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mistaken, the men currently standing at the side doors waiting were also with this man.
    That wasn’t good.
    Something was going on here that he didn’t understand but it didn’t bode well for Miri Reynolds.
    Miri knew the interloper’s oddly high voice all too well. Hargrove. The man was a plague on her.
    She turned to face him.
    It was jarring going from the visions to that brief moment where Ashtoreth had very nearly kissed her. And she him. Her body ached with need.
    And now this.
    Still, however unsettling, she was used to dealing with the transition from vision to reality, to hiding what her visions revealed and how they affected her.
    “No, Ashtoreth,” Miri said quietly in response to his request. “Please stay.”
    Whatever else, she didn’t want him to leave, not yet, not until she understood more. More about him, more about the feelings he roused so strongly in her, the need, the longing that still moved through her.
    And those visions…
    She shivered a little.
    Unconsciously, she laid a hand on Ashtoreth’s arm, gripped the strong muscles of his forearm tightly.
    Without a second thought, Ashtoreth nodded, ranging himself beside her to eye the interloper narrowly.
    Glancing up at Ashtoreth’s face, Miri could see small shots of fire glimmer in his dark eyes.
    A wiser man, meeting that fire-sparked gaze, would’ve left.
    Hargrove wasn’t wise.
    He’d also made several critical mistakes.
    The first was his insistence on talking to her when Miri had made it quite clear she had nothing else to say to him. The second had been to trip over her title in a professional environment.
    In this room despite all else, despite her youth, her sex, she was Dr. Reynolds.
    Few knew of the long hours of work it had taken to achieve those honors. She’d worked for each and every one of them, put in long hours in the various libraries, had done the research, served under others, wrote papers, proven her theories.
    The third mistake had been interrupting her, Ashtoreth, and whatever was happening between them.
    “No, Mr. Hargrove, you’re mistaken,” Miri said, her tone sharp, “I don’t need to speak with you. I’ve already given you my answer. I said no. You need to leave.”
    “It’s you who are mistaken, Dr. Reynolds,” Hargrove said. “My employer is very powerful…”
    “Bully for him or them,” Miri interrupted, shortly, narrowing her eyes at him. “I’m sure that employer of yours won’t appreciate the kind of attention and negative publicity that will come from you being arrested by campus police for harassing me. There are a number of people in this room who can stand as witness to that fact.”
    Hargrove visibly paled.
    “Be certain I mean everything I say, Mr. Hargrove,” Miri said, flatly. “I don’t make idle threats.”
    His expression went still and flat, his eyes as black and impassive as a shark’s.
    That look chilled her to the bone.
    Miri went very still.
    It was the look in his eyes that did it, they were so inhumanly cold. Something was very wrong about Jonathan Hargrove. She had the sudden sense of being in the presence of more than one predator. Ash, and this man.
    Had she seen him in her Vision, too? The memory of it teased at her. He hadn’t been in the forefront but in the background, perhaps?
    As hard as she tried, though, she couldn’t bring the vision back.
    “You’ll regret this, Dr. Reynolds. My employer doesn’t take no for an answer very well.”
    Miri faced the man down, sensing danger if she flinched, if she exposed even one sign of weakness. She was very grateful for Ashtoreth beside her, his solid presence at her side reassuring.
    Every instinct in Ashtoreth shrilled in warning.
    There were too many people, too many innocents who could be caught in the cross-fire and hurt. He took in every one of them but primarily Miri Reynolds. She was his mission and far more than a mission to him now.
    As much as he wished to deny it, it was for Miri herself that he would