“This cannot be,” I said, shaking my head. “No. It is an aberration. You cannot hear me.”

“I can, you know,” she said, still nuzzling Johannes.

It doesn’t make any sense.

“What doesn’t—oooh!” Her eyes widened as she realized that I had not spoken aloud. “You didn’t… your mouth didn’t… holy cats!”

Johannes is anything but a holy cat, I assure you.

Her eyes widened even further. “You did it again! Do you know what this means?”

I watched her warily as she took a step toward me. “Yes. It means that somehow I’ve… er…”

“Marked me!” she yelled, and with a whoop of joy, she leaped over Johannes and flung herself into my arms.

My mind may have known that the last thing in the world I should be doing was holding her, but my body certainly celebrated the fact that she was right where it wanted her to be—pressed tight against me, her soft, lush body stirring up all sorts of fires within me. Worse, her tantalizing scent woke the hunger I had just a few hours before sated, the gnawing, biting urge demanding that I dip my head and breathe deeply of her lilac-scented self.

It was madness to allow her to press kisses along my neck, but I couldn’t seem to put her from me as I knew I should.

“You’re my Dark One! I can’t believe it! I never thought I’d find another one after Sebastian, especially since Allie and Belle kept trying to find him for me, but I never clicked with anyone else, and now, here you are, all mysterious and darkly handsome, and I love the cleft in your chin, and you have the most gorgeous green eyes, just like your cat’s, and I’m your Beloved! You can brain-talk to me! I’m so happy!”

“No,” I said at last, gathering every ounce of strength I had in order to put her at arm’s length. It felt so wrong to do so, and yet I knew it was for the best. I had to stop this before it went any further, before she could be hurt.

“No what?” she said, her smile lighting up all the dark places of my heart. The hunger grew, roaring inside me now.

“No, you are not my Beloved.”

The joy so evident in her face faded. “But… I am. I know I am.”

I shook my head, not wishing to cause this pain but knowing it was better to sever her hopes now, while they were still newly born and not yet grown to a point where it would devastate her. “We may have a sympathetic link somehow, but I cannot have a Beloved. I am vitiated.”

“You’re what?” The hurt in her eyes quickly faded to curiosity.

I was half tempted to explain the circumstances, but sanity prevailed. “All it means is that I can’t have a Beloved. Now that we’ve dealt with that situation—”

“Have we? I don’t think you saying you can’t have a Beloved when you clearly can and do is dealing with it.”

I ignored the interruption. “Now that we’ve dealt with that, let us move on to the part where you explain to me just what you and your cohorts in crime are doing to the Abbey, after which I will ring up the local officials and have them remove you from the premises.”

She looked down at her hands for a few seconds. My gut tightened when I saw a glitter of tears in her eyes, but when she lifted her head again, her gaze was forthright and unwavering. “You want to have me arrested because I’m your Beloved?”

“You are not my Beloved. I thought I’d made myself clear—”

“Is it because you don’t like me?” Self-consciously, she brushed a hand down the lightweight summer dress. “I’m sorry I can’t change the way I look, but if I went on a diet, I could probably lose a few pounds.”

“That would be a crime,” I said without thinking, then mentally damned myself for saying it, then damned my damning, because women, it had been my experience, always believed the worst about their appearance, and I couldn’t stand the thought of Noelle believing she was anything but a lovely, sensual goddess put on earth to tempt mankind. “On the contrary, I think your appearance is exquisite. It has, however, nothing to do with—”

“Do you hate Guardians? I can’t leave the Guardians’ Guild, because… well, I don’t want to. I like being a Guardian, and I like helping people. But if there was some aspect of Guardians that you objected to, perhaps I could buffer that so it wouldn’t annoy you.”

“I don’t care what the hell you do in your spare time, other than trespassing, that is.”

“So there’s nothing about me personally that you object to?” she asked with obvious relief. “I’m so glad. I have to say, if I was rejected by a Dark One a second time, I’d probably become a hermit and just give up on men. It’s because you’re… what did you call it… vitiated? That means marked, doesn’t it? But that’s silly. I’m a Guardian. If you’re marked by a demon lord, then I’m just the person to help you. So, really, we’re meant to be together.”

She was back to looking happy again, dammit.

“There’s quite a bit more to being vitiated than simply being marked. No.” I held up my hand to stop her before she could start planning out our lives together. There was no future for us, period. “You are not my Beloved.”

I think I am.

“I do not need a Guardian.”

If a demon lord is after you, then you probably do.

“The only thing I want from you is the names of your cohorts and then for you to remove yourself from the grounds.”

I really want to kiss you. Her eyes widened in horror as she covered her mouth with her fingertips. Tell me you didn’t hear that.

Unbidden, my gaze went to her mouth as she dropped her hand. The hunger roared through me, shaking me with its strength, actually causing me to step forward until I realized what I was doing and stopped myself. I fought the hunger, fought the need to taste those lips, fought the urge to strip off that gauzy dress and lick every inch of the woman I’d just caught stealing into my grounds.

“I’m sorry if that offended you,” she was saying, her voice dimly audible over the growl of the beast inside me demanding that I take life from her. “I’m not normally the type of woman who falls instantly in love with the first devastatingly handsome vampire she finds, but I’ve heard from other Beloveds that they felt something right away, so I assume that’s why I really want to kiss you. And touch your chest. And possibly your legs.”

All too easily, the mental image came to mind of her kneeling on a bed next to me, her hand stroking its way up my legs, her lush, ripe body within my reach, waiting for me to taste it, to sate myself on her, to bury myself in her heat while feeding from her…

It was too much for me. Without another word, I turned on my heel and marched out of the room, my erection painful but not enough to distract me from the need to take her blood, to consume her, body and soul.

To make her mine.

Chapter Two

There you are. Where have you been? Miles and I have been going over the footage we shot yesterday, and he thinks we need to lose the Steadicam,” Teresa said.

“It doesn’t look Blair Witchy enough,” a tall, elegant man insisted. “We want gritty. This isn’t gritty, it’s arty. How can I make people believe that they’re really seeing the true me, the psychic me, the spiritual me, if it’s visually pretty?”

“Arty is easier to watch, though. People get motion sickness with handheld cameras,” the woman next to him argued before turning her gaze back to Noelle. “What do you think? Would you rather watch—Noelle? Are you all right?”

Noelle stopped in front of the three people clustered around a digital camcorder, their heads together as they watched a small video display. The two men dismissed her and returned to watching the footage, while the woman, petite and raven-haired, stood up to give Noelle a knowing look. “Something’s happened to you. Did someone from the village say something about us filming here?”

“No, nothing like that, and the police promised that they’d keep an eye out for any more folks who try to disrupt the filming,” Noelle replied, dropping onto a small packing box the backpack that she had retrieved from where it had fallen on the pitted gravel drive. “Teresa, what do you know about this place?”

Teresa looked puzzled. “What do I know about it? Other than it’s haunted, you mean?”

“What do you know about the owners? Did the person you rented it from tell you anything about the family who lives here?”

At a sharp look from the elegant Miles, Teresa took Noelle’s arm and moved off to the other side of the great hall, dark-paneled and prone to deep shadows that made one’s imagination run wild. Right now, with one of the two double doors open to let in light, it looked less intimidating.

“Other than that it’s owned by a very old man who lives in the south of France for his health, no. I take it there is an heir somewhere, but he doesn’t spend time in the Czech Republic, so the house is available for rent. The agent did say that Ghosts, Goblins, and Ghoulies wanted to film here, but ever since the scandal with their host caught faking on-screen events, they haven’t had the funding to do much but film in the same old tired haunted spots like the Tower of London.” Her voice dripped with scorn, which amused Noelle no end, since she knew full well that there were two separate portals to Abaddon in the Tower grounds alone.

“The heir—do you know how old he is? If he has lovely green eyes and a chin dimple that makes you want to bite it and is tall and incredibly handsome and quite likely very dangerous?”

Teresa’s eyebrows rose. “No, the rental agent didn’t mention anything like that. I take it you’ve run into this tall, dark, and handsome man with a biteable chin?”

“I have,” Noelle said with a loud sigh. She pulled forward one of the curule chairs flanking a stained coat of armor and pounded on the red-cushioned seat. A cloud of dust rose into the air, the sunlight streaming in through the door catching the dust motes and making a corona around her as she plumped down without ceremony. “I saw him, he kidnapped me, and then, when we were really having a quite interesting conversation, he ran away. It’s the story of my life. I tell you, Teresa, it’s almost enough to give me a complex.”