“Lucas.” Kathryn kept saying his name, sometimes calling it out, sometimes whispering it desperately. She couldn’t remember exactly where he’d been when the explosion hit, so she started at the elevator and worked outward as much as possible. There was an awful lot of tangled metal, big heavy bars torn like paper, all twisted up with each other, the spaces filled in with huge chunks of concrete and dirt. She wasn’t an engineer, but some of those beams seemed to be holding up the worst of the rubble from above, leaving small pockets at ground level. From far overhead, she thought she could hear shouting, and every once in a while, the air would fill with the sound of groaning metal. She imagined those thick beams straining under the weight of the demolished building. The first time she’d heard the noise, she’d been afraid something had cracked, and everything up there was about to end up down here. But increasingly, the crashing noises began to sound like an organized effort, almost like a construction site, and it gave her hope of a rescue. But that could take hours, and she had to find Lucas.

“Lucas?” she said again, nearly sobbing. Her chest hurt from trying to breathe the dusty air, her back ached from bending over in the cramped spaces. Her fingers were cut and bleeding from shoving aside jagged pieces of metal and concrete, and . . . she’d begun to fear Lucas might actually be dead.

“Kathryn.”

She froze, not sure she’d really heard it. “Lucas?”

“More or less,” he said weakly, and coughed.

Her flashlight searched the rubble and found nothing. “Where are you?”

“To the left. The other left,” he clarified when her light went the wrong way.

She forced herself to search slowly, moving the Maglite’s narrow beam back and forth until she at last caught a flash of pale skin, nearly invisible in the twisted mass of steel.

“Lucas!” At first, she was unable to reach him. Kathryn was strong for a woman, but even she couldn’t move all of that debris aside, even if it had been wise to do so. Frustrated, she duck-walked around to the left, toward where she was certain the outside wall had to be. Alternating her light between where she knew Lucas was and her current path, she found a tunnel of sorts through the wreckage and snaked into him on her belly, her skin crawling with the knowledge of everything that was hanging over them.

“Lucas,” she murmured in dismay, running her flashlight over what little she could see of him. He was all but buried beneath a pile of concrete and rebar, only his head, shoulders, and one arm visible. She shimmied as close to him as she could get, ignoring the pain as sharp bits of rubble tore her clothes and dug into the skin of her knees and elbows.

His eyes opened, gleaming with a golden light that put her Maglite to shame.

“Kathryn.” The words scraped dryly, and she wished she had some water to offer him. “You’re bleeding,” he said. “Are you injured?”

She shook her head, not trusting her voice and feeling foolish. Tears overflowed her eyes, mingling relief with despair. Vampire or not, he was seriously injured. Broken bones, those internal injuries she’d been worried about . . . that was just the beginning of what could be happening to Lucas.

“Sssh, don’t cry.” He reached for her with his one good hand. “I’m hard to kill, a cuisle. You’re not rid of me just yet.” A grimace of pain twisted his handsome face. He closed his eyes against it, but didn’t groan, didn’t cry out. It was everything Kathryn could do not to cry out for him.

She nodded, not really believing him, but understanding the importance of him believing what he said.

“Are you injured?” he repeated, squeezing her fingers.

She swallowed past the knot of grief in her throat. He could have saved himself, but he’d saved her instead. And now he was lying there broken and possibly dying, no matter how much he denied it.

She shook her head. “I’m not hurt. A few cuts. It’s nothing.” She twisted her fingers in his, then leaned forward and touched her lips to his mouth carefully. “What can I do?”

“The kiss was a start.”

She laughed. At least she meant to laugh. It was more of a broken sob, but that was okay. If he could tease, maybe there was hope. Maybe vampires really were tougher than she thought.

“Do you need my blood?” she asked urgently.

He grinned, his teeth flashing white despite the desperate circumstances. “I shall remember this moment forever, Katie mine.” He coughed harshly, then said, “A bit of blood would be most welcome.”

“How do we . . . I mean—”

“Your wrist will do quite well.”

“Oh. Right. Of course.” Kathryn propped her flashlight in the dirt, angling it to provide light without blinding either one of them. She was wearing both a jacket and long-sleeved blouse. Both were torn and dirty, but remarkably the cuffs were intact. She pushed the left sleeve of her jacket up to her forearm and unbuttoned the cuff of her blouse, folding it up over the jacket to bare her wrist.

“Do I—”

Lucas took her arm with his free hand and brought it to his lips, kissing the soft skin of her wrist gently. “So soft, a cuisle. So fragile.”

“Fragile,” she repeated. “There’s a word not too many people would use to describe me.”

“That’s because they don’t know you like I do.”

Her words of protest died unsaid as his warm tongue swiped once, twice over the pulse point of her wrist. Her heart started hammering when he kissed her wrist. She knew the pleasure of his bite, and so did her body. Her breasts seemed suddenly too tight in the confining bra she’d put on beneath her sensible cotton blouse this evening.

“This will hurt, Kathryn,” he whispered, his breath blowing gently over her damp wrist. “I’d rather be between your legs, my cock buried in your oh so wet pussy—”

“Lucas,” she warned him, her face heating. “This isn’t—”

He struck without warning, his fangs sinking into the veins buried deep in her forearm. And he was right. It hurt much worse than when he bit her neck, but only for the few seconds it took for the euphoric in his bite to make it up to her brain. After that . . .

She let her head fall forward, fighting the wave of sexual ecstasy careening through her system. If her breasts had seemed sensitive before, they were sheer torment now, her bra scraping her engorged nipples as if it were the roughest lace instead of fine cotton. Heat built between her thighs, waves of sensation storming up into her womb, her abdomen.

A cry escaped her lips, her body shuddering as the climax hit her. Kathryn buried her face against her upper arm, thankful for the darkness. They were trapped in a basement, three stories of dirt, rock and metal on top of them, and she was having a damn orgasm.

Lucas lifted his mouth from her wrist, his fangs sliding painlessly from her vein. He licked the wounds and deposited another kiss on her wrist, but he didn’t let go of her hand.

“Thank you, Kathryn,” he said solemnly.

She nodded. But couldn’t look at him. She was too embarrassed.

“Katie mine.”

“What?”

“Look at me.”

She lifted just her eyes in a glance, then back down.

“That wasn’t a look. Stop it, Kathryn. This is biology. It’s how we survived the centuries before humans moved beyond superstition and into discos.”

She smiled despite herself. “Discos?”

“A boon for the vampire community, a ghrá. But the true revolution was birth control. All of those beautiful women suddenly free and eager to indulge the sexuality men had enjoyed so liberally for centuries.”

Kathryn rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you were very popular.”

“Were? I’m wounded. I’ll have you know I still am.”

“Right. I know what you’re doing,” she added, meeting his steady gaze at last.

“Besides lying here under this pile of rubble, you mean?”

“How badly are you injured, Lucas? The truth.”

“Ah, that. I’m afraid I’ve a few broken bones under all of this. And may I say, never having broken a bone before . . . it hurts like hell. No, no,” he added quickly, hearing Kathryn’s involuntary gasp of dismay, “I can handle it. Although I will expect some expressions of sympathy and admiration once this is all over with. Maybe you can stroke my forehead and say things like, ‘Poor baby. You were so strong.’ That sort of thing.” The strain in his voice belied his easy words, his voice thin and strangled as if he was struggling to find enough oxygen to speak.

“If we get out of here, I’ll stroke more than your forehead,” Kathryn promised.

“I find myself motivated, apart from your delicious blood donation, which will speed things up tremendously. Unfortunately, bones take time to heal, even for a vampire.” His jaw clenched suddenly, his eyes closing as his face tightened in obvious pain.

“Lucas?” He grunted in response, so she continued. “Why would Alex do that? Try to kill us like that, and kill himself, too.”

“Compulsion,” Lucas said, his voice low with effort. “His master and I are enemies. He used Alex to go after me. Alex had no choice in what he did. He wasn’t a bad guy.”

Kathryn wasn’t sure she agreed with that, but she wasn’t going to argue with him. “I think Nick and the guys are trying to get down here,” she said quickly, wanting to distract him. She lifted her chin to indicate the almost constant noise now coming from above.

“Nicholas has begun a rescue effort,” he confirmed in a strained whisper. “But that will take time.” His voice eased, his expression lightening, as if the pain had ebbed, at least temporarily. “We’ll be stuck here for hours yet. So, while the very special thing in my blood which makes me Vampire does its best to mend my broken bones, you can distract me by talking.”

“What should I say?”

Lucas didn’t open his eyes, but his mouth curled into a lopsided smile. “Tell me you love me,” he murmured.