J. Geissinger - Edge of Oblivion

Nothing. He found nothing of her, not even a trace of her scent. Not at the Barberini Fontana di Trevi station, not at the baroque masterpiece fountain of Triton plashing in the plaza above, not along the elegant and bustling Via Veneto, not in the shopping districts or the labyrinth of tiny streets built in the Middle Ages of the Piazza Navona.

She was gone. Vanished.

And she didn’t even have the Gift of Vapor to explain it, though she was collared and wouldn’t have been able to turn anyway. He flew high over the city, district after district passing by below in blurs of painted color, his fury with himself increasing with each passing second.

A known criminal. A threat to the tribe. A pawn of the enemy. How could he have let her escape?

When the light showed faintly green along the eastern horizon, he finally gave up. He flew back to the Colosseum and resumed his human shape, retrieved his clothes and crescent knives, dressed, then took a taxi back to the Hotel de Russie, all the while trying to figure exactly what he would say to Leander and the Sommerley Assembly.

So sorry, but I’ve lost the one person who could destroy us all. Oops?

Somehow he didn’t think that would be sufficient.

At the hotel he brushed past the bowing doorman and took the elevator to the top floor. Once outside the door to the Nijinsky suite, he didn’t even bother with the key. He just Passed through it, clothes and all, and came to an abrupt stop inside the marble foyer.

A softly breathing bump was burrowed into the king-size bed.

Someone was sleeping in the bed .

Just as the thought flashed over him and he reached for his knives, he smelled her, warm sugar and woman, and froze in disbelief.

She came back.

She came back .

It kept repeating in his head like a broken record, anchoring him to the floor with the sheer impossibility of it. Then another, even more confounding thought: Why?

Freedom was hers. She’d—inconceivably—outwitted him, she had the resources to orchestrate her escape to any far corner of the earth, but she came back. The relief that surged through him was cool and prickling, as palpable as rain. It was followed by a gripping desire to know exactly what made this dangerous, maddening, lovely woman tick.

Without making a sound, without turning on any lights, Xander crossed the elegantly furnished living room and went into the master suite to stand beside the bed. He stared down at her sleeping face for several minutes, just watching her. Her hands were folded beneath her cheek as if in prayer; her lashes made a silken black curve over her cheeks. Her hair spilled dark chocolate and mink over the pillows; those full lips, ever red even without lipstick, were soft and slightly parted. She looked beautiful and innocent and totally at peace.

He would be well within his rights to kill her now and not wait the two weeks.

No , he thought immediately. No. That body, that face, those plush ruby lips...no.

Then he cursed his own stupidity and wondered what the hell was wrong with him. She was a deserter! She was a traitor! She was... beautiful . Mysterious. Strong.

He closed his eyes, stretched his neck back, and hissed a long, quiet breath through clenched teeth. Then he retreated to the safety of a leather armchair, set diagonally across from the bed in a corner of the room, removed his knives from their sheaths at the small of his back, and settled back with one gripped in each hand, to wait.

When Morgan opened her eyes in the morning, Xander was standing at the edge of the bed, staring down at her with searing, molten eyes. Clutched in his hands was a pair of wicked-looking knives.

She sat up so abruptly the goose-down pillows slid off the bed. Even as she looked around wildly for something to stab him with—the pen on the night table, yes!—he was backing away, lowering his hands to his sides.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He seemed to mean it because he retreated as far as the bedroom door before he put his hands behind his back and sheathed the knives at his waist. Then he stood there looking at her silently with his hands loose at his sides.

“Excellent plan,” she said, heart thundering, “because standing over a sleeping person while holding knives is very non scary.”

No response. The way he looked at her, searching and burningly intent, brought the blood to her cheeks. She pulled the sheets up to her chin and stared defiantly back.

“You came back.” His voice was different than yesterday. Just as grave, but softer somehow.

“I never left,” she answered, cross. “I just...I just...”

He cocked his head in a sharp, birdlike movement that brought to mind a raptor she’d once seen hunting a white rabbit in the New Forest. It hadn’t ended well.

She stood, pulled the sheet from the mattress, and wrapped it around her body. She wore a camisole and panties and nothing else and suddenly felt very exposed. “I’m starving. I think breakfast is in order before we get started.”

He frowned at her as if she were speaking in a foreign language and let his searing gaze drift over the sheet, puckered to folds in her fist. “Started,” he repeated, his voice gone husky.

The blood in her cheeks flamed hotter. He looked starving, too, but perhaps not in quite the same way she was. The thought unnerved her. “With our little mission here.”

He blinked. His gaze traveled back to her face.

“Finding the Expurgari,” she articulated when he still didn’t speak.

One of his eyebrows lifted and, surprisingly, so did one corner of his mouth. “Oh. That. I thought you might have meant get started with gloating .”

Her lips quirked. “I think I had my fill of that last night, while I was...” getting my tattoo , she almost said, but thought better of it. Her free hand drifted down to trace the sore flesh on her hip, and his eyes followed the movement, avid. “Sightseeing,” she finished.

They stared silently at one another. Outside in the pink flush of dawn, church bells began to toll, beautiful and melancholy. Sunlight streamed pale gold and glittering through the slit in the silk curtains to pool on the carpet between them, so bright it almost hurt her eyes.

“Are you going to run away again?” His voice was oddly courteous. It made her suspicious.

Perhaps he was having a laugh at her expense.

“Only if you leave any more rude notes,” she shot back, then swept around the end of the bed, headed for the bathroom. She paused at the door and looked back at him over her shoulder.

“No,” he said, quite serious. “I won’t.”

“Well, good then.” She still wasn’t sure if he was mocking her. But the way he looked at her was not mocking at all. His expression was at once grave and faintly confused, ineffably curious.

And...hungry.

A surge of heat passed between them, bright as danger. It made her take a step back, beyond the bathroom door. The marble was a cold shock beneath her feet.

“Ah, do you mind if I...?” She gestured to the shower, being careful not to allow her hand to shake.

“Of course,” he said, inclining his head. He stepped back, too, into the living room. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

That , she thought, firmly closing the bathroom door, is exactly what I’m worried about .

Morgan was under much better control by the time breakfast was served.

The café was quaint and sunny, situated directly across from the Keats-Shelley Memorial House at the base of the Spanish Steps. It boasted an excellent view of the terraced garden staircase with its fuchsia riot of ruffled azalea beds, the imposing Renaissance bulk of the Trinità dei Monti church perched at the top, and the tourists that flocked past on the Piazza di Spagna like so many chattering, exotic birds. It was Xander’s choice; he had guided her to it with one hand held lightly under her elbow the entire four-block walk from their hotel.