It didn't take him long. His arms came around her and he went still, his penis ramming between her fingers one last time before semen jetted all over her hand. She milked him with her fist until he sagged, and then she went down with him, curling up beside him, still holding him in her hand.

"You did not have to do that," he said when he could speak again.

"I don't have to do anything." Nick stared up at the stars. "I wanted to."

Sex had never felt less complicated, and she wanted more. She wanted him on top of her, in her mouth, riding her ass and squeezing her breasts. He was going to turn her into an animal.

She was thinking about doing it again. She'd just engaged in a mutual jerk-off session with a strange, injured vampire, and she couldn't wait to jump him a second time. What the hell was wrong with her?

"I'm sorry. That was"—what could she even call it?—"rude."

"You must be very rude to me, then. Several times. Every day. My God." He shifted and made a sound. "I had forgotten how it feels."

She'd pleased him. This beautiful man, who was everything she wasn't, who'd endured nothing but pain, had come for her. She'd given him that much. She'd remember it forever.

He groaned, and she thought of his raw wounds. "Did I hurt you?"

"Hurt?" He rolled toward her, covering her hand with his. "No, chérie, no. You make me forget what that is."

"Okay." She closed her eyes, helpless to stop the tears, glad that he couldn't see them. "Okay."

Chapter 10

"Will that be all, Mr. Cyprien?" the waiter asked as he finished placing the bottles of French wine in the rack behind the suite's wet bar.

"A moment, mon ami." Michael rested a hand on the man's shoulder, and watched his eyelids droop. "No need to speak of this delivery, or what you saw here. You will discard all records of it as well."

"No need." The man's head bobbed. "No records."

"Merci."

Marcella waited until the waiter silently exited before she came over and removed a sealed container from the refrigeration unit beneath the bar. Her movements, languid and negligent as they were, did not quite mask her restlessness. "When do we leave for Ireland?"

"Tomorrow night." He took the container from her and poured its contents, chilled human blood, into three crystal wineglasses. He diluted the thick fluid by adding a measure of burgundy. "If we are not discovered."

Phillipe joined them. In his hands he held reports faxed from Orlando. "Byrne has sent his trackers throughout the city. They have been unable to locate Alexandra's brother. There is no indication that anyone using his name or matching his description left the city."

John Keller had vanished on the day they had left America. Michael had suspected the former priest of walking out on their pact, until Byrne discovered that all of the security cameras in the parking garage had been disabled minutes before Keller had disappeared. As the Brethren did not know that Knight's Realm was owned and operated by the Darkyn, and Byrne controlled or monitored all transportation points around they city, that left only one possibility. "Richard arranged to have him taken."

"Keller may have chosen to abandon our cause," Marcella suggested. "He has no regard for the Kyn—"

"But he loves his sister, Cella, and he would not abandon her now." Michael handed one of the glasses of the bloodwine mixture to her. "Of that I am convinced. He would not leave except to go after her on his own."

"So Richard has him, and we must rescue both." She sipped from her glass and sighed. "The high lord still blames Keller for exposing your jardin in New Orleans, seigneur."

For the sake of his sygkenis, Michael had tried to protect the human priest from Richard's wrath by passing along the medical research Alexandra had been conducting on the Kyn. Ironically that research had resulted in her kidnapping.

"Under the present circumstances," Phillipe said, "Father Keller is worth more to the high lord alive than dead."

Marcella drained her glass. "Unless Richard discovers we are in England."

"That will not happen, madam," Phillipe assured her.

Michael and his seneschal had gone to great lengths to conceal their presence from Richard's suzerain and their border sentries. In addition to traveling mostly by day and using multiple false identifications, Michael had erased the memory of their arrival from the minds of every human with whom they came in contact since leaving America.

Usually Michael stayed at his private penthouse suite at the Savoy anytime he came to England, but they belonged to the suzerain of the London jardin. Michael had no desire to persuade Geoffrey into betraying his loyalty to the high lord. Instead, he had directed Phillipe to use contacts outside Geoffrey's influence to arrange accommodations, discreet transportation, and the other necessities for their journey.

Now Michael had to discover what he could about what was happening at Dundellan.

"I will question Father Leary now," he told his seneschal. "Make the final preparations for our journey." He glanced at Marcella. "Do you know how to use a computer?"

She arched a dark eyebrow. "I am Kyn, my lord. Not a Mennonite."

"Bon. Check the e-mail and see if Valentin has sent copies of the floor plans for Dundellan. If he has not, check the medieval Web sites to see if anyone has drawn or scanned them." He nodded toward the laptop Phillipe had connected at the suite's elegantly appointed workstation, and then went over to Leary.

Since being brought to the suite, the Brethren priest had been sitting and watching a soccer match on television. As Michael approached him, he looked up and smiled. "Yes, my lord?"

"I must speak with you, Orson." Michael sat across from him and took off his jacket. Each day he had been separated from Alexandra had made his scent had grow deeper and stronger, and now it filled the room with the fragrance of roses in the sun.

"Can you not read his mind?" Marcella asked as she booted up the laptop.

"No." Michael gazed into the calm, peaceful eyes of the Brethren interrogator, watching as the human's pupils dilated. "That is not part of my talent."

"Then how is it that you make them forget things?" she asked.

"I cannot erase memories; my gift only finds and conceals them," he corrected. "The memories remain masked until I choose to lift the suppression."

Dark eyes shifted to Leary's benign countenance. "And if you do not lift it?"

"The memories are lost to the human forever." He knew Marcella had an aversion to using talent, as hers was particularly powerful. Still, he could not spend the rest of his time in England catering to his second's prejudices. "We each have our gifts, Cella. Perhaps you will allow me to use mine now, so that we may learn what we can before we leave for Ireland."

Leary's expression remained placid as Michael focused on him, and his pupils fully dilated as he succumbed to l'attrait. "Roses. Pretty flowers."

"Yes, they are." The human appeared completely under his control now. "Tell me, Orson, what you do for the high lord Richard?"

"Anything he wants." Leary lifted his hands palms up. "Lord Tremayne commands; I obey."

"Do you pass information to him about the Brethren?"

"Once I did." Leary's eyes grew watery. "But no more."

"Why did you stop?"

"Lord Tremayne told me to leave, and then had his black-hearted beast kill my brothers in Dublin." His gaze wandered. "The Lightkeeper exiled me to London, and will tell me nothing now. I am almost useless."

"But you still serve the high lord." Until Lucan came to America, he had served as Richard's chief assassin. It would be all too like the high lord's twisted sense of justice to force a Brethren to serve as Lucan's replacement. "Do you kill for him?"

Leary shook his head.

"He knows nothing that will help us." Marcella came to stand behind the priest. "We should release him."

"If he does not serve as a killer or an informant, he has to be a procurer," Michael told him. He caught Leary's drifting attention. "Do you bring humans to the high lord's castle?"

"Four times a year," Leary said, his voice dreamy. "Twenty fresh ones, every quarter."

Marcella muttered something terse and ugly under her breath.

"Who do you take, Father Leary?" Michael asked.

"Scum of the streets." He smiled. "Runaways and whores and junkies. The ones no one sees, no one cares for, they are best. No one misses them."

Unseen energy rippled through the air. Overhead, plaster cracked, and a fine white dust rained down from the ceiling. At the same time, a swirl of gray silk came around the sofa.

Michael barely had time to catch Marcella's hand as she reached for Leary's throat.

Phillipe ran into the room. "Madam, no."

"Away from me." Marcella whipped her head to one side, and a marble-topped side table flew at the seneschal and exploded against his chest, knocking him to the floor. "This man is mine."

Michael tightened his grip. "No, Marcella."

"You heard him. He preys on the weak, the hyena." Marcella's dents acérées flashed, fully extended, and bits of plaster fell like tiny hail, salting her black curls. "Let me take him, my lord." The floor rumbled beneath their feet. "Give him to me!"

Michael slapped her. "Arrête."

The rain of plaster dust and rumbling abruptly ceased. Marcella pressed a slim hand to her cheek, her eyes wide.

"Je m'excuse," he told her softly.

"Il n'y a pas de quoi." She straightened and gestured toward the laptop. "Jaus has sent the floor plans. I… I must go and pray."

Phillipe got back on his feet and stepped out of Marcella's way as she strode out of the suite.