And then I got to my feet and stumbled toward the door again. And got halfway there before I realized I was naked. Of course I am, I thought angrily, and went back to the bed for a sheet. God forbid I actually wake up dressed anymore.

I did have regrets these past six months,” he told me quietly. “I found it a curse as much as a blessing, all that time to think. About the things I could have said, that I should have told you . . .

Aw, fudge,' floated down to me, as a couple of golden eyes peered over a third-floor window ledge. 'You're a freaking dhampir. Why are you reading Tolkien?' I shrugged, then had to dodge the potted geranium he threw at me. 'After five hundred years, you've read just about everything. Besides, he had hella world-building skills.

They always assumed that I did not speak. That I could not. So many had plotted my death, discussed it, laughed about it, even while I was in the same room, because they assumed I was mindless. Like one of the failures of their kind, born mad. But I was not a failure. I was what I was supposed to be. I was dhampir. And they never lived to tell anyone they were wrong.

I narrowed my eyes at it. Ming-de’s little gift, I assumed. “You look better in color,” I snapped. He sent me a sultry look over his shoulder. “Really? Most women think I look better in nothing at all.

My body cheerfully informed me that he felt really good pressed against me like that, all hard muscles and smooth contours and ominous bulges. My body liked the air of barely leashed strength and caged mayhem he was giving off. My body thought he smelled really good, like heat and coffee and electricity. My body was going to get me killed.

Country is based on folk music, which has been around for centuries—” “So has the plague.