Her Dark Lord by Mel Teshco Page B

His eyes, now cold, but capable of such passion, glittered beneath a bright street lamp. He gave a careless shrug. “Instinct…sixth sense…a hunch.” He smirked. “Call it what you will.”
    She glared at him. Neatly sidestepping an answer was her forte!
    A black stretch limousine pulled up to the curb. A chauffeur jumped out and opened the back door with a flourish.
    She ignored the driver. All her attention centered on the man who watched her so closely. “Who are you?”
    He raised a black brow. “You ask me that now?”
    It was a valid point. For her, sex was as personal as she became with a man. It was a physical release, nothing more. She didn’t want to know names, didn’t want an attachment to go with a face. Her mission to cure her mother was her only obsession—nothing or nobody could distract her from that.
    He gestured for her to precede him into the vehicle. She paused, fighting a sudden, inexplicable urge to flee. She took a steadying breath. She couldn’t fail. Her mother needed her.
    She climbed stiffly into the luxurious, leather interior and he slid in beside her. He didn’t wear a tie, and he unbuttoned his white dress-shirt collar while the limo drifted into the steady stream of city traffic.
    His spiced warmth tantalized her nose, and she almost groaned at the sight of his exposed throat, his throbbing pulse. She hadn’t fed for almost a month, and her defenses were crumbling fast.
    She could have drunk from this man a moment before he’d brought her to orgasm. Indeed, it would have intensified the experience. Though his memory would have been wiped the moment she tasted him, instinctive self-preservation had given her pause. And when a climax had exploded through her like a freight train about to derail, she’d been too overcome to care.
    She jerked away from his proximity, forcing self-control.
    Seemingly oblivious to her internal struggle, he uncorked a bottle of champagne from an inbuilt bar. Filling a delicate flute with the liquor, he passed it to her.
    Her throat tight, she nodded thanks, barely aware she’d spilled a little until he reached forward, using a forefinger to blot away the fat droplet spreading across her thigh.
    He opened his mouth, his eyes pinpointing hers while he leisurely sucked his finger dry. Oh, God . Her upper thighs clenched, and she felt a rush of moisture pool between them.
    “So, tell me about yourself,” he asked throatily.
    She swallowed back a mystifying need to tell him the truth, a no-holds-barred account of her history that would send anyone else scuttling to the far side of the seat.
    But he wasn’t just anyone. She sensed in him a fearless and fierce strength, a darkness within that made her toes curl in response.
    She pasted a smile to her face as a surge of anger at his audacity flooded through her veins. “I have yet to learn your name, and yet you want my personal details?”
    A dhampire—part human, part vampire—she could adjust her mortal sight to that of a nightwalker whenever she desired. Except, despite herself, she liked the way his teeth glinted in the semidarkness, the hard planes and shadows of his face beneath the muted flash of streetlights.
    “Perhaps I enjoy the novelty of being…mysterious,” he suggested with a shrug.
    She gritted her teeth, but saw little reason to argue. If he wanted to hear her watered-down version, so be it. She desperately needed his connections to the underworld, which became more and more credible every minute she spent in his company.
    “All right,” she said grudgingly. “I’ll tell you a little about myself. And then you can properly introduce yourself.”
    He laughed, the sound warm and lush. “Deal.”
    He was too fascinating by far, too distracting. She took a deep breath and began, “I’m an only child, raised by a single parent. My mum, Chantal.”
    “Then I commend her. She did a great job.”
    “Thank you.” She swallowed hard. Anger, resentment, even lust, evolved into