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to force his hand. His touch parted her, and she arched up against his fingers …

    ROME, ITALY
    PRESENT DAY

    The buzzer on the alarm clock shattered the dream, and Phaedra groaned with
    disappointment as she slapped the snooze button to eliminate the annoying sound. She desperately wanted to go back to sleep. It had been such a deliciously wicked dream. The only problem was her body ached for the man in her dreams. Lysander.

    Damn, it had been more than a year since he’d brutally rejected her that night in the Order’s Genova medical center. Why was the man still haunting her dreams? She winced. She knew why. Just because he’d crushed her heart, it hadn’t stopped her from loving him. She was as big a fool as they came. Why couldn’t she get the man out of her heart and her head? The thought tugged a groan out of her. And these dreams. They made no sense at all. Why would she be dreaming about the first Sicari Lord and his wife, Cassiopeia?

    For that matter, why did Maximus look like Lysander before the Praetorians tortured him? She rubbed sleep out of one eye with the heel of her palm. Whatever the dream was trying to tell her—and dreams always meant something—all she wanted was the man she’d fallen in love with more than a year ago. A sigh of resignation whispered out of her. Whatever those Praetorian bastardi had done to him, they’d destroyed that man. The man in that hospital bed hadn’t been the same man who’d made love to her.
    Her thoughts drifted back to that horrible morning. Pain forced her eyes closed. Hearing those cruel words from him had been the most humiliating moment of her life. But worse was the pain that had come with it. She’d left the hospital numbed to anything but her desire to strike back. To make him hurt as bad as he’d hurt her.

    And she’d worked hard to do that from the moment he came back to Chicago. Every chance she had, she flung her barbs at him as if they were darts. But he never acted as if any of her sharp jabs had hit their mark. That is until the night of Julian’s R ogalis , his memorial service. The moment she’d blamed Lysander for her friend’s death she’d wanted to take the words back. Her words had finally found their mark, and the anguish on Lysander’s face had twisted her insides in a way that said she had gone too far. Out in the small sitting room, the sound of the apartment door opening and closing with a loud bang echoed into the bedroom.

    “Phae, you awake?”

    She groaned. Cleo. Didn’t the woman ever sleep? Her friend had picked her up at the Order’s private hangar at Rome’s International Airport when she’d arrived late last night, and now she was up before her. She adjusted the spaghetti strap of her camisole nightshirt and slid out of bed. Her friend wasn’t about to let her sleep any longer. Not that she’d be able to. She was going to be on tenterhooks until she talked to Lysander and asked him why he’d summoned her to Rome. Even more importantly, she was going to do something she never did. Apologize.

    She grimaced at the thought. Apologies meant she’d screwed up. And even if the words had been said in the height of her own grief and remorse, he’d not deserved the blame she’d laid at his feet. Clearing the air between them would make the difference between this assignment being tolerable or unbearable. The room’s cool air made her shiver, and she reached for her robe as she headed toward the sitting room. The sight of Cleo seated on the couch, chewing on a bagel, tugged a smile to her lips.

    “Did you bring anything for me to eat?” Her question made the Sicari fighter turn her head to look at her, a grin on her lovely features.

    “Absolutely.” Cleo pointed to a small plate of fruit and cheese. “All I could find in the fridge was some Romano. It’s a tad salty, but the fruit should take the bite out of it.”

    Beautiful enough to be a cover model, her friend was tangible proof of their Roman heritage.