NI

The shock jolted me back to life. My arms automatically braced her upright before she fell. The overhead lights poured down, and the red silk of her cocktail dress was caught and pulled up, and the cloth clung and flowed in every direction-liquid fire that raged around her. And then her eyes. Dark brown with gold streaks, hard enough to rip me open and soft enough to cinch my chest into a vice. I couldn't catch my breath for a second. "Sorry," she whispered. Her voice... God. Low and sweet, with a sound I couldn't place. I swallowed, words knotting in my throat. "No. my fault." They didn't sound like me, strangled, someone else speaking. There was a flash of electricity in the air, sudden and fleeting, holding me to her. And then-just as suddenly-she smiled, thin and enigmatic, and vanished. A shadow in red. I was stunned, drained chest already empty of something I didn't even have. "Let me guess," Klaus sneered, standing next to me with that crooked smile that had my hands clenching to punch him. "You think she did it on purpose? Teasing the big fish?" "No." My objection had been reflexive, louder than I'd meant. I'd shocked myself with its ferocity. "And if she had. I'd have been a willing catch." Klaus's eyebrow ascended but fell. I ignored him in any case, my gaze roving the room, aching to catch a glimpse of her. My heart still was not at rest. Who was she? The. rest of the evening was agony-. gritting my teeth in grins at. things I was indifferent to and nodding at conversation, simultaneously working the room. I saw her again, with some old man who could have been her father. There was something ugly and vicious inside me. Possession. Starvation. I did not think. I acted. "I'm cutting in," I said to her, no warning, no asking. The man smiled and laughed and moved back. And then she was in my arms. Her h

row of my soul, that nothing would ever be the s