plans once. I was going to learn the answers to every question I had
about him—his kind.
Now all I want is to keep him from hurting you.”
“Hurt him, and you’ll be hurting me, Daniel.”
He stepped closer to her, slowly shaking his head from side to side as
his eyes searched her face.
“I love him,” she said.
Daniel’s eyes closed tight and he released a guttural grunt as if he’d
been punched hard in the stomach.
She didn’t show mercy.
She felt none after what he’d said about Eric.
“You say you love me, but I don’t think that’s true. I think you’ve
used me all along and just can’t admit it to me now.”
Again he shook his head.
“That isn’t true. I do love you—couldn’t love my own child more than
I love you.”
“Prove it.”
He faced her, standing stock-still as if he knew what she would ask of
him.
“Tamara, I ” “Drop the research, Daniel. Give up this plan to capture
Eric, or any of them.”
She took a step toward him, and realized she was willing to beg if it
would help.
“He isn’t what you think. He’s kind and sensitive and funny. If you
met him on the street you wouldn’t know he was different at all. He
doesn’t want to hurt anyone, only to be left alone.
If you want your questions answered, Eric would probably be willing to
answer them, once he sees he can trust you.
” “That’s absurd! If I got within his reach I’d be a dead man. Tamara,
you’re the one who doesn’t know this man.
He’s cunning and ruthless.
You accuse me of using you, but he’s the one using you.
to get to me, I think.
” She blinked slowly.
“I can see I’m not getting through to you.”
Feeling her heart had been bruised beyond repair, she turned and moved
to the curving staircase.
“Where ” “I’m going to shower and change. Then I’m going out.
Tomorrow I’ll come back and pick up my things.
” “You can’t go to him. Tam! My God, don’t do this ” “I can’t stay,
not unless you agree to what I’ve asked.
Keep in mind the way you’ve deceived me all this time, Daniel.
How much have I ever asked from you?
If you love me, you’ll do this for me.
If not, then it won’t kill you to see me go.
” She moved up the stairs, and did exactly what she’d said she would.
Daniel didn’t try to stop her.
When she left by the front door he was not in sight.
She sank into his arms when he opened his door to her.
Eric had sensed her turmoil as she approached, and he felt a burgeoning
anger toward those responsible.
St.
Claire and his protege, no doubt.
He held her, and her tears flowed into his shirt.
Beyond her, through the open doorway, he felt eyes upon him, and he
kicked the door closed.
Rogers, he realized slowly.
He’d followed her.
Eric felt the man’s rage like a blistering desert wind, and not solely
directed toward him.
The heat of his anger was aimed toward Tamara, as well, and the
knowledge shook Eric.
He knew when the van moved away.
The sense of hatred faded, and Eric put it aside for later
consideration.
Tamara needed to be the center of his attention now.
He held her tighter, and pulled her with him into the parlor, where a
cheerful fire and a pot of hot cocoa awaited her.
He settled himself on the set tee, pulling her across his lap as he
might do a small child.
He cradled her head to his shoulder, stroking her hair and feeling the
painful throbbing in her temples and the dampness of tears on her
skin.
“Oh, Eric, you were right. Daniel knew about us all those years ago.
He knew you’d come back some day, and that was the only reason he took
me in when my parents died.”
He felt her shuddering breath.
“He admitted it to you?”
She nodded.
“He could—could barely look me in the eye.”
Eric released a sigh, wishing he could choke the life out of the
heartless bastard for causing Tamara this kind of grief.
“I am so sorry, sweet. I wish I had been wrong.”
The air kept catching in her throat, making each breath she took like a
small spasm.
“It hurts to know the truth.
I love him so much, Eric.
” Love him, not loved him.
Eric frowned.
She lifted her head from his shoulder.
“I can’t stop myself from loving him just because he lied to me. I
think..
in his own way… he loves me, too.”
“I keep forgetting how well you read my thoughts,” he told her.
“How can you believe he cares for you after” — “I have to believe it.
It hurts too much to think he’s been acting the part all these years.
He says he came to love me, and that his motives for keeping me with
him changed.”
She blinked away the remaining tears, and gently brushed his white
shirt with her fingertips.
“I got you all wet.”
“I would gladly catch every tear you shed, if you’d permit it,
Tamara.”
Her lips turned up slightly at the corners, but still they trembled.
“I’m giving him one more chance.”
Eric’s brows lifted, one higher than the other, as he was prone to do
when puzzled.
“I told Daniel that if he truly loves me he’ll drop his research, and
the investigation of you.”
“Sweet, trusting Tamara,” he said, lifting a lock of hair with his
forefinger and tucking it behind her ear.
“Do you believe he’ll agree?
He’s made me his life’s work, you know.
He was tracing my every movement even before you were born.
” “I don’t know if he’ll agree. But, Eric, if he doesn’t I think you
should go away from here. I’m terrified of what he has planned.”
He smiled fully.
“I am well aware of what he has planned for me. And no, I will not
give you new nightmares by sharing it with you. You needn’t fear for
me, Tamara.
With vampires, age is strength.
I am over two hundred years strong.
A mere human—or even a pair of them-pose no threat to me.
” “But this tranquilizer I heard them mention” — “It matters not, I’ll
not leave you again.”
She gazed into his eyes with so much love Eric nearly winced.
“I wouldn’t ask you to. I’d go with you.”
She’d go with him, and he knew she’d stay with him.
For the span of her mortal life he would be allowed to cherish her and
adore her.
And then she would leave him to die of heartbreak.
He wouldn’t have her for more than a moment in time a mere twenty more
years, at best.
For though he hadn’t shared the knowledge with her, he was painfully
aware that humans with the Belladonna antigen rarely live beyond their
forty-fifth year.
Perh
aps, he thought, Roland had been right.
Perhaps the decision wasn’t his to make.
But could he sentence her to an eternity of darkness?
Would she even want it?
Her hand at his face broke his line of thought, and he looked into her
eyes.
“What is it?”
she asked.
“I feel sadness but I couldn’t tell what you were thinking.”
“I was thinking that you must leave me in the morning.”
She had enough to deal with tonight.
Let the question of her mortality wait for another time.
“I wonder if it is wise, now that St. Claire and Rogers know the
nature of our relationship? I do not like to think of you within reach
of their wrath.”
“Unless Daniel changes his attitude, tomorrow will be the last time I
set foot in that house.”
She looked at him and smiled very softly.
“Unless I’m jumping the gun. You haven’t invited me ” “Shall I come to
you on my knees? Shall I beg you to stay with me?”
“You only need to tell me you want me.”
Her voice came out lower than a whisper, and he saw the glimmer left by
the tears turn into a soft glow, put there by passion.
“In my existence I have seen women of such beauty it was said they
could drive a man beyond reason. Beside you, they would fade as a
candle’s flame beside the heart of the sun. Never has a woman stirred
me as you have done.”
He lowered his head, tilting her chin with one hand to settle his lips
over hers.
Softly he sipped them, suckled them, first upper, then lower.
He lifted only enough to speak, and to be able to watch her glorious
face as he did.
“To say that I want you is not enough. Might as well say that the
parched and barren desert wants the kiss of the rain. You are the part
of myself that’s been missing for more than two centuries.”
The shimmer in her eyes now had nothing to do with her earlier pain.
“Eric, you make love to me with your words as thoroughly as you do with
your body.”
She pressed her mouth to him, parted her succulent lips and invited his
tongue’s invasion.
He accepted eagerly, and her taste aroused him even more than the last
time he’d kissed her.
Eventually he lifted his head to breathe.
“I can’t say it as well as you can,” she told him, breathless now.
“But I feel the same. My life was so empty. I thought I’d never stop
wondering why. Then I found you and I knew. I don’t know what went
between us before, Eric. I don’t know why we are this close, but
whatever it was, it bound us together.
You are a part of me, as vital to my existence as my own heart.
If you leave me again.
” She stopped there. The sob that involuntarily blocked her words came
without warning, he knew.
He lifted her in his arms as he rose from the set tee.
“Leave you? Leave you? Look into my heart with yours.
See what is there, and end your doubts.
I would swim naked through a pool of shredded glass for you.
I’d crawl on my belly over hot coals through hell itself to get to
you.
You are in me, woman, like a fever in my blood.
All I find myself wanting these days is more of you.
” He took her mouth fiercely; plundered it as she’d been longing for
him to do.
He knew she had.
He’d heard her silent begging.
Even as he took her mouth he moved with her, to the staircase and up
it.
By the time he reached the top he was panting, as she was.
Her fingers twined and tugged at his hair.
Her tongue dipped and tasted him, then wrapped around his and drew it
back into her moistness.
She suckled it as if it were some rare, prized fruit something she
needed in order to live.
He kicked open the bedroom door, carrying her through it, certain she
only vaguely noted the candles and oil lamps that cast their
flickering, amber glow over the bed he’d prepared for her.
He laid her gently upon the high mattress, then straightened, allowing
his gaze to devour her.
He’d never thought highly of the denims today’s women favored.
On her, however, he found them alluring, the way they hugged her form
like an outer skin.
Then again, on her he thought he’d find a burlap sack alluring.
She blinked and broke eye contact, glancing around the room.
The satin coverlet on which she lay was fortunate enough to receive a
long, appreciative stroke from her equally soft hand.
She regarded the oversize four-poster bed and the hand-tooled hardwood,
then the masses of candles and the two lamps burning scented oil.
“You did all of this for me?
” He nodded, watching her face.
“You approve?”
Her smile was her answer.
She held his eyes prisoner as her delicate fingers began to release the
buttons of her blouse.
He took a step toward her.
She stopped him with a small shake of her head.
Eric swallowed hard, but obeyed her silent request.
He stood where he was, as the fire inside him burned out of control.
She shrugged so that the blouse fell from her shoulders, and he saw the
creamy-colored silk garment beneath it.
She slid from the bed, releasing her button, then her zip.
She pushed the denim down over her hips, down her long, bare legs, and
daintily stepped out of them.
She looked to him like a confection prepared especially for him to
savor.
Cream-colored lace touched her thighs, and the exposed mounds of her
breasts.
“You approve?”
A low growl was all he managed before he had her in his arms, crushed
against him.
When his hands lifted the scanty lace to cup her hips he found them
bare to his touch.
For him, she’d done this.
To please him.
To arouse him to the point of madness, he thought.
He moved his hips so the aching bulge that strained his own zipper
nudged her center.
He brought one hand up to push the flimsy strap aside and expose her
breast to his rough exploration.
As his hand teased her nipple to a taut pebble hardness he spoke,
moving his lips upon her throat.
“You wish to drive me mad, woman? I hope you’re certain you want this.
I believe you’ve pushed me beyond the point of return.”
He lifted her, hands on her silk-clad sides, and dropped her onto the
bed.
She watched him struggle with his shirt.
He didn’t hesitate, but removed his trousers and shorts, as well.
He couldn’t wait to be inside her luscious body.
He saw her eyes focus on his erection, and he clambered onto the bed
beside her, eager to mount her.
Then he stopped himself.
She was his for the entire night, he reminded himself.
He needn’t take her in haste.
He could love her slowly, drive her as wild as she’d already driven
him
.
She reached for him, eyes glazed with passion.
“Are you in such a hurry, sweet Tamara?
Would you deny me the chance to savor you first?
” “You want to drink from me again?”
Her words were merely sighs given form.
“Do it, Eric. I am your slave tonight. Do what you want.”
“What I want is to devour you. Every succulent inch of you. At my
leisure.
Will you lie still and allow it, I wonder?”
He knelt on the mattress beside her, and reached for her tiny foot.
He lifted it, kissing a hot path around her ankle, nipping the bone
with gentle teasing scrapes of his teeth, then sliding his tongue over
it, tracing its shape.
She breathed faster, and he moved his head.
His mouth trailed very slowly up the soft flesh of her inner calf.
He lifted her leg, flicking his tongue over the sensitive hollow behind
her knee.
She shook violently, and he glanced up to see that her eyes were closed
tight.
Oh, yes, my love.
Tonight I’ll show you the meaning of pleasure.
His mind spoke to hers, since his mouth was too busy carrying out the
promise.
He nibbled and tasted and licked at her thigh, moving higher slowly and
steadily so she couldn’t mistake his intent.
By the time he reached the heart of her, her need was so great she
whimpered with each breath she released.
One flick of his tongue over her, and she cried out.
Open for me, love.
Give me your sweet nectar.
She did.
He slipped his hands beneath her quivering buttocks and tilted her up,
and then he gave her what she silently begged him for.
He ravaged her with his mouth, and his teeth.
He plunged into her with his tongue.
Her taste intoxicated him.
He shook with feeling, for her sensations were his, as well.
She gasped for breath, tossing her head back and forth on the pillows,
her hips writhing beneath him.
He pushed her ruthlessly to the precipice, and then forced her over
it.
She screamed in ecstasy—and still he persisted.
She shuddered uncontrollably and pushed his head away, gasping.
“No, no more—I can’t” — “Oh, but you can.
Shall I show you that you can?
” He lifted himself and moved until his body fully covered hers.
He nudged her opening with his hardness.
So wet, and still pulsing with her climax.
He drove into her without warning.
She shivered beneath him as he withdrew and drove again, and yet