Lover Beware

had any further doubts, they were abruptly gone. From the first, she’d been overwhelmed. She’d feared the loss of control, but in stark contrast to her fears, she had never felt more female, more empowered, and she had never felt so much.
    She rubbed her palms up over Rider’s jaw, threaded her fingers through his hair, and surrendered the last threads that tied her to Patrick. “Did I ever tell you that I fell in love with you seven years ago, and I’ve been in love with you ever since?”
    He went still, his expression controlled, remote, reminding her of the way he’d been with her for so long—still and silent. She’d thought he was cold; now she knew that he’d just been wary—and she realized how out of character that was for him.
    His gaze searched hers, a glimmer of humour surfacing. “That calls for a celebration.”
    Without warning, he swept her into his arms and started toward a hallway. He was moving fast enough to make her head spin, and she was feeling giddy anyway.
    She clung to his shoulders, catching glimpses of rooms. “Where are you taking me?”
    He grinned, suddenly looking like nothing so much as a pirate. “Where do you think?”

Only Human
EILEEN WILKS

Chapter 1
    HE DIDN’T HAVE much face left. Lily stood back far enough to keep the tips of her new black heels out of the pool of blood that was dry at the edges, still gummy near the body. Mist hung in the warm air, spinning halos around the street lamps and police spotlights, turning her skin clammy. The smell of blood was thick in her nostrils.
    The first victim, the one whose body she’d seen four days ago, hadn’t had his face ripped off the way this one had. Just his throat.
    Flashes went off nearby in a crisp one-two as the police photographer recorded the scene. “Hey, Yu,” the man behind the camera lens called.
    She grimaced. O’Brien was good at his work, but he never tired of a joke, no matter how stale. If they both lived to be a hundred and ran into each other in the nursing home, the first thing he’d say to her would be, “Hey, Yu!”
    That is, assuming she kept her maiden name for the next seventy-two years. Considering the giddy whirl she laughingly called a social life, that seemed possible. “Yeah, Irish?”
    “Looks like you had a hot date tonight.”
    “No, me and my dog always dress for dinner. He looks great in a tux.”
    O’Brien snorted and moved to get another angle. Lily tuned him out along with the rest of the crowd—the curious behind the chain-link fence, the uniforms, the lab boys and girls waiting with their tweezers and baggies and fingerprint gear.
    They’d arrived almost as fast as she had, which said something about how nervous the brass was. That a crowd had assembled in this neighborhood said something about everyone else’s nerves. Spilled blood often drew people the way spilled sugar draws flies, but not in this area. Here, people assumed that curiosity came with a price tag. They knew what a drive-by sounded like, and the look of a drug deal going down.
    The victim lay on his back on the dirty pavement. There was a Big Gulp cup, smashed flat, by his feet, a section of newspaper under his butt, and a broken beer bottle by his foot. Defensive wounds on the right arm, she noted. Something had torn right through his jacket. There was blood on that hand, but she didn’t see any wounds.
    His other hand lay about ten feet from the body, up against the pole to the swing set.
    A playground. Someone had ripped this guy’s throat out in a playground, for God’s sake. There was a hard ache in Lily’s own throat, a tightness across her shoulders. She’d seen death often enough since she was promoted to Homicide. Her stomach no longer turned over, but the regret, the sorrow over the waste, never went away.
    She crouched, careful of the way her dress rode up on her thighs, and studied the focus of all the activity.
    He’d been young. Not young enough to have enjoyed those swings anytime recently, though. Twenty or less, she guessed, maybe five-foot-ten, weight around one-eighty. Weight-lifter’s shoulders and arms, powerful thighs. He’d been strong, perhaps cocky in his strength—used to fighting, probably used to winning.
    Strength hadn’t done him much good tonight.
    Whatever had torn out his throat and made a mess of his face had left the eye and cheekbone on the right side intact. One startled brown eye stared up at nothing from smooth young skin the color of the wicker