He had not expected her to like the situation, or to give him any significant amount of assistance. But her refusal to believe what he had told her, coupled with her endless derision, had set him on edge. Even so, he made allowance for that. Chris was an intelligent, resilient woman. She would adjust and come to accept what had to be.

Or so he had thought until she hit him.

Robin's head snapped back as her fist struck his jaw. She could not hurt him, not with her mortal strength, but he saw pain fill her eyes as she cradled her bleeding hand.

That she would injure herself trying to hurt him infuriated him as much as the scent of her blood aroused other feelings inside him.

"You did better with my dagger." He seized her by the arms. "Shall I retrieve that for you while you still have one hand working well enough to hold it?"

Chris swept her foot behind his legs, using it to unbalance him. He held her as he went down, landing on his back with her on top of him. She flipped away from him, kicking him in the side, and he tore off her shoe trying to catch her foot.

"Are you through?" he shouted.

"Why?" she yelled back. "Is it time for the directions?"

"What are you prattling about, woman?"

"You know exactly what I mean." She turned and looked at him through the hair hanging over her face. "Is this when you make me kill myself, the way you did Norman?"

"What? Who?"

"Norman DeLuca, my partner in Chicago." She scrambled to her feet, picked up his bow case, and heaved it at him. "Don't you remember? He was in that downtown bank you tried to rob."

Robin caught the case and set it aside. "I've never robbed a bank in Atlanta." He started after her.

"Don't you lie to me," she snapped as she retreated. "We found one of your arrowheads imbedded in a wall. I've seen what you can make people do. I know what you did to Norman."

"I don't bloody know any Norman DeLuca, you silly twit." He snatched at her when she dodged around him, ripping her jacket.

Chris shoved a sofa between them as she told him the date of the robbery and the address of the bank. "Now do you remember him?"

Robin stopped chasing her as the details finally rang a bell. "I didn't rob that bank. I used the old underground tunnels to break into the vault so I could retrieve the manuscript—"

"Oh, more borrowing?"

"—but that was my only reason for being there." He met her angry gaze. "The man who was robbing it escaped."

"Yeah." She braced her arms against the back of the sofa. "That would be you."

"No, it was the other man. Describe this Norman to me." He listened as she snapped out the details. "Wait. He was the sod who held them up. I stopped him from killing the hostages, but when the authorities stormed the building he vanished." He glared at her. "He was also alive when he nicked out of there. I didn't touch him."

"He was dead an hour later." She turned her back on him and walked to the windows. "He blew his head off. Because you told him to while he was hypnotized. You controlled him. The same way you did that customs agent and that cop back in Atlanta. The way you've been trying to with me."

"I never commanded him to do anything to harm himself. I only said…" Robin paused and dragged his hand through his hair. "Wait. It may have been the last thing I said to him. He was still under my influence."

She whirled around. "What did you say to him? 'Go blow your head off'?"

"I told him it was time to put an end to this." Robin moved to the window before she could react and caught her by the waist. "I meant the violence and the robbery, Chris. Not his life. It's not as if he wore a sign around his neck saying that he was suicidal."

"You bastard." She tore away from his hands, reaching for the vase he had admired. He lunged, knocking her to the carpet, but she rolled out from beneath him before he could pin her. He grabbed the back of her skirt, using it to drag her back, whipping his head to one side as she smashed the vase against his skull.

Robin shook the glass shards from his face and hair before he gave her a grim smile. "Stop breaking the signorina's pretty things. I promised her we would take good care of them."

She gave an outraged cry as she threw herself at him, pummeling him with both hands, striking him in the face and chest, pelting him with tiny drops of her blood.

Robin stayed on his back but wrapped his arm around her, tightening it until she could not wriggle free. He felt her jerking at the front of his trousers, and with his free hand he ripped off the remains of her skirt. As she freed his cock, he tore at her panties until she was naked from the waist down.

Robin slid into Chris at the same instant she impaled herself on him. The rough joining caused their hip bones to collide, and the jolt rocked through both of them, spurring them on. She clawed his shirt open to get at his chest, and he dug his fingers into her bottom, twisting her atop him so that he felt every soft, wet inch of her caressing him.

Robin swore as he felt her teeth on his flat nipple and her nails raking over his ribs. He grabbed her hair and forced her head up.

"You waste your time and energy, my lady. My flesh cannot be pierced by the teeth of a mortal." He allowed her to see his fangs. "You need these to tear into it."

"That's it." She lifted herself until their sexes separated, and would have gotten to her feet if he hadn't held on to her. "I'm done with this. I am done with you. So take your fake little plastic fangs and shove them."

"These are my dents acérées," he snarled. "They are quite real, I assure you."

"All right, then. Do it." She extended her arm. "Go on. Bite me, suck my blood, whatever. Prove to me that you're a vampire right now." When he didn't move, she sneered, "Go ahead. You might actually draw some blood. I've had an HIV test. I'm clean."

Robin kept his eyes locked with hers as he seized her wrist and brought her forearm to his face. He breathed in her scent and traced the veins running beneath her skin with the tip of his tongue. When he felt her shudder, he lifted his mouth an inch above her flesh and then buried his fangs in her.

Chris inhaled sharply.

He drank from her, swallowing once, twice, and then lifted his mouth from the puncture wounds his fangs had made. "There. It is done."

Chris had not cried out or said anything while he had fed on her, and now she stared at him, her eyes wide. "They are real." She touched his lips. "Unless… are they implants?"

"After I feed they retract. See for yourself." He guided her fingers to the sharp tips so she could feel them retreat into the twin recesses in the roof of his mouth. "Implants cannot do that."

She stroked her fingertips gently over the open apertures before she took her hand away. "No, they can't."

He didn't have to ask her if she believed him. He could see it in her eyes, her innocence gone, crushed by the truth. He thought he saw pain as well, and realized only then that he had taken her without any preparation. "Forgive me for hurting you. It seems you are immune to my scent, so I could not bespell you first."

"It didn't hurt that much." She turned her arm from right to left. "Everything else you said is true, isn't it? About being a vampire or whatever you are. About Norman and the bank."

He nodded.

"He left his suicide note for me. He told me that he'd let the Magician get away, and that he was too tired and sad to start over." She dragged in a deep breath. "He told me not to grieve for him. Because of that note, all the guys in the Chicago office thought we were sleeping together."

"But you weren't."

"No, the only guy I've slept with in the last couple of years is you. So what does that make me?" Her gaze moved from her wounds to his face. "Food. Food that you have sex with. Oh, Jesus." She put her hand over her eyes. "That's why you blindfolded me that night. Why I tasted blood when you came back and I kissed you." She stiffened. "You didn't get it from me. Who did you bite? One of the girls in your harem?"

"I do not have a sodding harem. I took what I needed from my stores. Bagged blood, Chris. The same as you'd get in a hospital." Robin brought her down against him and held her until some of the stiffness left her body. "You are not food to me. We do not think of humans in that manner. We need only a little blood to sustain us. We do not kill for it."

"Then what do you need me for?"

There was a terrible bleakness in her eyes. The despair of someone who had seen too much truth and known too little tenderness.

"It rhymes with Chris." He brought her up, sliding her over him until he could reach her lips. She hesitated, and then groaned and opened her mouth for his.

Before, they had gone at each other like animals; now Robin wanted only to take her back to the night when she had come to him, willing and curious and oh, so passionate. He lifted her and carried her to the back of the apartment, into the signorina's bedroom, where he placed her like a jewel on the thick red-and-gold velvet duvet covering the bed.

"Pretty." She stroked the material. "We shouldn't use her bed."

"She does not need it, and I am not making love to you on a floor covered with broken glass." He pulled off his clothes and bent to remove the rest of hers.

"Making love." Her expression turned bemused. "Is that what we're doing?"

He smiled down at her. "Move over and see."

She rolled onto her side as he joined her, and stroked his arm with her hand. "I'm human; you're not. I'm a federal agent; you're an international art thief. I'm going to grow old and die; you're going to stay young and live forever. You have a harem, probably three or four, and I have… This is never going to work."

"I do not have a harem." His hair tickled her cheek as he kissed the edge of her jaw. "What do you have?"