Free Twilight Prophecy by MAGGIE SHAYNE

opening her door for her.
    She got in, and he rounded the front of the car and got in, as well.
    “What do you mean?” she asked when he was seated.
    “I need to know how you escaped,” he told her.
    She shook her head. “As I said before, I didn’t. I was there—”
    “Where?”
    She frowned, thinking back. “I don’t know. I was unconscious for most of the ambulance ride—they drugged me. I woke in a hospital-like room, but it wasn’t a hospital. Or at least, not an ordinary one. I was interrogated as if I were a terrorist or something.”
    “About what?” he asked. “The shooting?”
    “A little. But mostly about you, and then they started asking me about my blood type, which is rare. And I have no idea how they knew that.” She shook her head, more confused than ever. “Much less why they would even care. Eventually they fed me, and then I was out again. I suspect they drugged the food.”
    “Probably.”
    “I woke up on the beach.” She met his eyes. “And you were there.”
    He had been about to put the car into gear and pull away, but he stopped in midmotion and looked at her. “They just let you go? Just dumped you on that beach for me to find?”
    “I don’t know that they could have expected you to be the one to find me there, but yes.”
    “Oh, they expected it.” He drew a deep breath. “Do you trust me, Lucy?”
    She tilted her head to one side, searching his eyes. “I think so, yes.”
    “Good, because I have to ask you to do something for me.”
    She nodded. “I guess I owe you a favor, given that you’ve saved my life—maybe twice now. What is it?”
    “Take off your clothes.”

5
     
    J ames tried not to notice the things he couldn’t help but notice as the frightened, introverted professor stood behind a conveniently located grove of trees in her bra and white cotton panties, with her arms up over her head.
    He tried not to notice, but he noticed anyway. Her skin, smooth and tight. Her lean body. She wasn’t curvy. She didn’t have mounds of cleavage busting out of a lacy push-up bra. She was lean and toned. Her skin didn’t sport a dark coppery tan but was almost as pale as his undead relatives’.
    And warm, as he ran his hands over it. From her shoulders to her wrists. Underneath her arms and down to her lithe waist and then to the barely flaring hips. From her soft belly over her rib cage and all around her breasts, all the while trying not to touch the breasts themselves. Then he turned her and examined her nape, her shoulder blades, her lower back. He stopped where the underpants began, crouching down to begin checking those long, lean legs of hers.
    He found the telltale bump, no bigger than a mosquito bite, in the delicate crease where buttocks met thigh, and she jumped when he ran his finger over it.
    “Hey!”
    Her voice was raspy, a little bit breathless. She was either humiliated or as turned on as he was, and then he wondered if it might be a little bit of both.
    “Sorry. It’s right here.”
    “What’s right here?”
    “I’ll show you in a sec. Grab hold of the tree, this might pinch a little.”
    She did as he told her, and he squeezed the tiny bump like a blackhead. It popped like one, too, except that the object that came out of it was tiny and metal.
    To her credit, she didn’t squeal. She flinched hard and sucked in a sharp breath, but that was all.
    He said, “All done,” and held the thing on the tip of his forefinger as she turned.
    She frowned at it, wishing for her glasses. “What is it?”
    “A tracking device. It sends out an electronic signal so that someone on the other end knows where you are at all times.”
    Lifting her eyes to his, she said, “They put that in me?”
    He nodded at her clothes where they were hanging over a nearby limb. “Better get dressed. Now that we’re rid of this, we can be on our way.”
    “But why?” she asked, grabbing the jeans and stepping into them. “I mean, if they wanted me, why let me go?