As soon as we were alone, Lucas said, “You look like hell.”

“Maybe I ought to be mad at you for saying that, but I know you’re right.” He was towing me along the sidewalk, beneath a few small trees that had been planted in open squares in the pavement. From the apartments around us, I could hear snatches of salsa music at different tempos, like competing heartbeats. “I have to get something to eat. It’s making me crazy.”

“There’s a hospital not far from the HQ. I was thinking I could break into the blood bank, almost like we did last year, remember?”

It was a good idea for the future, but I needed a faster solution. “Lucas, I can’t wait any longer. I mean it. I have to have blood tonight.”

He stopped, and for a few seconds we simply stared at each other on the sidewalk. Sweat marked the collar of his white T-shirt, and his bronze hair had darkened to the color of night. His thumb brushed my cheek. I was startled by how much warmer his flesh was than mine.

Haltingly, Lucas said, “I’m going to take care of you.”

“I know you will.” My trust in him was absolute. “But how? Is there a place around here we could hunt?”

“Come on.”

Faster, driven by purpose, Lucas towed me along the sidewalk. After a couple of blocks, the neighborhood quieted down a little—we were far from any of the main streets now, closer to the water.

We reached a storefront with windows newspapered over from the inside, and signs that read FOR RENT. Lucas stopped there. “I’m guessing this is bone empty,” he said, pulling a thin metal lock pick from his jeans pocket. “Which means there’s probably no alarm system activated either.”

“Why are we breaking in?”

“Privacy.”

Lucas jimmied the lock in about four seconds flat. I remembered my own feeble attempt at burglary, almost a year ago, and envied him his sure touch.

We ducked into the store, and Lucas immediately shut the door behind us. Streetlights shone through the newsprint, casting a muted golden light. The hardwood floors beneath us were old and unpolished, and an abandoned bar lined one wall. A mottled mirror hung behind the bar, and I stood in front of it to see myself. I was only a shadow—a pale silvery outline of myself. Like a ghost.

This is how Patrice used to look when she wouldn’t drink blood for a while, I thought. I never believed this could happen to me. Why didn’t I understand what it meant to be a vampire?

“Okay,” Lucas said. He seemed nervous. “We’re alone.”

I smiled at him, though I felt sad. “I wish we could do something with this chance besides feed me,” I said. His kisses were so far away; they were a memory almost too beautiful to belong to my real life any longer. “What are we going to do? Do you have a plan?”

“Yeah. You’re going to drink from me.”

At first I couldn’t believe I’d heard him correctly. Of course, I had drunk Lucas’s blood before—twice, so far. Both times, the experience had been intense, to say the least. Drinking blood was sensual, even sexual. I’d only ever drunk the blood of one other guy, Balthazar, and that was the closest I’d ever come to making love. But what happened between Balthazar and me was purely physical. With Lucas, the emotion made it more powerful.

So I should’ve leaped at the chance, right? Wrong.

Before, when this had happened between us, I’d been well fed. My loss of control with Lucas had been because of my passion for him, not because of hunger. The same love that drove me to bite him had also compelled me to stop before I hurt him. Now that I was governed by this wild craving, the one that clawed at me from within—I wasn’t so sure I could stop.

“It’s dangerous,” I said. “We should try another way.”

“There isn’t any other way.” Lucas slowly lifted up the edge of his T-shirt and peeled it off. I knew he did that because he didn’t want to get blood on his clothes, but the nearness of his half-undressed body hit me like a blow. The golden light behind us outlined his firm, muscled form. “I trust you.”

“Lucas—”

“Come on.” He stepped closer to me. “This is the only way I have to take care of you. Let me take care of you.”

I shook my head. “You don’t understand. It’s different now. I’m so much hungrier.”

“You only bite me when you’re not hungry?”

I remembered the two times I’d fed from him—once, after the Autumn Ball, when we’d been kissing passionately for the first time, and again when we were alone together in one of the high towers of Evernight, lying in each other’s arms. “That was different.”

“Doesn’t have to be.” He took me in his arms and kissed me.

It wasn’t like any of our other kisses. This was rougher, almost demanding. Lucas opened my lips with his and pulled my body against him. I couldn’t push him away; I couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but kiss him back. I’d missed this so much—the taste of his mouth, the scent of his skin, and the feel of his broad hands.

When he moved down to my throat, kissing me along the line of my jugular, I whispered, “You’re going to make me lose control.”

“That’s the whole idea.”

“Lucas—don’t—”

“If you have to get carried away to bite me, then I’m gonna make you get carried away.” His hand cupped the curve of my breast. “How far do I have to go?”

My instincts took over. I pulled him to the floor, the old wooden boards creaking gently beneath our weight. Lucas lay beneath me, pressing kisses on my forehead and cheeks as I raked my hands through his hair and breathed in the scent of him. I could hear his heart beating faster. I could smell his blood. More animal than human, I arched my body against his, so that I could feel his warmth all over me.

“Come on, Bianca,” he whispered into my ear. “Come on. I know you want to. I want you to.”

Stop, stop, stop. I’ll have to stop in time, I don’t know if I can stop, I don’t want him to let go of me, not ever, I don’t want this to stop—”

I bit down on his shoulder, and blood rushed in.

Yes. This was what I had needed, what I had craved. I heard Lucas groan, and I didn’t know if that was from pain or pleasure. My body quaked as I sucked in harder, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of his blood. It was hot and sweet, purer than anything else in the world. It was life. I could feel my body transforming, gaining strength, as Lucas’s life flowed into me.

My hands pressed his against the floor, and our fingers intertwined. “Bianca,” he whispered, his voice shaky.

I drank even deeper. This was perfection—hunger and satisfaction at once, inseparable. How could anyone want anything else?

“Bianca—”

Stop, stop, stop!

I pulled away just as Lucas’s head lolled to one side. Shocked into sanity, I shifted off him and patted his cheek. “Lucas? Are you okay?”

“Just give me—a sec—”

“Lucas!”

He tried to prop himself up on one elbow but ended up flopping back down beside me. His breaths were coming too quickly, and his skin was now more pallid than mine. Of course, I had become rosy and flushed with the life I’d stolen from the guy I loved.

Guilt descended on me. “Oh, no. I should never have done this.”

“Don’t say that.” His voice was slurred. “We had to—save you.”

I sat up and pressed two fingers to his throat. His heartbeat was steady, if rapid. I hadn’t gone too far, but I could have. I knew the danger even if he didn’t.

“We can’t do this again,” I said, as I cradled his head in my lap. His shoulder oozed a few trickles of blood, but I resisted the urge to lick his skin. “We’re going to find another solution, and soon. Right?”

“Wasn’t too bad.” Lucas’s lopsided smile made my stomach flip-flop in the best possible way. “Kinda nice, actually.”

There was a time when it would have thrilled me to hear him say that. But I knew more about Lucas now, and about his priorities, which meant that I was obligated to warn him: “Remember—if I ever go too far, I could kill you. And because you’ve been bitten by a vampire multiple times, you’d become a vampire yourself.”

Lucas went very still. Although I, too, no longer wanted to become a full vampire, Lucas’s revulsion to the idea was absolute. Death would have been preferable to him.

“Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll see about the hospital blood bank. Or something. But you’re better, right?”

“Yeah.” And now that I had drunk human blood, I felt sure I would be sustained for a while—but not forever. He had risked his life to buy me just a few days’ time. Or did he have other reasons, too? Quietly, I asked, “Do you crave it now? Being bitten? Is this something you wanted for yourself?”

I wouldn’t blame him if it were. Balthazar had drunk my blood a couple of months ago, and I remembered the exhilaration of it. But if Lucas was getting as hooked on my bite as I was on biting him, we were really going to have to work on the self-control.

Lucas thought over the question. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Part of it—most of it—is about taking care of you. And then there’s the fact that it’s one hell of a turn-on.”

Smiling, I brushed a last trickle of blood from his shoulder. “Yeah, there’s that.”

“Every time we do this, I get stronger.” Lucas’s eyes met mine.

“I get closer to being—to being what you are. To understanding, maybe. Without having to turn into a vampire myself.”

Each bite gave Lucas a little more vampire strength. His hearing had sharpened and his strength had increased—but he neither healed faster nor craved blood. The mystery of what it meant to be prepared for vampirism but not yet a vampire: That was one way in which we were truly and fully the same.

Well, not the only way.

I bent low and whispered, “I love you, Lucas.”

“Love you, too.” Tiredly he clasped my hand in his, and for a while we simply sat together, wordless, needing nobody else in the world.

Once Lucas felt reasonably steady and the bite mark on his shoulder had stopped bleeding, he put his T-shirt on again and we joined the others. We must have looked rumpled—a couple people snickered, and Dana waggled her eyebrows at us. I didn’t care if they thought we’d sneaked off to have sex. What we felt for each other was too pure to be turned into anything tacky or cheap.

Besides, I felt better than I’d felt in weeks. Lucas seemed a little bleary, and his skin was definitely pale, but he could walk steadily. He put his arm around my shoulders for support initially, but kept it there all during our long ride home.

We’ll be all right, I thought as he rested his head against mine. Taking a deep breath, I could smell the cedar scent of his skin, tinged slightly with the delicious saltiness of blood. It’s going to be okay soon.

After we returned to HQ and stowed our gear, we walked in to see that someone was waiting for us—Eduardo, who leaned against one of the cement pillars. In his hands he held a coffee can. I didn’t think anything of it, except that it was kind of weird to be making coffee so late at night. But the moment Lucas saw it, he stopped in his tracks. “That’s mine,” he said.

“You have an interesting definition of what’s yours.” Eduardo tossed the can upward, caught it lazily. The scars on his cheeks looked harsh in the overhead lights. “Because the way I see it, in Black Cross we have a rule. Everything we do is for the good of the group.”

Eduardo then peeled back the plastic lid of the coffee can to reveal a roll of cash.