I knew he couldn’t help the surge of playful lust that reached me through the blood tie, because our brains were on a weird, telepathic party line. Unless he blocked me or vice versa, we heard each other’s thoughts and felt each other’s emotions. If one of us had even the slightest inclination toward getting physical, the other one knew—and usually acted on—it.

Unfortunately, the blood tie doesn’t filter negative emotions out, so I always got a heaping helping of after-sex guilt. Thoughts of Marianne, his dead wife, were never far from his mind, so the punishment game usually kicked in within minutes of la petit mort. Once I felt his guilt, I added some of my own over the fact I’d helped cause it, and the resultant snowball effect was a good enough reason to avoid sex with him altogether.

At least, not beyond a few just-to-get-it-out-of-our-system flings. Giving those up would be like kicking heroin cold turkey.

The thought depressed me, so I put it aside. I swiveled my desk chair around and leaned back. “Seriously, why are you watching me?”

“The nightmares.”

I shrugged, hoping to pass off my terrifying dreams as a regular occurrence. “I have a lot of nightmares.”

“You said his name.”

Nathan wasn’t my first sire. Cyrus, whom I only knew as “John Doe” when he’d attacked me in the hospital morgue, had made me a vampire. He’d also nearly made me dead when I hadn’t been willing to satisfy his twisted desires. When I’d turned to Nathan and the Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement for help, Cyrus had removed one of my two hearts—a strange physiological trait unique to vampires—and left me bleeding to death in the alley behind Nathan’s building. When Nathan found me, I’d already died. He’d revived me by giving me his blood, and it’d had the desired effect—I was alive, after all. He just hadn’t realized he would “re-sire” me.

He’d already had a deep-seated hatred of Cyrus. Now, as my new sire, he felt it ten times stronger. He hated if I even mentioned my first sire in passing. The evil, antagonistic side of me couldn’t help but do it now. “Maybe my dreams about Cyrus are a subconscious thing to rile you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s the same excuse you use for leaving the cap off the toothpaste.”

He was right. He’s usually right. Damned sire’s intuition. I shut off my computer monitor and leaned back in my chair. “I’m guessing you have some sort of theory here.”