3:20 A.M.

With a sigh, Neely rolled onto her back and, in the next second let out a low, croaky cry.

A cloaked form towered at the foot of the bed.

"Oh, G.o.d," Neely whimpered. She didn't want to think the shadowy shape belonged to one of the senator's business a.s.sociates or some serial rapist, but the possibilities had to be considered.

She had just made up her mind to fight the intruder with everything she had when a familiar voice spoke.

"Don't be afraid."

Neely snapped on the bedside lamp and gasped. She blinked hard, but when she looked again, Aidan Tremayne was still standing there, smiling at her.

She was at once wildly relieved and totally mystified. Had she conjured an image of him somehow, by entertaining all those scandalous s.e.xual fantasies just after she went to bed?

Neely scrambled to the foot of the mattress, tugged at his cloak to a.s.sure herself that it had substance, and then hurtled back to the other end.

"It is you," she said in a tone that was almost accusing.

"Quite so," he replied gently, folding his arms.

Neely swallowed hard. She was at once terrified, sensing in her deepest being that Aidan had not entered her room by ordinary means, and at the same time wanting him to hold and caress and finally take her.

"d.a.m.n it, what's going on here?" she cried impatiently.

Aidan raised both hands, palms out, in a conciliatory, calming gesture. "I'm about to tell you the absolute and unvarnished truth. After that, you'll understand why I've been somewhat... secretive. First, though, I believe I'd best keep a promise I made not so long ago."

"What promise?" Neely whispered, but she knew. She knew, and her body, suddenly shameless after a lifetime of relative modesty, was already burning.

Aidan arched one eyebrow to show he wasn't buying her attempt at ingenuousness.

"Among my other talents, my darling, I can read minds. You want me to make love to you- is that not so?"

Neely gulped. "What if it is?" she finally managed.

He smiled. "Not good enough, Neely," he scolded. "If you want me to give you pleasure, you will have to say so, straight out. Whatever my other sins, I do not take women against their wishes."

Neely stared at him, fascinated, her whole body thrumming with the need of him and his intimate attentions. "I- I want you," she said.

Aidan did not move from his place at the foot of the bed, and yet Neely felt herself being pressed gently back onto the pillows. After that came light, tantalizing kisses, unseen lips grazing her mouth, nibbling at her earlobe and the side of her neck, tracing pathways of pa.s.sion across the rounded tops of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

She moaned, overwhelmed by her need, too caught up in the sensations that were being evoked inside her to question the strange detachment of Aidan's lovemaking. Even as her nightshirt was gently removed, and her slender body lay bared to whatever magic he was working upon it, she could dimly see that he was still standing some distance away.

Impossible-he was touching her, kissing her, teasing her, everywhere. Wasn't he?

He told her to part her legs for him, and she did, though she could not have said whether the command had been spoken aloud or had simply come sauntering into her mind on its own.

Neely felt his hand, nimble-fingered and firm, brush the nest of curls hiding the physical center of her wanting. Incredibly she felt his touch in her soul as well, and the tension building there was even more tumultuous than the sweet, frightening eruption rising in her body.

She arched her back to welcome him and whispered, "Yes! Oh, yes..." as he uncovered the hidden nubbin of flesh and gently toyed with it. "Please," she whimpered, having lost all semblance of pride, tumbling toward a spiritual release of cataclysmic proportions even as an equally powerful physical climax loomed just ahead, waiting to consume her.

"Tell me what you want," Aidan said.

"I want you!" she cried out, not caring if anyone heard. "Oh, G.o.d, Aidan, I need you... the real you... inside me!"

Both her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were being suckled at once, and she felt strong, warm hands slide beneath her bottom to raise her high for the final conquering. She even felt him enter her with a hard, delicious thrust that made her cry out in ecstasy. Still, even through the fog of this all-encompa.s.sing pa.s.sion, she could see that Aidan had not moved to join her on the bed, that he was watching her pleasure with a shimmer of tears in his eyes.

The crescendos were so violent, her body and her soul being satisfied in the same joyously terrifying moments, that Neely shouted aloud as she came, in involuntary triumph, lost in the glorious dual releases.

It was a very long time before she could speak or move, so completely, so thoroughly, had she been loved. But the moment arrived, finally, when the words that had been clamoring in her mind took shape on her lips.

"Why, Aidan?" she whispered. "Why did you make love to me that way, without actually touching me?"

He turned away from her briefly, and even though he held his head high, Neely knew he was overcome by emotion. Then he faced her again.

"I did not trust myself," he confessed hoa.r.s.ely.

Neely managed to raise herself onto her elbows, but she was still in a state of bliss and hadn't the energy to demand answers to all the obvious questions. "What do you mean, you didn't trust yourself?"

Aidan averted his gaze for a moment, then looked directly into her eyes again. "My pa.s.sion for you is fathomless," he said. "It is wolflike, a thing of the darkness. I could not be certain of maintaining control."

She yawned, beginning to drift. "Most people lose control when they make love, Aidan,"

she observed. "That's the idea."

One corner of his inviting mouth lifted in a sad, rueful attempt at a smile. "Yes," he said.

"But I am not a person. I am a vampire."

Neely sat bolt upright, as wide awake as if she'd just had an intravenous dose of pure caffeine. "Did you just say that you're a vampire?" she asked, sounding ridiculously cordial.

A strange excitement rushed through her, along with a whisper of primitive fear.

At long last Aidan rounded the bed and sat down on its edge. "I'm afraid so," he said.

It was remarkable, incredible, his claiming to be a supernatural creature, but it made an odd kind of sense, too. After all, he'd disappeared that night, in the parking lot outside the Lakeview Cafe, in quite literally the blink of an eye. Furthermore, he'd just made love to her in a very extraordinary way, a way no normal man would have done.

Yes. There was surely some kind of magic at work.

He must have seen the beginnings of belief in her eyes, for his smile was less forlorn than the one that had preceded it, less weary.

"Let me see your teeth," Neely said impulsively. She was still a little afraid, but she was fascinated, too, and wildly curious.

Indulgently Aidan permitted her to lift his upper lip and peer at one shining, sharp incisor. It was obviously no ordinary tooth, so she checked its counterpart.

"Good grief," she whispered, marveling. She knew her eyes were wide with wonder as she drew back to look at him, and she felt a shiver of fear as she began the arduous process of letting herself accept the remarkable possibility that Aidan had spoken the truth. "Were you afraid you would bite me?" she asked, unconsciously laying her hands on his broad shoulders. "Is that why you didn't lie down with me?"

"That's a rather simplistic way of putting it," Aidan said, with a glint of humor in his eyes, "but yes. I was afraid of hurting you."

Neely frowned. "What about your own pleasure? Did you feel what we were doing?"

Aidan looked away, clearly embarra.s.sed, but then met Neely's gaze again. "Holding you in my arms, entering you physically, would have been better, but yes, I took a certain amount of satisfaction from the experience."

Neely rolled her eyes. "You make it sound as if I gave you a back rub."

He smiled. "There are releases that are felt in the emotions, Neely," he said gently. "It was that way for me."

On an impulse she couldn't have explained had her very life depended on it, Neely put her arms around Aidan's neck and planted a light kiss on his cheek. His flesh felt cool and smooth beneath her lips, strangely like fine marble, and yet pliant, too. He flinched and started to move away, but Neely did not release her hold on him.

"If I trust you," she said quietly, "why can't you trust yourself? Lie down with me, Aidan.

Sleep in my arms." "I can't," he replied, and she heard unremitting anguish in his voice, felt it in his magnificent body.

Perhaps it was the ancient, elemental attraction she felt toward Aidan that made her behave so boldly in the instant that followed; Neely didn't try to a.n.a.lyze the decision. Still naked from his lovemaking, she raised herself onto her knees and brushed her left breast lightly across his lips which felt strangely warm and soft against her flesh. It was the only way she could think of to offer him her trust, as well as the intimate comfort he so clearly needed.

With a moan Aidan took her nipple into his mouth and suckled greedily, and Neely entangled her fingers in his dark hair and tilted her head back, feeling fresh ecstasy rise within her as she nurtured this man-this creature- that she had come to love.

"See," she told him softly as he moved to her other breast and took pleasure there, too, "you needn't be afraid-not of me, not of yourself."

He eased her backward onto the mattress and would surely have taken her, but just when Neely was ready, body and spirit, to receive him, he stopped, held himself utterly motionless, and listened with the intensity of some wild, exotic beast.

"Aidan," Neely pleaded softly.

But he raised himself from her, his attention so focused on some sound or feeling that he did not even seem aware of her presence.

"What is it?" she asked.

He gathered her into his arms and enfolded her warm nakedness within the whispering smoothness of his cloak. "I'll explain later," he promised, and then he bent and kissed Neely on the mouth. A drumming sound filled her ears, and it seemed that she was propelled outward into a dark universe, even while she lay helpless in Aidan's arms. She was made of thought alone, not flesh, and then she knew nothing.

Nothing at all.

Aidan laid the unconscious Neely gently on his bed in the house in the woods of Connecticut. The sound of her pursuers' approaching that faraway motel room still echoed in his head; by now the two men would be inside, ransacking the place, wondering how their quarry had managed to escape them.

He bent, kissed Neely tenderly on the forehead, and fought the awesome need to complete the dangerous process she had begun by taking him to her breast. The courage and sweet generosity of the gesture were beyond comprehension; he did not think he would ever fully understand why she had chosen to give him that singular joy.

"Sleep well," he whispered, tucking the blankets around her. Then he touched her cheek and whispered a command that would anchor her to the bed as effectively as the heaviest chains, for that was the only way he could think of to keep her safe. Then he vanished.

Aidan found the thugs in Neely's motel room, just as he had expected. They relished their criminality, he thought with disgust, and from what images he could glean from the recesses of their diseased minds, they hadn't even had particularly difficult childhoods. He filled the doorway, making no effort at all to hide what he was, or to be subtle about his powers.

They whirled to face him, and one of them cried out.

Aidan wanted to kill them, yearned to drain them of every glimmering red, droplet of blood, and then toss their husks aside to rot. This development unnerved him, for he was always coldly dispa.s.sionate about his victims, and what he felt now was a fiery and utterly ruthless appet.i.te.

He crossed the room on the impetuous of that thought, grasped a throat in either hand, and pressed his struggling captives to the wall.

"You may want to rethink this whole matter," he instructed politely. "It's a dangerous business, you see, involving forces and creatures you can't begin to grasp with those pitiful little snot-wads you fancy to be brains."

The thugs stared at him, mute with confusion. They were strong in a bullish sort of way and must have wondered why a lone man could render them powerless so easily.

"What the h.e.l.l are you?" one of them managed to croak out.

Aidan showed his fangs then, although he personally thought it was a touch melodramatic-more Valerian's style than his own.

"Jesus Christ," murmured the first thug, while his partner fainted.

Aidan sighed. It was nearly dawn, and there was no time to go back to the Havermails and explain his sudden disappearance to Maeve, nor could he return to Neely. No, he must go to Valerian, who still lay stricken in that dusty crypt well outside of London, and it was imperative that he bring blood to give the other vampire sustenance.

Aidan eyed the two criminals before him, one awake and one unconscious. The bloodl.u.s.t he'd felt earlier had turned to the purest disgust; he would have preferred to drink from rats. Regrettably, though, there was no real choice.

He fed on the larger one first, bringing him as close to death as he dared, and then lifted the smaller man and drank again.

The usual delirium of joy came over him, but it was nothing compared to what he'd felt when Neely had lain naked before him and cried out at the pleasure of his caresses.

But he could not think of her now.

Aidan blinked, and when he opened his eyes, he was in the crypt with Valerian. The sun had already risen by the time he arrived, although its light could not reach through the stone walls or the metal door, but the inevitable fatigue threatened to swallow his consciousness.

"Aidan," Valerian whispered in a hoa.r.s.e, fitful murmur of joy, and groped for his hand.

"Quickly-"

Aidan bent and, once again, found Valerian's throat. Black weariness clawed at him, pulled him downward, toward the filthy, bone-littered floor. He struggled back to the waiting vein and willed the blood to flow into Valerian, and it was still pouring forth when he collapsed.

Far away, yet near as the next heartbeat, Neely stirred in her soft, unfamiliar bed but did not climb toward wakefulness. She knew, on some level, that it was better to stay asleep, to wander in dark dreams. When she opened her eyes, after all, she would have to make sense of all that had happened to her in recent hours, and that was going to be virtually impossible.

Maeve found Aidan insensate on the floor of the crypt, his back to the high stone slab, his fine clothes speckled with blood. Ignoring Valerian, who stirred above their heads, she shook her brother and called his name in a frantic whisper.He was empty and wasted, and Maeve knew he would perish if she did not save him. She ripped away the fitted cuff of her frilly shirtwaist and pressed the inside of her wrist to his lips. He resisted weakly, then drank.

After a few moments Aidan revived, opening his eyes. "Maeve," he said, giving the name the shape and substance of a sob.

She smoothed his lovely dark hair back from his wan face. "There now, you'll be fine after this. It's night, and you're strong enough to feed properly."

"Valerian," he said. "Is he all right?"

Maeve remembered the other vampire, her mentor and erstwhile friend, and rose slowly to her feet. Seeing Valerian's sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes, she clutched his hand and demanded, "What have you done?"

"Atlantis," he said. "Atlantis-"

Aidan scrambled up beside Maeve, fairly shouldering her aside to peer down into Valerian's tormented face. "What are you saying?" he rasped. "What about Atlantis?"

"That's-where it-began," Valerian managed. "The mystery lies on the lost continent-"

"Enough!" Maeve interrupted, her temper flaring. Having fed amply, she was by far the strongest of the trio, and she could afford to issue orders. "There will be no more talk of mysteries and lost continents! Can't you see that he's dying, Aidan? Don't you realize that you nearly perished yourself?"

Despair and frustration howled within Aidan like a spiritual storm. He grabbed at the b.l.o.o.d.y front of Valerian's shirt and wrenched the other vampire upward with the last of his strength. "Tell me!" he cried, and when Valerian remained silent, clearly too enervated to speak, Aidan wailed with all the forlorn grief of an animal caught in a trap.

Maeve whirled on him, her blue eyes, mirror-images of his own, flashing with pain. She raised one hand, fingers spread, and pressed it to his face. He felt her horrific power surge through him, like a double dose of lightning, and then he swooned.

When he awakened, he was lying on a wide-planked table, stripped to the waist. He turned his head-it felt as though a speeding locomotive had crashed into each-temple at full throttle-and saw Valerian lying next to him.