the clothes she had chosen, feeling as though he were slipping into her arms as he pulled the sweater over his head.
Leaving his lair, which was located in the guest house behind a rather expensive mansion, he headed for Marisa's apartment.
He knew immediately that she wasn't there. A wave of his hand opened the door, and he stepped inside to wait for her to return from work. He wondered how Ramsey had spent the day, whether he had learned anything of where Alexi took his rest.
He wandered through the apartment, noting that the front window had been replaced. The kitchen was clean and tidy, as usual. The spare bedroom smelled strongly of Ramsey. Ramsey, who was falling in love with Marisa. He cursed softly, annoyed because the very idea filled him with jealousy, because his first urge was to kill the man for daring to care for her.
Leaving the room, he slammed the door behind him.
He went into Marisa's bedroom, and her scent wrapped around him, warm with life. He ran his fingertips over the pillow on her bed, felt his awareness of her grow sharper as he imagined her sleeping there, imagined what it would be like to lie beside her, to make love to her through the night....
His head jerked up, every sense alert, as he heard the front door open, the sound of familiar footsteps.
In the blink of an eye, he was standing in the living room.
"I must destroy you." Her voice, so different, yet the same.
"Antoinette, don't."
"I must."
"Remember, dammit! Remember who you are. Remember me."
She shook her head, the dark cloud of her hair floating over her shoulders. And then she lifted her hands. There was a pistol in the left, a very long, very sharp blade in the right.
He muttered a curse as she fired the gun. He felt the bullet pierce his chest, tearing through flesh and muscle and tissue. He reeled backward, slamming into the wall behind him, as she squeezed the trigger again.
With a wordless cry, he lunged toward her. He knocked the gun from her hand, wrested the knife away from her and flung it across the room. She fought him wildly, her nails raking his face, biting, kicking, but she was no match for his strength this time, and he wrestled her to the floor, one of his hands imprisoning both of hers, the weight of his body pinning her to the floor beneath him.
"Antoinette." He murmured her name, and then, with a low growl, he buried his fangs in her throat.
She cried out once, a cry filled with anguish and pain, and then she went limp beneath him.
As he drank, her essence spread through him, filling him, warming him. And with the blood came the knowledge of what her existence had been like for the last two hundred years. Empty years, with no memory of her past, no recollection of who she was. That, at least, was a blessing.
His tears fell onto her face like red rain as her heartbeat grew slow, lethargic, so faint he could scarcely hear it.
When he had taken enough, but not too much, he drew her into his arms and held her against him, his hand stroking her hair. And then he sank his fangs into his own wrist. Opening a vein, he pressed her mouth to the wound, telling her to drink.
Please, he thought, please let this work.
Marisa checked her watch for the third time. She had been standing out front, waiting for Edward, for twenty minutes. She was about to go back inside and call home when she saw her car pull up to the curb.
"About time," she muttered as she opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. "What took you so... Oh, my God."
She stared at him, wondering why she hadn't sensed his presence as she had in the past.
She grabbed for the door handle as the car spun away from the curb, but the door wouldn't open. It wasn't locked, but it wouldn't open.
"Please," she whispered, her heart in her throat. "Please."
"Sit back, my dear, and enjoy the ride."
Like a mouse mesmerized by a snake, she stared at Alexi Kristov, unable to draw her gaze away, unable to believe that it was really him. His skin, so pale when last she saw him, was now rosy with the illusion of life. His reddish brown hair, no longer lank, fell past his shoulders. He wore a pair of black pants, a loose-fitting white shirt with long, full sleeves, and