Maybe she sensed the dark strength of his need for her. God knew, she had to feel it. His cock was a ridge of steel between them, his veins pulsing with a drumming demand to take her. To claim her.
“Gideon, I can’t.” She broke away and sucked in a hitching breath. Her fist came up to her mouth, pressing against her glistening, kiss-swollen lips. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” she whispered brokenly. “I can’t start wanting something that feels so right when everything else around me feels so terribly wrong. I’m just so confused.”
Hell, he was too. Confusion was a wholly unfamiliar feeling for him. This woman had knocked him off his axis the moment he met her, from her quick-witted comebacks at the library, to the intense attraction she stirred in him, just to be near her.
He hadn’t come to her apartment looking to seduce her, but now that he’d kissed her, he wanted her. Badly. Their kiss left a fierce desire pounding through him for the first time in more years than he cared to recall. It took all his self-control to cool the hammering of his pulse, to make sure the amber was extinguished from his eyes before he met her gaze. To coax his fangs back to their human-like state before he attempted to speak.
Savannah heaved a sigh. “I’ve never been so confused in all my life. And you’re right, Gideon. I am scared.” She looked so vulnerable and sweet. So alone. “I’m scared that I’m going crazy.”
He stepped closer, gave a mild shake of his head. “You don’t seem crazy to me.”
“You don’t know,” she replied, her voice quiet. “Nobody knows, except for Amelie.”
“Nobody knows what, Savannah?”
“That I...see things.” She let the statement hang between them for a long moment, her gaze searching his eyes, watching his face for a reaction. “I saw the attack on Rachel. I saw how she was murdered. I saw...the monster that did it.”
Gideon held himself still at her mention of the word monster. He kept his expression neutral, a carefully schooled show of outward calm and patient understanding, despite that inside his Breed instincts were on full-alert, alarm bells clanging. “What do you mean, you saw your friend’s killing? You were there?”
She slowly shook her head. “I saw it afterward, when I found one of Rachel’s bracelets outside Professor Keaton’s office. She was wearing it that night. I touched the bracelet, and it showed me everything.” Her lips pressed together, as though she wasn’t sure she should go on. “I can’t explain how or why, but when I touch an object...I can see a glimpse of its past.”
“And when you touched her bracelet, you saw your friend’s death.”
“Yes.” Savannah stared at him with a gaze that was far too wise. Bleak with a dark, unswerving knowledge. “I saw Rachel being murdered by something inhuman, Gideon. It looked like a man, but it couldn’t have been. Not with sharp fangs and hideous glowing yellow eyes.”
Holy. Bloody. Hell.
Forgetting the fact that she had just confessed to having a powerful extrasensory ability--something many mortals faked but very few genuinely possessed--it was Savannah’s other revelation that had Gideon’s veins going tight and cold as she spoke.
When he didn’t answer right away, Savannah blew out a humorless laugh. “Now you do think I’m crazy.”
“No.” No, he didn’t think she was crazy. Far from it. She was intelligent and beautiful, a hundred years of wisdom in those soft brown eyes that hadn’t even seen twenty years of life yet. She was extraordinary, and now Gideon wondered if there was something more to Savannah that he had yet to understand.
But before he could pose the questions--questions about her ESP talent and whether her body bore any unusual birthmarks--she turned away from him and the answer was right there in his line of sight. A small red mark on her left shoulder blade, only partially visible beneath the thin strap of her white tank top. It was unmistakable: a teardrop falling into the cradle of a crescent moon.
Savannah wasn’t merely human.
She was a Breedmate.
Ah, fuck. This wasn’t good. Not good at all. There was a protocol to be observed when it came to the discovery of women like Savannah living among the Homo Sapiens public at large. That protocol certainly didn’t include seduction or duplicity, two things Gideon was currently teetering between like a man on a high wire.
“Since I’ve obviously rendered you mute with my mental instability,” she went on, as his uncharacteristic loss for words or a quick solution eluded him, “then I might as well tell you about the other glimpse I saw. There was a sword in the Art History’s collection, a very old sword. The one item that went missing the other night. I touched that sword recently too, Gideon.” She turned back to look at him. “It showed me the same kind of creature--a group of them, in fact. Using that sword, they slaughtered a pair of little boys a long time ago. I’d never seen anything so awful. Not until I saw what happened to Rachel. I know you probably don’t believe any of this....”
“I believe you, Savannah.” His mind churned on the implications of everything he was hearing, everything he was seeing in this frightened, but forthright, female. “I believe you, and I want to help you.”
“How can you help?” He heard the desperation edging into her voice now. She was exhausted, emotionally drained. She drifted over to the sagging sofa and dropped down onto it Bent over her knees, she held her head in her hands. “How can anyone help with something like this? I mean, there’s no possible way that what I saw is real. It doesn’t make any sense, right?”
God help him, he nearly blurted out the truth to her, right then and there. He wanted to explain away her confusion, help her make sense of everything that had her so distressed and uncertain now.
But he couldn’t. He didn’t have that right.
The Order needed to be informed of Savannah’s existence. As a warrior--hell, like any other member of the Breed race--Gideon was duty-bound to see this female gently introduced to their world and her place within it, should she choose to take part. Not plunged carelessly into the worst of it.
“What I saw doesn’t make sense,” she murmured. “But maybe I should go to the police and tell them anyway.”
“You can’t do that, Savannah.” His words came out too quickly, too forcefully. It was a command, and he couldn’t take it back.
Her head came up then, her brow creased in a frown. “I have to tell someone, don’t I?”
“You did. You told me.” He walked over, sat down beside her on the sofa. She didn’t flinch or withdraw when he put his hand on her back and slowly caressed her. “Let me help you through this.”
“How?”
He reached up with his free hand to stroke the velvet curve of her cheek. “For now, I just need you to trust me that I can.”
She held his gaze for a long moment, then gave a nod and curled into his embrace. Her head rested over his heart, her slender body nestled close, warm and soft in his arms. It was a struggle to hold his desire in check with Savannah pressed so sweetly against him.
But she needed comfort now. She needed to feel safe. He could give her that, at least for the moment.
Gideon held her as she fell into a hard sleep in his arms. Sometime later, easily hours, he lifted her off the sofa and carried her tenderly to her bed so she could rest more comfortably.
He stayed until the hour before dawn, watching over her. Making sure she was safe.
Wondering what the hell he was getting himself into.
CHAPTER 8
“Tell me this is some kind of fucking joke.”
Lucan Thorne wasn’t at all pleased to hear that Gideon had gone AWOL from the night’s patrol. He’d been even less enthused to learn where Gideon had spent those off-grid hours.
“A goddamn Breedmate? What the hell were you thinking, man?” The Gen One leader of the Order blew out a nasty curse. “Maybe you weren’t thinking. Not with your brain, anyway. That alone is cause for serious concern, if you ask me. You’ve never lost sight of your duty to the Order, Gideon. Not once in all these year
s.”
“Nor have I lost sight of it now.”
He was seated in the war room with Lucan and Tegan, the former radiating fury and pacing the room like a caged cat. The latter was sprawled in a conference chair at the other end of the table, showing less than passing interest in Gideon’s morning-after ass-chewing while idly spinning a pen around on top of a mission review notebook.
“My interest in this woman has nothing to do with Order objectives. I told you, it’s personal.”
“Exactly my point.” Lucan’s stormy gray eyes narrowed on him. “Personal agendas have no place in this operation. Personal agendas make people sloppy. You get sloppy, you get people killed.”
“I can handle this, Lucan.”
“Not your choice, Gid. You know the protocol. We have to let the Darkhavens know about her, let them step in on this. We don’t do diplomatic work. For damn good reason.”
“She witnessed a Breed assault on a human,” Gideon blurted. “The coed who ended up in the morgue after the attack on her and one of the professors over at the university the other night. The dead girl was Savannah’s roommate. She was killed by one of our kind.”
Lucan’s jaw went even more rigid. “You’re certain of this? You’re saying this Breedmate--Savannah--was there when it happened?”
“Her talent, Lucan. It’s psychometry. She touches an object and can see a bit of its past. That’s how she saw her friend’s killing.”
“She tell anyone about this?” Tegan drawled from his seat at the end of the table.
“No. Only me,” Gideon replied. “I’d like to keep it that way--for her own sake and that of our entire race. And that’s not all she’s seen with her gift.”
Both Gen One warriors stared at him now.
“This shit is about to get even worse?” Lucan growled.
“During the attack, there was a sword taken from the university’s Art History archives. A sword I’m very familiar with, because it was the one a band of Rogues turned on my young brothers the night they were slaughtered outside our family Darkhaven in London.” Gideon cleared his throat, still tasting the smoke that lingered for months after the stable was torched. “Savannah touched this sword too. She saw the Rogues and what they did to my kin. I never gave that damned sword another thought, until now. Until I realized it had surfaced in Boston, some three hundred years later.”
Tegan grunted. “Surfaced, only to disappear again.”
“That’s right. I need to know who has that blade now.”
Tegan gave a vague nod, his overlong tawny hair falling over his eyes, but not quite masking the intensity of his gem-green gaze. “You think there’s a connection between the sword being here in Boston and the murders of your brothers centuries ago.”
“It’s a question that needs to be answered,” Gideon said. “And I can’t do that unless Savannah can identify the Breed male responsible for the attack at the university.”
“What about the other victim, the one who survived?” Lucan said. “That’s another potential witness who was actually there and lived to tell.”
Gideon shook his head. “He’s still hospitalized, critical. In the time it takes him to come around enough for some private questioning and the requisite memory scrub afterward, Savannah could have already given me everything I need.”
Although Lucan didn’t say as much, Gideon could see the suspicion in the Gen One’s keen eyes. “You’re risking too much, letting yourself get close to this female. She’s a Breedmate, Gideon. That might be all right for guys like Con and Rio, but for any of us?” He glanced to Tegan, then back to Gideon. “We’re the longest-standing members of this operation now. We’re the core. We’ve each been through enough shit to know that relationships, blood bonds, don’t mix well with warfare. Someone always gets hurt in the end.”
“I’m not looking for a mate, for fuck’s sake.” Gideon’s reply was sharp, sounding too defensive, even to his own ears. He exhaled a ripe oath. “And I have no intention of hurting her.”
“Good,” Lucan said. “Then you’ll have no problem when I arrange to have one of the Darkhavens meet the female at her apartment and take her into their protective custody while she’s being brought up to speed on the Breed and her place in our world.”
Gideon bristled, coming up out of his chair to face off with his old friend and the Order’s commander. “Trance her and dump her with one of the Boston Darkhaven leaders? Not a chance. She’s just a scared, confused kid, Lucan.”
“You’re not acting like she’s just a kid. You’re acting like you’re responsible for this female. Like you’ve already got more than a passing interest.”
Christ, did he? Gideon wanted to refute the accusation, but the words sat like cold lead in the back of his throat.
He hadn’t intended to feel anything for Savannah. He sure as hell didn’t expect to feel the sudden, violent spike of possessiveness over her at the mere idea of walking away now, leaving her safety and wellbeing in the care of the Breed’s civilian arm.
Nor could he ever have imagined the day when he’d be standing off against Lucan Thorne over any direct command, let alone a command that Gideon knew in his gut was the right call for Lucan to make. For Savannah’s sake, if nothing else.
Lucan fixed Gideon with a grim stare. “She’s out there right now, walking around with the word vampire on the tip of her tongue. How many people do you think she’ll tell before we have the chance to contain her? She told you, for crissake. What if she tells the police next?”
“She won’t,” Gideon said, wishing he believed it. “I told her I would help her sort everything out. I told her she could trust me.”
“Trust you? She just met you,” Lucan pointed out. “She’s got friends she could tell this tale to, classmates. Family?”
Gideon nodded. “A sister in Louisiana. I don’t know about anyone else. But I can find out. I can take care of any loose threads. I want to be the one to explain everything to Savannah. After last night, I owe her that.”
Lucan grunted, his expression stony, unconvinced.
Gideon pressed on. “I want to know what the sword that was used to slay my brothers is doing here in Boston. I want to know who has it, and why. I should think the Order would like that answer too, seeing how the son of a bitch in question murdered one human to get it and left another near death.”
“We can’t leave her out there on her own, Gid. Her knowledge is a threat to the entire Breed nation. It’s also a threat to her, if the one who killed her roommate somehow learns there was a witness and turns his sights on Savannah.”
Gideon’s veins turned to ice at the thought. He would eviscerate any Breed male who so much as touched her with intent to harm. “I’m not about to let anyone hurt her. She needs to be protected.”
“Agreed,” Lucan said. “But that means day and night, something we can’t enforce so long as she’s living among the human population. And we sure as hell aren’t bringing a civilian female here to the compound.” Lucan stared, a tendon ticking in his square jaw. “You want to initiate her about the Breed and our world, fine. I’ll give you that. You want to see if her talent can help us ID the bastard who attacked those humans the other night, that’s yours too.”
Gideon nodded, grateful for the chance and more relieved than he should have been at the prospect of Savannah being entrusted to his care.
Lucan cleared his throat pointedly. “You bring her up to speed. You question her. But you’ll do all of this inside the secured shelter of a local Darkhaven. It’s the best place for her right now, Gideon. You know that.”
He did. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
And he didn’t like it.
At the moment, he didn’t see any better options.
“I’ll make some calls,” Lucan said. “This plan goes into motion tonight.”
Gideon remained standing, his molars clamped together, fists curled at his sides as the Order’s leader left the room. Tegan got up from his chair a moment l
ater. He prowled toward Gideon, studying him with those unreadable eyes. He held something in his hand--a folded piece of paper, torn from the notebook that lay on the table alongside the pen he’d been toying with during the impromptu meeting.
“What’s this?” Gideon said as the big Gen One offered the square of note paper to him.
Tegan didn’t answer.
He strode out of the war room and headed down the corridor without a word.
~ ~ ~
The university campus was crowded with students that next day at noontime, people seated in small groups under tall, leafy oaks, eating packed lunches, others playing sports on the broad, green lawns. It seemed practically everyone was taking advantage of a sunny and warm October day. A pretty snapshot of a world that seemed so innocent. So...normal.
Savannah strolled past her chattering, laughing, carefree classmates, her steps hurried on the concrete sidewalk, her arms wrapped tightly around her book bag.
She had just left a meeting with her academic advisor, who’d given her clearance for a short leave of absence from her classes. She was going home soon, leaving in several hours. Although she’d told the advisor she expected to return to class in a couple of weeks, after she dealt with some “personal issues,” Savannah wasn’t sure there was enough time in the world to come to terms with everything she’d seen over the past few days.
She still wondered if she were somehow losing her mind. Gideon hadn’t seemed to think so last night. It had been incredibly sweet of him to check in on her, concerned that she had called in sick from work. His comfort, although totally uninvited and unexpected, had been just what she needed.
His kiss hadn’t been half bad either. More like, incredible. She hadn’t been prepared for how good it felt to be in his arms, her mouth under his control. If she concentrated, she could still feel the heat of his lips on hers. And her body remembered too, every nerve ending going tingly and warm at just the thought of being wrapped up in him.
If Gideon were a lesser man, he might have used her shaky emotional state to his advantage last night and tried to get into her pants. God knew, after the kiss they shared, she likely wouldn’t have needed much convincing to let him take things further.