Folding her arms across her chest, she glared back. “She was playing you like a master musician with a tiny violin. You don’t know that she would have slit my throat. She made it quite clear I’m a useful bargaining chip for more than one reason. Giving in to her demands wasn’t just stupid of you – it was downright suicidal.”

Instead of bothering to answer her, he heaved at the restraints again. While his joints popped audibly, the fastening in the ceiling never shifted. The restraints had been constructed with a Vampyre’s strength in mind.

After watching him for a moment, Melly strode toward him. “Stop that. Julian, stop. You’re tearing your wrists open for no good reason.”

He grunted, “It’s better than standing here and doing fuck all while you bitch at me.”

When he glanced at her, she set the flashlight on the floor, angling the beam of light toward his right ankle, and knelt at his feet. “Well, you’d better not bring the whole thing down on my head. For God’s sake, hold still, will you?”

The sight of her kneeling at his feet brought other erotic memories to mind, her sexy lips and tongue working on him as he pumped into her, fists buried in her hair. She had loved it when he fucked her mouth.

He had loved it too, had loved watching her enjoy what they had done more than his own pleasure. Orgasming was too simple a term for how he had felt at the time, but making love felt transcendent.

Had she been acting for any of it? How much of her pleasure had been real?

The brutal fact was, he would never know for sure. She could not only talk up a bitch when she wanted, but she could lie about virtually anything like it was the Gospel truth.

It was one of her strongest talents, and one of the reasons why she was such a popular actress. Not only did the camera love everything about her, but she could also convince audiences all over the world that she really had cared about the gigantic ape that had kidnapped her and climbed the Empire State Building, and she could sell zombies like they were the only true apocalypse.

Once they had laughed about that together.

Angling his jaw out, he averted his gaze. “What’s taking you so long?”

Unable to resist, he glanced down at her again and saw that her shoulders had pinched together in an unhappy slump. He knew he was being a bastard, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He had a devil riding him, and the devil wore worn cowboy boots, smoked a cigar and answered to Julian’s name.

“I have pieces of two broken hairpins, not a magic bottle labeled ‘miracles,’ ” she said tightly. “The locks on these manacles are a lot smaller than the ones on the doors. I’m having trouble getting at the tumblers inside.” Angling her head up, she gave the chains over his head a grim look. “And not only are you taller than I am, but your wrists are locked above your head. God only knows how I’m going to get at those.”

“You’re going to climb up my body, that’s how,” he told her. “If you have to, you can kneel on my shoulders. Hurry up. Justine’s lackey isn’t going to be gone for that much longer.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “Leave me alone, so I can work.”

He bit back the retort that rose to his lips, and stood in clenched silence while she twisted to reach the lock of the manacle at the correct angle.

He muttered, “Your mom has called on a lot of help in searching for you, including Graydon from the Wyr demesne and Soren. I suppose if you could have called Soren by now, you would have.”

She paused only for a moment. “Soren and my mom go way back, but he’s her friend, not mine. I don’t have a connection to him, although right now I sure wish I did.”

How long had it been since Vampyre Guy had left? Like windowless casinos that deliberately masked all signs of time passing, it was impossible to calculate how long Julian had been in the heavy darkness of the caverns.

But it had been long enough for him to realize that Melly’s nearness was just as excruciating as he had always known it would be. Certainly it had been long enough for them to argue and snipe at each other the way they always did whenever they saw each other these days.

It had also been long enough for him to realize he wanted her as much as he ever had. Perhaps even more so, as the long years without her had only served to make his hunger for her that much more urgent.

The thought that had been circling at the back of his mind came to the forefront again – he could take her. He could get his hunger slaked, at least for a time.

The prospect wasn’t exactly a done deal. Apparently, to go by her angry responses to him, her emotions were just as complicated for him as his were for her, and the arousal he had sensed when he fed from her had no doubt been enhanced by the intoxicating properties in his bite.

But if he chose to go after her and set his mind to the task, and if he got her, maybe he could make the infernal noise in his head and his heart quiet down for a little damn while.

This time, instead of recoiling from the idea, he actually considered it as he watched her work. His sensitive hearing picked up the miniscule sounds of the ends of the hairpins scraping on the metal of the manacle. Her fingers jerked as the makeshift pick slipped, and she swore.

His gaze ran down the shapely curve of her hourglass back and lingered at her round, sweet ass.

Mine, he thought. He had lost so much of what had passed for a soul that not even he could tell if the thought was cold-blooded or heated.

You will be mine again. I’ll take you. I’ll make you want it.

I’ll make you want me again, at least for a while. Only this time I won’t wait for our different lifestyles to pull us apart, or for you to cheat again.

I’ll take you and make you mine, until I choose to walk away.

By sheer force of will, Melly forced her hands to remain steady as she tried again to pick the lock on the manacles.

On the one hand, this whole nightmare pretty much topped every other bad memory she’d ever had.

On the other hand, it was kind of a dream come true to have Julian hog-tied and at her mercy. She could get in his face and yell what the fuck until she got it all out of her system. Think of how cathartic that would be. Really, it could take her days.

The last occasion they had spent any significant time together was when he had broken up with her. She didn’t want to think about that right now, but her mind went there anyway.

He had been so icy and terse. The lover who had known her body and desires so intimately had vanished as if he had never existed, and the stranger who had taken his place had a face like a stone wall.