had to school himself to patience. He had to know why she was here, what she was doing. He’d waited sixteen years to be with her again—more than five hundred before that. Surely he could wait one more night. But not much more than that.
He was hungry. He needed sustenance, blood to satisfy his body and perhaps calm the raging desire in his veins. To keep himself from going to her, for just a little while longer. And then, in the early hours just before dawn, he would go after the ring.
And that was precisely what he did. But when he got to the museum, it was to find the window broken, the alarms shrieking, sirens blaring and the ring…
Gone.
Stormy woke to the insistent sun beaming through the hotel room’s windows and searing through her eyelids. She rolled over in the bed and hid her face in the pillows, but the memory of her dreams woke her more thoroughly than the sun ever could have.
She’d dreamed about Vlad.
But she hadn’t dreamed about the two of them making love—which was odd, because she’d dreamed of that many times over the past sixteen years, never sure whether it had actually happened, or if it was just part of her senseless yearning for him. Or something more sinister—perhaps the longing of her intruder or one of her memories.
No. This dream had been more like a memory. Until the end. Then it had become a vision. He’d been standing there on the shores of Endover, where she had first met him. His castle-like mansion hovered on its secret island behind him, and the sea was raging in between. He’d been just standing there, staring at her.
Wanting her.
Calling to her.
The wind had been whipping through his long dark hair, and she’d remembered—yes, remembered!—the way it felt to run her fingers through it. His chest had been bare, probably because, in her mind, that was the way she preferred to remember him. His chest. Next to his eyes, and that hair, and his mouth, it was her favorite part of him. She’d touched that chest in her dreams. She’d run her hands over it and over his belly. Had it ever been real?
It felt real. More real than anything else in her life.
She rolled onto her back and pressed her hands to her face. “God,” she moaned. “Am I ever going to get over him?”
But she already knew the answer. If she hadn’t been able to forget Dracula in sixteen years, it wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon. He had a hold on her. Maybe it was deliberate. Maybe it was him messing with her mind, refusing to let her forget him, even while making her forget the details of their time together. Or maybe it was because of that other soul that lurked inside her. Because, though it had been dormant for a long time, Stormy knew that the other was still there. And if she’d begun to doubt it, Elisabeta’s recent appearance had driven the truth home. She lived still.
But was that why she couldn’t forget Vlad? Or was it just because he was the only man who had ever made her feel…desperate for him. Hungry for him. Certain no one else would ever suffice.
And no one else ever had. Or ever would. She couldn’t even climax with another man.
He certainly hadn’t had the same issues, though, had he? He’d never made contact, not once in sixteen years. And it hurt, far more than it should. Some days she convinced herself it was because he truly did care about her. That he was keeping away to protect her from the inner turmoil Elisabeta would cause if he did otherwise. But most of the time she believed the more likely reason. It was, after all, Elisabeta, not Stormy, he loved. And since he couldn’t have her, he couldn’t be bothered with Stormy at all.
She closed her eyes, and revisited, mentally, the initial parts of her dream—and knew it had been a memory. A snippet of the weeks Vlad had erased from her mind. He’d taken her to Romania, not North Carolina, smuggled her there inside a casket. She’d awakened in his castle, furious with him.
But why? What had happened there? Why had he let her go? God, why had he ever let her go?
Groaning, Stormy dragged herself out of bed, shuffled across the room and kicked the clothes she didn’t remember wearing out of her path. She went to the door and hoped, for the hotel staff’s sake, that her standing order had been delivered on time.
It had. Outside the door was a rolling service tray, with a silver pot full of piping hot coffee and a plate with several pastries beside it. There were a cup, a pitcher of cream, and a container with sugar and other sweeteners in colorful packets. Beside all of that was a neatly folded—and hot of the presses, by the smell of the ink—issue of the daily newspaper.
Her order had been filled to perfection—assuming the coffee was any good—and delivered on time. She’d specified this be brought to her room every morning of her stay between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m., and that it be left outside her door so that her sleep wouldn’t be disturbed.
Yeah, she was a pain in the ass as a hotel guest. But given what they charged for rooms these days, they ought to throw in a little extra service, the way she saw it. Not that they were throwing it in, exactly. She would be billed, she had no doubt. But the agency was thriving, so what the hell?
She wheeled the cart into her room, filled the cup with coffee and snagged a cheese and cherry Danish. It wasn’t Dunkin’ Donuts, but it was the closest she could get at the moment. Then she sat down to enjoy her breakfast and unfolded the newspaper.
The banner headline hit her between the eyes like a fist.
BOLD BREAK-IN AT NATIONAL MUSEUM—PRICELESS ARTIFACT STOLEN.
“No,” she whispered. But she already knew, even before she read the piece, what had been taken. The hole in the pit of her stomach told her in no uncertain terms.
And her stomach was right.
According to the article, the burglary had been a graceless smash-and-grab. Someone had kicked in the window of the room where the ring was on display, so they clearly knew right where it was. They had set off every alarm in the place but were back out the window and gone before the security guards even made it into the room.
It didn’t seem a likely M.O. for Melina Roscova. Stormy would have expected more grace, more finesse, from a woman like that. But who else would want the ring?
The answer came before she had time to blink. Vlad. That was who.
She’d dreamed of him last night. Had it been coincidence? Or had it been his real nearness making his image appear in her mind?
Did he have the ring? Just what kind of power did that thing have?
She shivered and knew that whatever it was, it frightened her. But she shook away the fear and squared her shoulders.
“One way to find out,” she muttered. She finished the Danish, slugged down the coffee, and headed for the shower for a record-breaking lather and rinse, head to toe. But halfway through, she stopped. Because…damn, hadn’t she fallen asleep in the bath last night? Why the hell didn’t she remember getting out of the tub and into bed?
She frowned as she toweled down and yanked on a pair of jeans and a black baby T-shirt with a badass fairy on the front above the words Trust Me.
“I must have been more tired than I thought,” she muttered. “It’ll come back to me.”
