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it.
    Then his mouth was on mine.
    For a moment, from sheer surprise, I tried to pull back. But Holden was a vampire and much stronger. He held me still with one hand. After that, I accepted there was more to his plan than kissing me and let myself yield to it.
    He kissed me with the deliberate precision of someone who had learned to kiss over the course of two hundred years. When someone kisses you so brilliantly, you can easily forget who and where you are, and what brought you there. It wasn’t long before I surrendered to his efforts and melted against the movement of his mouth.
    It began as a decoy kiss, just lips on lips. But when he sensed I was no longer fighting him, his mouth forced mine open, and he growled as my tongue tentatively brushed against his. He buried his hand in my hair, dipping my head to the side and exposing the smooth line of my neck. This was second nature for a vampire, where sex and blood went hand in hand. But if we were doing this to pretend we were just a frisky couple, unable to wait until we were through the door, we couldn’t behave like vampires. We needed to be human about this.
    I bit his lip.
    He retaliated by shoving me hard into the door, using the full line of his body to keep me pinned. My mouth opened, a shocked groan attempting to escape, but he kissed me harder and more enthusiastically than before. I put my hands on his shoulders, my fingernails raking upwards from his shoulder blades, dragging him closer to me.
    In response, his hands skimmed the edge of my hips and down to my thighs. His knee moved between mine, nudging them apart and inching the hem of my dress higher. He grasped hold of me, and I gave a little hop so he could lift me the rest of the way. With my body still pinned against him, I snaked my legs around his waist. His kisses began trailing down my neck, and in spite of our efforts to be normal, his fangs were exposed and grazing over my skin.
    Ding .
    The elevator swished closed, and the bald vampire and his corpse were gone.
    Holden’s exploring kisses stopped at the sound, and I froze, wide-eyed and painfully aware of my precarious position. I stared at him, and his pupils were dilated and glossy black, overwhelming the usual chocolate brown of his eyes. He put me down and was on the opposite side of the hall before I’d had a chance to smooth out my dress.
    “Sorry,” he said, his voice raspy and his fangs still out. “I needed to mask my smell, or he’d have known what I was. If I was with you, it wouldn’t be so obvious.”
    I was too dizzy to speak. I just nodded mutely and kept playing with the hem of my dress so I didn’t have to look at him.
    “I wouldn’t have bitten you,” he added.
    Forcing a weak smile, I felt my face flush with warmth. Worry over him biting me wasn’t the problem. The problem was I’d wanted him to.
    “You can’t come in with me,” I told him. “I need to do the rest alone.”
    We both regarded the now-quiet elevator, remembering the dead girl who had just been taken away. Had she seen the real face of Charlie Conaway? Did she make it within an inch of escape only to have her neck snapped?
    My grip tightened on the strap of the travel tube. If she had only made it through the door, we could have saved her.
    I shook myself and stood tall. Holden was waiting by the elevator now, watching me guardedly. Whatever he was thinking, it didn’t show on his face.
    “Be careful, Secret.”
    Under my thumb, the bell for PH3 chimed.
    “I’m always careful.” It smelled like a lie, even to me, but it was too late to turn back now. The penthouse door opened at the same time the elevator door shut. Holden was gone, and Charlie was standing in front of me without a shirt on, a big smile on his face.
    “You’re just in time.” He stepped out of the doorway, giving me a small entrance, but I still had to brush against him to get inside. “We’re going to have some fun, you and I.”
    “Yeah,” I said, my eyes adjusting to