“I—I don’t know.” Erin was shaking so hard she could hardly answer him. “I th-thought I s-saw someone on the b-balcony—”
Slade was up and out the open French doors before she could finish the sentence. He came back moments later, shutting and locking the doors behind him. He bent over Erin, gently lifted her to her feet, then guided her toward the couch.
“Tell me what happened,” he demanded. “Every last detail.”
“I was asleep,” Erin said, trying to clear her mind and remember exactly what had just happened to her, “but I could feel this strange breeze in the room with me. It seemed almost…alive. It…touched me,” she whispered, looking away. “I know that sounds crazy.”
“Did you see anything outside? Anyone?”
There was a note of urgency behind his query. Erin’s eyes shot back to him, seeing a face that was at once strange, yet increasingly familiar; frightening, yet oddly comforting. Something stirred inside her. A restlessness she didn’t quite understand. She touched a trembling finger to her lips. “I saw a man. He wanted in—”
“He?”
“Roman Gerard,” Erin whispered.
“How do you know?” Slade gripped her arm until Erin winced and tried to draw away. He relaxed his hold, but his voice conveyed his tension. “I’m sorry. But think, Erin. How did you know it was Gerard?”
“I recognized his voice,” Erin said, her voice steadier. “I met him at the theater, before I went to the club.”
“You went there alone?”
“Yes. I had to see him,” Erin said, averting her eyes.
Slade swore under his breath. “The doors were open when I came in. This is important, Erin. Did you open them? Did you invite him inside?”
“No, but I—” She stopped as she began to remember more and more. The strange wind. The provocative whisper. The dark coercion. She closed her eyes in shame. She had almost invited him in. She hadn’t been able to help it. If Nick hadn’t come—
She opened her eyes and gazed up at him. “How did you know to come?” she asked. “How could you know that I needed you?”
Because I was afraid, Slade thought. But he said only, “I didn’t like the idea of your being here all alone.”
“I’m always alone,” she said bravely, but he could see that her hands were trembling. Her eyes were soft and blue and very inviting. Almost against his will, Slade’s gaze traveled over her. The wide neckline of her cotton nightgown emphasized her creamy shoulders, her sleek neck. Like a subtle invitation, like a promise whispered in the dark, her breasts lifted slightly as she drew a long breath.
Slade closed his eyes tightly. “Get some clothes on,” he said hoarsely.
“What?” Her hand flew to her neck, and Slade saw her fingertips caress the spot where the silver cross had once lain. It was dawning on her that its being gone truly did mean that she had no more defenses.
And neither did he, God help them.
“You can’t stay here alone tonight,” he said flatly, as he got up and moved back to the window. He stared into the night with a brooding frown, seeing in his mind’s eye the nameless, faceless shadows wandering the streets, waiting and watching for the unsuspecting. The innocent.
Roman Gerard, he thought. Not D’Angelo. At least now he knew he was dealing with a real entity, and not a ghost from his past conjured up by his guilt.
Behind him he heard Erin stir to life. She got up and crossed the room toward him. He didn’t turn around, but he knew she was behind him. He could smell lilacs and sunshine and the essence of innocence that emanated from her like the most seductive perfume. There was an erotic undercurrent to her scent now, as if something dark and powerful had been awakened inside her.
Slowly he turned and gazed down at her. “Get dressed,” he said again. “I’ll take you to my place for tonight. Gerard can’t come to you there. You’ll be safe.”
But would she be safe from him?
* * *
The moment she walked back into the living room, Erin could feel Nick’s brooding stare on her. She wore her own clothes this time—jeans and a sedate lavender blouse—but for some reason they didn’t seem to suit her anymore. Erin didn’t understand why her own clothes felt so foreign to her and Megan’s felt so right. She didn’t understand all these new feelings whirling around inside her, either. Or why she was drawn to a man who also frightened her.
Slade took the overnight bag from her, and Erin shrugged into her coat. Within minutes they were inside his car, speeding through the darkened streets. Erin was surprised to find that his apartment was located near the river, not far from the club they’d left earlier.
The area seemed even darker now, and more mysterious than ever. Slade pulled up to the front of a warehouse, activated the garage-door opener, then drove the car inside and lowered the door. Erin shivered as she stepped out of the car into a gloomy, cavernous room. A chill hung in the air as if the mist from the river had seeped through the cracks around the doors and windows. The warehouse reminded her of a tomb. Not that she actually knew what a tomb felt like, she thought, trying to suppress a shudder.
Slade’s hand on her elbow made her jump. “Sorry. Not much light down here. Watch your step.” But he seemed unaffected by the darkness. He still wore the dark glasses as he guided her deeper into the gloom.
Toward the back of the warehouse, the light completely gave out, and Erin lost all sense of direction. If not for Slade’s grip on her arm, she would have been hopelessly lost. As it was, she felt strangely excited.
Slade released her long enough to slide up the wooden panel at the front of a freight elevator. They stepped inside and he flipped the switch. Still in darkness, they began to ascend. Within seconds, the car bounced to a stop, the panel slid up, and they stepped directly into Slade’s apartment. “Home sweet home,” he murmured, turning on a lamp.
Though not as large as the room downstairs, the apartment still seemed huge, and the same chill pervaded the air. Erin tugged her coat more tightly around her as she walked slowly to the center of the room and looked around.
“I’ll try to get some heat going,” he said, disappearing into a shadowy hallway. When he returned, he’d taken off his coat. He wore jeans, black boots and one of the dark sweaters he seemed to favor.
Erin’s gaze lingered on him for a second too long. When her eyes lifted, she knew that he was staring back at her, and there was something about his expression that suggested he was not unaffected by her perusal.
“How about a drink?” he asked abruptly. “I think I have a bottle of brandy around here somewhere.” He moved off toward the kitchen, which occupied a modest corner of the huge room.
“Sounds good.” Erin wandered around the living area, fascinated by Slade’s home. The furnishings were sparse, consisting mainly of a battered leather sofa and chair, an intricately carved chest that looked like an antique and served as a coffee table, and one wall of crowded bookshelves. “You must read a lot,” she commented. It gave her a thrill of pride to see some of her own titles among his books. Erin had never exactly envisioned him as the type who spent long hours glued to a book, especially not foreign editions, as many of these were. “Do you speak all these languages?”
“A word or two here and there.”
It took more than a word or two to get through a five-hundred-thousand-word tome, Erin thought. She read through some of the titles. Many of them were books dealing with the supernatural. With vampires.
A chill of foreboding crept over her as she looked back at him. The dark glasses he wore seemed to mock her. “If you don’t believe that vampires exist,” she said slowly, “why do you have all these books about them?”
“If you don’t believe in vampires, why do you write about them?” he countered. He walked slowly across the room and handed her a glass. Erin took the drink and lifted the glass to her lips, craving the fortification. The liquid seared a path all the way down her throat, then raced through her veins. She coughed but almost imme
diately felt a pleasant little glow chasing away the chill. “That’s nice,” she said, taking another sip.
Slade reached for her glass. “I wouldn’t overdo it if I were you. This stuff can have a kick if you’re not careful.”
“Are you always so protective?”
He shrugged. “Comes with the job.”
“You don’t have to stay with me, you know. I can take care of myself.”
“So you keep saying. I’ve yet to see evidence of it, though.”
“I’m still alive, aren’t I?” she said testily.
“For the time being.”
God, he was cold, she thought. Like ice. Did he even have a heart? “Aren’t you on duty?” she asked thinly. “Don’t you have to get to work?”
“This is work,” he said. “Keeping you safe is now my first priority.”
“I’m flattered,” she said dryly, slipping out of her coat and draping it over the back of the chair. “As long as we’re both here for the duration then, we might as well talk about the case. You have to admit all this business about vampires seems to be a bit much for coincidence. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought the same thing.”
“What? That a vampire’s on the loose?” His deep voice taunted her.
“You don’t have to make it sound so totally insane,” she said, an edge in her voice.
She turned back to the bookshelves, skimming over the titles until her gaze lit on a small silver frame tucked into a corner of one of the shelves. Other than the books, it was the only personal adornment she’d seen in the apartment. She picked up the frame and, in the lamplight, studied the couple in the picture.
The young man’s arm was draped possessively around the girl’s shoulders as she smiled up at him in adoration. Obviously a couple very much in love, Erin decided. Then she realized with a jolt that the man was Slade, without his dark glasses. She lifted the picture closer, trying to see his eyes, but the photo had been taken from a distance, obscuring his face.
Erin glanced up. “Who is she?”
Slade’s face seemed even more shadowed than usual, even less expressive. “Her name was Simone.”
Simone. So that was her. Erin studied the girl’s long, flowing hair, her lovely, flawless face. She was very beautiful, but there was something disturbing about her….
“You obviously loved each other very much,” Erin said. She replaced the frame on the shelf and turned back to Nick.
“That was a long time ago,” he said. “In another life.”
“What happened?”
He lifted his glass and killed the remainder of the brandy, then said in a toneless voice, “She died.”
“I’m sorry.” He still clutched the empty glass, and Erin could see the scars that marred the back of his hand. “A fire,” she murmured, without thinking.
Slade’s gaze sharpened on her. “How did you know about the fire? Who told you?”
“No one. But the scars on your hand…I just assumed…” Her voice trailed off under his scrutiny. “What happened?”
He turned away from her. Erin saw him lift his hand and remove the dark glasses and rub his eyes wearily. She had the strongest impulse to go to him, to make him turn around so that she could look up and see, for the first time, the emotions that would be revealed in his eyes. She didn’t. Instinctively she knew he wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t sure she was, either.
He turned again, dark glasses in place. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“But I think it does,” she said softly. “I think it matters a great deal. Mr. Rubinoff said you started wearing those glasses after she died. Why?”
“The past is dead. Leave it buried.”
“But it isn’t, is it?” Erin said sadly. “Yours or mine.”
He walked to the window and stood staring out.
Erin came over and stood behind him. “I’d like to know about Simone,” she said quietly. “I think I need to know.”
He remained silent for so long that Erin thought he wasn’t going to tell her. Then he said in that dead voice, “It happened eight years ago. Simone and I had just gotten engaged when…she met someone else.”
“You must have been very hurt,” Erin murmured, not quite knowing what to say.
“Drake D’Angelo fascinated her,” Slade said, turning to face Erin, “from the first moment she saw him. She started acting differently, dressing differently. She thought about him day and night. Even when she was with me. Especially when she was with me.”
Erin wanted to touch him, connect herself with his pain. But he wouldn’t welcome the intimacy, and she knew she didn’t have the nerve to push it. So she said simply, “I find that hard to believe.”
His smile was bleak. “Do you?” He turned back to the window, staring out at the darkness. “She left me soon after she met him. I was angry and hurt. I went to confront them. There was a struggle. A fire broke out. Simone and Drake were both…destroyed.”
Destroyed. What a strange way of putting it, Erin thought. Where moments before the brandy had warmed her, now his words, hanging in the air as heavy as a lingering fog, chilled her to the bone. “There was a struggle. A fire broke out. Simone and Drake were both…destroyed.”
He wasn’t telling her the truth. Not the whole truth, anyway. What more was he hiding from her? What had really happened that night? Erin wondered with a shudder of unease. Why was the past—an accident—still tormenting him so? Unless…
“You think a policeman can’t become a coldblooded killer? Who knows what may have driven him over the edge? I’ll bet you anything that Detective Slade is a man with a very dark past. I advise you to stay away from him, Erin. He’s dangerous. You only have to look at him to know that.”
“It was an accident,” she said, almost fiercely, as if to deny her own conclusions. “You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
“Then who should I blame?” he asked with a harsh edge to his voice. “I failed her. I should have known what to do, but I didn’t. I didn’t know how to save her. Because of me, she had to die.” In spite of her previous resolve, Erin found herself reaching out to touch his arm. He flinched. “Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t get close to me, Erin.”
“I’m not Simone,” she said.
“And I’m not who you think I am. Don’t you understand? People are dying because of me. Women just like you.” He grasped her shoulders, holding her at arm’s length. “Damn it, stop looking at me that way.”
“What way?” Erin’s heart pounded inside her chest so loudly she thought she could hear the echo in the icy crypt of a room where they stood.
“Like you want this as much as I do,” he groaned, pulling her into his arms so fast Erin stumbled. He caught her, then crushed her to him, tunneling his fingers through her hair to turn her face up for his kiss. “God, it’s been so long,” he murmured huskily. “So very long since I’ve held someone like this.”
It was a desperate joining. An urgent attempt to wipe out the past. Erin trembled in his arms, telling herself that it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that he was trying to forget Simone. She had her own memories to erase. They could use each other. What would be the harm?
“This is wrong,” Slade said raggedly, when they finally had to break apart to breathe.
“Because of her?”
“Because of you.” His voice gentled as he caressed her face with one scarred hand. “I shouldn’t be touching you. Not like this. But I can’t help it.”
She might have resisted his passion, but not his longing. She might have denied his desire, but not his need. Not the loneliness and despair she sensed inside him, in the soul that mirrored her own. “Then don’t,” she whispered urgently against his lips, pulling his mouth back to hers. “Don’t fight it.”
His kisses were like nothing she’d ever known before. He teased her mouth open, then demanded her compliance. His body moved against hers, then commanded her response. Erin wanted to melt in his arms. He was a master of seduction, invading her mouth
and her heart and her soul with his shattering kisses.
At last he tore his mouth from hers, pulling her against him to cradle her head against his shoulder. She felt his lips in her hair, then heard him warn, “We have to stop this, Erin. Before it’s too late.”
“But I don’t want to stop,” she protested.
“Don’t you know what will happen?” he demanded. “If I kiss you one more time, if I hold you even for a minute longer, I won’t be able to stop. I’ll rip your clothes off right here and now, and I’m not even sure I can manage to be gentle.”
His words made her shiver all over. Made her ache with an arousal that was both wondrous and frightening. “Maybe I wouldn’t want you to be,” she whispered, amazed by her candor. She took a deep breath, her gaze searching the darkness of his face. “If we…if we make love, will that satisfy this longing? Will it make the past disappear? Will it be enough, Nick?”
“I don’t know.” His tone was bleak. “But I do know that I can’t offer you anything more. I want you, God knows I need you, but beyond tonight, I can’t have you, Erin. I want you to understand that.”
She said ruefully, “If we do this, you want my eyes wide open, is that it?”
“At least in the beginning.” She could hear the smile in his voice, and it surprised her. He surprised her. Fascinated her. Thrilled her.
She turned and gazed up at him. “Then perhaps we should both have a clear vision of the future,” she said softly and reached up to remove his dark glasses. She could tell when he tensed, but he didn’t try to stop her this time. Slowly Erin drew the glasses away from his face and stared up at him. Her heart pounded and her pulse quickened. “My God,” she breathed. “Your eyes…”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
His eyes. His beautiful, beautiful eyes. So light a shade of gray they appeared almost transparent, like bits of crystal ringed with smoke. They reminded Erin of a rainy night, of a storm brewing at sea.
His eyes. So revealing and all knowing. She could see his desire for her, his need to possess her burning in those crystalline depths, and it made her tremble with her own needs. Made her shiver with fear, because a part of her knew that when it was all over, she would never be the same again.
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