"I'm gonna give you an even bigger rush." Topaz leaned in to brush her lips over the guy's neck. She found it corded and firm.

Nice. "You want this. You know you do. Just relax," she whispered. "Close your eyes, and let your head fall back and rest against the seat. Oh, it'll be so good for you."

"Yeah," he said, obeying her every word.

She glanced at Jack and found his gaze on her, his eyes ablaze with the bloodl.u.s.t, just as hers must be. She smiled at him, and he smiled back. And then they bent to feast at the throats of the two lovers.

It was good, Topaz thought. The guy's blood was strong and vital and rich, and packed just enough toxins to give her a slight buzz above and beyond the normal rush of feeding.

She drank, relishing it, lifting her eyes every few sips to glance toward Jack, always to find his gaze fixed on her.

When she'd taken all she could without doing harm, she lifted her head and dabbed at her lips with the back of one hand. Vic was unconscious-not from blood loss, but because she had mentally commanded him to be.

She saw that Jack had done likewise with his party-girl waif.

"Mmm," he said. "That was good, what little I dared take, at least."

"It was. I'm glad you suggested it."

"I'm glad you're open to my suggestions."

She glanced at the sleeping beauties. "Now, what sort of memory shall we give them? That this was all just a dream, or maybe a bad reaction to too many drugs and too much booze?"

"The latter," Jack said. "Might actually do them some good."

The limo came to a halt. "Better hurry, so we can wake them. Ride's over." She took a tissue from a built-in dispenser and dabbed the droplets from their victims' necks, then stopped in mid-motion when the driver's door suddenly opened, and Ralph dove from it and ran like his pants were on fire.

"What the-"

Then a voice from outside shouted, "Get out of the car, hands in the air. You're completely surrounded."

She met Jack's eyes, her brows raised. "You have got to be kidding me."

Jack was peering out the tinted window. "I don't think they're kidding, babe. I think we'd better cooperate. Stay behind me, okay?"

"It's not like they're going to shoot us."

He was still studying them, and she looked, as well. Armed men with shotguns pointed their way stood on all sides of the car. She frowned. "Jack, those don't look like cops."

"I don't think they are." "s.h.i.t. Leave it to me to pick a victim with his own private army."

"Driver must have known something was off," Jack said. "I should have seen it coming." He hit a b.u.t.ton and lowered the window slightly. "We're coming out. We're unarmed. And we've done nothing wrong."

He pushed the door open and slowly, with his hands over his head, got out of the limo. He moved about three steps forward, then waited for Topaz to emerge.

"Vic! Tiffany!" the guy who'd spoken earlier yelled. "Are you all right in there?"

Topaz closed her eyes. "s.h.i.t. We really should have woken them up."

"Looks like they're down," one of the armed men said. "You two," he commanded Topaz and Jack, "take five steps forward and then lie facedown on the ground, hands behind your heads."

They took a step, then another. On step four, run for it, full speed. Jack sent the words mentally. I'll be right behind you.

Okay.

Three. Every shotgun muzzle was aimed directly at them.

Four. Topaz hesitated.

Go! Jack ordered.

She flew into motion, and shots rang out. Jack launched himself with a burst of speed a heartbeat after she did, and they vanished like blurs of color in the night. They didn't stop until they were miles from the scene, at the edge of the desert, a sprint that took them only minutes.

Topaz sank into a dune and waited. "Jack," she called, verbally as well as mentally. "Where are you?"

He came into sight then, walking slowly, exhausted-more so than he should have been from the brief burst of speed. She smelled blood.

"Jack!" Surging to her feet, Topaz ran to him.

Blood soaked his shirt. He'd lost the elegant black dinner jacket he'd been wearing somewhere along the way. "G.o.d, you're hit."

"Yeah, slightly."

"Slightly, h.e.l.l, you're bleeding out." She eased him down into the sand, then reached for the high end of the slit in her s.e.xy red dress and tore it all the way around. Using her teeth, she tore the fabric into sections, then wadded up several pieces as she dropped to her knees beside him.

She was glad the feelings roiling in her belly hadn't paralyzed her. The sight of Jack bleeding and the fear of losing him permanently were raging in her mind and in her heart. But instead of slowing her down, they only seemed to spur her into quick action.

She tore open his shirt. The wound was low, just above his hip bone on the right side. And it was pulsing blood at an alarming rate.

"Hold on, Jack," she told him, and willed it with everything in her. She pressed the wad of fabric into the wound, using all her strength to exert pressure. Then she took his hand and laid it over the makeshift dressing. "Press hard."

"Pressing." The word was more of a grunt. His eyes were on her face, but she couldn't look into them. She would lose track of what needed doing if she looked into those eyes. They did things to her.

She took a larger piece of fabric and wrapped it around him to hold the dressing in place, knotting it as tightly as she dared.

He grunted in pain. "Jesus, woman, you can't tourniquet a waist."

"I can d.a.m.n well try." When she finished, he let his body fall backward in the sand, his eyes heavy. She sensed his pain, and as magnified as it was in their kind, she knew it was crippling him.

"Jack, you can't rest here. Not here."

"Just for a minute."

"We need to get you to shelter." His eyes closed, his head falling to one side. She shook his shoulder gently. "Jack, we're in the desert. And the sunrise is..." She looked at the sky. The stars were fading, and in the distance, a thin ribbon of gray, paler than the midnight-blue above, had appeared. "We've got less than an hour. Come on."

She hooked her arms beneath his and tugged him upright. "Come on, Jack."

He tried, bending a knee and pressing his foot into the sand in a weak effort to rise. But he only toppled again. "Can't. I'm too weak."

"Dammit, Jack!"

He hooked his hand around her neck, cupping the nape, tugging her face close to his. "I have something to say."

"There's no time-"

"I'm sorry I hurt you, Topaz. I really am."

She stared into his eyes, shocked into stillness by those words. She had never expected an apology. And that it came now, when he was hurt and maybe bleeding out-she believed it. She believed he meant it. And, unable to do otherwise, she kissed him.

Something possessed her, something beyond reason. His fingers threaded in her hair, and his tongue danced over hers, and he kissed her like he'd never kissed her before.

She was aching, hungry, when their lips parted, but he was still kissing, his mouth trailing over her cheek, her jaw, her neck.

She tipped her head back. "Do it, Jack. Drink."

As his mouth moved against the sensitive skin of her throat, he spoke. "No. Not from you. The bond-"

"I know it forms a bond. The truth is, Jack, we already have one, as much as I hate to admit it. Now drink, dammit, before we both roast in the sun."

His lips trembled as they parted. She felt the graze of his teeth on her skin and shivered from sheer pleasure. And then he bit down, and his fangs sank through her flesh, popped through the vein. His lips closed, and he sucked from her.

Pleasure-no, ecstasy-washed through her like a warm elixir. Her entire body writhed and heated, and her head fell back. She closed her eyes and moaned in pleasure even as she clutched the back of his head to hold him to her, to offer him more and still more.

He pulled away at last and enfolded her in his arms as he lay back. She relaxed atop him, lying across his chest as the sensations slowly ebbed. She knew he was feeling the rush of power now. It would surge through him with the influx of powerful vampiric blood.Eventually he sighed. "Thank you."

"Thank you." She said it jokingly, but she meant it. G.o.d, that had been so good. Only s.e.x could have come close. "Think you can walk now?"

"Yeah. Let's get out of here."

She got up off his chest, regretting the loss of that intimate contact with everything in her. He sat up, got to his feet, reached a hand down to help her. She swayed just a little.

"I didn't take too much, did I?" he asked, concern etched on his face as he searched her eyes.

"No. I'm fine." She wasn't, though. She was drunk with pa.s.sion, with need. And he was the only man who could fulfill it. The only man who ever had.

"You suppose there's time to get the car?" she asked.

"No, and we can't make it back to the mansion, either. There's barely time to get to the crypt," he said with a brief glance at the night sky.

"We'll make it," she promised, and, clutching his hand in hers, not even wondering why, she got moving.

Jack's pain was excruciating, but at least it was less than it had been before Topaz had replenished him with her blood. d.a.m.n, even with the physical agony, his body had come alive when he'd been feeding from her tender throat. Smelling her, tasting her, touching her. He'd felt as if he'd been about to burst into flames.

He wanted her more than ever now; there was no question about that. And he knew that the bond between them, whatever it had been before, had been magnified by the sharing of their blood. It was inevitable. It was also why he'd never partaken of her when they'd had s.e.x in the past, no matter how sorely he'd been tempted. He hadn't wanted to make her any more attached to him than she already had been, knowing he would leave her in the end.

But now they'd done it. Topaz would never get him out of her system now. That thought made him smile just a little, until its echo whispered through his psyche. And you'll never get her out of yours. Then again, you never really have, have you?

His smile died.

Jack was lying on the air-mattress-enhanced bier inside the crypt, while Topaz secured the door, changed her clothes and unfolded a blanket. He watched her every movement, though she never revealed enough to sate him. He didn't think all of her would be enough for that. As hard as he tried, he'd never been able to forget her, to stop wanting her, thinking about her.

She climbed into the makeshift bed beside him and tugged the covers up around them both. Then she rolled onto her side, facing him. He was on his back. "Twenty more minutes, give or take. How's the wound?"

"It's bleeding again, but only a little. I'll last."

"You sure?"

He turned his head toward her. "You'd care, wouldn't you? If you woke up to find me dead tonight, you'd really care."

She lowered her eyelids, hiding her emotions behind them. He could have probed her mind for them, but he was too weak and tired to make the effort, and she was probably blocking, anyway.

"When you have s.e.x with someone, especially if it's only them and for an extended period of time, it creates a bond. It doesn't matter if you want it or not, it just does. That person becomes important to you. It can't be helped. So yeah, I may hate your guts most of the time, but I care."

He nodded. "Is that what it is, you think? A physical bond created by all the s.e.x we had?"

She nodded. "And it'll be stronger now, with the blood sharing. But you know that."

He hadn't thought it could get much stronger. But he liked her theory. He was this drawn to her and this obsessed by her because they'd shared intimacy over a long period of time. It made sense that s.e.x could create a bond as surely as the sharing of blood could. It wasn't any sappy emotional thing, like love, for example. It was physical. Simple. Cut and dried.

"We didn't really get anywhere tonight, did we?" she said. "With the Bonacelli connection, I mean."

"Yes we did, Topaz. We learned a lot. Enough to rule him out."

"As my mother's killer, yes," she said softly. "He wouldn't have put out that reward just to make himself look innocent. A man like him wouldn't worry about looking innocent to his peers. He was too powerful for that. And he certainly didn't broadcast the reward to the authorities to avert suspicion."

"No, that would have gotten him arrested."

"But we still don't know if he was my father," she said.

Jack sighed. "If he told his son the timing was off-"

"I know, but he could have been lying. It's just not as compelling to me as the reward and the hit and all that."

"We'll find out the truth, Topaz. We're getting closer all the time."

She sighed softly. "It's just that we're running out of options. One more interview to conduct. And I don't know where we go from there."

"Mmm, the actor. Retired by now, no doubt."

"It's a long shot," Topaz said, and he could hear the disappointment in her voice. "He didn't even try for custody."

"Don't a.s.sume anything." He reached out to brush a stray lock of hair from her face, breaking their deal by doing so, but grateful when she didn't object. "Thank you, Topaz. You probably saved my life tonight."

"You're welcome," she said. He held her eyes for one long moment, and he thought she might just be willing to let him kiss her.

But then she lowered her lashes, rolled onto her back and took a long deep breath. "Good night, Jack."