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them, loosening them not at all.
    “You’ve been more than three months,” she said, keeping her
voice idle. “What kept you?”
    “I thought you were in Turin, and then I heard that you were
in Milan.”
    Daniel’s voice was edged with impatience but then Genevieve
swept her hands along her hips and her waist. She smiled with private pleasure,
watching him swallow hard.
    “Your hair. Take it down.”
    Slowly, Genevieve reached for the jeweled hairpins that held
her hair up and slid one from her tresses. It was gold and nearly as long as
her hand. She thought that it might be sharp enough.
    “I missed you,” she murmured. “You should have been faster.”
    Daniel snorted at that, and it looked like his patience was
nearing its end as he took a step closer to her.
    “I’ll show you how much I missed you,” he started, and
shouted in surprise when Genevieve sent the golden hairpin arrowing through air
toward him. A mere man would have found himself bleeding, heavily cut or even
stabbed by the object’s sharp tip, but Daniel’s quick reflexes allowed him to
fall back and knock it out of the air, practically in one motion.
    His moment’s distraction was all she needed, and in a flash
she was by him and perched on the open window, glancing behind her with a sweet
smile.
    “Too slow, my love,” she called mockingly. “Perhaps next
time you will be quicker!”
    She threw herself off the wall of the building, and though
he was to the window as quick as a lick of fire, she was off and away.
    Genevieve heard his furious snarl loud in her ears, but then
she was darting into the maze-like alleys, tracing paths that she knew like the
back of her hand.
    A pair of gondoliers shouted approvingly at her bare legs
and streaming hair, and she flashed them a grin that was surely too sharp for a
human woman, stunning them into silence as she ran past.
    The moon was up and Venice’s streets were filling with
people. Men and women in masks greeted each other under the pools of lamplight
and Genevieve darted between them, a bright laugh bubbling out of her throat.
     
    From Genevieve’s window, Daniel stared out into the night.
The first shock of being so close and losing her was gone, and now his head was
clearer. She had been so close that he could see the pulse at the base of her
throat. The thought made him want to howl.
    Instead, he laughed, at himself and at his clever Genevieve.
The sight of her in her underclothes, bright hair spilling over her shoulders,
was enough to make him ache for her. He needed to feel her in his arms, to
speak with her about his need for the game to change, but that would happen
soon.
    Next time, he decided, he would not give her enough time to
be clever. Next time, he would not let her speak at all.
    She would not leave the city, not now that he found her. It
was the same when she found him in Paris. After the first contact, the prey’s
ability to flee was limited to the city boundaries. There were rules, and she
would no more break them than he would. Venice was the world now, and somewhere
in the city, she was running.
    Thoughtfully, he stroked the gold hairpin she had flung at
him. The spot where it had grazed his knuckle was already healed, leaving only
a smudge of blood on his skin, and he licked it absently.
    “First blood to you, Genevieve,” he murmured.

Chapter Three
     
    The crowd’s cheering was deafening as the decorated gondolas
wended their way down the canal. Even in her plain brown cloak, the hood pulled
up well over her face, Genevieve still felt shockingly exposed.
    He was here, she knew he was, and it was driving her mad.
She had managed to scent him twice over the last few weeks, but she had not
seen him at all. Daniel was approaching like a storm, but he did not strike,
and her nerves were stretched to the breaking point.
    “You’re stalking me,” she muttered to herself, and there was
a rich laugh right behind her ear just as she felt the prick of something