THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

hospital to take a very cushy private job for a researcher doing top-secret clinical trials. A great job, but she was on the road with her boss right now and her schedule was crazy.
    What’s that? Was her boss cute? Yes, actually, he was very handsome, but he was also old. Very old.
    Then she switched the topic to the one thing guaranteed to divert her friend’s attention — Lucy’s daughter Devon. Too soon, Fred had walked up to the booth and tapped his wristwatch meaningfully. She’d said a rushed goodbye and hung up, missing Lucy but lighter of heart knowing that both she and Devon were still safe.
    No, Fred would definitely not be receptive to stopping at a sex shop, but it might be worth it to ask him, just to see his reaction. Poor guy. He’d probably offer to send someone to make the purchase for her, if she would describe what she wanted. Her smile broadened.
    But apart from the distraction that tormenting her straight-laced bodyguard would afford, a stop at the sex toy shop wasn’t going to help her. Her smile faded. They weren’t that kind of dreams.
    Oh, they were hot, all right, and Delano featured in every one of them. As did gleaming, massively elongated cuspids, arched throats, thudding hearts and slick, mating bodies. But the dreams were also incredibly tender and … well, sacred, for lack of a better word. As raggedly aroused as the dreams left her, she felt strangely averse to seeking release. Somehow, it seemed tantamount to blasphemy.
    Or maybe she was just turning into a masochist, preferring to walk around all day — or rather, all night — carrying that sweet ache low in her belly and in her tender, swollen breasts.
    And as for the man who put it there, he’d all but disappeared. She saw him briefly each night before she left for the clinic. He dutifully drew her blood to test for the vampirism virus and/or antibodies to the virus. Typically, he inquired after her level of comfort with the security he was providing, then quickly excused himself to start his night’s work at the lab. Occasionally, he returned shortly before or after she did, giving them a few moments together, but on those occasions he’d looked so exhausted, she hadn’t the heart to delay him from seeking his bed.
    Shoot, she didn’t even know what would happen if he didn’t get to bed. Did sleep claim him wherever he happened to be, if he didn’t make it to his rooms? Or could he postpone it, like regular people did? And what happened if he did? Would he age? She distinctly remembered him saying that sleep erased the previous day’s — or rather, night’s — aging. And what did he look like in his sleep?
    Chocolate. Now.
    She glanced down to see the empty wrapper she clutched in her hand. Ack! She’d eaten the whole thing.
    Dammit, that did it. She wasn’t going to grow fat eating comfort food to ease her loneliness. Delano was responsible for her being here; he’d admitted as much. So he could damn well take some responsibility for her current social vacuum.
    Tossing the candy bar wrapper in the garbage, she headed for the stairs, the ones inside the suite that traveled just one short floor to the 28th level.
     
    Delano had been looking into the amber depths of a forty-year-old whiskey in an even older Waterford glass when he heard the trill that signaled someone was on their way down to the lab. An intruder? Eli was still away.
    He put the glass down and picked up the 9mm he always kept handy. Cocking the pistol, he took up position beside the door.
    The door opened and Ainsley stepped into the lab. Moving with maximum speed, Delano grabbed her by the wrist and whirled her out of the way. Partially shielded by the door, he trained his pistol into the stairwell.
    The empty stairwell.
    Thank God. He dropped the nose of the gun until it pointed at the floor.
    “God, Delano! Didn’t you see it was me?”
    “Of course I did.” He decocked the Walther, conscious of her horrified gaze following his every movement. “But if I were an intruder, I’d have held you at gunpoint and forced you out the stairwell first, as a distraction and a shield.”
    She looked at the closed doors shielding the stairwell. “Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you.” Her gaze drifted back to the gun, regarding it as though it were a snake coiled to spring.
    “No harm done.” Wanting to get rid of the gun but not wanting to just lay it down on the workbench again, he deposited it in the right-hand pocket