Page 41 of Dark Embrace

In that instant, she wanted to stride to his side, take his hand between her own and decry the constables’ vilesuspicions.

In that instant, she wished she were guilty of all the lascivious acts they suspected. She wished that shehadallowed Killian those liberties, that she deserved the horrified looks the nurses and the matron castherway.

The truth was, she might well have allowed them if he had onlyasked.

Because...Oh, sweet heaven...her heart twisted and she felt the blood drain from her cheeks. She was in lovewithhim.

The magnitude of that realization left herreeling.

She thought she must have loved him for a very long time. For all the small kindnesses he offered to those less fortunate. For the way he offered each patient his undivided attention. For the way he spoke to her and listened to her and valued her words. For the way he had sat outside her door, his presence lesseningherfear.

She was in love with Killian, despite—and because of—all his secret layers and hidden depths, all the mysteries and shadows thatdoggedhim.

She was in love with a man they suspected ofmurder.

15

Paris,France,1670

Killian had been backin Paris only three weeks, and he found the streets and alleys to be both familiar and foreign. When last he visited, some sixty years earlier, he had been able to stroll from the north end of the city to the south at a leisurely pace and still arrive at his destination in under an hour. That Paris was gone, replaced by a city more than double in size. The population had doubled in size as well, a happy circumstance for one suchashe.

The fledgling night was cool and brisk, stars blinking overhead, a thin crescent moon bright against the dark sky. Killian walked along rue Neuve-Saint-Saveur, then down a long, uneven slope through the Courtyard of Miracles, home to all manner of criminals and thieves. He was quite certain he could find what heneededhere.

The houses here were crumbling with age, families living one atop the next in poverty and crime—thieves passing their profession from parent to child. It was a place where he could hunt. He rounded one house, the walls half-fallen, and the hairs at his nape prickled and rose. He stilled, glanced back, but sawnothing.

Nomatter.

His senses might lie. They might befooled.

But his instinct was that of a nocturnal beast, a monster, a killer, and that instinct wasevertrue.

Someone followed him. Not human. Someonelikehim.

Something primitive inside him recognized another monster, though in all the years he had never encountered one save his maker. He was torn by an instinct that demanded he terminate the interloper and the intellectual excitement of having the opportunity to discuss all manner of things with another likehimself.

He kept his stride even and sure, his posture relaxed. Instinct bid him stop, turn, fight, kill the threat, rip it limb from bloody limb. Logic bid him be cautious, be stealthy. Besmart.

He picked up his pace only slightly as he rounded a corner, then ducked down a dark alley, turning to follow another and another, glad this part of the city had changed little since his last visit. In the end, he was behind his pursuer, prey nolonger.

He caught a glimpse of a woman walking justahead.

She was small and delicate, her blond hair piled atop her head in an intricate style, her gown flawless, diamonds at herthroat.

Her shoulders stiffened. She turned her head to the right, not quite looking over her shoulder, certainly not meeting his gaze, but he knew she was aware of his presence. She knew he wasthere.

She faced forward once more and walked, and hefollowed.

She passed beneath an archway and he walked the same path seconds later, only to emerge on the far side and find the road empty. She was notthere.

He started to turn, his movement aborted as a blow of unsurpassed power landed between his shoulder blades, throwing him forward against the wall. He pushed off, spun, and found the road emptystill.

For a moment, he was disoriented, trying to make sense of the unexpected attack. He was strong, not in the way of a man, but in the way of a monster that was more than man. His adversary wasstronger.

He spun and she closed her hand around his throat. She stared at him, then let him go and stepped back. He vibrated with the need to lunge at her and tear her throat out, to dismantle herbody,to—

He mastered the urge; it made little sense. Here was a woman who was one of his kind, the first he had met in hundreds of years of roaming. He had questions. Surely she had answers. Yet, beneath his skin, the primitive need to battle one who encroached on his territory screamed through his veins and made his musclesclench.

“You surprise me,” she said. “Only the very old can manage to stand this close and not bare their teeth and posture and growl. Yet, here you are, watching me, studying me…somehow masteringtheneed.”