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every inch of his Italian ancestors—dark, dangerous, and mysterious. Deacon and Antonio were nearly identical in temperament. But where Antonio still openly and unabashedly reveled in the darkest of acts, Deacon purposefully curbed that side of his nature, because he knew just how far down into the darkness he could go and how much he loved it. There had been spans of time in his life when he’d gorged himself on excess—blood, sex, violence—fueled by a madness born of self-hatred and heartbreak, but he walked the straight and somewhat narrow road these days. And that was why his visits to Sanctuary were few and far between.
    Deacon made his way through the crowd, clutching the still-seething Cici’s stiff hand tightly; the crowd parted ahead of him, mostly younger vampires identified easily by their tendency to show rather than grow their fangs. They sensed his age and gave him a wide berth. Most knew him, or more importantly knew of him, and that would protect Cici from any asshole who thought he might try something with the newbie.
    The bouncers at Sanctuary kept the biggest trouble at bay, but in a place where two consenting adults could get up to anything they wanted in the dark recesses of the club, you couldn’t be too careful.
    “Deacon.” Antonio nodded at him, turning quickly to smile at Cici. “Ms. Trent, I’m glad to finally see you here.”
    Cici wrenched her hand out of his and stepped a pace away, her glossy red curls catching the lowlights in the room. She was gorgeous, even more so because of the anger wafting off her like a sweet perfume. “You couldn’t have really expected me to come here.”
    “No, I didn’t,” Antonio said, his smile showing both fangs. “Although I hoped.”
    “You never sent me an invitation.”
    “Yes. Well, that was because Deacon wouldn’t let me.”
    “Fuck no, I wouldn’t.” Deacon reached over and wrapped a possessive arm around Cici, letting everyone know whom they’d be messing with if they even looked at her sideways. “Not to this place.”
    “And what exactly is wrong with this place?” Antonio shook his head, gesturing to the masses of bodies around them and they all turned to observe the spectacle—vampires, a few Others, and enough humans to make it sordid. This wasn’t a sex club, but people came here for specific reasons and it wasn’t to sip tea and make small talk over a round of bridge. Humans came to feed off the excitement they thought existed in the Other world, and the vampires came ready to fulfill human fantasy and nourish themselves at the same time. They’d been accused of filtering a sex pheromone through the ventilation system, but this was all crowd-induced, each person’s deepest desires feeding off the other until nobody could resist the pull.
    Sex, edged with danger, was always part of the blood play equation and he’d wanted to keep Cici far away from all of it. He didn’t fool himself that she was an innocent, but he couldn’t have borne the idea that she was here indulging in all that frenetic, contrived intimacy with one of the faceless masses.
    “Is that true? You wouldn’t let him invite me?” Cici asked in a low voice.
    “That’s right,” he said, refusing to budge an inch on this one. She could be as pissed as she wanted. The only way she was getting in here was with him, like tonight. She’d blow a gasket if she got a look at his private files and realized just how close an eye he’d kept on her over the years. He’d promised her father and he took his promises seriously.
    Her eyes narrowed and she opened her mouth, ready to chew his ass. “Deacon—”
    “Holy shit! What are you doing here?”
    Cici was wrenched away from him and engulfed in muscled arms by a large black man in jeans and a tight dark T-shirt. Cici automatically hugged the guy back, her delight erasing all the anger from her face. Deacon bit back his automatic reflex to tell the guy to keep his distance but watched the scene