by Christine Feehan
Leisure
January 2002
ISBN #0-8439-4952-X
$5.99 U.S. / $7.99 Can. / $12.95 Aus.
Series - The Carpathians

Gabriel

He woke deep within the ground, and the first sensation he felt was hunger. An overwhelming hunger for the blood that demanded satisfaction. But as he hunted the dark streets of Paris for prey, a voice called to him, soothing, calming, giving him the strength to control his craving.

Francesca Del Ponce was a healer, a woman who radiated goodness as powerfully as the sun did light. But surely his obsession with her would turn him as his twin brother had turned, leaving the world with two monsters instead of one.

Though he knew she would be like hot silk in his arms, though he knew the taste of her would be addictive, he feared for her life and his soul if he took her. Then with one mind shattering vow she gave herself - "I offer freely, without reservation, I offer my life for yours as is my right" - and with a firestorm of long-forgotten feelings, he glimpsed salvation.

They were masters of the darkness, searching through eternity for a mistress of the light...

Excerpt

"I want you."

    She turned her head to study the glittering of his eyes. Dark. Dangerous. That was Gabriel, a legend come to life. He reached out, caught her wrist, and drew her to him. "I want you. All over again." He said it starkly, without embellishment. He brought her hand to his trousers, but the material was gone, sliding from his body in the way of their people so that her palm contracted the hard length of him.
    "Undress for me, in the manner of humans," he said suddenly. His eyes had gone very black, burning with such intensity that she could feel tiny tongue of flame along her skin. "There is something very erotic in the way a woman removes her clothes."
    Her eyebrows shot up. "I thought there was something erotic in the way your clothes melted away and left me to explore where I wanted." Her voice teased him, was sultry with invitation. She stepped away from him, her arm dropping slowly to her side. her fingers brushing the hard length of him as she did so. Francesca tilted her head so that her long hair slid in a silky black curtain over her shoulder. Her hands went to the small pearl buttons on her sweater. She eased each through it's buttonhole so that the edges began to gape open to reveal the satin swell of her breasts.

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