As sick and dishonest as it seemed, I wanted to spend one last day with him. It was a death wish, considering how adept he was at reading my mind, but he either had been too busy to uncover my deception yet, or he had figured it out and was waiting to punish me for it at a more convenient time. For reasons I wasn’t willing to explore, I would risk being found out for just a few more hours with him, even after he’d made me feel so…used.

Eventually I decided that if I were to get myself back into Cyrus’s good graces, I’d have to take the first step. Friday morning, I went to his bed without an invitation. Dressed in a white silk nightgown I’d found in my wardrobe, my heart pounding so loudly I thought it would burst from my chest, I stared down the guards at his door.

When I entered his bedroom, I’d expected to find him with Dahlia or Ziggy, but he lounged on the bed beside a slender girl with blond hair. Her back was turned to me as they lay sideways across the bed, and one of her arms draped across Cyrus’s waist. He looked up with eyes of mismatched blue and the smile of a man who’d just learned he’d be having his favorite meal for dinner.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” I said, surprised at the smoky sound of my voice. It must have been the sexy lingerie, or the perfume, or the makeup, because I was really getting into character.

Cyrus gave the girl a kick. Instead of scrambling to her feet and rushing from the room, she fell limply to the floor at the foot of the bed. Her head lolled to the side on her broken neck, and I saw her missing eye.

I almost turned back. No. Do what you came here to do.

I called over my shoulder for the guards and they stepped through the open door. I gestured to the dead girl, trying not to look too revolted as they carried her away. “I didn’t want an audience.”

“She was boring, anyway. Kept crying about wanting to go home.” He leaned up on one arm. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

I approached him slowly, trailing my hands across the silk that covered my stomach, my breasts, then the bare skin over my collarbones. “I’ve missed you.”

Suspicion clouded his eyes. “I thought you didn’t like me very much. Those were your words, were they not?”

“Maybe I don’t like you. I might just be here for sex.” My body throbbed at the thought.

I looked down the length of his body and saw he was just as hungry for me, despite his previous encounter. “You want something more, I can tell.”

I stepped to the edge of the bed, ignoring the blood on the carpet at my feet. “Maybe I do.”

He smiled, flashing the tips of his fangs, which had not yet retracted since his feeding. The vampiric feature in his otherwise normal face made him seem more dangerous than usual. “Is this something I can give you?”