As their lips playfully melded, separated, merged, he held her close, his embrace gentle and careful, yet firm enough so she knew he'd never let go. Her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, he sensed that if it was possible, she'd pull him deep into herself and make their bodies one. Instead, Rose's hands tugged behind his neck, her fingers stroking its nape, letting him know how much she loved him.

Tongues gliding across each other's, Zach was ever cautious that Rose didn't accidentally drag her tongue across his fangs and cut herself. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. They'd already been down the road of pain, loneliness and separation. For something to happen to set them on that path again, he couldn't bear it.

Even now, standing here with her, holding her, kissing her, there was the underlying trepidation that something might go wrong.

Zach's heart raced with phantom beats, his uneasiness at the prospect of losing her distracting him from their kiss.

Rose must have sensed it because she pulled slightly away and said, "What's wrong?"

"I just . . . I love you so much," he whispered. "I never thought--"

She placed the soft skin of her fingertips across his lips. "Shhh." And drew her to him.

Their lips met and Zach's world exploded in flashes of Rose growing up, a little girl with brown hair in pigtails wrapped in purple ribbon all the way to the gorgeous sixteen-year-old she was now.

The images--flying photographs wrapped in light--not just mere pictures but each a snapshot of Rose's time on this earth oozing with meaning and life, their display not just impacting his mind's eye but also his heart. Though each image flashed but for an instant, the sensations crashing through him drew on, the events depicted happening in real time. A nightmare when she was three; a pizza party for her and her girlfriends when she was six; the cake falling off its tray as her mother tried to bring it to her on her tenth birthday; her first pimple; her dad giving her the keys to the car when she got her license.

It was Rose's life that kept Zach connected to the realm of the living. His life . . . he didn't know it, at least not in the way he should. These past few weeks with Rose were all he knew by way of life.

It was a few months ago that he emerged from the dark, unsure of who he was and how he wound up in a crypt in Eagle Park Cemetery.

It was several months since he became a vampire.