Burning Up

him have that one.
    “Do you know,” she told him, gently touching the almost-healed cut on his lip, “that I’ve never once held a gun before today?”
    His grin remained only until he glanced at her features. He came to a stop. “Now you’re not serious. That glass you shot was an inch from my head.”
    “But it’s true.” She wiggled her fingers, silvery in the moonlight. “I knew my aim would be perfect. And it was, don’t you agree?”
    He studied her face a moment longer, before starting toward Vesuvius again, a smile deepening the corners of his mouth. “God help me,” he said.
    Once again, she took that as a “yes.”

KEEP READING FOR A PREVIEW OF
VIRGINIA KANTRA’S NEXT
CHILDREN OF THE SEA NOVEL
     
    IMMORTAL SEA
     
    COMING SEPTEMBER 2010FROM BERKLEY SENSATION!
     
    M organ looked down, arrested, at the woman clinging to his arm. Was she aware what she invited? His kind did not touch. Only to fight or to mate.
    His blood rushed like water under ice. Perhaps tonight he would do both.
    He had not come ashore to rut. He was not as abstemious as his prince, Conn, but he had standards. Unlike his sister Morwenna and others among the mer, he did not often waste his seed on humankind.
    The woman’s throat moved as she swallowed. “Sorry,” she said, and dropped his arm.
    She was very young, he observed. Attractive, with healthy skin and glossy brown hair. Her face was a strong oval, her jaw slightly squared, her unfettered breasts high and pleasing. There was even a gleam that might be intelligence in those brown eyes.
    It would be no great privation to indulge her and himself.
    “Do not apologize.” Grasping her hand, he replaced it on his sleeve. Her nails were clean and unpolished, her fingers tapered.
    He imagined those short nails pressing into his flesh, and the rush in his blood became a roar. No privation at all.
    He glanced around the narrow buildings fronting the street. He would not take her here, in this filthy human warren. But there were other places less noxious, and nearby. Adjusting his stride to hers, he led her away, seeking green ways and open water.
    The lights and noise of the city at night eddied and ebbed around them, the amber pool of a streetlight, the green glow of a bar sign, a lamp in a second-floor window.
    At the next intersection, she hesitated, her gaze darting down the street toward a café where trees strung with tiny lights canopied a cluster of empty tables. “Don’t we want to go that way?”
    She did possess intelligence, then. Or at least a sense of direction.
    “If you like.” Morgan shrugged. “It is quieter toward the harbor.”
    Her brow pleated. Her eyes were big and dark. He watched the silent battle between feminine caution and female desire, felt the moment of acquiescence when her hand relaxed on his forearm. He fought to keep his flare of triumph from his face.
    “Quieter,” she repeated.
    “More . . . scenic,” he said, searching for a word that might appeal to her.
    “Oh.” Her tongue touched her lower lip in doubt or invitation. “I haven’t seen the harbor yet. This is my first visit to Copenhagen.”
    “Indeed.” Warmth radiated from her hand up his arm. Anticipation flowed thick and urgent through his veins. She was not part of his purpose here. But she was a respite, a recompense of a sort, for long years of trial and frustration.
    Her bare shoulders gleamed in the moonlight, sweetly curved as the curl of a shell. The night swirled around them like seaweed caught in the tide, the smell of beer and piss and car exhaust, a waft from a flower box, a breeze from the sea.
    “I almost didn’t come,” she continued, as if he had expressed an interest. “Not part of The Plan, you know?”
    He did not know and cared even less. But her voice was low pitched and pleasant. To hear it again, he asked, “There is a plan?”
    She nodded, touching the ends of her hair where it brushed her smooth shoulders. He observed the small, betraying gesture with satisfaction. Consciously or not, she was signaling her awareness of him as a male.
    “I start med school in the fall,” she said. “My dad wanted me to stay home and do a post-bacc program, get a leg up on the competition. And my mother wanted one more summer of tennis and Junior League before I slip from her grasp forever.”
    He had no idea what she was talking about. “And what do you want?”
    Her eyes crinkled. “A break,” she said with such rueful honesty that he almost