Kentoku is heir to a corporate empire, and the only one in his family aware that a very active spirit walks the hallways of his ancestral home. Keiko is a feisty young university student with an unusual spiritual talent -- the ability to feel ghosts as though they were flesh. Ryudo is an ancient samurai guardian spirit to an old and respected family, grown powerful in the modern era.
An invitation to tea becomes a seduction that binds all three together in a web of desire, appetites, and secrets.
Alas, they are not alone in the dark. There are those among the living, and the dead, who would bind them to their service. Willing, or not.
“Your gift is responding to me.”
Keiko shook her head and jerked at his coat. “What gift? It doesn’t do anything except let ghosts…hurt me.” Her gaze dropped to his coat, and she frowned. The coat seemed to be darkening right under her hands and becoming…black with red trim, and the buttons looked more gold than silver.
He pulled his palm from her belly to catch her chin, drawing her gaze to his. “You have the power to make the dead live and feel again. For a short time, anyway.” He released her chin, and set his palm back on her belly. “And it lives here. This is what those…creatures were after.” He looked into her eyes. “They wanted to feel alive.
Keiko frowned in confusion. “By biting me?”
He scowled. “They terrified you to make the gift spill into your blood. They bit you so they could drink your power straight from your veins.”
Clutching his coat, she shivered hard. “Like vampires?”
He snorted. “Without doubt. Vampires are supposed to be blood-drinking ghosts.”
She looked up into his eyes. “Is that what you want from me? To drink my power?”
His smile vanished, and an aching hunger filled his midnight gaze. He licked his lips. “Yes.”
