“Last night, I dreamed about you.” His words were a low growl as he leaned closer to her.

The noise from the bar drifted into the room. The blaring beat of music. The scents of sex, blood, and booze.

“You stared right at me, then you stabbed me.”

His bad memories weren’t going to make things any easier.

“So maybe you should tell me why I shouldn’t just pay you back for that right now.” His breath blew lightly over the sensitive skin of her neck. “And end you.”

She shook her head, sending her long hair sliding over her shoulders. “Please . . .”

“Oh, I like it when you beg.”

Actually, he did. But that was another story.

“So you’ve had dreams.” Cassie started talking, fast, because she had seen him incinerate a man before. She didn’t want that same fate. “Well, I’m your key. I know you. Every dark spot in your mind? I can shine the light and show you—”

His mouth was just inches from hers. Inches? More like an inch. “What are you going to show me?”

“Everything,” she whispered, promised. “I can tell you the secrets of your life. I can tell you who you are, if you’ll just trust me.”

His gaze searched hers. Some people thought that his eyes were just dark—mirroring his black soul, but they were wrong. There were flecks of gold hidden in his eyes. You just had to look hard and deep enough to see them.

“Why should I trust a woman who’s killed me before?”

“Because I’ve saved you, too.” She’d risked so much to save him. “Believe it or not, you actually owe me.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Her lips trembled.

His gaze dropped once more to her mouth.

“Dante . . .”

He kissed her.

She hadn’t been expecting the move, and when his lips closed over hers, shock froze her for a moment. Then she realized—Dante.

Her lips parted eagerly for him, and the wall that she’d built to hold back her need for him started to fracture. His tongue pushed into her mouth. Not sampling, but taking, and it was just like she remembered. He kissed her, she wanted. Lust tore through her, and her wrists twisted in his grip because she wanted to touch him.

She wanted—

His head lifted. His eyes blazed down at her, the gold starting to heat. “I remember . . . your mouth. Your taste.”

She’d never been able to forget his kiss. He’d been the first man that she ever kissed. The first to make her feel like she belonged to someone.

A someone who sometimes seemed to hate her.

“You can trust me,” she whispered, desperate to make him believe her.

He gave a hard shake of his head. “No, that’s the last thing I can do.” He moved away from her, leaping back.

For an instant, she didn’t move. His eyes were on her, sweeping from the top of her hair down to her small sandals. He seemed confused. Yeah, well, so was she.

Don’t kiss me and jerk away. She didn’t have the damn plague.

“I woke up a week ago,” he told her quietly, his voice still making her ache. “In an alley that had been scorched. I was naked, and there were ashes all around me.”

Her heart beat faster as she straightened on the table. “What happened to me?” he demanded.

“Dante, I—”

“Is that my name?”

The memory loss seemed more severe than it had been in the past. “Y-yes. That’s what you told me to call you.” But was it really his name? She wasn’t sure. He’d never confessed too much about his life—at least, not his life before he’d come to be a prisoner.

“How did I get in that alley?”

She pushed away from the table. Her knees were trembling so she locked them as she faced him. “I don’t know. The last time I saw you, you were down in New Orleans.”

A faint furrow appeared between his brows. He appeared to be a man in his prime, maybe close to thirty-four or thirty-five, but the truth was that Dante was much, much older.

There was a reason he’d been called the Immortal at the facility.

“New Orleans?” He yanked a hand through his hair. “What was I doing down there?”

That was an easy answer. “Saving my life.”

His hand fell. Suspicion was on his face as he asked, “Are you sure I wasn’t trying to kill you?”

Actually, no, she wasn’t. But she was still breathing, and if he had truly wanted her dead, she’d be ash.

His enemies had a way of ending up as ash drifting in the wind.