___________________

His gaze cut to her and she managed to keep from flinching as his dark gray eyes connected with hers.  She lifted a hand, waved hesitantly, but he didn’t acknowledge her.  He just turned his away and strode across the rubberized floor.  She knew where he was going—the training area on the second level.  Right now, there was a class in progress for the advanced students; fighting skills, but not exactly the kind of fighting one would encounter at any legit dojo.

Martial arts were definitely taught, but the advanced students, the ones most likely to be approached about joining the Hunters, weren’t just taught self-defense.  Duke was currently one of the Hunters assigned to help train—she knew, because she did her best to quietly learn everything about him that she could.

As much as she could learn without him realizing it, anyway.

Considering she’d once been party to his kidnapping and torture, she doubted he’d be too happy knowing that she was obsessed with him.  None too happy with knowing that she still dreamed about him, more than four years after the night he’d had the bad luck to meet up with her.

*

Too fucking twitchy for this, Duke thought as he squared off with a young vampire.  Young in vamp years, but not human. Shawn Lenning would have celebrated his fiftieth birthday in just a few months if he hadn’t been attacked one night.  Not a random attack, though.  He’d been heading to his car after leaving work.  Parked on a side street in a less than respectable area of East St. Louis, he’d heard the sounds of struggle, a woman screaming and he’d gone to help.

But it wasn’t just the average rape he’d interrupted.  The woman survived, Shawn Lenning was technically listed as missing and presumed dead, and his life would never be the same.  Duke could sympathize.  He knew what it was like to have your entire life changed in the blink of an eye, although at least Duke had been a little prepared.  A natural shifter, he’d known pretty much all his life that there was a whole hell of a lot more to the world than mortals thought.

Shawn had just been simply human.  Courageous and decent, willing to risk his neck for a woman he didn’t know, but just a human and he hadn’t known a damn thing about natural shifters, vampires, psychics…

Pretty blonde psychics with eyes the color of violets and a mouth he could still taste, even four years later.

Life would be easier if he didn’t have to know about that particular psychic, Duke suspected.   After what she’d done, it wasn’t a big surprise that every time he saw her, it hit him on a deep, visceral level.

___________________

Just a quick reminder on the contest:

• Runs through 12/1.
• Read the complete rules here.
• Comment @ my blog (Not via facebook, amazon, myspace, etc) to enter. Each comment gets you one entry. You can enter via blog comments once each day.
• If you post a link to the contest and then email me @ contest4shiloh(at)gmail.com, that will get you an additional ten entries. Put link in the subject line.
• If you preorder and forward the receipt to contest4shiloh(at)gmail.com, that will get you an additional twenty entries. Put receipt in subject line. Please remove all sensitive personal data.
• You can enter each way-if you post a link, comment and preorder, that is 30 entries, as well as one entry for each day you visit the blog to comment. You could get up to fifty entries for the grand prize.
• Names will not be shared/sold/traded/spraypainted on a billboard.
• Please note, to enter for the small daily giveaways done during the week, you must comment @ my blog.
• Daily giveaways will be Monday-Friday. Winners will either be posted here or notified via email so please make sure you check back often.
• Please do not cheat-trying to comment more than once a day, using different names/emails, is cheating and you’ll likely end up disqualified and barred from entering future contests.
• Do not post to sweepstakes sites. These contests are for current and potential readers and I do not want to them to be posted at sweepstakes sites. Should this contest end up at sweepstakes sites, I reserve the right to end the contest without warning and without giving away the rest of the prizes in the contest.
• Each (daily) contest thread will be closed within a day or two of its original posting.  So enter while it’s open!