glanced warily into the lobby window as I passed, wondering what might be lurking there.

I was horrified to spot a familiar figure seated on a small sofa, toasting champagne with a group of academic types.

Someone opened a door. He caught my scent immediately and looked up. I’ll never forget those yellow-green eyes, even disguised with steel-rimmed glasses. The metal briefcase in his lap abruptly snapped shut as our eyes locked. Dirk smiled slowly, rising to shake hands with the mortals.

Sloughing off my shock, I bounded away, but he caught me at the next corner, backing me up against a building with a knife against my throat.

“My, what do we have here?” He tugged my short-cropped hair.

“You’re the proverbial bad penny.”

“I’ve a string of beauties at home. Chasing self-important tarts isn’t my line these days. But why not avail myself of the convenience?” His finger hooked the butterfly around my neck. “Brovik’s monkey gave you this? The diamonds in this case are much nicer.” He pushed himself against me.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Cunt.” Dirk clapped his hand over my mouth, dragging me toward a car waiting at the curb. He pushed me inside, ordering the driver to floor it. I bit his hand. He yelped and slugged me hard. That was the last thing I heard. A needle jabbed my thigh and everything went black.

Severe hunger pangs woke me up but full consciousness eluded me. I kept falling and falling into darkness. He’d bled me. I was chained to a huge old four-poster in a darkened room, overhead track lights spotlighting me. My throbbing head was securely fastened to the headboard.

Dirk moved toward me, his huge naked frame covered in knotty muscle, reddish hair and bizarre tattoos. Lightening symbols decorated one arm and a death’s head the other. Serpents twined around swastikas on his chest. The shining stainless steel contents of a small case he held glittered in the light. Small liquid-filled bottles stood in a row on the bedside table.

His skull face loomed over me. “Awake?”

I gasped, “Blood.”

Dirk selected a silver scalpel from the case. A beam from the track light struck the surface and bounced off the wall. His unzipped my jacket and idly caressed my breasts.

“Here’s my proposition, Mia. Fucking Brovik’s monkey makes you very valuable to us. Gaius pursued him for years but he remains loyal. Think of the wealth of information in that golden head. He’d be far less pretty without it, don’t you agree? Just work it out of him to give me, or… I’ll make him quietly disappear. Perhaps when he makes one of his jaunts to Zurich? Brovik will never know what happened.” He held the scalpel to my neck. “How will the arrogant little cocksucker’s death taste?” He trailed the slender silver blade over my breasts and down my belly, slicing a red thread on my abdomen. “Will he beg for his life like all the others as I carve his carcass up slowly, still alive, with this scalpel, bit-by-bit to put him into these little bottles until there’s nothing left but his bones? Then, I’ll tear out his heart to keep in a jar beside my bed to remind you.” He licked my blood off the scalpel. I started shaking as he sat down on the bed. “Funny, I can’t taste his taint. I really should kill you too for contaminating yourself, but if you do exactly as I say, perhaps I can forgive.”

Dirk licked his lips. He wasn’t bluffing. He was a sociopath before taking the blood and ten times more twisted and powerful now. Kurt was in serious danger. There was only one way out.

To kill a cast-off like me is no crime. A slave would be bad enough, requiring compensation for damages. But a cast-off kill a full-fledged alpha? A death sentence, self-defense or not, Gaius could take my head.

Light glinted off the shining surface of the blade. If only I could get my hands on it.

He caressed my breast. “I’ll burn my mark here.”

I swallowed my revulsion and tried the submissive tack. “Please Dirk,” I whispered. “I’ll do whatever you want. Just promise you won’t hurt him.”

He grabbed my chin. “You’ve never shown me proper respect.”

I had laughed at the bastard, too much to be smart. It was pay back time for him in a big way.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. It was no work to look scared.

“Not good enough,” he breathed into my face. He sank down next to me on the bed, pressing the scalpel to my throat.