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“Merde.” So much for a speedy hunt and making no bodies.

He raked the long fingers of both hands through his hair. So close. He had denied himself the innocent in favor of this deviant, and now he didn’t even have that.

His vampire-self raged with disappointment, but calmed a little when he recalled the pimp waiting for him downstairs. That one didn’t seem like a heart attack looking for a reason.

Trembling with the effort to maintain what little control he had left, Dominique barely remembered to pocket the knife and pull down the sleeve of his leather jacket to operate the door handle. He also wiped the spot where his hand had held the door earlier. Officially deceased as he was, his fingerprints had no business showing up in a police report.

He found his bike where he left it, untouched but also unguarded. The compulsion had worn off in record time, which was about right, considering how the evening was going so far. Was this what Serge had seen for him? He had been strong enough to resist the temptation of the girl, and the fatality had been beyond his control—well, mostly—so his future was supposedly set. Or would be, assuming he could get his teeth into some live prey soon.

A low grunt caught his attention from the dark recesses of a breezeway. Growling to himself in agitation, he stalked toward what he hoped was the wayward bike guard—his new prey—who was presumably named Dex.

He rounded a corner and froze mid-step, no longer caring about the pimp’s name or anything else.

The miscreant he had compelled stood propped up against a leaking ice-maker with his pants and boxers pooled around his ankles and his head thrown back, mouth open with shallow, panting gasps. A woman cleaved to him, her pale, delicate hand working his cock, her face buried in his neck.

Feeding.

Dominique stared at this apparition, this female glowing with a vampire’s cold, bright aura, and knew a flash of primal fear. If he had not sensed her presence before now, it was because she hadn’t wanted him to sense it. She probably chose Dex for her meal to force Dominique to discover her in just this way—feeding and vulnerable.

These were not the actions of a blood-drinker concerned for her safety. This had all the markings of a trap, possibly a lethal one.

He tried to catch her scent and caught everything but. A miasma of cloying perfume, urgent sex, and heated blood assaulted him like a blow to the head, the gut, and the groin, all at once. Inhuman lust exploded in every cell of his body.

She lifted her head and pinned him with the empty, jet-black eyes of her vampire beast. The tip of her tongue mopped the shimmering blood from her full lips, and Dominique’s groin grew tight. His own beast screeched with need.

The pimp thrust his hips a little, weak and moaning. She latched onto his throat again.

Dominique’s world collapsed with stunning speed. Only this moment remained, only this hunger clamoring for satisfaction as helplessly as that man begged for her touch, heedless of the death coming for him. Watching with preternatural stillness, Dominique imagined those strong fingers stroking his own needy shaft, and could almost taste the prey’s warm skin beneath his tingling lips and the slick blood sliding down his parched gullet. Nothing else mattered. Nothing except plunging his fangs into that vein and drinking until the prey’s ecstasy became his own.

The moment he darted forward, mouth agape, the pimp shuddered and cried out. Then he wilted into Dominique’s arms.

Dead.

For a long moment, he stood there with his burden, disappointed beyond all reason, before letting the body drop to the stained concrete floor.

The female was gone.

He leaned against the wall, stared at the corpse, and tried to make sense of what happened. No blood on his tongue or in his belly. His teeth had not found their mark. The relief he felt was reluctant at best.

The female vampire stood across from him, dabbing lipstick to her rosebud mouth and smoothing her short, platinum-blond hair. No hint of blood marred her snowy skin or the brief, metallic-green dress hugging her petite, voluptuous curves. He sought her scent again and found the heady floral aroma of a blood-drinker older than him, though not by much. Decades rather than centuries separated them. She was no true threat to him—if he kept his wits about him.

Which he had not.

Nausea pinched the back of his throat when he realized she could have easily killed him while he tangled in the fevered web she spun. This was why vampires hunted alone. Feeding made them vulnerable.

He pushed off the wall. “Who are you? What do you want?”

She tucked her mirror and lipstick into a small clutch that matched her dress and stiletto shoes, and regarded him with enormous, innocent green eyes. “I hope you won’t be this slow next time.”

The implication that there might be a next time was only half as shocking as the fact that she proclaimed it in the flawless French of his Caribbean island home of St. Barth.

“Who are you?” he asked again, making no attempt to hide his astonishment.

The smile curving her polished mouth made his flesh crawl for all it promised to conceal. “Perhaps we will discuss such things another time.” Her smoky voice hinted at far more than conversation. “But for now, be a darling and clean this up, won’t you?”

Before he could form a reply, she was gone, leaving him alone in the dark with the dead pimp.

And a hunger unlike any he had ever known.