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An Excerpt From: MISLED
Copyright © SYLVIA DAY, 2005.
All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing,
Inc.
Sable Taylor
was going to jail for sure this time.
And Derek watched the events leading up to her arrest with
a slight smile.
Leaning back, he rested a broad shoulder against the
wall and crossed his arms. Sable was no more than a blur to the humans who
milled around Windemere Court’s Palladian-style City Hall, but his vampire sight
caught her movements without any trouble at all. The bounty hunter raced
along the white stone walls, her lithe body moving with little strain as
she chased the murderer they were both pursuing.
He could help her, he supposed, but Sable wouldn’t
appreciate it. Despite his job as a Special Task Force agent, he was the
enemy to her, direct competition in the capture of wanted criminals. He did
it for justice, she did it for money, but he didn’t think less of her. She’d
earned his respect, in addition to more carnal interest. An interest she
returned, but refuted at every opportunity.
When they’d first met he’d been a rookie and he’d
learned a lot by watching her in action. He’d see her in a flash, a brief
moment of sharp recognition, before one of them, usually him, made off with
their quarry. Every time he saw her she was more beautiful than he
remembered. Sable honed her body with hard training and a diet of blood.
Her hair was jet black, deeper in color than his own
raven locks and completely straight, a long curtain of silk. Her skin was
as pale as starlight and just as luminous. And her eyes—he dreamed about
her eyes. They were a rich blue so startling the sight of them always
caught him off guard.
He’d lusted after her since the moment he’d first seen
her. He had smelled her lush scent and heard the barely there beat of her
heart, and he’d known she was one of his kind. The last two years of
watching Sable work—admiring her skill, her daring and her bravery—had only
made him want her more. Their work, by nature, was a lonely existence.
Always in pursuit, hunters never stayed in any one place long enough to
become attached to anything. Or anyone. She knew what his life was like, because
she lived one similar to it. That commonality gave their inevitable pairing
a common thread he looked forward to exploring.
But first they had to get through this capture.
They were hunting
Jared Ione, one of their kind
who’d crossed the line between drinking to live and drinking to kill. Jared
was a vampire in his physical prime but he was barely staying ahead of
Sable, whose physical stamina made Derek’s jaw ache and his fangs descend.
Imagining all that energy in his bed was enough to make his cock hard. Just
once he’d like a lover that gave as good as she got—an equal, his match.
He expected it would take another minute at most before
the authorities in City Hall put an end to the chase. Windemere
had a law against vamps using their superhuman abilities in public
buildings. It was considered too dangerous to the humans to be in the path
of vampires running at full speed. A straight-on collision was often
deadly. But Sable was known for ignoring any laws that got in her way. With
her uncommon beauty and blatant, innate sex appeal, she could usually talk
her way out of any scrape. But this time, Derek was going to step in and
apprehend her before she had the chance to do any sweet talking. He was
tired of waiting for her to come around to his way of thinking, which included
a couple of weeks and his four poster bed. Two years, damn it. He’d spent two
years lusting for her.
Today he was going to get what he wanted.
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