Burke had suggested calling the authorities, but Lucan refused. He would not allow them to lock her up in some asylum. He had put her into this trance; he would wake her from it.

He had talked to her, and rubbed her hands, and immersed her in a warm bath. He had held her, and rocked her, and lain down with her on his bed, trying to warm her. He even considered singing to her. Nothing worked, until at last he lost his temper and propped himself over her, shaking her shoulders.

"Bloody hell, woman, you won't do this to me. You can't find Harry's killer if you're a bloody damn vegetable. Obey me, Samantha. Do you hear me?" He shook her again. "Wake up."

The blank stare in her eyes receded, and her eyelids closed and opened until she focused on his face.

"Thank Christ," he said.

"Hello," she said, like a polite child. She glanced around her. "We don't have to chase that snake-man again, do we?"

He was so relieved that he couldn't answer her. He could only snatch her up against his chest and hold her tight.

"Lucan." Her voice was muffled against his ragged shirt. "I can't breathe."

"Forgive me." He laughed, so great was his relief. "I had thought I might never bring you back."

Samantha relaxed against him. "That bad." She sat up again and stared at his face. "You were all cut up, and then you healed in a few seconds. I wasn't hallucinating."

"No." He cursed himself for allowing her to see him heal. "You were not."

Her expression grew solemn. "How do I even begin to believe in something like you?"

"Not easily. I know what even the fact of our existence can do to the sanity of a human," he told her, brushing the hair back from her face. "But you are stronger than that, Samantha. What you saw tonight was a Kyn version of the humans you hunt."

She shook her head. "He was easy to spot. Human snakes wear their skins on the inside."

"I would have spared you this." Ironic, that she had been made to face what human monsters could do, and now had to endure knowledge of those among his kind. "Then again, perhaps all of your life's miseries were to prepare you for what I would do to you."

Now she seemed bewildered. "What have you done to me?"

"Witnessing the rage of my old friend Faryl wasn't enough?"

"Did you make him that way?" When he shook his head, she smiled a little. "I didn't think so. Was he what you said you were? Something like a vampire?"

He hid his fear, but he could not keep back the words. "I'd rather not tell you something that will made you turn back into a beautiful carrot—"

"Don't tell me," she said. "Show me."

"You've been through enough." If he touched her now, he wouldn't be able to control himself.

Samantha reached up and took a handful of his hair in her fist, and dragged his face to hers. He was so starved for her that the kiss he gave her must have bruised her lips, but she only nestled closer to him. As he kissed her, he felt her fingers touch the juncture of their mouths. Their lips parted, and she inserted a fingertip, rimming the edge of his bottom teeth, turning her hand to do the same to the top.

Desire made his dents acérées slide from the recesses in his palate. She felt them as they extended, and the taste of her blood sweetened his mouth as the sharp, elongated point of one fang pierced her skin.

Her eyes were only inches from his. In them, he could see the reflection of his, and how the pupils in his eyes instantly contracted, becoming narrow, vertical black slits.

"Jesus," she breathed, not repulsed but riveted. "You really are a vampire."

Lucan caressed the length of her finger with his tongue as he savored the small wound he had inflicted on her. The scent of jasmine rose around them, thick and deep. Reluctantly he released her finger, kissing the reddened dimple in the skin.

"I live on human blood." He would tell her the rest. "My wounds heal instantly, and I do not age. My kind are difficult to kill. We have been living among you since the Middle Ages, when the first of my kind rose to walk the night. I was born in the thirteenth century."

"Are you like the vampires in the movies?"

"No. The cross doesn't burn us, and sunlight only makes us tired. Wooden stakes are useless; our weakness is copper. We don't drain all the blood from humans or make them into our kind." He thought of Alexandra, but explaining her would only complicate matters. "We are different, but we try to coexist with you."

"You have sex with humans."

He gave her a wicked smile. "Whenever possible. We are very hungry, very sensory creatures, and you…" He breathed in her scent. "You are a movable feast." He felt her pulse change. "What more can I show you?"

"One last thing," she said. "Take off your gloves and show me your hands."

"I can't touch you."

"I know. I remember." She looked down at them. "You did something with them to stop those men who attacked us. That's why you wear gloves all the time."

"Each of the Kyn has their own talent, but some are particularly rare and powerful," he said, hearing the bitterness in his voice and despising his own self-pity. "Mine affects anything that breathes, whether it is animal, vegetable, human, or Kyn. That is why I am feared, Samantha."

"Why? What do you do?"

"I can shatter bones, tear flesh, and rend veins. Nothing living can withstand the touch of my bare hands if I wish it harm." He looked down at the weapons he could never be rid of. "My former master called me the Black Prince of Death. Black like a plague that can never be stopped. Death for my hands."

"Why does glass break around you?" she asked. "That's not a living thing."

"It happens sometimes when I'm angry, or close to losing my temper. Rather like a warning signal." His mouth curled. "I never have enough wineglasses."

She nodded slowly. "I still want to see your hands."

Lucan considered the thin layer of velvet that kept her safe. If this was the price for her sanity, then so be it. Slowly he stripped off his gloves and held out his hands.

Her expression changed to surprise. "They're not black."

Of all the things he had expected her to say, that was not one of them. "I'm not a black man."

She looked up quickly. "In my dream, one of them was black."

"Was it the left?" When she nodded, he picked up his gloves. "I was born left-handed. It was considered unlucky in my time." He froze when she touched his hands with hers, and jerked them away. "Samantha, I told you, nothing living—"

"Can withstand your touch, yeah, I got that. I also know you don't want to hurt me. If you did, you wouldn't have been so careful." She took his bare hands in hers again. "I trust you."

The only flesh Lucan had touched without gloves protecting it for the last seven hundred years had suffered or died moments later. Yet here was this foolish, ridiculous human female, cradling his killing hands between hers, bending to them, bringing them to her face—

The feel of her skin under his fingers made Lucan close his eyes.

Like a blind man walking without cane or guide, he let himself live dangerously for a moment. He moved his fingertips over her face, sweeping over the lines and curves, learning her, feeling her. At first he raced, eager to take in as much as he could before it was time to release her, but then he began to linger, testing a texture here, a softness there.

Her lashes were gossamer, her lips warm satin. The bones beneath her flesh were strong, angular things made graceful by the resilient stretch of muscle. The tiny hairs on her skin worked like fine velvet against him, finer than any glove he had ever worn. Her breath warmed his skin, as tender as a lover's caress.

Too much.

He opened his eyes and pulled his trembling hands away, ashamed of himself for risking her safety all for the rapture of knowing her under his hands. He reached for his gloves.

"Don't put them back on." Her voice sounded as ragged as his grip on his self-control. "Please."

He stared at her in disbelief. "Have you gone carrot-brained again?"

Samantha lay back against the pillows of his bed, and pulled up the hem of her T-shirt, tugging it up and over her head. Under it she wore a plain white bra. "I like feeling your hands on me." She touched the clip at the front, but didn't release it. "Don't you want me?"

She wasn't afraid. She had seen what he could do with his hands, and she wasn't screaming in fear. Lucan couldn't think. "I want you."

"Then take off my bra."

If he put both hands on her, he would rip her bra to shreds, so Lucan used only two fingers to release the clasp, and one to peel back the thin cotton cups. Her breasts were neither too small or too large, pretty round globes that promised to fill his hand. Her nipples were the same color as her lips, a delicate pink only a shade or two darker than her skin, but as he looked at them they turned rosy and tightened.

"Touch me," she whispered.

Lucan had to taste her first, and so he bent his head to her, watching the tiny vibrations of her heartbeat under her skin, and opened his mouth over her, and took her nipple in. He tried not to curve his hand around the luscious weight of her breast as he sucked, but that, too, he could not resist, and the sensation of his fingers sinking into the firm mound brought his other hand to her.

He felt her hands on him, moving over his shoulders, skimming down his back. He was on top of .her, pressing her into the bed, his bare hands filled with her, his tongue lashing her. Her thighs parted and he settled between them, inching the heavy weight of his cock back and forth against her.

He lifted his head to look into her eyes. He saw no pain, no hesitation, no doubt. "I want to put my fingers inside you."

Instead of answering, Samantha reached down and unfastened the waistband of her trousers, and opened the zipper beneath it. Lucan lifted up, first to watch her, then to help her. He stripped off the trousers, tossing them aside, but left her white cotton panties, which he found as unbearably erotic as her plain little bra, in place.