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Make that knew I wasn’t, I thought, laughing, when I scraped a thumb over the end of him and he finally broke.

A decidedly inhuman sound erupted from his throat, and I abruptly found myself on my back. But I had expected it, threw off his hold and sprinted for the river, shucking my gown on the way. For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to follow, because I heard no pursuing footsteps.

And then he came out of nowhere and took me down; with no warning, not even a twig breaking or a startled bird erupting out of the undergrowth. Nothing, which was impossible! I was the stalker, the hunter, the one who heard everything.

But all I heard this time was my own laughter, because I had been well and truly caught.

He stared down at me, and the intensity in his face caused me to sober up slightly. That looked less like the expression of an eager lover than a man in genuine pain. “What is it?”

He didn’t speak for a moment. And when he did, it was in a voice unlike any I’d heard from him before. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“You’ve never had me,” I pointed out. “At least not yet.”

But my attempt to jolly him out of whatever was causing that look on his face failed utterly.

“I almost lost you,” he repeated savagely. “For a moment, I thought—”

“For a moment, so did I. I was wrong. So were you.”

He just shook his head. And then buried his face in my chest, and I somehow found myself comforting a shaking master vampire, smoothing his glorious hair, and whispering nonsense things into his ear as you would for a child. But it seemed to help.

He looked up after a moment and grimaced. “You should not be comforting me. I should be doing that for you!”

“Is that why you came out here?”

I watched his face closely when he answered, and there was no deception in it. “Of course; why else?”

I sighed and wondered what to do with him. I had never met a vampire like him. I had never met a person like him. “You did that when I’m the reason you’re displaced in time?” I asked. “We’re more than one hundred years away from my own, and for you—how long has it been for you?”

He answered immediately, without thinking. “Over four hundred more.”

It felt like a gut punch. “So many?”

That time it was me answering spontaneously, something I thought I had long ago trained myself out of.

But I had felt his answer in my bones.

“We have . . . known each other a long time, then?” I said, trying for casual.

But I must not have done a very good job, because he paused that time and stared down at me, searching my face. “Why do you ask?”

It should have been easy enough to turn his question aside, a simple “no reason” or “merely curious” would have been enough. But I had trouble lying to those blue eyes. My God, it was catching!

And then I actually answered him, I have no idea why. And my hand came up to push some of that ridiculous hair out of his face. “I wondered how long I will have to wait. All those centuries—”

It was the wrong response, I thought, seeing his face fall. Or perhaps the right one. For the next moment he was kissing me, and this time, it felt like he would never stop.

He hadn’t answered my question, but that was answer enough. It would be a long time before we met, possibly very long. And it seemed that he wanted to give me something to remember him by.

And he did, kissing the honey off my lips, and then depositing it on my breasts when he laved them with his tongue. And then kissing it away there, too. Should have made even more of a mess, I thought, as he mapped my body, taking his time, making me squirm.

If I’d had any doubts about his veracity as far as our past acquaintance went, they evaporated quickly. He knew exactly what I liked, precisely how to touch me, the perfect moves to send me gasping and laughing and tearing up and writhing on the grass. And I gave as good as I got, once he provided the opportunity, which took some time, and it was a revelation.

Desire, I discovered, felt very different when it was with someone who cared about you, who gently directed you, and who seemed to view your pleasure as his own.

No one cared for a dhampir. I was a trophy, a dare, a quick grope in the night while on a mission to while away time or to quell rising fear. That was all I knew; that was all I had come to expect.

That was not what I found here.