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C elandine watched his fangs shoot down. Where was her healthy fear now? Those sharp teeth didn’t scare her as they had, as they should. Fascination made her reach up and run her finger down one of his canines.

She pricked herself on the sharp point. Troi closed his mouth around her finger. This time he looked into her eyes as he sucked.

She could see the desperation in his gaze, the sickly tint under his rich complexion. “My wrist will not be enough for you tonight.”

He braced his hands on the table on either side of her. “May I drink from your throat?”

He could have demanded. He could have taken. But something about that question was more seductive than anything her lovers had ever said to her in bed.

She buried her fingers in his hair and pulled his mouth down to her neck.

When his fangs sank into her, she felt the bite all the way to her core.

She bit down on her own hand to keep from moaning.

He sucked rapidly at her throat, sending beats of pleasure pounding through her body.

Splayed on the table for him, it would be so easy to wrap her legs around him and let him pound into her with more than his fangs.

Fuck, she had to stop thinking. Stop breathing. Just hold her own until he had his fill. She couldn’t let him find out how his bite affected her. He would use it against her. Wouldn’t he?

He lifted his head with a gasp. Her blood painted his beautiful lips and dripped down his chin. “Your lust is the finest delicacy in this house.”

Oh, fuck . He could taste that in her blood?

Did her pleasure somehow make her flavor better for him?

A knowing, infuriating smile spread across his face. He lowered his mouth to her ear. “I won’t touch you unless you demand, Your Highness.”

He kissed his way to the other side of her throat and bit down.

He let her lie there, half under him, while he wreaked havoc in her body with only his bite. His hands lay flat on the table to either side of her, unmoving.

She swore at him and dragged her robe open. Taking hold of his hand, she put it to her breast. Obediently, he began to massage her. Gods above and below, his one-hundred-year sleep had not made him forget his way around a woman’s body. His fingers played her nipple with expert flicks and tugs.

She should stop him now while she still had the will. But she was so hungry…she had been hungry for so long.

She clutched his other hand and guided it to where her wound had been. He swept his hand around her thigh, just like when he had healed her. This time his touch seared her, feverish hot.

He took his time, warming her with slow caresses along the inside of her thigh. She wanted him to hurry and give her everything now. But she didn’t want him to stop.

When she was on the verge of falling apart, he stopped touching her. Wicked tease. She cursed again and dragged his hand between her legs.

His touch was smooth and hard and warm. She pressed the heel of his hand to the top of her cleft and arched against him. Oh, it was good to feel a man’s touch there again. She guided his hand exactly where she wanted him, and he rubbed her while she ground herself on him.

She let her head fall back and closed her eyes. Wetness slid between his fingers onto her hand as her grip relaxed. He slowed his caresses, bringing his fingers up to tease her clitoris. She melted into his touch, curling her fingers around the edge of the table to steady herself.

He drew shameless sighs out of her until she was twisting under him, begging. In another life, she would have thrown all her other lovers out on their ears for one man with hands like this. She forgot his family name and her own.

“Troi,” she gasped against his ear as he held her, trembling, on the edge.

He sent her over with another rough bite and a gentle flick of his fingers. She spasmed against his hand, a moan tearing out of her. His jaw tightened, and he purred low in his throat like the cat that got the cream.

He worked her with his hand, dragging her long release out of her and lapping it up at her vein. And she couldn’t have stopped him if all her Pavo ancestors had come to haunt her for it.

When he finally let her go, her knees were jelly and her pride not much better off. He stood back, swiping his hand across his chin, and licked her blood from his fingers.

Her gaze dropped to the laces of his trousers, straining over his erection. Before her curiosity got the better of her and she took his measurements with her own body, she squeezed her thighs together and pulled her robe over her breasts.

Troi grinned at her. “My compliments on your table.”

And then he disappeared into thin air. She heard his bedroom door shut upstairs.

Insufferable creature, leaving her sitting here cold in the middle of a seduction.

Confusing man, retreating at her merest sign of hesitation instead of pressing his advantage.

Celandine’s gaze fell to the lute he had left behind. She could hardly envision her future, and yet she felt sure Troi’s song would haunt her dreams long after Summer Solstice was through.

While Troi slept, Celandine waited in the ramshackle cemetery where paupers went unmourned. No one here but the dead and her. She hadn’t been followed.

The long, hooded cloak she had donned to sneak out of the manor was too warm for the balmy summer day. But now she pulled it closer around her with a shiver.

Soon, graveyards would no longer be her haunts.

Heavy boots crunched in the brittle grass behind her, and Celandine jumped.

A low, hoarse chuckle crept over the back of her neck. “Did I frighten you, little bird?”

She turned to face the man. The morning light seemed to die everywhere it touched his dark clothing.

He wore the short robes and leather armor of a Gift Collector, an assassin of Hesperines.

The Eye of Hypnos—the glyph of the god of death and dreams—was painted on his breastplate in bright red blood.

Must his sort be so theatrical? She put her hood back and gave him a practiced expression of disdain from her days as a princess.

“You should know I’ve put less savory creatures than you in their graves.

If you think we mages of Chera fear our brethren who serve the god of death, you are very unwise. ”

“You should know necromancers of my profession are more dangerous than anything else you’re likely to meet in a graveyard.”

“Be that as it may, your scarred face is not much prettier than some of the undead I’ve slain.”

He rubbed the bite marks on his chin and smiled. “The Order of Hypnos doesn’t pay me for my pretty face, only Hesperine heads. Can you get me inside the manor or not?”

She tried not to stare at the bleeding knife hanging from his belt. But she couldn’t escape the image of that blade laying open Troi’s throat.

She wanted to shake herself. A week locked in the manor with the Hesperine’s allure was addling her wits. She couldn’t let fleeting pleasure sway her from a decade of effort.

From within her cloak, she withdrew the rose she had brought from the manor’s garden as proof. “I’ve already made it past the flames.”

Greed gleamed in the Gift Collector’s hard eyes, and he reached for the flower.

Celandine held it back out of his reach. “I want to see my first payment.”

He took another step toward her. Her heart jumped in her chest, but she forced herself to stand her ground. “The Order doesn’t pay apostate witches at all. Don’t forget you won’t see a coin except through me.”

“And you haven’t a hope of getting to the Hesperine without me. If I don’t unravel the spells for you before the mages of Anthros arrive, your valuable prey will be wasted on their altar.”

Still standing too close for comfort, the Gift Collector dropped a heavy coin purse in her hand.

She let him take the rose and opened the purse to count her spoils. It was the amount he had promised. Enough to get her out of the city once Rixor and Kaion were dead. But after her escape, she would need much more to survive in the world as a woman alone.

The Order of Hypnos’s bounty on the notorious Hesperine of Corona had been increasing for the last hundred years. Even a fraction of it would be enough to reinvent herself and fund any new life she chose to live.

And Troi’s life would end.

She tried to keep her voice steady. “We split the bounty fifty-fifty, as we agreed.”

“I’m the one who must decapitate the creature. I should get seventy at least.”

She had expected him to renegotiate, but not to torture her with such images. But could she really believe a few conversations with Troi over a lifetime of knowledge about Hesperines?

Knowledge fed to you by the Orders , the voice of truth reminded her.

Be that as it may, she couldn’t throw away her life for this ephemeral sense of compassion for a Taurus. What compassion would Troi have for her when this was over? No doubt he was playing her like that lute and planning a betrayal of his own.

Would he kill her for simply being a Pavo? Would he take her away with him and use her for blood until she died?

Did you feel used last night? demanded that dangerous voice.

“Forty-sixty,” she made herself say, “or I will let another Gift Collector through the gate before you.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Very well. But if you don’t hurry and get me inside before the mages of Anthros, you’ll get nothing but my hand in your hair, dragging you back to your temple.”

“I only need a little more time…”

Time to what? To reconsider her effort to free herself from Rixor and the Orders? To fall deeper under Troi’s spell, until he and his goddess took control of her destiny?

The Gift Collector loomed over her. “We are running out of time.”

“Unraveling the Hesperine spells inside is a massive effort. I’m earning my forty percent. Wait until the day after tomorrow, then come at dawn when he’s asleep. I’ll leave an opening in the spells for you.”

“I will be there,” the Gift Collector growled, “whether you’re ready or not.”

He turned on his heel and stalked away from her. The warm summer day seemed to fill with cold, dark visions of Troi, vulnerable in his Slumber, and the Gift Collector closing in on him with that deadly blade.