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When he drew back, he held a spot of my lipstick like a crimson stain in the center of his lips. There was the tiniest bit of color to his cheeks. He was like the cold of winter touched by the barest breath of spring, so that warmth was only a promise, not real, not now, but a distant hope. But hope is better than the alternative.

He swallowed convulsively, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment, before he straightened and his hands on my shoulders were firm. “That is but a taste of what I need, ma petite.”

“Don’t stop,” I said.

He smiled, but it was sad. “Let the effects wear awhile, then give me an answer about more.”

I shook my head. What was he talking about? Of course, of course he could have more.

“It is my fault, ma petite. I asked you to let me in your shields. I did not mean for you to drop all the defenses in your considerable repertoire. It was nearly overwhelming for both of us.” He looked at me as if he saw something new there, or someone new. “I must attend to our fair audience.” He almost came to me again for a good-bye kiss, but he pushed away, and he called to someone, “Attend her until she recovers. No, not you, not until she is herself again. I fear what she would do if you touched her now.”

His voice when it came again, filled the club, echoed into the shadows of it, and yet, seemed intimate, as if he whispered it against your skin, and only your skin. “Primo has walked through fire and blood to be reborn for you tonight. Transformed before your eyes from the warrior of nightmares to the lover of dreams.”

“They’re too scared, they won’t believe it.” It was Nathaniel’s voice.

I turned toward that voice, but met a different face. Nathaniel was standing just beyond, out of reach, but Byron was standing so close that it startled me. He wasn’t quite three hundred years old, and I normally heard him move as if he were human. He wasn’t powerful, and never would be, but tonight, I hadn’t even known he was standing nearly touching me. That helped sober me up more than anything else. I hadn’t heard one of the weakest of the new vamps that Jean-Claude had welcomed to town. Bad necromancer, no cookie.

“You’ve never seen him after he’s fed like this,” Byron said in that nicely accented British voice, “watch.”

I fought not to look at Jean-Claude. I looked at the audience instead. Their eyes were wide, their faces pale, or flushed. Some of them were still hiding under the tables. If the fight hadn’t taken place between them and the most obvious door, they’d have probably fled. All they needed was a sign above them that said “scared shitless.” It was probably the most spilled blood that any of them had ever seen. Scary stuff.

As long as I looked at the audience I agreed with Nathaniel, but when my eyes drifted to Jean-Claude’s back as he spoke with them, well . . . I had to look away. I had to not look, because the craving was still there. I’d been told that my desire to touch him had been part of the same craving that any servant felt for their master, but I hadn’t really believed it. This, this was craving.

I found myself staring at Primo, who was still on his knees, looking confused, a half-circle of black-shirted security guards standing around him. He looked up at me, and his eyes held something like pain. He spoke, and no one at the tables heard him, just me and security, and the vampire and wereleopard at my back. “You have trapped me.”

I opened my mouth to say, “I didn’t mean to,” but someone touched my left wrist, and it hurt. A sharp immediate pain. I whirled and found Byron touching me. “Let go of me.”

He opened his hand and just let my arm fall back. He whispered, “You’re bleeding. Jean-Claude told me to attend to you. Let me tend your wound.” Here was a face younger and more innocent seeming than Nathaniel’s. He’d been in his late teens when his master had brought him over. His hair was a soft brown that fell in loose curls just past his ears, leaving his slender neck bare and showing the V of white skin at the neck of the robe