Prologue
Sable Taylor was going to jail for sure this time.
And Derek watched the events leading up to her arrest with a slight smile.
Leaning back, he rested a broad shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms. Sable was no more than a blur to the humans who milled around Windemere Court’s Palladian-style City Hall, but his vampire sight caught her movements without any trouble at all. The bounty hunter raced along the white stone walls, her lithe body moving with little strain as she chased the murderer they were both pursuing.
He could help her, he supposed, but Sable wouldn’t appreciate it. Despite his job as a Special Task Force agent, he was the enemy to her, direct competition in the capture of wanted criminals. He did it for justice, she did it for money, but he didn’t think less of her. She’d earned his respect, in addition to more carnal interest. An interest she returned, but refuted at every opportunity.
When they’d first met he’d been a rookie and he’d learned a lot by watching her in action. He’d see her in a flash, a brief moment of sharp recognition, before one of them, usually him, made off with their quarry. Every time he saw her she was more beautiful than he remembered. Sable honed her body with hard training and a diet of blood. Her hair was jet black, deeper in color than his own raven locks and completely straight, a long curtain of silk. Her skin was as pale as starlight and just as luminous. And her eyes—he dreamed about her eyes. They were a rich blue so startling the sight of them always caught him off guard.
He’d lusted after her since the moment he’d first seen her. He had smelled her lush scent and heard the barely there beat of her heart, and he’d known she was one of his kind. The last two years of watching Sable work—admiring her skill, her daring and her bravery—had only made him want her more. Their work, by nature, was a lonely existence. Always in pursuit, hunters never stayed in any one place long enough to become attached to anything. Or anyone. She knew what his life was like, because she lived one similar to it. That commonality gave their inevitable pairing a common thread he looked forward to exploring.
But first they had to get through this capture.
They were hunting Jared Ione, one of their kind who’d crossed the line between drinking to live and drinking to kill. Jared was a vampire in his physical prime but he was barely staying ahead of Sable, whose physical stamina made Derek’s jaw ache and his fangs descend. Imagining all that energy in his bed was enough to make his cock hard. Just once he’d like a lover that gave as good as she got—an equal, his match.
He expected it would take another minute at most before the authorities in City Hall put an end to the chase. Windemere had a law against vamps using their superhuman abilities in public buildings. It was considered too dangerous to the humans to be in the path of vampires running at full speed. A straight-on collision was often deadly. But Sable was known for ignoring any laws that got in her way. With her uncommon beauty and blatant, innate sex appeal, she could usually talk her way out of any scrape. But this time, Derek was going to step in and apprehend her before she had the chance to do any sweet-talking. He was tired of waiting for her to come around to his way of thinking, which included a couple of weeks and his four-poster bed. Two years, damn it. He’d spent two years lusting for her.
Today he was going to get what he wanted.
As he’d predicted, two Windemere officers stepped into view and one of them took aim with a net gun. The built-in tracking device locked onto the racing vamps and the officer fired, encasing the two straining bodies in a single net. With a stunning crash they fell to the floor, both of them growling in near-deafening frustration. Startled humans scattered with piercing screams. Derek pushed off the wall and strolled to the rescue, flashing his badge with a smile.
“Hello, officers,” he greeted.
“Damn you, Atkinson!” Sable yelled, fighting futilely against both the entrapment and the vamp locked with her. With a low snarl, she reached for her blaster and neutralized Ione.
It took a few minutes to untangle her, then another minute more to cuff