Diana's Hound: Bloodhounds, Book 4 by Moira Rogers

finally. Sated.”
    Fighting. She’d done her share during the call of the moons, both full and new. “Struggling always makes it worse somehow. I’m glad that you don’t have to do that with me, not all the time.”
    “No.” His thumb traced her cheek, smoothing over her skin as he kissed the corner of her mouth. “I’m quite intoxicated by you.”
    Intoxicated…and possibly not even in his right mind.
    Now there was a sobering thought. Diana kissed him back and pulled away before he could sense her doing the same mentally. Emotionally. “The bath. We have a big night ahead of us.”
    “Ah, yes. Jonah Knight’s debauchery.” He chuckled and reclined on the bed. “One thing hasn’t changed, Diana. I’ll give a poor impression of a man desperate to part with you. We must hope I can do a better one of a man who has no choice.”
    At least they wouldn’t be vibrating with sexual tension. “We’ll be fine.”
    “We will, we will indeed….” His voice trailed off in another sleepy laugh as his eyes drifted shut.
    Asleep. After a moment, Diana quelled a disbelieving laugh and escaped to the washroom.
    She started the bath and leaned her head against the wall, her eyes closed. She was unaccustomed to uncertainty. She’d fought long and hard to leave that in the past, and yet here was Nate, so hesitant to touch her that sure footing of any kind was impossible to find.
    It had caught her off guard, too, the relentless tug of attraction between them. It didn’t fit with her plans, or why she’d come to Iron Creek in the first place. She was there to learn, not find herself inextricably ensnared by a man, no matter how attractive.
    But she wasn’t sure fighting it would change a damn thing. She’d tried to let familiarity breed contempt, relying on proximity to cure her of her ill-advised infatuation, but all it had done was intensify her fascination—the lure of the forbidden, perhaps. He seemed to suffer from plenty of that himself.
    He wanted her, all right, and all the while wished he didn’t. Perhaps her blood really had left him drunk and reeling, taking yet another step closer to her, a step he would regret.

Chapter Six
    Sleep, it turned out, restored life to even a half-vampire, half-bloodhound abomination.
    Sleep—or Diana’s blood.
    Nate had never been less certain of what, exactly, he was and had never cared so little about the possible answers. He felt young, vigorous and alive , truly at home in his own skin for the first time since he’d been spirited away to the Deadlands as an old man.
    The reflection staring back at him from the polished full-length mirror in their suite’s dressing room belonged to a man he’d never been. Oh, the face was his—square jawed and capable of a cold sort of handsomeness—but missing were so many tokens of an arrogant, preoccupied scholar. No spectacles sliding down his nose, no furrow etched between his brows, no slouched shoulders or painful back, courtesy of the countless nights spent hunched over a workroom table, squinting at notes.
    He looked like the best version of himself he could have imagined, hale and healthy, with only the scholar’s pallor remaining. That, he had no doubt, was a good thing—as long as he wanted to pass for a vampire.
    “Are you almost ready?” he asked Diana, lifting his voice enough to be heard through the closed door.
    “Nearly,” she called back. “I need help with my dress.” She emerged from the washroom, clad in yards of midnight-blue silk that she clutched to her chest. “The buttons.”
    He fought to swallow as he stared at the vast expanse of bare skin. “Buttons. Uh, yes. They’re on the back?”
    “Of course.” She turned but glanced at him over her shoulder. “I wish I could say the dress looks less scandalous fully fastened, but it would be a lie.”
    An unfamiliar sort of possessiveness had awoken inside him, one tangled up with the parts of him that felt like a bloodhound. He disliked the idea of