Curious, Montrose retook his seat and waited while Emrys entered a security code.

A beep sounded, followed by a click. Emrys opened the case and spun it toward Montrose. “This should aid you in achieving your goal.”

Montrose looked at the contents, then up at Emrys.

What did Emrys know that he didn’t?

Hot water sluiced down over Marcus as steam rose all around him. The wounds that hadn’t yet healed stung at the contact as though being inflicted anew. Blood, some sticky, some crusty, softened and liquified, trailing down his flesh like paint following an artist’s brush.

Bracing his hands on the tiled wall, Marcus ducked his head under the pounding spray. His long hair straightened beneath the assault and fell in a sleek, gleaming curtain.

The water pressure dipped. The temperature fluctuated, shifting from hot to warm. Above him, Marcus heard the clink of metal rings as Ami stepped into the shower in her private bathroom and drew the curtain closed.

He turned the hot water handle until it almost shut off, wanting Ami to have as much hot water as she needed. Besides, cooler water would do him some good. His body ached with the need to race upstairs, join her in her shower, and run his hands over her glistening flesh.

He groaned.

The drive home from Roland’s had been a quiet one. Expectation had vibrated between them, lingering until they had arrived and stood staring at each other in the foyer.

Desire had burned through Marcus as Ami gazed up at him with shy invitation. But her shoulders had drooped with weariness, her face had been smeared with blood, and … he needed to know the extent of her relationship with Seth before he considered taking things further.

Though Ami didn’t know it, the whole time they had been straining against each other on the sofa, Roland had been yammering in Marcus’s ear (a slight exaggeration—he had been whispering softly enough for his words to pass undetected by humans), asking Marcus why he was tonguing Seth’s woman.

You really are a suicidal bastard, aren’t you? he had demanded roughly. I had actually begun to have some hope for you, but … anyone stupid enough to grab Seth’s woman’s ass must have a death wish. And she is Seth’s woman. Every time I see the two together, they’re joined at the hip.

Marcus had been able to block Roland out while Ami wrapped her legs around him and heated his blood with her kisses.

Now, however, those words fluttered back and wouldn’t stop pecking at him.

He reached for the soap and lathered up a soft cloth.

If nothing else, imagining Ami wound around Seth succeeded in dampening his arousal and rid him of the erection he’d sported ever since her lips had touched his. Just the thought of it made his gut clench and his fingers curl into a fist he wanted to plant in Seth’s face.

Which would probably be the last thing he ever saw if it came to that. He had no illusions over which of the two of them would win in a fight.

Ami began to hum upstairs. Marcus smiled, then winced as he scrubbed one of his cuts too hard.

Roland must be mistaken. Ami wouldn’t have kissed him the way she had if she were Seth’s woman as Roland persisted in naming her. Even Seth had admitted she couldn’t lie worth a damn. And keeping a relationship with Seth from him would be one hell of a lie.

The water pressure increased suddenly as Ami shut off her shower. Metal rings clinked.

Don’t picture her naked. Don’t picture her naked. Don’t imagine her smoothing one of those fluffy, white towels over her pale, slick, perfect body.

And, just like that, he was hard again.

Sighing, Marcus turned off the hot water and embraced the frigid cold.

After five minutes of such torture, he dried off and covered his icy flesh with a dark gray T-shirt, a pair of black sweatpants, and socks.

He spent another couple of minutes working a comb through the tangles in his long hair, which he left to dry on its own. It took too damn long to dry it with a hair dryer.

Maybe he’d cut it short like Roland’s. It would certainly be less trouble.

He had only let it reach this length—had even grown a beard he’d kept until a couple of years ago—for Bethany.

Setting the comb on the counter, Marcus paused.

The pain that had always accompanied memories of Bethany had dulled significantly.

He frowned. Did that say something about him? Something negative?

Everyone else seemed to think eight years an inordinately long time to mourn Bethany’s loss, but to him it seemed short considering the eight centuries he had loved her.

One of the things that troubled him so much about Ami was that he feared he could come to feel for her what he had for Bethany. Maybe even more. With Bethany, after all, there had been no reciprocation of his feelings. No real chance to build upon those feelings, to know each other as a man and a woman rather than just friends. No intimacy at all. Not one single kiss.

Ami …

Ami blew Marcus’s mind. If he let her, she could be everything to him, including his undoing. Because she wasn’t a gifted one and couldn’t become an immortal. He would lose her.

It always came back to that.

He would lose her just as he had Bethany, only losing Ami would be worse. He had known her kiss. Her touch. Her innocent explorations.

And she did seem innocent, despite the fact that she appeared to be in her early twenties.

Marcus wondered if Roland had felt this conflicted with Sarah. If he had wanted to get as close as possible to her and, at the same time, run far and fast in the opposite direction.

Leaving his basement bedroom, Marcus headed upstairs. Though he called himself every kind of a fool, he found his morose thoughts falling away as every step took him closer to seeing Ami again.

“Sap,” he muttered.

But he couldn’t help it. He enjoyed spending time with her. When he reached the landing, Marcus opened the door to the ground floor and couldn’t stop the broad smile that stretched over his face.

Ami waited for him in the hallway, pacing back and forth. Like him, she had left her hair to dry on its own, merely combing it back from her face. The ends had already begun to lighten and draw up into curls that floated on the breeze her smooth movements created.

Her small bare feet trod the bamboo flooring with fascinatingly inhuman silence. Her clothing mirrored his: dark sweatpants that settled low on her hips and a matching T-shirt that hugged a slender waist and full breasts that swayed with each step despite the bra he could glimpse the outline of beneath the soft cotton.

As soon as she saw him, Ami leaped forward. “Finally!” Grabbing his hand, she took off down the hallway toward the front of the house.

Marcus grinned as she pulled him along after her.

No, he just never knew what she would do next.

His stomach fluttered as their palms merged and she twined her delicate fingers through his, reminding him how he had felt as a boy sneaking into the shadows to share his first kiss with the blacksmith’s daughter.

“Hurry,” she urged him, “before he leaves.”

He? Who the hell was he?

Marcus sent his senses searching as she swung him around the corner and tugged him toward the kitchen. His ears registered no vampire, immortal, or human on his property.

Into the kitchen she led him and over to the sink. Her sweet scent, free of perfumes, distracted him as she drew him up against her side.

“There,” she said, and pointed out the window.

Marcus leaned forward and peered into the night. Like most immortals, he lived apart from others in a relatively isolated location. No nearby neighbors. Only field and forest.

The years he had spent in the house next door to Bethany in her typical, middle class suburban neighborhood in Houston, Texas, had been—apart from the time he had spent with her—fairly miserable ones.

Living amongst the humans he protected hadn’t always been so. But, in recent decades, humans had become a noisy, inconsiderate lot, acquiring a narcissistic, fuck-you-I’ll-do-whatever-I-want-whenever-I-want-and-if-you-don’t- like-it-you-can-kiss-my-ass attitude, blasting music in their garages, on their back patios, and in their homes for hours on end and booming ludicrously loud music in their cars and trucks every time they drove past. It was an assault on the senses that raised blood pressure and eroded peace of mind in humans who still believed in practicing common courtesy and proved physically painful, sometimes agonizingly so, to immortals with hypersensitive hearing.

Those brave (or insane) few immortals who lived in cities and suburbs sometimes had to spend tens of thousands of dollars soundproofing their homes just to achieve some level of peace.

Thankfully, Marcus no longer had that particular problem, surrounded as he was by nature rather than humans.

Beside him, Ami leaned forward and flicked on the back lights installed purely for her benefit.

Marcus could see clearly without them and scoured the backyard, looking for predators of any kind.

The trees in the yard itself were young, planted in the meadow when his house had been built eight years ago. Little could hide behind them. Nothing moved in the much larger and thicker trees that horseshoed around the yard and house. No figures lurked on the back deck, seeking entrance.

He and Ami had transferred their combined multitude of potted plants into the garage the day before to protect them from the freezing temperatures that would blanket the area for the next few nights, leaving the deck sadly bare save for several hanging bird feeders, a bowl of birdseed on the wooden planks, and a small, furry creature that stood with one foot in the bowl.

“You see it?” Ami asked.

Marcus glanced at her, followed her gaze, and realized she was watching the creature stuff its furry face. “Yes.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“An opossum,” he said.

“Opossum,” she repeated, seemingly fascinated.

Marcus smiled. Like him, she had proven to be a softie when it came to animals. “Many people simply call them possums. They’re the origin of the saying playing possum.”

She glanced up at him. “I haven’t heard that one. What does it mean?”

“Playing dead. When an opossum is frightened badly enough, it will lie on its side with its mouth and eyes open and emit a revolting smell, dissuading predators who prefer fresh meat by convincing them it’s been dead for several days.”