Every corner in the labyrinth makes my heart jolt and my throat close. I had been lucky, every new corridor up until now had been deserted, but the closer I get to the surface, the more likely I am to run into Nikolai’s guards, and I have no idea how to reach the light of day.

That’s the worst part of being the ‘guest’ of a master vampire. I don’t really know for sure if it’s day or night, or how long I’ve been down here. Every new hallway looks the same as the one before, dirty stone floors, cobbled stone walls, and strings of hanging lanterns hanging from the high arched ceilings, casting their soft yellow glow in the darkness.

Don’t lose your shit, Sasha, a little voice in my head spurs me to action and I duck around the corner, almost crying in frustration as I hit my third dead end in the hour that I’ve been searching.

I glance down at the analog watch my mother gave me for my high school graduation, an expensive rose gold with Roman numerals and a tiny diamond in the face. But I would give anything for her to have given me a cheap Timex with a calendar instead of a diamond, or better, my phone.

Not that it had helped. When I’d first awakened on the king-sized bed and looked around, my phone had been on the table at my side. Nikolai had caught me trying to call the police and informed me that we were too deep underground to get any signal. It hadn’t stopped him from taking it, and my purse, when he’d left.

I backtrack quickly, jogging to make up the time I’ve lost as my mind keeps wandering back to my room. I retrace my steps back three turns and go right, instead of left, praying the sensation of walking uphill isn’t just my imagination.

But with each step, my feet continue to feel heavier, and within yards, I’m exhausted and must sit and rest, my sweaty back pressed against the cool stone wall. Get up. Get UP stupid, they’re going to catch you. I know I’ve got to move, but my body is as heavy as the stone around me and I can’t stand.

I can feel my mind being pulled back into the daydreams I kept catching myself in as I sat in a heavy wingback chair by the fire in my room. The stone across from me starts to waver and shift, until a doorway appears in front of me.

Crawling, I make it across the hall and run my hand up the wooden surface until my fingers close over the antique doorknob. Exultant, I pull myself up and turn the knob, stumbling forward into the space beyond. A fire flares and I see the rich hangings of my quarters on the walls, the satin bedding I’d slept in, the two deep burgundy velvet chairs by the fire, even my phone and purse on the table between them.

“Oh my God, no.” I turn to escape, but the door is closed. The handle barely budges in my hand, and I sink to the floor. What the hell just happened?

“You’re lucky I keep close tabs on you, Sasha. What if one of my people had got to you before I did?” Nikolai stepped out of the shadows near the wall of bookshelves I’d perused when I was alone.

“I thought you were their master, Niko.” His face twitches when I call him Niko, so I do it again. “I mean, Niko, Niky boy, are you the boss here, or aren’t you?”

Instant regret pours through me at the anger flashing in his eyes, but I stand up and push my shoulders back, meeting his glare with one of my own. “Lovely Sasha, do your human leaders force you to obey the laws they make?”

“Well, there are at least consequences if humans break the law.”

His laugh isn’t scary at all, it’s warm and alive and I hate myself for the heat that builds low in my stomach at the sight of the sexy smirk that accompanies it. “There are consequences if my people break my laws, too. But they are sick, and you hold the cure. Temptation exists in every tribe, even mine.”

The warning sends a shudder down my spine and I drop my bravado. “I was almost out, I know it. What happened to me?” He motions me to a chair to sit down. “I can’t, Nikolai. I just want to go home.”

He takes off his jacket and sets it across the table, then sits by the fire, waiting for me. I stand there as long as I can, but he’s got patience born of a hundred years of knowing he has all the time in the world and all the power too.

I don’t want to come to you, you bloody egomaniac.

“Then why didn’t you take the exit at the end of that corridor, Sasha, instead of the door that led you back in here?”

I stumble backward into the foot of the bed. “I didn’t say that aloud, Nikolai. What the hell are you doing in my head?”

“I drank your blood, Sasha. Haven’t you watched any vampire movies? Once I taste you, I can find you anywhere, enter your dreams, even make you see things that aren’t there.”

Like a door appearing in the middle of a wall. He chuckles, and I cast about for something to throw at him. “Get the hell out of my head, Niko. Why the hell would I expect you to behave like a movie? They’re movies. Fiction. Entertainment. You aren’t supposed to be real.”

He leans forward to warm his hands in the glow of the fire. “But I am real, aren’t I?” Fuck it, even my internal voice admits I’ve lost. I join him, sitting in the other chair with my feet tucked up under me. I don’t know why, but the aura of danger he puts off makes me want to tuck my whole body into a ball like an armadillo, so there aren’t any pieces that can be snatched off.

Then again, when I don’t concentrate on the natural terror he exudes, I can barely find the strength of focus not to crawl into his lap. He chuckles, the gravelly laugh stoking the small fire at my core

“I told you to get out of my head, Niko.” I hate knowing he’s in my head again, enjoying my desire as much as he does my fear.

His sigh is an unexpected, almost human response to me and I forget I’m avoiding him, glancing at him in surprise. “What would be so wrong with giving in to my charm?”

“Mind control is not charm, Niko. Not even you can be that arrogant.”

This time his laugh was full and rich, and pure joy hummed in my veins in response to his pleasure. “Are you certain?”

I gasped and hugged myself. “No, I’m not. In fact,” I sighed, irritated with myself as a smile I couldn’t prevent turned into a chuckle, “that was a silly thing for me to say.”

“But you haven’t answered my question. “Do you really want to avoid me, or do you want to follow your desire and see where it leads?”

The hardest thing I’ve done since I found myself in this place, is to look him in the eyes, but I must face him. I meet his gaze and fall into his eyes, such a dark brown they look black in the firelight, reflecting everything but me.

“Why? I mean,” I curse under my breath and blink fast to clear my head. “I didn’t realize I was more than food, I guess medicine, to you.”

“You’re beautiful, and you haven’t made it easy to control you, which I respect.”

I scoff and turn back to the fire, the connection broken more by his ego than I had strength to do on my own. “You really know how to turn a girl’s head, Niko.”

He’s out of his seat so fast my hands wrap around my neck to cover me, but he just paces behind me, his steps so silent that only turning in my seat and following his route convinces me he’s moving at all.

Back and forth, ten steps into my line of sight, then behind me again, until I wonder if I really did push him too far, until he finally speaks again, his voice careful, measured. If he was human, I’d think he was nervous, but of course, that’s ridiculous.

“You can choose your own mate, if you wish, from among us.”

“Well, since everyone else I’ve met here has tried to kill me, that doesn’t seem like much of a choice, does it?” I hug myself again. It doesn’t matter if he’s self-conscious or just baiting me, either way I know it’s a manipulation.

“My clan has been together a long time, Sasha. Would you be entertained by us while you’re here?” Niko is kneeling in front of me before I realize he wasn’t pacing anymore. My heart leaps into my throat and I clutch the arms of the chair until I’m sure my nails are breaking through the velvet upholstery.

“While I’m here, as in, forever?” I choke out the weak joke and he shakes his head.

“You want to leave, I’ll get you out of here, I told you, you’re my guest. But leaving without an escort is suicide, and there are, quite frankly, less painful ways to die than having your throat torn out by a revenant vampire.”

I force my white-knuckled grip loose and place my hands in my lap, trying to appear calm even though I know he can hear my heart slamming against my ribcage. “So, I can stay and be entertained, which apparently includes sex with the vampire of my choice, or I can leave and go home?”

“I would prefer if you leave, that you do go home, Sasha. Whatever is in your blood, I need to be able to reach you quickly when I need more.” He smiles at me, and it’s almost human, no mind-control tricks, no intimidation. For the blink of an eye, he’s just a really hot guy kneeling at my feet in front of a fire, the picture of a perfect boyfriend.

But I blink, and the image is gone, replaced by the feral caution I’m used to seeing in his eyes, the kind of look you get from a wolf when you stare at each other through the chain link of a zoo enclosure. He wasn’t threatening, just measuring me, waiting with that utterly supernatural stillness for an answer.

“I need to go, Nikolai. I have responsibilities at the lab, finals to take.” I lick my lips, feeling crazy for what I’m going to say. “But at the lab, I can do some tests, figure out what’s different about me.”

With dizzying speed his face is inches from mine and I gasp, choking on a shriek of fear. “If you find anything, you bring it to me. No one else.”

“Your clan aren’t the only ones with the virus, Niko,” I shoved him in the chest and he waits a beat before giving me a few more inches of space, as if to remind me that I have no power here.

“We’ve taken care of our people that were showing signs of the sickness, but there may be more that start falling ill,” he reminds me, like the still healing puncture-marks in my wrists and neck aren’t enough to ensure I remember. “You will return to me if I summon you, and you will not give yourself to anyone else.”

I push back, hard enough that even though he doesn’t move, the chair does, and it gives me room to walk away from him. I survey the room as I search for the words that will get me out of the richly decorated prison and not into a coffin of my own, but all I can see is the flicker of the firelight on the leather bindings of the hundreds of books I’d only begun to work my way through.

“I don’t belong to you, Nikolai, but I don’t want revenant vampires roaming my city or my campus.” I grab a book off the shelf and flipped through it, wondering what language it’s written in. “So, if I look for a way to manufacture a real cure that doesn’t include bleeding me dry, will you let me come and go as I please?”

A dark, knowing smile slips across his face as he leans against the mantel, obviously satisfied with himself. “Of course, Sasha, you may come and go as you please. I will keep this room available for you.”

With a sinking feeling, I realize his misunderstanding. I feel the hot creep of my embarrassment climb up my neck to my face, suddenly grateful I hadn’t demanded the lights be turned on.

“Don’t put anyone else out just for my benefit, Nikolai, I simply want to be able to return and give you my findings, and if I’m really lucky, maybe a vaccine or at least a cure…” My voice tapers off and his predatory smile widens.

“Nevertheless, you have a place here, and whatever need or curiosity brings you back, I wish for you to be comfortable.”

I don’t respond, but my mind is whirling with the stupidity of making promises of a cure to the one vampire who won’t let me use it on anyone else, if I can find it at all.

Never mind the cure, stupid, the rational voice in my head chastises me as Niko escorts me out into a clean, bright hallway that looks nothing like the ancient stone corridors I thought I was navigating in my failed escape attempt. You just put your sanity and your life on the line because a vampire give’s you the creeps.

Well, I’m in it now, and I know Nikolai won’t let me out of my agreement until he’s gotten everything he wants from me, including the very blood that runs through my veins. I just want a chance to keep some of it for myself.