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God, what was that scent? She breathed in deep and recognized the mix of dark spices that she’d smelled on the towel in his bathroom.

Sex came to mind. The kind that you had when you lost all your inhibitions. The kind you felt for days afterward.

Stop it.

“Every eight weeks or so,” he said.

“Excuse me? Oh, is that how often you…”

“Feed. Depends on stress. Activity level, too.”

Okay, that totally killed the sex thing. In a gruesome series of Bram Stroker scenes, she imagined him tracking and preying on humans, leaving them chewed raw in alleys.

Clearly her distaste showed, because his voice got hard. “It’s natural to us. Not disgusting.”

“Do you kill them? The people you hunt?” She braced herself for the answer.

“People? Try vampires. We feed off members of the opposite sex. Of our race, not yours. And there’s no killing.”

Her brows lifted. “Oh.”

“That Dracula myth is such a fucking bore.”

Her mind spun with questions. “What’s it like? What does it taste like?”

His eyes narrowed, then drifted from her face to her neck. Jane quickly brought her hand to her throat.

“Don’t worry,” he said roughly. “I’m fed. And besides, human blood doesn’t do it for me. Too weak to be of interest.”

Okay. Right. Good.

Except, what the hell? Like she wasn’t evolutionarily good enough?

Yeah, whoa, she was so totally losing it, and this particular subject matter wasn’t helping. “Ah, listen…I want to check your dressing. I wonder if we can even remove it altogether by now.”

“Suit yourself.”

The patient pushed himself up on the pillows, his massive arms flexing under smooth skin. As the covers fell from his shoulders, she had a moment’s pause. He seemed to be getting bigger as he recovered his strength. Bigger and…more sexual.

Her mind shied away from where she was headed with that thought and latched onto the medical issues he faced like they were a lifeboat. With steady, professional hands, she pulled the covers completely from his chest and eased the adhesive tape off the gauze between his pecs. She lifted the bandage and shook her head. Astounding. The only thing marring the skin was the star-shaped scar that had been there before. The residual marks from the operation were reduced to a slight discoloration, and if she extrapolated, she could assume the inside of him was just as well healed.

“Is this typical?” she asked. “This rate of recovery?”

“In the Brotherhood, yes.”

Oh, man. If she could study the manner in which his cells regenerated, she might be able to unlock some of the secrets to the aging process in humans.

“Forget it.” His jaw set as he shifted his legs off the far side of the bed. “We’re not going to be used as lab rats for your kind. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a shower and have a cigarette.” She opened her mouth and he cut her off. “We don’t get cancer, so spare me the lecture, okay?”

“You don’t get cancer? Why? How does that—”

“Later. I need hot water and nicotine.”

She frowned. “I don’t want you smoking around me.”

“Which is why I’m going to do it in the bathroom. There’s an exhaust fan.”

As he stood up and the sheet fell from his body, she glanced away fast. A naked man was hardly a new thing for her, but for some reason he struck her as different.

Well, duh. He was six feet, six inches tall and built like a brick shithouse.

As she headed back to her chair and sat down, she heard a shuffling noise, then a thud. She looked up in alarm. The patient was so unsteady on his feet, he’d lost his balance and landed on the wall.

“Do you need help?” Please say no. Please say—

“No.”

Thank you, God.

He palmed a lighter and what looked like a hand-rolled cigarette from the bedside table and lurched across the room. From her vantage point in the corner she waited and watched, ready to pull a fireman’s hold on him if she needed to.

Yeah, and okay, maybe she watched him for a reason other than wanting to keep him from getting a carpet burn all over that face of his: His back was amazing, the muscles heavy yet elegant as they spanned his shoulders and feathered out from his spine.