Movement stirred her hair, almost like a lover’s breath on her skin. Startled, she jerked up her head, but before she could leap away, or even see what was happening, something sharp pierced her neck and clamped down hard.

She couldn’t move, couldn’t even cry out. Somewhere she knew she should be terrified, but in reality her brain was far too busy trying to work out what the hell had happened.

There was pain at the side of her neck where it seemed to be stuck to the face of the carved sarcophagus, a strange, cold pain that suddenly heated as whatever had gripped her began to suck.

Now the fear surged, deluging her. She felt the blood rushing through her veins, dragging from her heart, and knew she was about to die. Worse than that, the cold thing clamped around her neck grew warm, moved on her skin, and the rushing of her blood became a stream of weird, sensual pleasure. Fire and ice flowed together in her veins as she was held captive.

Everything seemed to tighten in her body - her muscles, her nipples, her clenching womanhood – until it came to her in a flash that this treacherous, paralyzing sexual response was killing her.

With a yell of as much self-encouragement as fear, she tore herself free, falling off the sarcophagus into a heap on the floor and scrabbling backwards away from whatever had attacked her.

She knew, she’d always known, it came from the sarcophagus itself, and yet the sight of the carving rising from the table in a cloud of dust drew a long, low whine from her that she couldn’t control. Her neck throbbed in agony; it felt slippery with her own blood under her questing, trembling fingers. Her heart hammered with the force of a pile driver, as the thing shook itself and emerged through the scattering dust toward her.

Not a beautiful stone carving but a beautiful, terrifying man, heart-churningly three dimensional as he yanked the broken sword from his chest and threw it to the ground. A sound seemed to hiss from between his teeth. It might have been pain, but right now, she didn’t care.

In the spotlight of her fallen, wavering flashlight, he regarded her from burning, coal-black eyes. His cloak, now streaked with black, fell around him in stiff, dust-laden folds as he walked forward with slow, deliberate strides. Beneath it, his clothing was torn across the chest, but no blood oozed from the sword-wound. His pale lips parted.

"Silly girl." The deep, almost sepulchral voice vibrated through her entire body. "That’s no way to break off a relationship like ours."

She scrabbled backward in a futile attempt to escape the horror, but inexorably, he kept coming...