She dropped to the floor and brushed her hands. "There." She unknotted her skirts in the dim light. When she looked up, he had managed a smile.

"I've never seen a girl do that."

"I expect not, with the insipid kind of girls you probably fancy." The bulge of muscle at his biceps, the hard planes of his chest and the ribbed abdomen were hypnotizing. Maybe he could compel her, in some ways. She wouldn't look lower. But she couldn't escape the impression of a dark nest of hair at his groin to match the hair in his armpits and the light spray across his chest. G.o.d, what was she that she could so desire a man who was injured? Taking herself firmly in hand, she removed the hairpin from her collar at the nape of her neck, and held it aloft. "And now for these shackles."

Elyta's words came back to her. Should she release him?

She shook herself mentally. He was Gian. And if she was anything, she was an excellent judge of character. He was arrogant and intelligent and maddening. But he was not violent toward women. Indeed, he had been kinder to her than anyone in her life.

She descended upon him, determined to ignore the throbbing inside her that he evoked.

"I never knew what accomplishments I should... desire in a woman."

"I'll wager sleight of hand or breaking and entering were not at the top of your list." She worked the lock until the mechanism clicked. "Now you can move around our little cell to escape whatever sun gets past that fur."

"It won't matter. She'll be back tonight." Despair lurked in his eyes.

There were things she had to know, since he was so weak. He was too big for her to carry or drag. "What effect would going out now have on you?"

He took a breath. "I'd burn in seconds." He shook his head. "Normally I'm old enough to go out in the sun briefly. We toughen with age. But right now I'm... I'm fairly weak."

That was an understatement, "With clothes?"

"Noticeably absent."

"With clothes?" she insisted.

He closed his eyes as though he didn't care to argue anymore. "I'd burn less."

She wasn't going to subject him to any more torture than she must. How much was that? "If we wait until late afternoon?"

"Kate, we're not going anywhere." He looked at her expression and relented. "But late afternoon is better."

All right. Late afternoon. The later, the better. But not too late. When would Elyta rise and come for him? Her mind was racing.

Luigi would be gone. Either he had returned to Firenze, or he and the groom were dead. She and Gian were alone against Elyta and her crew. She was only human, and Gian hardly more and maybe less right now. She took his hand and felt the thrill of touching him. But his flesh was cold even though the early mornings of May were warm. It was a mark of his poor condition.

How could she give him strength?

She sucked in a breath as she remembered the contessa's restorative. Kate knew what would help Gian. Human blood. And they had some of that. It was running in her veins.

That's why Elyta said he was dangerous to her. He needed Wood. She found herself blinking rapidly as the voices inside her argued back and forth.

You can't be thinking of giving him your blood!And how else is he going to be strong enough to escape by this afternoon ?

Maybe he just needs rest.

She looked at him, haggard and shivering. You know that's not enough.

But what if he sucks you dry?

You got yourself into this mess, Katie my girl, and now you'd better have the courage to get out of it. Giving him your blood is better than failing both of you entirely. She wasn't going to admit failure. She'd come for Gian, and she was going to leave with him.

No matter what that took. Giving him blood was the lesser of two evils.

She chewed her lip. Could she just... offer that? Here, have some of my blood. And how would he get it? She had no knife to slit her wrist.

Oh, G.o.d. He didn't take it like the contessa from a German pewter tankard. She had seen him getting his blood in a tavern from that serving girl. He bit her neck. And vampires had fangs. He didn't have fangs now, but somehow he got them. That's how that serving girl got twin puncture wounds just over the artery in her neck.

Very well. Pressing her lips together in determination, she curled beside his naked body.

"No," he protested. "No."

"You're cold. I can warm you."

"I'm not... safe." His hot breath hissed in and out. It bathed her neck in his scent, more man now than cinnamon and that something else that was sweet. "You don't know..."

"But I do." She slid her arm under his neck and pulled him to her. "Your mother took blood when she was weakened by the stone to help her recover. Wouldn't it help you?"

He didn't answer. "I'm depleted. I might take too much."

"Let me worry about that." Fear wound round her spine. She remembered his strength when he hurried her across town to his house in Rome even when he was horribly burned. Still, what other way was there? "You need strength if we're to get out of here." She lifted her chin.

But wait, didn't the children's stories say that you became a vampire yourself if a vampire bit you? Or was that a werewolf?

Maybe that was the danger Elyta meant. She didn't want to become something that needed human blood to survive. She could ask him, but did she really want to know? Because she was going to do this anyway, no matter if she became a monster or not.

She was going to do it for Gian, who was not a monster, even though he needed human blood. She steeled herself and drew him closer.

His breath was hot on her throat as he struggled with himself. He gave a low moan, and she felt the vibrations that had been quiescent now throb slowly in the air. They were not as electric as they once had been, but they were there. "Yes," she breathed, though inside she was trembling. She stroked his hair and eased him even closer to her throat.

His lips brushed the flesh of her neck and sent goose-flesh down her right side. But she did not draw back. The fear, his nearness, his scent, all combined into a brew of antic.i.p.ation, and... sensuality. Her blood began to pool in her center, leaving her almost light-headed.

The twin pains were not unexpected, but she jerked a little in reaction. His amis came round and held her to his body. He began to suck. Horror drained away. All that mattered was the feel of his body moving against hers in matching rhythm to his sucking.

"Kate," he murmured against her neck. "Kate." And the word was not a paean to hunger, but a caress. She arched into him, and the feel of her blood pounding inside her matched the rhythm of his lips, sucking, caressing her neck. That vibrating, electric feeling in him ramped up. She could feel his ecstasy and it was infectious. His hold grew stronger on her and she held him tightly in return. Their breath, matched now in some urgent pull toward life, pressed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his chest. She could not help but thrust her hips against him, and in doing so she found something quite unexpected. Oh, her blood was giving him strength all right.

He had an erection. How she longed to make love to him, with him sucking at her neck. The sensuality of this most intimate exchange of fluids, him to her, and her to him in return, would be... paradise.

Abruptly, he pulled away, with a moan of frustration.

Kate felt... bereft.

He was gasping for air. "Did I... did I take too much? Are you all right?"

"A little... disoriented." As though she had been pulled from ultimate intimacy back to an everyday world. Yet she still throbbed inside. Her heart pumped. Her breathing pushed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his bare chest. And she still felt his erection against her thigh.

"I can't erase the memory of this unpleasantness with compulsion as normally I would." He was looking at her so... tenderly.

"I'm sorry."

"It wasn't unpleasant." She realized he was still holding her against him, and she was still holding him. "Do you feel... better?"

He smiled. There was no trace of fangs. "Yes. My Companion is stronger. Thank you."

"It was nothing," she lied. "Tell me more about your Companion. It seems more to you than just a parasite."

"It makes us who we are. We have a symbiotic relationship. It gives us strength, and more acute senses, and allows us to draw on its power."

"It makes you hum like that?"

He nodded, but he looked surprised. "I've never met anyone who could sense our vibrations. They experience them as an attraction, or a feeling that we are very alive."

"Vibrant in fact?" She had to .smile.

"My Companion wants survival. Enough to rebuild its host constantly."

"That's why you live so long and heal so well."

He nodded.

"It gives you red eyes?"

"The red eyes are a symptom of the Companion's power coming up." It all sounded so reasonable in that sensual rumble.

"Bringing the power up enough causes that black vortex you saw around Eltya and her friends, and when the field of energy grows so intense it collapses in on itself, we pop out of where we are and into another s.p.a.ce. With practice we can direct where we reappear. We call it translocation."

She couldn't think what to say. She had seen it herself a number of times at this point, and yet in some ways it was the most astounding trait of all. That and the healing, and the age, the blood and the energy, the strength."Quite convenient, really," he remarked.

That was one way to put it. And he made it sound so... prosaic. "And... and what else is there?" She steeled herself to know it all.

He pulled back a little and smiled at her, those green eyes crinkling. G.o.d, but she loved that smile. "Most of the rest is myth. I didn't lie about that. Garlic doesn't repel us. Or crosses, as you know. I was once a cardinal, and cardinals really spend an inordinate amount of time around crosses. I happen to like garlic on my pasta. The only time we cast no reflection in mirrors is when we are about to translocate. Then even light does not escape the field of power our Companion creates."

"What... what do you call yourselves?" There must be some other name besides the one she knew. Perhaps using it would be some sort of slur.

"Vampire."

She sucked in a breath. The word was ugly. There was no getting around it. And maybe she was vampire now too. "Am I now like you?"

He shook his head and held her close to him. The faint cinnamon and man scent rose from his chest. He breathed the words into her hair. "No, Kate. That's another myth. Vampires can be made, Lord knows. But my blood would have to infect yours... Oh, G.o.d." He held her away from him abruptly. "Do you have any sc.r.a.pes or cuts? I've been bleeding." He took her hands frantically and examined them.

She too felt panicked as he turned them first one way then another. "I... I don't think so." Then he swept his gaze over her face, her neck and breast. "No..." He began to breathe again and so did she. "No, you're fine." He clutched her to him. "I thought for a moment..."

"That was close." She had very nearly been made a monster, if Gian was a monster.

He held her away again. "You must never touch me if you are bleeding. Even from the tiniest scratch. Do you understand?" His voice was fierce with either anger or... or pain.

"I understand," she snapped. What he was stood between them.

He squeezed his eyes shut. She hadn't meant to give him pain. Her hand reached out and caressed his jawline of its own accord.

That made his eyes open, at least.

"I'm sorry to have dragged you into all of this." He took her hand and kissed her palm. That sent shivers down her body to the place between her legs.

"I stole the emerald." She sighed. "I got myself into it." She realized that through all this conversation, she had been lying in his arms, that he was naked. She must distract herself from the feel of his lips on her palm. "I... I am glad your... your Companion is better."

He ran his hand up her ami to where the sleeves of her traveling dress left the inside of her elbow bare. His thumb moved over the pulse there. Dear Lord. "The Companion loves living more than anything," he murmured, bending to kiss the place he had been rubbing. "The truest affirmation of life is..."-here his tiny smile appeared-"the s.e.xual act."

"You can't be thinking of s.e.x right now when you're injured and you've been... abused by Elyta, and we're locked up waiting for her to kill us, or worse?" Her outrage was dutiful, if not wholehearted.

He looked half apologetic, half wicked. "A Companion is always eager to affirm life. It gives vampires a heightened s.e.xuality."

He sobered. "It might be the last time."She didn't want to think about that. "I can't make love to an injured man. It isn't right."

He lifted a curl of hair from her shoulder and smoothed it back behind her ear. "Sweet Kate. There are many kinds of healing. I need to feel good and true right now, as well as stronger. Not... defiled. Not a victim. And only you can make me feel that way, after... her."

Oh, he was good. How could one resist the expression in his eyes, the soft caring in his voice? He had probably practiced that expression. But she didn't care. "Let me see if your wounds are healing now that you've had a 'restorative.' " The cuts on his chest were now no more than pink lines of new skin. The circular burns had disappeared entirely.

He pulled her in to him again. He was decidedly wanner now. Hot even. "You see? I'm fine." He leaned in to her, and this time his lips just brushed hers.

Their touch made her shiver. Arrogance be d.a.m.ned. Monster? She didn't care. The fact that they were essentially two different species? That was going to bring tragedy, since she had lost her heart to him so thoroughly. Perhaps Elyta would bring tragedy first. So all they had was this moment. And she knew what she wanted to do with it. She swallowed around the lump in her throat. She mustn't let him see into her heart right now. "Does that mean I needn't feel guilty about taking advantage of you?"

She felt his smile as he kissed his way down her jawline. "Yes." The word was a caress.

She lifted her chin once more, wondering if he would take her blood again, and not unwilling for him to do so. But he only made his way down her throat. The feel of his kisses was so delightful she hardly realized he was untying and unb.u.t.toning, and soon he was pulling at the bodice of her dress until her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were revealed. She became so intent upon what his mouth was doing to each nipple in turn she lost track of exactly how she became naked.

"Kate," he murmured as he changed nipples. "Kate."

She ran her hands over the muscles in his back and down over those lovely b.u.t.tocks she had first seen in the piazza in Firenze.

Really, Michelangelo was an incredible sculptor. Women had been worshipping that statue for three hundred years, and she, Kate, had the real, live version here, its warm, living flesh pressed against her. She giggled.

He drew back, affronted. "What?"

"I was just wondering what would have happened if Michelangelo had sculpted you erect. I expect there would have been female riots in the piazza."

His expression softened. "That would have been bad."

"Yes. And it would have gotten worse, because all the men who weren't so well endowed would have gotten together with chisels to remove the comparison."

"Ouch." He kissed her mouth. "As long as you like it, I am satisfied."

"I like it." She wanted to say she liked him. Actually, she half wanted to say she loved him. But that would be useless.

He had said himself his s.e.xual appet.i.tes were more than any human because of his Companion. She was just another in a long line of women whom he used to satisfy those appet.i.tes. So she said only, "And I would like to know it more intimately now, if yon please." She scooted onto her back.

"Happy to oblige." He hung over her, braced on one elbow.