’s house told Sorin that somehow the assassin had put together far more pieces of the puzzle than was comfortable. If anyone could sow confusion and fear in the insurgents’ ranks, it was Luca Ambrus. Just knowing he was against them would make some of them either drop out, or switch to the other side.

  Luca had obviously followed Enoch from headquarters to the conduit’s house, which explained Enoch’s disappearance; he’d no d