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better. “Let’s go.”
    He scrambled to obey.
    She couldn’t stop the wild smile that lifted her
lips. Her compulsion had actually worked!
    * * *
    Two hours later, Terese stepped into her one bedroom
studio apartment and slammed the door shut behind her. Finally,
finally,
she was—
    “Hello, my love.” A man’s voice, silken and dark with
menace, called to her from the shadows.
    She froze as ice-cold, numbing fear filled her.
No, no, it couldn’t be—
    He reached over, turned on a nearby lamp, and the
glowing yellow light illuminated his face. His glowing green eyes.
His glistening fangs. “I’ve been waiting for you to come home.”
    “Eric.” Her heart raced and the furious pounding
filled her ears. How had he found her?She’d tried to be so careful.
She’d run far from him, leaving Baton Rouge and traveling southeast
until she’d literally hit the ocean—the ocean, and the small,
unassuming town of New Olympus, Florida, that graced the beach.
    Eric stepped toward her and she instinctively
flinched back, moving a good foot.
    But he just smiled. “I’ve got your blood in me, love.
That means
you
are in me. And I’m in you. We’re linked.
Bound by the blood.”
    She didn’t want to be linked with him. Didn’t want to
have a damned thing to do with him.
    “Our bond links us. It gives me your scent. It lets
me track you. And I
can
track you—wherever you go, I can
find you.” Another slow, gliding step toward her. His tall, sleekly
muscled body moved with dangerous grace. “There’s nowhere that you
can hide from me.
Nowhere
.”
    With that, he shot forward and grabbed her. His long
nails dug into her hair as he hauled her against him. “You’ve been
a very, very bad girl, Terese. You shouldn’t have left me, not
after all I did for you.” His breath blew across her face and sent
a shudder of revulsion through her.
    All he’d done for her?
“You turned me into a
monster,” she grated. “You took my blood and forced me to
become…like you.” The memory of that night—of the burning pain, of
that first, desperate taste of blood—filled her.
    When the compulsion faded, when she realized what he
was doing, she’d fought him. But Eric had been too strong, and he’d
just held her down. He’d shoved her onto the floor as he drove his
fangs deep into her throat. And though she’d struggled, she hadn’t
been able to break free. As the minutes trickled by, she’d become
weaker, weaker…and cold, so very cold. She’d drawn a last, gasping
breath—
    And then he’d shoved his wrist over her mouth and
dripped his thick, hot blood past her lips. Her body had convulsed
at the sickly sweet taste. Pain lashed through her. Agonizing.
Wrenching. She’d blacked out, screaming—
    And awoken as a vampire.
    “I chose you,” he muttered, gazing down at her with
his fangs bared. “I could’ve had anyone, but I chose
you
.”
    And the sick psycho thought she should be honored. He
hadn’t understood when she wasn’t thrilled by her new life. “I
didn’t want this,” she whispered, not looking into his eyes. She
didn’t want to look into those eyes again. Because when she did, it
chilled her to the bone.
    “If you’d given me time, I could have made you want
this life, made you want
me
.” He lowered his head, and his
breath tickled her throat. “I played the gentleman. I tried to give
you time to accept your new world, time to accept me—”
    Her hands came up and rammed into his chest.
Grunting, he slipped back a step.
    “Oh, yeah. You played the damn gentleman,” Terese
snapped. “You just transformed me into a vampire
without my
permission!
But, since you didn’t rape me, I guess you
thought—”
    His hands tightened into fists. “It wouldn’t have
been rape. You would have enjoyed every moment of my touch.”
    Yeah, right.
She would have enjoyed it…as
she gagged. “Only if you’d put me under compulsion, asshole. And
even then, I would have been screaming on the inside.”