Excerpt:

Devon was cute. He accepted this fate. He didn’t have the dark, mysterious look he admired in other men. His eyes were big and blue, fringed with ridiculously long lashes. His curly blond hair flopped into his eyes when he was excited or nervous. He’d been an adorable baby, and grandmothers had pinched his cheeks until he was sixteen. He would be one of those doddering old men who make people smile and shake their heads. But Rosalie cared for him; nothing else mattered.

The beat of the music thrummed through the soles of his shoes, as they left the club. He was exhausted from a night of frenetic dancing, of wanting Rosalie and knowing he’d have to wait. The crowd at the Metropolis had been vaguely uneasy tonight, as if they were battening down for a hurricane.

Devon looked up at the clear sky which was just starting to blush with dawn. His instincts urged him to hurry Rosalie home, to protect her from the killing sun, but he knew she would wait until that last moment when the red eye of God peered over the horizon. Only then would she sigh, and follow him into their brownstone.

“What was all that talk about a new drug?” he asked. Rosalie shrugged. She watched the glowing sky. Her eyes were hooded by shadow and he couldn’t make out her expression.

“Another of Xavier’s amazing concoctions, no doubt,” she said. Xavier Saint Amant was her sire and a legend among the Nightcrawlers.

“Why don’t we get some?” While none of Rosalie’s friends would speak directly to her mortal, Devon had heard enough to understand the power of the drug. His heart raced from the thought of what Luminari could do for them. Rosalie sensed his excitement and laid her hand on his chest. A faint smile curved her lips. She leaned over and nipped him gently on the neck, a promise of things to come.

“Nothing would make me visit Xavier again, Cherie,” she whispered in his ear. “Not even that.” Rosalie often spoke of Xavier’s nobility, his passion and his genius, but never his kindness, nor why she left him.

His genius was in the realm of alchemy, an obsolete science for modern man, but an art to the undead. He lived up to his name; he was a saint among the undead. His inventions bettered the lives of Nightcrawlers, though they often came at a high price.

But Devon was no longer thinking of Rosalie’s sire or the Luminari. She suckled his neck, dragging her lips up to the soft space behind his ear.

"I'm hungry.”

He turned to her as the sun crested the buildings and, for a moment, sparkled in her eye. Then with her uncanny speed, she slipped into the brownstone.

She waited for him in their bedroom. They were both tired, but when he slipped between the sheets, she pressed herself against him. The long length of her body matched his, but her skin was cool, while his blazed with pent up passion. Her lips and teeth cut a trail down his chest, stomach and groin. He never knew when she would kiss him, suck him or bite him and the mystery aroused him until he begged her to stop.

“So soon?” she teased. A wet curl of hair stuck to her lip and she flicked it off with her tongue.

“Jesus.” His breath rushed from his chest. She held his face close to hers.

“Again,” she said as she straddled him.

“Again what?”

“Breath on me.” She raised her head, closed her eyes and Devon blew on her neck. A tiny sound escaped her throat as he slipped inside her. He longed to fill her up the way she filled him. He longed for her blood, though in the light of the day, he would deny it, even to himself. But right now, as she rose and fell on him, arching back so that he could see all of her unbelievable beauty, he couldn’t deny it. He wanted her blood. And she knew it. Mortal sex was only foreplay. With the flick of her nail, she sliced open the skin, just above her breast. Devon fell on the brilliant trickle of blood. His lips clasped onto her skin, and her intoxicating tonic filled his mouth.

He drank.

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