Dead By Nightfall by Beverly Barton Page A

I don’t know how long I will sleep. I am needed now. Do you understand?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen may I take your strength and energy?”
    Blythe’s face paled. “Yes, of course. Do what you must.”
    Yvette tugged on Blythe’s hand and they sat on the bed side by side. Within moments, the two had connected. Mentally, emotionally, psychically.
    Once she had absorbed enough of Blythe’s youthful energy to restore herself to a normal state, Yvette knew what she had to do first. She had to convince Griff that finding Rafe Byrne needed to be a top priority. She had sensed Rafe’s presence for a reason. In some as yet unknown way, Nicole’s disappearance was connected not only to the pseudo-York, but to the boy who had become a killer of monsters and by doing so had become a monster himself.
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    He shuddered with release, his entire body on fire with passion as he climaxed. Melting his body into hers, he clung to the woman lying beneath him, savoring this moment, allowing himself the pretense that they loved each other. The first time they had been forced to have sex, she had been the one to comfort him, to hold him after he lost his virginity, to promise him that he could survive the humiliation.
    â€œBe strong, sweet boy,” she had whispered in his ear. “I will not share your secrets with him. I will protect you.”

    Rafe Byrne’s eyes flew wide open as he awoke from the fragmented dream. A dream of the boy he had once been and the woman who had taken his virginity and stolen his heart.
    Sweat dampened his bare chest and moistened his face. He didn’t want to remember her, didn’t want to feel anything tender and loving, not even in his dreams.
    During his years on Amara, as he grew from a naïve boy of barely seventeen into a tormented young man of twenty, the comfort she had given him became a mutual give and take. It had become something they shared, something he had believed that she cherished as much as he did.
    In time, he had fallen in love with her and had lived for those precious moments they shared alone. Usually, they had an audience of lascivious men, titillated by observing them perform. Sometimes her husband demanded a private showing. He would sit in the dark and watch. And then there were those rare occasions when it was just the two of them, when she had been instructed to “read his mind.” In those quiet, gentle moments when they made love—and he had foolishly believed she loved him—he had known that he could endure anything as long as he could be with her. The beatings. The deadly hunts. Even the brutal rapes.
    But in the end, once Griffin Powell and Damar Sanders killed Malcolm York and his henchmen and they had escaped from Amara, he had lost her.
    How can you lose something that was never yours?
    She had cared about him, had helped and protected him, but she had cared for all the others, too, especially Griffin Powell. She had helped Griffin, protected him, and in the end had enabled him to destroy her husband.
    She had no more been in love with him than she had any of the other men her husband forced her to have sex with for either his amusement or to gain information.
    Their sexual encounters had not been lovemaking. Not to her. He had been a fool to ever think otherwise. If she had loved anyone, it had been Griffin. And in the end, it had been the giant blond warrior who had saved her from her husband.
    A part of him hated Griffin, as irrational as it was for him to feel such animosity toward a man who had saved his life time and time again. But on some level, he still felt as if Griffin had taken Yvette away from him.
    That’s not true and you know it. You chose not to go with them, not to be a part of Yvette’s life. She no more belongs to him than she belongs to you. Whatever she felt for Griffin or for you years ago on Amara, she belongs to no man now.
    The body lying next to Rafe stirred and flung