I blinked a new scene into focus, my ears ringing from the sudden silence. Low-burning candles cast a puddle of watery gold light around a large bed, raised up several steps from the rest of the room. I had an impression of comfortable surroundings—dark wood, soft carpets and a lot of heavy antiques—but I couldn’t focus on them. All my attention was taken up with the body lying on the crumpled sheets, skin china-pale next to the chocolate-colored fabric. Dark blue shadows softened the clean, strong lines, draping them with a subtle beauty completely unlike electricity. Watching the flames run orange-gold fingers along Mircea’s muscles, I finally understood the allure of candlelight.

He’d unbuttoned his shirt but kept it on, and it was all he was wearing. It was plastered to him, the thin white fabric gone nearly translucent from the sweat that soaked it. I took in a swift succession of images, none of which did anything for my equilibrium: nipples drawn to tight points, stomach muscles quivering, hips slick and straining, eyes liquid amber.

His body, already taut with pain, suddenly shuddered and twisted violently. His back arched, throwing out his chest, flexing every muscle until it looked as though his spine would break. His fingers splayed across the damp sheets helplessly, his thighs trembling as if he’d just finished a marathon. His head craned back against the mattress, teeth clenched, the tendons in his neck standing out starkly. I stared at him with a heart-squeezing ache that made me want to grab him and cling, as if that would somehow keep him safe. Instead of damning us both.

His limbs finally went slack and he sprawled on his back, still breathing hard, shivers racking him for long minutes. A few locks of glossy dark hair had stuck to his throat. Other than his eyes and the pale blue veins visible just under the skin, they were his only color.

His face was free for once of its usual pleasant mask and he looked desperately hungry, almost feral. His eyes were wide open, focused intently on the ceiling, and he was muttering something in a hoarse, indistinct voice. Then he paused, hands fisting in the damp sheets beneath him. There was a smear of blood on his lips from where he had bitten them in the seizure. He licked it away as that sharp gaze flicked about the room. Although I wasn’t actually there, although he couldn’t possibly see me, I was suddenly speared by a pair of feverish, fire-lit eyes.

“Cassie.” My name was half caress, half groan.

I found myself at the top of the steps, as if his voice had summoned me. I didn’t panic—visions are not exactly unusual for me—but this one communicated something more than mere images. I could feel everything: the slick wood of the bedpost, fragrant with beeswax; the heavy brown velvet bed curtains, trapped by a soft satin cord, and the silken fringe that edged them, sliding softly over my knuckles. I’d never had that happen in a vision.

It slowly dawned on me that I might have accidentally shifted, although that seemed impossible. Since becoming Pythia, I’d had the power under my control, not vice versa. I decided where I went, and when. I started to move back when a shaking hand lifted and slid up my thigh, feverishly warm against my skin. Of course, I could be wrong.

Mircea’s hair hung limp and snarled and his cheekbones stood out sharply under bruised-looking flesh. Despite the solidity of his body, he looked worn. But the eyes were the same—burning, glittering, dangerous. The intensity in them caused me to decide that maybe I should panic a little after all, especially when my skin started prickling, and not with fear.

With no warning, my legs went out from under me. I fell into a depression already warm from his body, his scent clinging to everything like a drugging haze. The musk of it was almost a taste, surrounding me with something dark and sweet and wild. It jumbled my thoughts, my brain trying to catalog too much at once: the sheets, crisp old-fashioned linen, so finely made that they might have been silk; dust specks glittering in the candlelight like gold dust; a few drops of sweat falling from Mircea’s hair and landing on my cheeks like tears; and the weight of his body over me, his thigh pressing between my legs, firm and blood warm.

He took my mouth hard, teeth and lips almost savage. He bit my lower lip until it stung, then licked the marks with quick motions that soothed only enough to leave me even more sensitive for the next bite. He growled against me, the words meaningless but the thought clear as crystal: Mine.

Just when I decided that there was nothing in the world but that skillful mouth, he started shaping my body with his hands, sliding over my hips and stomach, up to my breasts and shoulders, then to my throat and down again. The thin PVC conducted warmth almost as well as bare skin; every touch burned, every possessive sweep of his hands said mine without the need for words.

I’d been living with the hunger the geis caused for so long that I’d almost become used to it, almost forgotten how satisfaction felt, until the heat of his touch reminded me. His fingers tightened with bruising strength, but I barely noticed. Another teasing bite was followed by a slow, caressing kiss. My eyes slipped dreamily closed as I was marked with lips and teeth and the addictive slide of his hands.

His feelings resonated through the bond as loudly as if he’d spoken, and I could feel him hard above me. It hurt that we were still apart, still separate beings when the geis wanted us one. It was a deep, hollow ache, like hunger that has gone beyond starvation, past where the need is a pang to become a long, gnawing nothingness. I’d never known hunger like that for food, but I recognized it anyway. Hunger can have so many forms.

I’d spent my whole adult life starting over. I’d been constantly on the run from someone, Tony or the Senate or the Circle, never staying too long in the same place, never getting to know people because I’d soon be moving on again, leaving them behind. I’d learned not to want things, not to try to hold on to anything, because if I got used to it being there, it would be that much harder when I had to let it go. I’d watched person after person with paranoid eyes, keeping them all—potential friends, enemies, lovers—at a safe, painful distance. And all the while, the hunger grew, for someone who would stay, someone permanent, someone mine.

And now the geis was whispering, so seductively, that I could have it all: Mircea, a family, a whole world that I understood and that understood me. I might be human, but I didn’t think like one. I hadn’t realized how much I didn’t until these last few weeks, when I’d been lost in a sea of human magic that made no sense, in human reasoning I couldn’t follow and in human quarrels that might end up destroying me. I had a sudden, intense longing for cool skin, calm voices, and ancient eyes. For home.

Only I didn’t have one of those anymore. It was just so me, I thought bitterly, stroking the sharp lines of his cheekbones with my thumbs. The only place I truly felt at home was the last place I could ever go.

My hands buried themselves in his hair, even while my brain tried to treat this like all the things I’d ever wanted and not been allowed to have. But my usual compartmentalizing and compromising weren’t working. Nothing about me wanted to hear “later” or “wait” or “too dangerous,” not with dark strands running through my fingers, wrapping like a silken restraint around my wrist, just as soft as they looked, and beautiful, so incredibly beautiful.

I explored his body while hunger and a deep possessiveness battled it out with a lifetime’s caution. I wanted this, so badly. My hands shook as they rode the curve of his legs to the hollow of his knees, the crest of his thighs. It wasn’t enough and it was too much. I badly needed to get out of there, but I’d never wanted to stay so much in my life.

I caught his shirt, shoved it down his arms. His shoulders were broad enough to make me stretch to bare them, the muscles knotted with tension as my hands slid over them, sweat slicking my palms. I could have this, I argued with myself, just for a minute, a few stolen seconds before I did the smart thing and got out of there.

I stroked up his biceps to the hard wings of his collarbones and the strong column of his neck. Mircea was all long, sleek lines, the angles softened by lean muscle, the classic body of a runner, a swimmer, a fencer. I reached his cheek and followed the line of his jaw, where a muscle quivered helplessly, to lips that opened beneath my touch.

His tongue slid across my fingers the way his voice had shivered across my skin as I traced the curve of that full lower lip. Our eyes met, and I felt like I could fall into that amber gaze for weeks if I let myself. I expected him to kiss me, but his lips found my collarbone instead, mouthing it lightly, his tongue sliding along the bone before moving back up to explore the vulnerable skin of my throat.

Teeth brushed against me, a small sensation precisely where a vampire would bite, but I felt no fear. Unstuck, unmoored, floating almost gravity-free, but not afraid. He withdrew slightly, his tongue making a slow, possessive glide, right over my pulse, and I once again felt teeth. They weren’t the dull blade of a human’s, but a razor-sharp reminder of what, exactly, was in bed with me. But I still wasn’t worried. Because Mircea never bit me.

Only he’d gripped the flesh over the jugular, just hard enough for me to feel it, and he wasn’t letting go. It was a light sensation, no pain, but my pulse was beating hard against the pressure of his lips and there was a claustrophobic ache when I swallowed. “Mircea,” I began, and felt fangs slide into my flesh.

For a frozen moment, my heart stuttered in my chest, torn between pounding its way through my rib cage and stopping altogether. But I couldn’t concentrate on what his lapse in control might mean because the pain was immediately followed by a weightless swell of pure need. He was grinding our hips together as his teeth sank deeper, bright agony broken by strobing flashes of intense pleasure, everything bleeding into a surreal wave of sensation that rose and fell with each sinuous move of his body.

I started making these sounds—high, strangled whimpers and faint little gasps that didn’t sound like me at all. I arched as Mircea began to feed, the sensation rippling through me with an almost audible sizzle. It seemed to free some part of me that had been stretched too tight for too long, like an elastic band pulled beyond its limits. It finally broke with a snap I felt all the way to the bone, as if a dislocated joint had suddenly popped back into place. The sheer rightness of it caught my breath, hummed through my veins, telling me that I belonged here, right here, only here. I gasped in wonder, indescribable tension flowing out of me as I relaxed into Mircea’s embrace.