am the same man who held you in my arms… who kissed you. Did I
frighten you then? Did I give you any reason to fear me?” Her eyes
focused on his, and he thought they cleared a bit. She shook her head.
More confident, he pressed on. ” I am not a monster, Tamara.
I’d never harm you.
I’d kill anyone who tried.
Listen with your heart and you’ll know it to be true.
” He reached one hand tentatively, and when she didn’t flinch or draw
away he flattened one palm to her silken cheek. ” Believe that.
” Her brows drew together slightly, and he thought she might be
thinking it over.
Roland cleared his throat, her head snapped around and the fear
returned to her eyes.
“If it is me you fear, you need not. I do not choose to trust you as
my dear friend does, but neither would .1 lift a finger to harm you. My
anger at finding you here is directly related to my wish to continue
existing.”
The last was said with a meaningful glance at Eric.
“Tamara.”
When he had her attention again, he continued.
“There are those who would like nothing better than to murder us in our
sleep. We both thought my security system infallible. Please, tell me
how you breached it.”
She swallowed.
Her throat convulsed.
“Where the fence ends,” she said hoarsely.
“At the cliff.”
Her gaze flew to Roland.
“I didn’t bring anyone here. I didn’t even tell them where I” — She
bit her lips before she could finish the sentence, but Eric had barely
heard her words.
“At the cliff?”
he repeated.
For the first time he looked at her closely.
Her denims were damp and caked with dirt.
A streak of mud marred her high cheekbone, and her hair was wild.
The scent of blood reached him from the hand he held, and he spread her
fingers wider with his own.
Drying blood coated her palm.
Fresh trickles of it came from narrow slices at the creases of three
fingers.
It pulsed a bit harder from the fourth.
“How did this happen?”
“I—I fell. I had to cling to the fence, and the vine patterns are
sharp.
They cut” — Roland swore softly and whirled to leave the room.
Eric could clearly see what she described.
He sensed what had happened, her fear, her panic and her pain.
The memory embedded itself in his mind as firmly as it had in hers, and
it shook him to think of her coming so close to death while he slept,
helpless to save her.
Roland returned, dropped to his knees beside the set tee and deposited
a basin of warm water on the table beside it.
He squeezed a clean white cloth and handed it to Eric.
As Eric gently cleaned her hand, Roland looked on, his face drawn as if
he, too, could envision what had happened.
The wounds cleansed, Roland produced a tiny bottle of iodine.
He took Tamara’s hand from Eric’s, and dabbed each cut liberally with
the brownish liquid.
He recapped the bottle, and took another strip of white cloth from some
hidden pocket beneath his cloak.
Carefully he began to wrap her four fingers at the knuckle.
“It—it’s only a couple of scratches,” Tamara croaked, watching his
movements in something like astonishment.
Roland stopped, seeming to consider for a moment.
He grinned then, a bit sheepishly.
“I sometimes forget what century this is. You’ve likely been
vaccinated against tetanus.
There was a time when even minor scratches like these could have cost
the entire hand, if not treated.
” He shrugged and finished the wrapping with a neat little knot.
He glanced up at Tamara, caught her amazement and frowned.
“You assumed we would go into a frenzy at the scent of your blood,
like a pack of hungry wolves, did you not?
” “Enough, Roland,” Eric cut in.
“You cannot blame her for misconceptions about us. She’s been reared
by a man who loathes our kind. She only needs to see for herself we
are not the monsters he would have her believe.”
He studied Tamara, but found she wasn’t looking at either of them.
and that, frowning as if she didn’t quite know what it was, or how it
had got there.
His stomach clenched.
She’d had a scare out there at the cliff, and now another shock, in
learning the truth about him.
She was shaken.
He’d have to go gently.
“Tamara,” he said softly.
When she looked up, he went on.
“Will you tell me why you came here?”
“I… had to know. I had to know.”
He closed his eyes and made himself continue.
“Then St. Claire doesn’t know you’ve come to me?”
Some of the fear returned to her wide, dark eyes, but to her credit she
answered honestly.
“No one knows I’m here.”
He swallowed, and squared his shoulders.
He had to ask the next question, no matter how distasteful.
“Did you come to discover my secrets, and take them back to your
guardian, Tamara?”
She shook her head emphatically, straightening up in her corner of the
set tee.
“I wouldn’t do that!”
When she met his gaze again, her eyes narrowed.
The fear seemed to be shoved aside to make room for another emotion.
“I was honest with you, Eric. I found myself telling you things I had
never told anyone, and every one of them was the truth.
I trusted you.
” Her voice broke, and she had to draw a shaky breath before she could
continue. In that instant roland nodded toward Eric, indicating he was
satisfied that she posed no threat, and would leave them alone now.
roland vanished through a darkened doorway. Tamara found her voice and
rushed on.
“I told you about the nightmares, about how I thought I might be going
insane.
I bared my soul to you, and the whole time you were deceiving me.
Daniel was right.
You were only using me to get closer to him!
” Eric felt a shaft of white-hot iron pierce his heart.
All she wanted at this moment was to get away from him.
He swallowed his pain.
“I never deceived you, Tamara.”
“You deceived me by omission,” she countered.
“And I would have told you the rest of it, in time. I didn’t think you
were ready to hear the truth.”
“The truth? You mean that you’ve been plotting to rid yourself of an
old man’s harassment, and you were using me to do it?”
“That I am not like other men. I had no idea you were under St.
Claire’s hand until you told me yourself, and after that my only goal
was to protect you from the bastard!”
“Protect me?
From Daniel ?
” Eric let his chin drop to his chest.
“If I was lying to you, you would know it,” he told her slowly,
; carefully, enunciating each word and giving each time to penetrate her
mind.
She was angry now.
He didn’t suppose that should surprise him.
He met her probing, questing eyes.
“We have a psychic link, Tamara. You cannot deny that.
You’ve felt its power.
When you called to me in your dreams, when I summoned you out onto the
balcony.
Have you realized yet that you can cry out to me, across the miles,
using nothing but your mind, and that I will hear you?
” She shook her head fast.
“The dream was a fluke, and beyond my control. I couldn’t do it at
will.”
“You could. Put it to the test, if you doubt me.”
“No, thank you. I just want to go home… and ” “Do not say it,
Tamara.
You know it is untrue,” Eric cut in, sensing her declaration before she
uttered it.
She met his gaze, her own unwavering.
“I don’t want to see you again. I want you to leave me alone. I can’t
let myself be used to betray Daniel, or DPI.”
“I would never ask you to do either one. I haven’t yet, have I?”
He grabbed her shoulders when she would have stood, and held her where
she was.
“As for the rest, now you are the one lying, Tamara to yourself and to
me.
You do not wish for me to leave you alone. Quite the opposite, in
fact.”
She shook her head.
“Shall I prove it to you, yet again? You want me, Tamara. With the
-same mindless passion I feel for you. It goes far beyond the past we
share. It exceeds this mental link. I would feel it even if you were
a stranger. Our bond only strengthens it, and vice versa.”
She stared into his eyes, and her own dampened.
“I can’t feel this way for you. / can’t, dammit.”
“Because I’m a vampire?”
She closed her eyes against the glycerin like tears that pooled
there.
“I don’t even know what that means. I only know you despise the man I
hold more dear to me than anything in the world.”
“I despise no one. It is true that I distrust the man. But I wish him
no harm, I swear to you.”
Her eyes opened slowly, and she studied his face.
“I could not long for something that would cause you pain, Tamara. To
harm St.
Claire would also harm you.
I can see that clearly.
I’m not capable of causing you pain.
” She shook her head.
“I don’t know what to believe. I I just want to leave. I can’t think
clearly here.”
“I can’t let you go in this frame of mind,” he said softly.
“Stop trying to rationalize, Tamara. Let yourself feel what is between
us.
You cannot make it disappear.”
His gaze touched her lips, and before he could stop himself he was
tened his hungry mouth over them, enfolding her in his arms and drawing
her to his chest.
She remained stiff, but he felt her lips tremble against his.
Barely lifting his mouth away, he whispered,
“Close your mind and open your heart. Do not think. Feel.”
His lips closed the hairbreadth of space again, nudging hers apart,
feeding on the sweetness behind them.
With a shudder that shook her entire body Tamara surrendered.
He felt her go soft and pliable, and then her arms twined around his
neck and her soft mouth opened farther.
When his tongue plunged deeply into the velvet moistness, her fingers,
clenched in his hair.
One hand fumbled with the ribbon that held his customary queue.
A moment later the ribbon fell away, and she swept her fingers again
and again through his hair, driving him to greater passion.
He pressed her backward until she lay against the set tee’s wooden arm
and still farther, so her back arched over it.
His own arm clutching her to him rested at the small of her back,
protecting her from the hard wood.
His other arm stretched lengthwise, up her spine so his hand could
entangle itself in her hair.
His fingers spread open to cradle her head.
He moved it this way and that beneath his plundering lips to fit her to
him.
His chest pressed hard on hers.
He drank in the honeyed elixir of her; he tasted every wet recess his
tongue could reach.
He caressed the roof of her mouth, the backs of her teeth and the sweet
well of her throat.
She groaned, a deep, guttural sound that set an inferno blazing through
him.
She shifted beneath him so that one leg, bent at the knee, pressed into
the back of the set tee, while the other still hung off the side, onto
the floor.
He responded instantly and without thought, turning into her, pressing
one knee to the cushion and lowering his hips to hers.
He brought one hand down, sliding it beneath her firm backside and
holding her to him while he ground against her.
He throbbed with need, and he knew she could feel his hardness pushing
insistently against her most sensitive spot, as his hand kneaded her
derriere.
He felt her desire racing through her, and the knowledge that she
wanted just what he did added fuel to the fire incinerating his mind.
He trailed a burning path over her face with his lips, moving steadily
lower, over her denned jawbone, to the soft hollow of her throat.
Her jugular swelled its welcome, and her pulse thundered in
anticipation.
He tasted the salt of her skin on his stroking tongue, and the stream
of her blood rushing beneath its surface tingled on his lips.
His breathing became rapid and gruff.
His own heart hammered and the blood lust twined with the sexual
arousal, enhancing it until both roared in his ears as one entity.
Another moment—another of her heated, whimpering breaths bathing his
skin, or one more shift of her luscious body against his straining
groin—and it would take over completely.
He’d lose control.
He’d tear her clothing off and he’d take her.
He’d take her completely.
He’d bury himself inside her so deeply she’d cry out, and.
he’d drink the nectar from her veins until he was sated.
She arched against him then, pressing her throat hard against his
mouth, and her hips tighter to his manhood.
She shivered from her toes to her lips.
Even her hands on his back and in his hair trembled, and she moaned
softly—a plea for something she wasn’t even fully aware of craving.
He gathered every ounce of strength in him and tore himself from her so
roughly he almost stumbled to the floor.
He whirled away from her, bent nearly double, holding the edge of the
table for support.
He heard her gasp in surprise, then he heard the strangled sob that
broke from her lips, and when he dared look at her, her knees were
drawn to her chest, her face pressed to them.
“Why” — she began.
“I’m sorry. Tamara, you make me forget common sense.
You make me forget everything except how badly I
want you.
” “Then…”
She paused for a long moment and drew a shuddery breath.
“Then why did you stop?”
He had to close his eyes.
She’d lifted her tearstained face to search his for an answer.
When he opened them again, she was dashing her tears away with the
backs of her hands.
“I came to you to help you, to protect you.
You called to me for help.
You thought yourself slipping away from sanity.
I had to come to you.
But not for this—not to satisfy my own unquenchable lust.
” She shook her head in obvious confusion.
He stepped forward, extended his hands, and she slipped her feet to the
floor, took them in her own and rose.
“There are still many things you do not fully understand.
No matter how badly I want you—and I do, never doubt that—I cannot
let my desire cloud my good judgment.
You are not ready.
” She glanced up at him, and very slightly her lips turned up.
“I don’t know anything about you, and yet I feel I know you better than
anyone. One thing I do know is that you were right when you said you
were different from other men. Any other man wouldn’t have stopped
himself just now. The hell with what was best for me.”
She sighed and shook her head.
“When I’m with you, even I say the hell with what is best for me.
Sensation takes over. It’s as if I lose my will. It frightens me.”
; His lips thinned and he nodded.
He well understood what| she was feeling.
The powerful feelings seemed beyond her; control.
Well, they seemed beyond his, as well.
But he’d keep himself in check if it killed him.
“Will you tell me yet, how I know you? When did we| get so close? Why
can’t I remember?”
He reached out, unable to resist touching her again.
His body screamed for contact with hers.
He lifted her hair away from her head, and let it fall through his
fingers.
“You have had enough to deal with tonight, Tamara. Your mind will give
you the memory when it can accept and understand. It grieves me to
refuse anything you ask of me, but, believe me, I feel it is better for
you to remember on your own. Ask me anything else, anything at all.”
She tilted her head to one side, seeming to accept what he said.
Then, “You told me your father was murdered in Paris.
Was it during the revolution?
” He sighed his relief.
He’d thought she would run from him.
Even the strength of their passion hadn’t frightened her away.