A climax rippled through her, stealing her breath, splintering her thoughts. Bastien stiffened above her and shouted her name.

Sheer ecstasy.

As the last tingles faded, he lowered his forehead to hers. Melanie wrapped her arms around him and hugged him close, loving the feel of his big, muscled body on hers, though he supported the bulk of his weight with his forearms.

As his breathing evened, Bastien titled his head, touched his lips to hers in a profoundly tender kiss, then drew back and smiled down at her.

He was so beautiful. So perfect.

And she loved to see him smile.

She loved to make him smile.

She grinned up at him.

His eyes narrowed with amusement-laced suspicion. “What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking immortal speed isn’t just a plus on the battlefield. You stripped me naked in only a couple of seconds.”

“I can do more than that in a couple of seconds.”

“Really?” She couldn’t imagine what.

He winked, then blurred.

A second climax drove through her, catching her totally off guard. She thought she may have even screamed with it, gripping the sheets with fists as her body convulsed over and over again.

When she opened her eyes, Bastien was grinning down at her as if he had never moved.

Melanie stared up at him in amazement. She didn’t even know what he had done—it had happened so fast—but her heart raced madly and . . . she didn’t think she had ever come so hard in her life.

“What the hell was that?” she panted.

He laughed. “Another benefit of being an immortal.”

That was one hell of a benefit.

He left her long enough to turn the overhead light off, then hastened back to bed. Reaching down, he pulled the covers over them both and drew her close.

Quiet enfolded them as they lay in the dark. Weariness snuck up on Melanie and weighed her down. Though she was tempted to try anyway, she thought she would have been too tired to do anything other than lie there like a limp noodle if they made love again.

Almost dying was apparently exhausting . . . and continued to mess with her head in slow moments like this.

What must Bastien have thought earlier tonight when she had basically voiced a living will?

“Do you think I’m paranoid?” she asked softly.

“No.” He seemed as disinclined to move as she was. She didn’t think she had ever seen him so relaxed and content.

“You don’t think I overreacted when I told you I want to be transformed if anything else happens to me?”

“No. I think you were being smart and practical. Shit happens in this business. Even in the hallowed halls of the network.”

“Yes, but most of the shit that happens at the network is instigated by you.”

He chuckled, the rare sound of it trickling through her and relaxing her like wine. “True.” Another moment passed. “Times are changing though. You might consider making your wishes known to Seth and Chris. Someone at the network needs to know in case I’m not around and something foul goes down.”

“Linda knows.”

“Good. She seems like good people.”

Melanie smiled. “She is.” She was pretty damn courageous, too. Linda had been scared as hell when Vince, Cliff, and Joe had taken up residence in the network, but she had sucked it up and worked with them until she had lost that fear.

Unlike Dr. Whetsman and certain other colleagues.

Melanie guided her mind away from the job. She didn’t want to think of work when she had Bastien snuggled up with her. All she wanted to think about was how good it felt to have his large, warm, muscled form pressed against hers.

Well, that and . . .

“Go ahead. Ask me,” he murmured.

“Ask you what?”

“The question I imagine you’ve been wanting to ask ever since the meeting.”

“Are you sure you aren’t telepathic?”

He grunted. “I wish I were. It would take all of the guesswork out of dealing with people.”

“True.”

“So go ahead and ask me.”

“Who was the woman?”

“The one Ewen caught me draining?”

Melanie nodded as lethargy stole upon her. She shared Tanner’s belief that Bastien wouldn’t kill anyone who hadn’t done something seriously wrong. So what had the woman done? What had she been to him?

“She was a madam . . . of sorts. There were a lot of homeless children and poor children in what the ton would think of as the seedier parts of London. Always hungry. Working at a ridiculously young age to help put food in their mouths and on the family’s table.”

“I’m guessing there were no child labor laws back then.”

“No. Though a few fought for them.” He sighed. “Pedophiles are not new in our society. They were present in my youth and long before that. This particular woman catered to that sort of clientele, stealing, conning, or buying children and selling them into prostitution.”

Melanie didn’t understand people like that. People who seemed to have no conscience. “How did you find out about her?”

“There was a boy. He had been earning just enough to stay alive working as a chimney sweep when he stumbled upon a temporary resting place I had chosen after I stayed out too late to make it back to the apartment Blaise and I used to share. Blaise was dead then, recently destroyed by Roland and I was . . . lost. First my sister. Then my best friend. I had had to give up the rest of my family when I was transformed. So I had no one.”

Melanie gave him a squeeze.

“Anyway, this boy stumbled upon my hiding place and . . . He looked so damned skinny and hungry. And he was such a proud boy. I offered him a job, gave him some busy work so he wouldn’t think he was a charity case. You might say he was my first Second.” He shrugged. “I really just wanted to give him a warm place to stay, three squares a day. And his chatter filled the silence.” He sighed. “I don’t know. There might have been a little ‘I could have had a son like him if I hadn’t been turned’ mixed in there, too. It doesn’t really matter because he didn’t come home one day. And by the time I found him he was dead.”

“The woman . . . ?”

“Mistook him for fair game and sold him to the man who killed him.”

“So you . . .”

“Killed them both . . . and everyone associated with the woman. Her employees. Her other customers. I saved her for last. Unfortunately, Ewen came along just as I finished draining her.”

“He must not have been a telepath or he would have seen the reason you killed her.”

“I don’t know what his gift was. I only know he didn’t give me a chance to explain and nearly destroyed me before I finally managed to destroy him. I didn’t have a ready supply of blood then, so it took me three days to recover.”

“You should tell the others.”

“Do you really think knowing their friend died because he made an error in judgment will make his loss less painful or me more popular?”

“I suppose not.” She yawned.

Bastien brushed his hand over her hair. “It’s been a long night. See if you can’t get some rest.”

Melanie gave him a quick kiss and closed her eyes.

If he said anything else, she didn’t hear it. Sleep claimed her too quickly.

As Chris promised, a network employee delivered two thermal vision scopes—one for Bastien and one for Richart—and one pair of thermal vision goggles for Sheldon just before dusk.

Bastien liked the scope. So did Richart when he teleported home soon after. It fit in their pockets, and they could take it out and peer through it without altering the vision in both eyes. Call him old-fashioned, but he didn’t want to completely abandon his super-sharp immortal vision in favor of high-tech whatever.

Bastien took Melanie home once the sun set. She had a small place out in the country that reminded him of the tiny frame house Sarah had been renting when Roland had met her.

He suspected she was as obsessively neat as the immortals because the clutter he found there was minute at best. Mail scattered on the coffee table. A couple of dishes soaking in the kitchen sink. A jacket tossed on a chair.

Unable to resist, Bastien followed her into the bathroom and made love with her in the shower. It was so good it terrified him. With every touch, every look, every minute they spent together, he could feel the bond between them strengthening.

While she dressed for work, he meandered around and snooped freely. There were only two framed photographs in her small home. The couple pictured in them, their arms around each other in one and looped around Melanie in the other, must have been her parents. They looked happy in a way Bastien’s aristocratic parents never had.

Melanie’s furniture was mismatched. Some, he thought, had probably belonged to her parents. Some were purchases of her own. The atmosphere was warm. Homey. Welcoming. He wanted to sprawl on her beat-up couch, prop his feet on the coffee table, and just soak it and her in.

But duty called them both. So he took her to the network, left her with a kiss, and met Richart at UNC.

“You’re doing it again.”

“What?” Bastien looked over at Richart as the Frenchman held his thermal scope up to his right eye and scanned UNC’s campus for the fiftieth time from their position on the roof of Davis Library. “I’m doing what?”

“Mooning.”

Bastien snorted. “Last time I checked, my ass was still in my pants.”

“Not the drop your drawers and bend over mooning. The sighing as you fantasize about Melanie mooning.”

“Bollocks.”

“You’re infatuated with her. At the very least.”

Bastien thought about denying it, but . . . “Can you blame me?”

“No. But your distraction with her last night may have contributed to your not noticing the soldiers earlier.”

“So what was your excuse?”

He sighed. “I was distracted by Jenna.” He gave Bastien a rueful smile. “We’re a pair, are we not? Two hundred years old and behaving like we’re each caught up in a first crush.”