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live?” His question diverted
her thoughts from the dark places where she didn’t want to
dwell.
    “On Rochester Drive in the apartments at
101.” She answered him easily and regretted it. She should have
given him Elena’s address and caught a cab from there, but if she
had to walk another block in her heels, she’d have collapsed. Her
legs ached, and she indulged in the fantasy of asking Max to
massage them for her when they reached her apartment.
    Replaying flashes of the evening in her mind,
Erica found herself alternately aroused and disgusted, enticed and
ashamed. Whatever spell she’d been under in the bar, she could not
have been completely in control.
    “The drink ...”
    “There was nothing in it. Honest.”
    She still didn’t believe him. Out of the
corner of her eye she regarded his handsome profile. A muscle at
the back of his jaw twitched. He’s hiding something, she
decided.
    “Right here,” she said a while later when her
building came into view. “You can pull up over there.”
    Max stopped the car and turned to her. The
look he gave her made her heart pump a little faster.
    “Erica,” he said her name slowly, his voice
low and smooth. “I don’t want to put you through any more of this.
Let me look for your sister. I’ll keep you informed of what I
find.”
    Disappointment surged through her, and she
glanced away. Why had she been hoping he was about to kiss her?
    He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled
out his business card. A phone and fax number were embossed below
his name in small black letters.
    “Call me with any information you have, and
like I said, if you can give me something of your sister’s that I
can trace ...”
    Erica bit her lower lip and nodded. “I will.
I’ll go to her apartment tomorrow and get something. But, I’m not
giving up, Mr. Hart. I’m going to keep looking for her myself. I
can’t just sit around and wait.”
    “Erica ...”
    “No. The things I saw tonight.” The things I
did. “I can’t bear to think of Elena involved in that.”
    “It still may be her choice.”
    “No. I don’t believe that. I’m not saying
there aren’t people who ...” Like it? Find it arousing? She refused
to think about how aroused she was at the moment. “It’s just not
Elena.” Who was she trying to fool? She wrenched the door handle
and stomped one foot onto the curb.
    When he grabbed her wrist, she pulled back
halfheartedly, but he didn’t relinquish his grasp. His gaze was
hard, like it had been inside Club Dead when he admonished her,
when he commanded her. It killed her that her body responded to the
authority in his voice.
    “If you insist on looking for her yourself,
then I’ll take you. You have to understand that there are places
you just can’t go alone. In order to keep their secrets, there are
vampires that will hurt you. You need someone to protect you.”
    “I thought we’d been through this already,
Mr. Hart. If you want to do that, that’s fine. I’ll go along with
your investigation--only as long as I’m part of it. If Elena thinks
that you’re a cop or that I’ve hired you to find her, she’ll make
herself harder to reach. She’ll withdraw and I won’t ever be able
to help her.”
    “How far are you willing to go to find
her?”
    Erica met his gaze and held it as she
disengaged her wrist from his grasp. “All the way.”
    “I don’t think you know what that means.”
    “Then show me.”
     

Chapter Six
     
     
    Max’s growing hunger surged at Erica’s
invitation. What he wouldn’t give to truly show her everything he
sensed she wanted to know about his world. Right now, with her eyes
flashing, and the scent of defiance mixing with the aroma of her
own arousal, she was everything he wanted--and nothing he dared
take.
    Her conflicting reactions at the club had
told him much more than she ever would have. Truly drawing her into
his world, maybe even into his life, would destroy everything about
her that made her so