"You don't have fangs," she lamely pointed out, her mind still rejecting what she was hearing from him. "Don't all vampires have fangs?"
"We have them, but they're not normally prominent. Our upper canines lengthen with the urge to feed, or in response to heightened emotion. The process is physiological, much like the reaction of our dermaglyphs ."
As he spoke, Dylan carefully watched his mouth. His teeth were straight and white and strong behind his full, sensual lips. It didn't look like a mouth meant for savagery, but for seduction. And that probably made it all the more dangerous. Rio's beautifully formed mouth was one that any woman would welcome on her own, never suspecting it could turn deadly.
"Because of our alien genes, our skin and eyes are hypersensitive to sunlight," he added, as calmly as he might discuss the weather. "Prolonged ultraviolet exposure is deadly to all of the Breed. That's why the windows are shaded during the day."
"Oh," Dylan murmured, feeling her head bob like that made perfect sense.
Of course they had to block out UV light. Any idiot knew that vampires incinerated like tissue paper under a magnifying glass if you left them out in the sun.
Now that she was thinking about it, she'd not once seen Rio out in daylight. In the mountain cave, he was protected from the sun. When he'd tracked her from Jicin to Prague, it had been late evening, total darkness. Last night, he'd gone out to hunt prey but obviously had made sure he was back before dawn.
Get a grip, Alexander.
This man was not a vampire - not really. There had to be some better explanation for what was going on here. Just because Rio sounded calm and reasonable didn't mean he wasn't completely deranged and delusional. A total nutjob. He had to be.
What about the other people in this high-rent estate? Just more vampire fantasists like him, who believed they descended from a solar-allergic alien race?
And here she was, the unwitting participant, abducted and held captive against her will by a wealthy, blood-drinking cult who believed she was somehow linked to them by virtue of a simple birthmark. Hell, it sounded like a story that was tailor-made for a tabloid front page.
But if anything Rio had said was true...?
Good Lord, if there was anything real about what she'd just heard, then she was sitting on a news story that would literally change the world. One that would alter reality for every human being on the planet. A chill ran up her spine when she considered how important this could be.
"I have a million questions," she murmured, venturing a glance across the room at Rio.
He nodded as he got up from the chair. "That's understandable. I've given you a lot to absorb, and you'll be hearing even more before it's time for you to decide."
"Time for me to decide?" she asked, watching as he strode over to the door to leave. "Wait a second. What am I going to have to decide?"
"Whether you become a permanent part of the Breed, or go back to your old life with no knowledge of us at all."
She didn't eat the breakfast Rio brought her, and the dinner he delivered later that day sat untouched too. She had no appetite for food, only a gnawing hunger for answers.
But he told her to save her questions, and when he came back in to inform her that it was time for the two of them to leave, Dylan felt a sudden rush of trepidation.
A gate was being thrown open before her, but it was dark on the other side. If she looked into that darkness, would it consume her?
Would there be any turning back?
"I don't know if I'm ready," she said, held in the mesmerizing snare of Rio's eyes as he came toward her in the room. "I'm...I'm afraid of where we're going. I'm afraid of what I'm going to see there."
Dylan looked up into the handsome, tragic face of her captor and waited for some words of encouragement - anything to give her hope that she would come out of this all right in the end.
He didn't offer any such thing, but when he reached out and placed his palm to her brow, his touch was gentle, incredibly warm. God, it felt so good.
"Sleep," he said.
The firm command filtered through her mind like the soft rasp of velvet over bare skin. He wrapped his other arm around the back of her, just as her knees began to sway. His hold on her was strong, comforting. She could melt into that strength, she thought, as her eyes drifted closed.
"Sleep now, Dylan," he whispered against her ear. "Sleep."
And she did.
Chapter Thirteen
One of the Order's black SUVs was waiting inside a private hangar as the small jet out of Berlin taxied in from a corporate runway at Boston's Logan Airport.
Rio and Dylan were the only passengers aboard the sleek Gulfstream twin engine. The jet and its human pilots were on round-the-clock retainer for the Order, although as far as the two flyboys knew, they pocketed their sizable cash salaries on behalf of a very private, very wealthy corporation that demanded - and received - complete loyalty and discretion.
They were paid extremely well to not so much as lift an eyebrow when Rio had carried a dead-to-the-world, psychically tranced woman into the aircraft in Berlin, nor when he took her off the jet in the same condition some nine hours later in Boston. With Dylan resting soundly in his arms, her backpack and messenger bag slung over his shoulder, Rio headed down the brief flight of steps to the concrete below.
As he crossed the short distance to the Range Rover idling in the hangar, Dante got out of the driver's side, jacking one elbow up on the open door. He was dressed in night patrol gear - long-sleeved tee-shirt, fatigues, and combat boots - all of it as black as his thick, shoulder-length hair. A black semiauto pistol was holstered under his left arm, another gun strapped to his thigh, but it was the two curved titanium blades sheathed at his h*ps that Dante never left home without.