Which gave her an opportunity to study his appearance. He looked like hell. His eyes were not just silver, but a glowing silver. His fangs were elongated. Perspiration covered his body, and his face was flushed, the flush being more apparent because of the paleness of his skin.

"You're sick."

"No, Nicole. I'm not sick. I just need to feed."

Suddenly, everything became clear to her, based on things he'd told her about vangels over the last few days. And an idea came to her . . . a scary, distasteful idea. "Trond, does your brother Vikar feed on his wife?"

"Yes, but-"

"Is she a vangel, too?"

"No, but-"

"Then you can feed on me." Oh Lord! Did I just say that? Did I just offer myself up as Dracula bait? No! Trond is the man I love. If he is a Bram Stoker creation, then he's a good Dracula. Maybe Dracula had a nonevil brother.

"No! Absolutely not!"

"Would you hurt me?"

"Of course not."

"Then do it." I don't like needles. How am I going to bear teeth piercing my skin? Don't start shaking, Nicole. Do. Not. Shake. "Besides, you're hurting me now by shutting me out. You have to know that I love you, Trond. Oh, don't get that sick look on your face. I'm not asking anything from you, and I know we have no future. But there it is. I love you, get over it. And I want to help you."

Trond just stared at Nicole, his heart aching in that odd way it did of late. He could have wept at the pleasure of the love she claimed to have for him, and he could have wept at the pain of knowing he was unworthy and therefore unable to accept what she offered so freely.

But he needed his strength in order to get them back to Afghanistan and do all that he must in the next day or two. "I accept your generous offer, Nicole." He held out a hand to her.

Instead of taking his hand, she rushed at him and clung to his shoulders, burying her face in his neck where he felt the wetness of her tears. "You brute! You louse! Shutting me out like this!"

"Shh," he said. "Shh." That's all he could say.

"How do we do this?" his brave girl asked, even as her bottom lip quivered with fear.

He laughed and framed her face with his hands, kissing her softly. "Not so fast. If we make love, it will be easier for you."

"It won't hurt?"

"Just the first time. A little."

She laughed now, too, and swiped at her eyes. "Sounds like all the guys when they're trying to talk a girl into giving it up the first time."

"I am not like 'all the guys.' " He pretended affront.

"I know," she said.

Trond drew her to the bed and proceeded to make sweet love to her. He paid homage to every part of her body with caresses, kisses, and whispered words of admiration. He started gently, stoking her fires, needing her molten and ravenous for fulfillment before he would take her blood.

"Did I ever show you the famous Viking S-spot?" he asked silkily at one point, wanting to lighten the somberness of their lovemaking.

"You're making that up," she told him with a laugh.

"Am not," he said and showed her exactly where it was. With his tongue.

That brought her close to her first climax, but he wouldn't let her go over the top. He had to have her mindless.

But she was not happy. She pushed herself up and over him, sitting on his belly. With excessive sweetness, she inquired, "Have I ever shown you the Cowgirl Twirl?"

She hadn't, but she did, and it took every bit of restraint to lift her off before they both exploded into a mutual orgasm.

"You're driving me crazy," she moaned.

"I need to." He used all the expertise he'd gained over eleven hundred years then to bring her to a keening, arms-flailing, hips-bucking arousal.

He played with her breasts until she grabbed his head and forced him down hard against her, wanting more and harder suckling. Instead, he eased himself away and teased her with light, feathery touches until she reached the point that his breath on her wet nipples brought her close to peaking. Even the hair on his legs rubbing against her legs was enhancing her excitement.

Once again, he stopped. And this time just stopping wasn't enough to dampen down his excitement or hers, so he tried a different tactic. Lying on his back with his arms folded under his neck, he asked, "What's your favorite food?"

She looked at him with disbelief, then down at his amazingly huge cock and said, "Sausage."

He barely stifled a grin. "Your favorite color?"

"Flesh."

"You're not taking my questions seriously. Your favorite song?"

" 'Sex Machine.' "

"Nicole! Your favorite book?"

"Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus."

"I give up," he said then, and rolled over on his side, staring down at her.

She resembled a furious tiger kitten as she glared up at him through bruised lips. Her eyes were misty with arousal. Her nostrils flared with either anger or arousal. Probably both. Her hair was bed-mussed, or rather sex-mussed. In other words, she was nigh irresistible.

"I want you so much, Nicole," he murmured against her mouth.

"Not half as much as I want you, Viking," she murmured back.

He kissed her ravenously then, and at the same time used his fingers to delve into her soaking folds. Putting first one, then two, then three fingers inside her, he stretched her inner muscles, then began pumping her. Her liquid pleasure coated his fingers. He felt a wetness on her face, as well. Salty tears seeped down to their joined lips. When he raised his head to look down at her, she said only one word, "Please?"

His knees trembled and there was roaring in his ears when he finally, finally, finally mounted her. As tortuous as it had been for Nicole to forestall her orgasm, it had been twice . . . nay, thrice . . . as hard for him. And even now, he had to fight against the coils of tension in his body that yearned to let go, especially when her inner channel clutched at him on each backstroke.

Her head was tossing from side to side, her eyes closed, as Trond thrust himself hard inside her, his pubic bone hitting her clitoris. He leaned down then and clamped his teeth against her neck. He heard her gasp of shock, then her sigh.

His strokes into her climaxing folds were short and hard then as he drank greedily from her. So sweet. Her blood was so sweet and nourishing to him. Lifeblood. Forcing himself to stop, finally, when they'd both climaxed together, he licked the bite marks on her neck and lay atop her, his cock now quiescent inside her.

"Thank you," he murmured against her neck.

At first there was no response, but then she slapped him on the shoulder.

"What?" He raised his head.

"You didn't tell me I would enjoy it so much."

If Trond hadn't fallen in love with her before, he would now. Throwing his head back, he laughed joyously. In this moment there were no jagged splinters of his horrid life. This woman, and this woman alone, had shown him what life could be without all the dark shadows.

Before he could bite his foolish tongue, he kissed her lips and said, "You are mine." Forever.

Twenty-three.

He never actually promised her forever . . .

The following morning, they were back in the Davastan cave where the SEALs and WEALS had hidden before the hostage mission, and it had all happened so easily. She'd dressed in the same tattered Arab robe, and Trond put on the smelly socks and Arab garb he'd worn when "selling" her and Marie and Donita for Najid's harem. One minute they stood in the garden, Trond holding tight to her hand, and then they teletransported, or whatever it was vangels did. Whoosh, in an instant, they were on the other side of the world.

Thanks to materials that had been stashed at the back of the cave, they'd been able to contact CentCom and a helo was being sent for them within the hour. She and Trond had rehearsed over and over the story they would tell the commander on their return. They'd been captured by some of the terrorists at the end of the mission and kept in one of Najid's hidden caves farther away from Davastan. The ragtag band hadn't been sure what to do with them these past five days, and they kept arguing over whether to torture information from them, kill them as examples of U.S. military intrusion in Afghanistan, or ask for ransom. The tangos had been waiting for word from Najid's successor who was supposed to arrive from Pakistan when she and Trond had managed to escape, and it had taken them two days to find their way back to the cave hideout near the compound. At least, that was the story they were telling.

"I hear the helo," Trond said, helping her to her feet. Instead of walking out immediately, though, he pulled her into an embrace, a tight embrace, as if he didn't want to let her go.

"Hey, we have plenty of time for that when we get back," she said, kissing him lightly on the chin. They both picked up backpacks containing small items left in the cave.

"They'll be putting a harness down for us," Trond said. "They don't want us rappelling up without gloves."

She nodded.

The helo was already hovering nearby when they walked the short distance to the extraction site.

"Listen to me, Nicole," he said against her ear at the last minute. It was hard to hear over the chopper's noise. "I'm not going back."

"What? Wait."

"No, listen to me, heartling." He held her by the forearms. "I must go after Zeb. There will be an explosion any minute now in the cave. You will tell the authorities that I went back to get something, and I must be presumed dead."

"Nooooo!" she wailed. "I want to stay with you. We'll help Zeb together."

He shook his head. The sadness on his face was heartrending, for both of them.

Just then, two things happened at once, a harness was dropped for her about a hundred yards away, and the cave exploded. Into the flying mist, Trond was already beginning to disappear. She couldn't hear him, but she saw him mouth the words, "I. Love. You."

Where there's a will, there's a way . . .

Nicole had been back in Coronado for four days, and following ten different debriefings, her life should have been back to normal, or as normal as it would ever be after the experiences she'd had. Sometimes she wondered if half of it had ever really occurred.

But, no, if she denied those horrid beasts devouring humans in Najid's courtyard, or the concept of teletransportation, or men with fangs, then she would have to deny her love for Trond, a Viking vampire angel.

Aside from yet another debriefing-and she'd been questioned and questioned, then questioned again about what had happened to her and Trond in Davastan-all special forces operators when they returned from a mission involving deadly force were required to meet with the base psychologist. To make sure their heads were still screwed on right. Killing changed people, and the military wanted to make sure they handled their roles in taking out tangos without going bonkers. Some did.

The Octopus mission was deemed a success. Well, not a total success since two of the hostages had died, and Trond was gone and presumed dead, but overall there had been none of the planned explosions, thanks to careful special ops planning, and most of Najid's followers had been destroyed or scattered to far parts. Oh, there had been efforts to pull the stragglers together in Osama's name by another of his illegitimate sons, but the effort petered out. That did not mean it was the end of terrorism, by any means, but hopefully one more step had been taken, making the world a little safer and freer.

She was worried sick about Trond, of course. And Zeb. If only she'd realized that Trond would give himself up to that evil Jasper to save Zeb-and that is what she was convinced had happened now that she'd had time to think about it-she would have tried to do something to stop him. What, she wasn't sure. She presumed it was the angel thing to do. The right thing to do. That didn't make it any easier to handle the images in her head of what horrific torture he might be undergoing at the moment.

As soon as the commander released her from questioning the first day back, she'd gone seeking Karl to see if he could help her find Trond, or contact St. Michael the Archangel-she'd felt foolish even saying such a thing-to see if he could help. But Karl was gone, too, supposedly back to his Jaegers unit in Norway, but she knew better.

Interesting, though, that before he'd left, Karl had been meeting daily with Sly over in the mental wing of the base hospital, and apparently Sly had recovered his mental faculties. Karl must have saved him.

And here was the icing on the cake. Sly and Donita had reunited and gone off to be married in Las Vegas, where they still were, honeymooning.

Torolf "Max" Magnusson had taken her aside yesterday and questioned her about Trond. "I really regret not having gotten to know him better. My father will be especially sorrowful at not having made a connection with a fellow Viking."

Nicole had been given another week off from her WEALS duties, only reporting for her daily psychiatric session with Dr. Feingold and light PT. Marie had gone home to Louisiana for a short break. So, she was home alone at one a.m. when the doorbell rang.

At first, her heart raced, thinking it might be Trond, but, no, he wouldn't bother with any doorbell or a door, for that matter. Her visitor was equally surprising, though.

A girl stood on her doorstep, wearing skinny jeans, a cropped T-shirt, and too much makeup. A small suitcase sat at her feet on the stoop.

"Nic?" the girl said.

She tilted her head to the side. "Teresa?"

The girl, whom she could see now was not a girl but a young woman of about eighteen, nodded and started to sob.

Nicole gathered her baby sister into her arms and led her inside. "What's wrong, honey?" As if she couldn't guess.

After much blubbering and a half box of tissues, and words like "the ass," "Daddy said," "college," "a slap," and then an amazing, "Mom told me to come to you," the gist of it was, she didn't want to marry Billy, the ass, who'd told her she couldn't continue her college classes when they married. She'd been planning to go to nursing school. When she'd protested, he'd slapped her, and their dad had told her she must have deserved it because she was getting mouthy at home, too. "But Billy told me he was sorry right away," she'd quickly amended.

The same old Billy!

"And Dad said Billy would probably change his mind about college after we were married."

Yeah, right!

"So, what do you want to do?" They were in the kitchen now eating store-bought cookies, hers washed down by a cup of herbal tea and Teresa's by a cold Pepsi.

"I don't want to get married right away. And . . . and I don't think I want to marry Billy at all."

"Okay. What do you want to do?"

"Nursing school, but not in Chicago. I was accepted at three schools. One of them is in Florida. That's where I want to go."

Good idea. Get away from them all. "Will Dad pay for your school?"