I rolled onto my side to face him. His long, white-gold hair covered his shoulders and the pillow beneath his head. A smile formed slowly on his beautiful mouth, and I ached to touch him.

“I’m not awake.” I couldn’t force the sadness from my voice. “I’m on a plane. I’m sleeping.”

He nodded and reached for me. His hands weren’t the clawed nightmares they’d been after five hundred years of living death. They were smooth and strong when he brushed my hair from my eyes. They slid down my neck to the scar he’d left on the night he’d changed me, and a shudder of longing passed through me at his touch. In reality, Cyrus would have been pleased with that reaction. In my dream, regret softened his usually cruel face. “You’re right. You’re not awake. But now your eyes are open.”

I leaned forward and kissed him. There was none of the need for control or power in it that there had been when he was alive. I surrendered completely, willed him to do the same with my mind. In my dream, I could have him again, the parts of him that I’d loved and not feared. The parts of him that had seduced me into questioning whether my humanity was truly worth keeping.

When I opened my eyes again, I was awake, and a very startled Max was pulling away.

“I was trying to—to wake you up,” he stammered, rubbing his chin as though I’d hit him. The look in his eyes was just as accusing. “And you kissed me.”

“Sorry.” I resisted the urge to wipe off my lips. “I was dreaming.”

“Must have been a hell of a dream.” He slid his hands into his jeans pockets and rocked back on his heels while looking at anything but me. “There was something on the news I thought you should see.”

In the other room, Max had CNN on the television. The picture-in-picture function displayed MSNBC. I dropped onto the couch. “No porn? This must be important.”

“Shh, it’s on again.” He gestured to the screen. “It’s been coming on after the ‘top of the hour’ shit.”

The anchorwoman, who’d previously reported a story about a toilet-trained horse, put on a more somber expression. “Police in Grand Rapids, Michigan, are searching for a suspect in a brutal slaying that took place in front of several eyewitnesses Monday night.”

“That was last night—” The words stuck in my throat. I grabbed one of the throw pillows and hugged it tight to my chest.

The anchorwoman continued. “The victim, whose name has not been released, was jogging down a public bike path when an unidentified man tackled her to the ground and cut her throat.”