Her door was opened by her driver and she walked straight into Grenville and Thrang. The shop had closed to the public and there were only a few staff sweeping and tidying up. She was met, as always, by Jaunty her tailor, who’d held out his hand and given Byron a warm greeting. There were very few people in this world that she trusted, but Jaunty was one of them. He had proven his discretion and loyalty to both her father, Michal, and herself over the course of many years.

Byron was about to tell Jaunty how brief her visit would be when she heard the sweet lilt of a woman’s laughter. She turned around and immediately felt her rarely beating heart thud like a drum. Coming up the stairs from the shop workroom was a beautiful young woman she had never seen before. She was naturally beautiful, not covered in make-up or wearing false nails like most of the women she met. She caressed the woman’s face with her gaze, and then her focus fell to the woman’s neck, where it zeroed in on her throbbing, vibrant pulse point.

She’d felt her mouth water and the pressure of her fangs as they threatened to erupt. In a second her mind was filled with a vision of making this woman moan as her teeth pierced her neck and she drank from her.

“Who is that, Jaunty?” Byron had asked without taking her eyes off the woman.

“That’s my niece, Amelia. She’s just graduated from the London School of Fashion, and she’s come to work with us full-time. She worked weekends throughout her college days, so you wouldn’t have seen her before.”

As soon as Jaunty said the woman was his niece, the prospect of getting to know her better was brought to an abrupt stop. She would never disrespect Jaunty by trying to seduce his niece into a no-strings encounter, because that was all she would ever give a human woman.

“She’s very beautiful, Jaunty. Look after her.”

From that day forward, Byron never got the image of Amelia out of her head or her heart, it seemed. Any woman she slept with, or drank from, the image of Amelia floated through her mind, and each time she went to Grenville and Thrang for an appointment, her craving for Amelia got worse.

Byron’s passion for the woman she had never even spoken to grew and grew, until she could not stop herself from meeting Amelia. The opportunity soon presented itself when Jaunty was in hospital and unable to make her appointment. Byron suggested meeting with Amelia. She thought perhaps when she met Amelia in the flesh, her hunger and attraction would wane, but she was so wrong.

“Byron? Did you hear me?” Amelia shook Byron from her thoughts.

“My apologies, what did you say?”

Amelia narrowed her eyes with mild annoyance. “Will you tell me about your parents?”

“Of course.” Byron cupped her cheek and gazed into Amelia’s bluish green eyes. She could get lost in those eyes for hours. In them Byron could see the light of Amelia’s unblemished, untainted soul, not weighed down by centuries of taking blood and killing when the need arose. She saw pure innocence that she wanted to drown in.