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that he would assess for his brother's sake, if not his own. He got into his car and gunned the engine. There was something elusive about this girl; he couldn't quite put his finger on it. He only knew that he
didn't

want Lucian to interfere just yet.
    Tori.
    The name rolled over his thoughts like honey, and he ruthlessly squashed the memory of her. He wasn't an animal. He wouldn't let one girl destroy the perfect balance and independence he had defied his own world to achieve. He wanted a life of obscurity and quiet. The rules of the Devereux aristocracy no longer applied to him. Christian wanted to keep it that way.
    As he drove along the narrow roads at over a hundred miles per hour, the thick forest on either side cloaking the way with long, dappled shadows, he briefly considered returning to Paris but he just as quickly discarded the thought. The urge to run was not his style. It wasn't that he was afraid of her, he was afraid of something far worse. The violent temptation that she had put him through had been momentary, more an accident of fate than anything, yet his loss of control had been staggering. It had taken every ounce of his discipline to hold himself together and not succumb to his darkest urges ... the secret that haunted his existence.
    Christian Devereux was a vampire.
    A vampire, whose mask after almost two centuries, was perfect. He was cultured, urbane, sophisticated. Yet for all that, he'd never been more afraid of
what

he was, than he had been at that single moment when he'd locked eyes with Tori Warrick.
    Christian hadn't killed anyone in more than one hundred years; he satiated his thirst and his victims lived, human or not. But with her, the most reviled part of himself craved her blood to the last drop, to the death. Already he could imagine the warm, briny taste of it, and his teeth lengthened, his body trembling. He willed himself under control, his jaw tightly clenched.
    She was what she was, and he was what he was.
    The laws were clear. And he was bound to them.
    Christian pulled into the driveway of his house, an old Georgian mansion that he had spent the last few years restoring. It rested on ten acres of flawlessly manicured grounds, fringed by untouched woodland backing onto even more thickly wooded forest. The property afforded him the privacy he needed. He glanced at his watch. It was almost four o'clock. Right now he needed to hunt. He needed to satisfy his hunger, and drown the taste of her from his mouth.

VICTORIA WALKED ACROSS the open quad between the tall red and white brick buildings, following the student map together with the course assignments she held in her hand. Kramer Hall, it said, for psychology. Oh hell, not five minutes into the day and she was lost already.
    Windsor shared the town and its rolling landscape with its sister school, Harland College. Both private institutions, they shared not just the same acreage, but the same benefactors and some of the same facilities, including a library and concert hall. Windsor prided itself on preparing its students for college, and according to the brochure, ninety-eight percent of Windsor graduates went on to a four-year college, with almost a fifth of its graduating seniors matriculating to Harland.
    "Okay," Victoria told herself. "Head back to the library, that's the building over there with the big clock, and then start over."
    "Hey there! Are you lost? You look confused, and well, you're talking to yourself." Her savior was a pretty girl with tight, reddish brown curls and brown eyes. She was with a dark-haired girl with an extremely sour face. The redhead continued in a friendly manner. "My name is Charla. That's Angie. Are you new? Where are you headed?" It was hard to keep pace with her rapid-fire speech.
    "Um, yes, I'm a transfer. I'm looking for Kramer."
    "Psych? Yeah, I'm in that building, too. Come on, we're headed there. Those maps are the worst, but don't worry, you'll get the hang of it. Only a few hundred