How did a two-hundred-thirty-year-old vampire find himself on a blind date with a human female cyber genius?

A remote part of Devlin Sinclair’s mind pondered this question with immense curiosity and astonishment while the rest of him focused on the task at hand.

“That seat is taken.”

The Hunter of the Dark Ones flashed his most engaging and disarming of grins, nearly blinding the occupants of the nearby tables at Raoul’s with its brilliance.

At the very least mesmerizing guests of the female variety.

“Mith, am I right?” he called the woman seated before him by her encrypted chat room handle, knowing full well that her name was actually Grace Elizabeth Darling. Twenty-nine years old, single, and wanted by several government agencies for her cyber hacking skills since the age of twelve.

She tipped her head slightly to one side and gave him a slow, meticulous, dispassionate appraisal from head to toe.

As if he were the restaurant’s special menu for the evening, and she found every item on the list less than appetizing.

“You’re not Azor Ahai,” she stated with absolute certainty.

Devlin mentally rolled his eyes and stifled a sigh.

No, he was not the Prince Who Was Promised, according to George R.R. Martin’s magnum opus A Song of Ice and Fire.

He wasn’t even the man who used the name as his online handle in the chat room where he occasionally traded conversational volleys with Grace.

No, Devlin Sinclair, Marquess of Hartington in his human life, was the royal henchman to the New England vampire queen Jade Cicada.

Devlin had in the past few months painstakingly insinuated himself into the role of Grace Darling’s chat room flirtation so that he could track the elusive cyber genius down in the flesh.

“I am,” Devlin said presently, blinking his eyes with innocence and injecting a slightly wounded look into his countenance at her immediate rejection of his identity.

She stared unblinkingly back at him, her expression unsmiling and devoid of any emotion.

“I expected you to be balding and pudgy, and maybe a foot shorter,” she said.

“There are no pictures of me anywhere, I made sure of that,” Devlin pointed out, though he knew that the real man was in fact as she described.

He’d chosen to get closer to her through this particular identity precisely because the man suffered from extreme paranoia and took care never to leave traces of himself. Who better to impersonate than a ghost on the Net and an invisible man in real life?

That, and the fact that he engaged in far more conversations and commanded more minutes of Grace’s time than anyone else in cyber space, where she lived for fourteen out of her sixteen waking hours each day, ostensibly as the work-from-home Enterprise Architect at the hottest new tech startup Zenn.

It was a stroke of pure luck that Grace herself initiated this face-to-face meeting just as Devlin almost gave up on tracing her, though his own digital abilities were substantial.

But not as good as hers.

“I hacked some satellite images and filtered the distortion. I got one of you walking through Central Park while eating a Big Mac a couple of weeks ago.”

There was no accusation or apology in her voice. She simply stated a fact and waited for him to refute or confirm.

Huh.

Devlin had to admire her resourcefulness, but he was not surprised. He would have expected no less given her skills.

“I must have had some sun glinting off my hair that day, which you mistook for the bald spot, and I was bundled in a heavy coat, which probably made me look a bit…fluffier,” he suggested smoothly.

“It was nighttime.”

“How forgetful of me,” he corrected with another flash of teeth, but she didn’t seem the least bit distracted by their brilliant whiteness.

“It was the light from the street lamps, not the sun.”

She made no reply.

Instead, she unhurriedly took her napkin from her lap, put it back on the table, pushed her chair back, slung a small backpack onto one shoulder and got up to leave.

Devlin thought fast.

“How is Miu-Miu?”

She paused and looked up at him, her expression still a neutral mask.

“And Antony and Cleopatra?”

Devlin quickly glanced at his watch, quickly because he didn’t trust her not to disappear in a puff of smoke if he took his eyes off her for even a millisecond.

“You don’t need to go home to feed them for another few hours. Let’s sit down and have our dinner, shall we? I, for one, am famished.”

She stood there regarding him with that fathomless dark stare, and Devlin would have given half his considerable fortune to know what she was thinking.

He read people very easily; it was one of his many natural gifts. But this woman was a Sphinx as far as he was concerned.

Perhaps because in order for a human book to be read, there had to be emotional signatures, but in Grace’s case, there was only cold logic. Encrypted cold logic.

Seeing that she was hesitant enough to at least remain stationary rather than dash out the door and disappear without a trace, Devlin pushed his luck further by walking around her and pulling out her chair again.

“Please do take a seat. This is your favorite restaurant, isn’t it? It took some doing to get a reservation. I would hate to waste it.”

He held his position for several seconds, one hand on the arm of her chair, one hand ever so lightly settling on her shoulder to guide her into the chair, while she considered her options.

But really, any choice she thought she had was an illusion.

Now that Devlin had seen her in the flesh, she would only escape him if he allowed it.

The Hunter never lost his prey.

“Since turning vampire, I’ve made killing my exclusive profession,” he continued smoothly, almost bored, as if talking about something as mundane as the weather.

“I’m exceedingly good at it. My moniker among my Kind is Assassin. Not very inventive, is it? But fitting nevertheless. I have many weapons at my disposal, f*cking included, to get what I want.”

She came to him then, chased him across the length of the room.

Shaking. Her body was shaking with emotion.

He wondered detachedly whether she was going to strike him for his hateful words. He’d purposely demeaned what had just happened between them a short while ago. He wanted her to hate him. It was an emotion he understood well.

“Don’t say such things about yourself,” she whispered, still shaking, her eyes wide and sorrowful.

“It’s all true,” he said carelessly, his expression sardonic. “I have never pretended otherwise.”

Her hands rose, and he almost pulled back. But he made himself stay still.

She was just a human female, he told himself. He was not afraid of her.

Her hands fell again, and he thought she would turn away now, her illusions about him, about what she felt, obliterated by reality.

Instead, she gently, inexorably unfolded his arms and wrapped her own around his waist as she laid her cheek against his chest, right against his heart as it beat almost frantically within its cage.

“I hear you,” she murmured, acknowledging his confession. She rubbed her cheek against his skin and nuzzled her nose in the center of his chest, inhaling deeply, then rested her cheek there again.

For long moments she simply held him, offering her warmth, offering unconditional affection, and he felt protected. He, the Assassin, felt protected by a slip of a human female who made Bambi look tough.

He felt increasing panic at how in such a short period of time, he had come to depend on her. How much he wanted and needed her. The pleasure she represented and gave him made him all the more aware of the pain that he had always carried within.

This was what his Master had warned him of. This weakness and vulnerability brought about by pleasure. By desire.

“I hear you,” she repeated softly against his chest.

Then she looked up into his eyes and caught him in an unguarded moment, her eyes bright and intense with emotion.

“I see you,” she said, and he almost believed she could look directly into his soul.

“I love what I see, Ryu Takamura. I love you.”

He inhaled sharply and was suddenly furious. Why did she keep pushing him? Why didn’t she run away? Couldn’t she tell he was a monster? A killer?

“You will realize one day that you’ve wasted your emotions on me,” he told himself as much as he was telling her. “You will regret this.”

“Maybe,” she conceded, “but emotions are not things one can bring to heel like a good little terrier, at least mine aren’t that way. And I have always been taught to trust my instincts and be honest with myself and the people around me. If I died tomorrow and didn’t tell you how I feel, that's what I'd regret more."

She hugged him tighter and rose on tiptoe to brush her lips against his throat.

"May I have you, Ryu? For a little while if not forever?"

She kissed his chin and his jaw.

"I want to be yours too," she added, in case he was in any doubt. "For as long as you're willing to have me."