Please enjoy a "sneak peek" of the unnamed sequel to Midnight Rose

Alix turned the knob and slipped into the bedroom, moving like the soundless wraith she'd become, stealthy and graceful for the first time in her life, and filled with a dreadful excitement for what lay ahead. She was only vaguely aware of the quiet that swept in behind her like an errant shadow and wrapped thick tendrils around her senses, making everything seem muffled and hazy.

Despite its tomblike silence, the room looked cheerful. A brass floor lamp cast a golden arc in the corner, banishing the gloom and gilding the ivory walls and mouldings. Jude's clothing lay discarded on the chaise lounge nearby, copies of Sports Illustrated and The New Yorker scattered across its foot. Signs of normalcy that twisted her reality and sent a hysterical giggle to threaten her grave decorum. The woodsy, herbal scent of shampoo and soap hung in the air; somewhere beyond another door, a faucet dripped once, twice, sounds Alix's ears could never have discerned two days ago.

And Jude. Jude was there, the dark and light of Alix's story. The hero and villain. Clad only in a pair of pale blue pajama bottoms, his hair damp from the shower, he stood staring out one of the double windows with his forearm braced on the sash. He stood like one of the marble statues in the garden, seemingly unaware of her presence. Only preternatural vision could perceive the minute tightening of the muscles in his naked shoulders, the vague stiffening of his spine, as she closed the door behind her and leaned against it.

There was something less remote about him in that reflective posture. A vulnerability she hadn't seen before. He looked young, troubled. He looked...human.

For a fleeting moment she loved him with a ferocity that startled and frightened her. Then her reasons for being there washed over her again, and the low, simmering rage returned, fortifying her against maudlin sentiments that refused to die.

"What do you want?" he spoke finally, his gaze fixed somewhere far beyond the glass panes and bricked-in courtyard below, far beyond the townhouse that guarded all the bloody secrets of his kind--and now hers.

She tried to swallow the lump in her throat and failed, the roar of blood and hunger swishing loud in her ears. "I don't really know. Maybe you can tell me."

"You're weak and shaky," he observed without looking at her. "The world is too loud, too bright, your nerves raw."

"Yes."

"You would climb out of your skin if it were possible."

"Yes. What's wrong with me?"

"You're hungry. You need nourishment."

She drew a breath for the first time in eons, filling lungs that no longer needed oxygen to sustain her. "I don't suppose that means a Big Mac and fries, huh?"

"No."

"God help me."

But there was no God here. They both knew it.

Jude came to life at last, shifted his attention from the rain-soaked night and turned to look at her. Neither spoke while dark, forbidden tension moved the air in sultry waves between them. Shadows Alix had never noticed before danced in every corner of the room. Phantom voyeurs, watching. Laughing.

If Jude saw them, he showed no sign. He seemed only aware of Alix, his speculative gaze peeling away skin and muscle and bone, down to the raw, newly immortal heart of her. And to her eyes, he was everything beautiful and horrible, king of the laughing shadows, lover and liar and monster.

If he touched her now, she would scream.

But he didn't. They stood in the viscous quiet for far too long, while Alix's ears discerned every droplet of the silky rain that had begun to dance on the brick patio two stories below Jude's windows. One drop, two drops, then more, too many to count, and she thought she could go crazy from the roar of it inside her head.

At last he broke the trance between them and crossed the room to meet her, moving with the subtle grace that seemed such an inherent part of his persona. It was one of the first traits she'd found so appealing about him the night he'd swept into her life, the enchanted night when the end of that life had begun.

Elegance and sensuality hiding the beast within.

Alix's lashes slid closed to shut him out as he approached, to block the sight of his fair, naked torso from reaching that vulnerable place within her where keen memories stirred. Was it only three nights ago that she'd run her hands over his smooth shoulders, felt the sleek movement of his body over and under and inside hers, marveled at the strength and warmth and beauty of him, at the sheer human magnificence of loving another person?

Only he wasn't a person, of course.

And she had loved him beyond anything rational or earthly before she'd known any better. In a sad, twisted way, she'd signed up for this nightmare. She and her foolish, lonely heart.

He stopped in front of her. Alix opened her eyes to look at him and found him regarding her with a steadiness that wrenched a shudder from her woman's soul.

"I don't want this," she whispered. "I wouldn't have ever wanted it."

"I know."

He had the nerve to reach for her. When his caressing fingers came whisper-soft at her cheek, she jerked her head aside and glared at him. "Can we do this without touching?"

His expression hardened, his hand dropping to his side. "I'm afraid not. But we can minimize contact, if that's what you'd like."

"That's what I'd like, all right." A lie. She'd like his arms around her, to bury her nose against his chest and inhale his fragrant warmth. To draw comfort from his strength instead of blood from his veins. But the blood was why she had come. She was his creation, and she needed to be fed.

"Let's get it over with," she muttered.

He didn't move. His dark eyes searched hers, his body radiating a heat so intense she thought she could burn up in its fever, curl and wither and blow away in a sweep of ash and heartache. He wasn't the man she'd thought, and yet she still wanted him. It had nothing to do with species or humanity. Whatever drew them together was comprised of elements that transcended genus or mortality.

Tears sprang to her eyes and slid down her cheeks before she could smear them away. "What are you waiting for, Jude? Can we please just do this, damn you?"

You've already killed me. Why torture me, too?

Jude flinched, a reaction so fleeting she wasn't certain she'd seen it. Then he raised a wrist to his mouth and neatly opened a vein. The raw sorrow stamping his features as he held his offering to her lips told her how much it cost him to save her and lose her at the same time.

A sick time to feel cherished, Alix thought dazedly, watching the blood well on the tender skin inside his wrist and run in artful rivulets to his elbow.

But he didn't prompt her to get on with it. He just waited, quiet, impassive, bleeding. Something told her he would have stood there all night, his life draining from his body with every beat of his infuriatingly patient, inhuman heart.

She hated him now as much as she'd loved him mere days ago, and the realization slammed into her with the same stomach-twisting force. God--the two sentiments seemed nearly one and the same, separated only by the thin veil of three days' time.

Warm crimson droplets splashed the top of her bare foot. His scent was everywhere suddenly, filling her senses, and then instinct took over, her mouth watering, her pulse pounding drums in her ears, her fingers reaching for him...she grasped his forearm against her mouth and latched on like a hungry child, and when her tongue swept his rent flesh, he swallowed a groan.

Agony. Ecstasy. Life with this creature would be both, every minute of every endless day, a fruitless fancy that played across the blackened screen of her mind. They would never again belong to each other except in this gory, sickening way, and somehow she had to resign herself to his haunted world...but not tonight. Tonight she just had to be Alix. Alix with Jude. Erase the last two days, she told herself, even as his blood surged over her tongue. Pretend the nights are still for sleeping.

The only sound to shatter the silence was their erratic breathing, which seesawed in a strange duet as she took what he offered. Feeding from him wasn't terribly different than taking him inside her in that lush, sliding rhythm of lovers. The same searing satisfaction was there, the climbing pleasure, the excruciating intimacy, and as she lifted her lashes and found him watching her with black eyes gone hot with desire, a spear of want shot straight through her.

Can we do this without touching? she'd demanded, fool that she was, and he'd been so obliging, so amiable, no doubt knowing the spell that would bind them the moment his blood touched her lips.

Enraged all over again, she readjusted her grip on his arm and came at his wrist from another angle, with enough vigor to wrench a harsh sound of pain from his throat.

Still he didn't stop her. Maybe he would have let her drain him dry, but Alix didn't wait to find out. When he grew weak and braced one palm on the door beside her head to hold himself up, she forced back the raging hunger and released him, turning her head aside and squeezing her eyes closed. It was the only way she could reject him, and it cost her plenty.

"Enough?" he panted, his open mouth nearly against her cheek.

Alix gave a short, dispassionate nod. Something was happening inside her, though. Where she had been so cold, so empty before, now silken heat curled through her as his essence slid through her system like a drug, soothing and silencing the craving, awakening an even deeper, more primal need.

All she had to do was turn her head and meet his mouth, and he would give it to her. He would give her his lips and tongue and flesh and blood.

"I have to go." She turned her back and grasped the brass knob, but he didn't budge behind her, didn't give her room to swing the door open.

"Stay," he said softly, the word whispering through her hair.

"I can't. I won't." Her hand tugged fruitlessly at the knob. She hadn't locked it, but it was frozen--his telepathic tricks. "Open this door, damn it!"

Instead, he slid a proprietary hand around her mid-section, flattened his palm against her stomach, pulled her back into the hard wall of his chest. His naked flesh burned her through her thin tanktop as she stood imprisoned between his body and the door.

Alix swallowed, refusing to relinquish her hold on the knob. "Go to hell."

"Trust me, I'm already there." Jude nuzzled her hair, his voice low and thick with unspoken pain. "So are you. Alix...let me take us out of this horrible place. Together."

"You're speaking metaphorically," she whispered. "Lover's words. Screw that. Screw you."

His free hand swept aside her hair, baring her neck to his lips, and Alix shivered when he brushed a searing kiss against her nape.

"You fell in love with me once," he murmured, a gentle accusation. "You took me inside you."

"Before I knew what you were. You lied to me, Jude."

"I never lied."

"You didn't tell me what you are."

"You never would have believed me."

"Let me go." She jerked against him, trying to wrench from the deceptively gentle embrace, but he merely tightened his arm around her waist, reminding her of the inhuman strength she couldn't yet match.

"You think I wanted this?" His voice came in a tortured hush against her ear. "For you to hate me? My God, Alix--"

"I didn't ask for this life, damn you." She stared ahead at the fine wood grain of the door, shutting out his anguish, his feelings, wanting to hate him and succeeding a little less with every passing moment held tight to his hard body. "You claim you wanted to save me, but that wasn't an act of love, Jude. It was all for you. Everything about you is a lie."

His groan was low, too low for human ears. "It was an act of love. It was. I couldn't let you die, not like that, not at his hands--"

"No? At yours, then?" Empowered by a fresh surge of anger and grief, she struggled anew and nearly succeeded in slipping from his hold, but he regained it and pushed her against the door again with a heavy thud. The forceful shove would have knocked the breath from a mortal woman, but she was no mortal now, and the violence of the action didn't frighten her. Instead--and sickly--it aroused her. God, she was becoming more like him with every useless heartbeat.

"Let me go, Jude," she said, her flat tone hiding the excitement that threatened to steal her words. "I don't want you. I want out, away from this cursed house, away from your sick life."

"Who will feed you?" The damp caress of his tongue slid along her earlobe, tickled her gold hoop until much to her dismay, desire shuddered through her. "Who will teach you our ways?"

"I don't want to know your ways." But the fight continued to bleed out of her as his deft hand found the hem of her tanktop and slipped beneath it to find naked skin, and she found herself holding her breath as his touch made a slow foray up, up to the valley between her breasts...where it stopped.

Then Jude shifted impossibly closer, his hips pressed tight to hers so that she was painfully aware of the hard ridge of his arousal searing the small of her back. "You came here to feed, Alix. You got what you want. So why don't you leave now?"

"I'm trying, you jerk."

"Not hard enough."

She gave another squirm, a weak one, even as his other hand reached around her and slid inside the elastic of her pajama bottoms. He'd already won the game.

She wouldn't leave here until he'd fed her hunger in all possible ways.