Declan regarded me a moment longer. “Then you have much more faith in him than I do. But I suppose I now have a good idea why that is.”
I felt myself pale. “If you’re talking about what he said earlier . . .”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I hissed out a breath. “It does matter. If it’s bothering you . . .”
“It’s not bothering me.”
“Fine.” I nodded stiffly. “Then let’s just forget about it.”
Declan moved to the small window at the side of the door and opened the gingham curtain so he could look outside. The nearly full moon hung heavy above the parking lot, the only light apart from a couple lamps around the motel’s cement lot. There was one sorry-looking palm tree out front next to the sign, but that was about it for greenery in the general vicinity.
“You said his name in your sleep last night,” he said after a moment.
The facecloth froze at my neck. “What?”
“I heard you. You were dreaming and you said his name. I thought maybe you were having a nightmare about what happened, but now I’m thinking it wasn’t a nightmare at all.”
I’d all but forgotten about it until this very moment. It hadn’t been a nightmare. It had been a dream in which I’d been seducing Declan, feeling his warm hands sliding over my body, when suddenly it had turned into Matthias’s cool touch. It wasn’t the first time I’d had the dream this week and I worried it wouldn’t be the last.
My face burned. “There’s no reason for you to feel jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“I didn’t sleep with him.”
Declan brushed his fingertips lightly against his eye patch, then scrubbed his hand back and forth over his scalp. “So he lied? He made it sound like you were in his bed, naked, while he explored your body enough to know you have a tattoo on your hip.”
“He influenced me.”
“To have sex with him.”
I shook my head, wishing I could rewind this conversation and try again. “He was trying to test himself, see if he could be close to me without giving in to the need to taste my blood. It was a power thing for him, that’s all.”
He studied my face. “I know vampires are very powerful. That bastard could have made you do anything. I just wish you’d told me. Is there anything else you’re keeping from me?”
I shook my head. “It happened. It’s over. It feels like a million years ago. And it’s not going to happen again.”
At the time I’d believed Declan was dead, a horrible lie told by Matthias himself as a means to manipulate me. But as a human, one look in the vampire’s eyes was all it took to make me forget all of that, for me to strip off my clothes and climb into his bed at his command. And I’d come very, very close to letting him have sex with me as he tested his limits by using me as a guinea pig.
I looked at Declan, surprised by his lack of reaction to this news. “You really don’t care, do you? You’re only asking this out of curiosity, not jealousy.”
“Do you want me to be jealous?”
“That another man nearly manipulated me into letting him fuck me? Yeah, a little jealousy might make everything start to make some kind of sense again.”
“The serum won’t allow me to feel jealousy.”
“Must be great to be emotion free. Keeps things nice and simple.” The words tasted sour on my tongue.
His jaw tensed. “You know it isn’t like that for me. And now that I know what happened, it all makes much more sense.”
I raked my hand through my hair until it caught on a tangle, then went to toss the facecloth back into the bathroom sink. “None of this matters. And it’s just distracting us from the real problems we need to deal with.”
“You’re right. That is, unless you’d rather be with him right now.”
I almost laughed. “You manage to make that sound more like a bland question than an accusation.”
“I swore to protect you, Jill. To do everything in my power to get you through this and back to your regular life.”
I swallowed hard, my anger quickly being replaced with anxiety. “And now?”
“Nothing’s changed.”
He came closer and touched my chin, raising it so I’d look directly at him. I wasn’t sure what to expect after our little conversation about Matthias. I didn’t feel particularly better about having it all out on the table even though it had been weighing on my conscience for days. Even though it hadn’t been full intercourse, I still felt as if I’d cheated on Declan.
I wanted him so much, but I couldn’t have him. I was coming to terms with this very slowly. It was likely the reason behind my disturbing dreams about both Declan and Matthias. One was shut off from me sexually and emotionally, and the other—wasn’t. But only one was the man I truly wanted to be with.
“I’m sorry for everything you’ve had to go through since we met,” he said softly. “It’s all my fault.”
Strange. I hadn’t expected an apology from him at the moment. My heart, which felt rather battered and tender tonight, grew a few degrees warmer. “If my life hadn’t been completely turned inside out, I never would have met you.”
He snorted humorlessly. “Some prize.”
I placed my hand on his broad chest to feel his heart beating under my touch, then slid up to his throat, letting my fingertips trail over his scars. “It has its moments.”
It might have only been my imagination, but I thought I saw something in his gaze then—a softening, a yearning.
He shook his head. “I can’t be who you want me to be, Jill. Not anymore.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to take what I can get.” I went up on my tiptoes so I could brush my lips against his. His body felt like a statue, so hard and unyielding. He let me kiss him without attempting to pull away. His mouth felt hot against mine and after a moment his lips parted so I could deepen the kiss. I even imagined that he was kissing me back.
His thumb moved across my throat, over the vampire bite from earlier.
“Jill . . .” he whispered against my lips.
“You want me to stop?”
“No. Don’t stop.”
I pulled back a little to look up at him, surprised by the sound of his voice. It was deeper and raspier than before. It held desire, the same desire I swear I now saw in his gaze. “Your serum . . .”
“It’s like a cloud lifted just now. At this very moment, I can barely feel it at all.”
I was confused. “And how before you didn’t seem to care about what happened with Matthias . . .”
His eye narrowed. “Right now I want to fucking kill him for touching you. For manipulating you like he did.”
I frowned. “Wait. But you—”
He didn’t let me finish. He kissed me this time, crushing his mouth against mine, his fingers digging into my sides so hard it nearly hurt. He groaned as his hands slid down over the curve of my buttocks and he brought me up firmly against him, enough that I could feel him hard against my stomach.
I wasn’t sure what was happening. The serum made him completely impotent, the perfect soldier unaffected by emotion or desire—one who could focus all of his attention on hunting and killing vampires. One who didn’t have to worry about the lustful nature of his vampire side that might lead to the same violent crimes his father had been accused of. Bottom line: Being on the serum meant no sex.
When he’d been off the serum I’d been the first to . . . well, I’d been Declan’s first. And there had only been the one time between us before his father injected him with the new and improved permanent drug.
This didn’t feel all that permanent to me.
I slid my hand down between us and over the front of his jeans to make sure his erection wasn’t simply a figment of my overworked imagination. It wasn’t.
He groaned again. “Jill . . .”
“I don’t know what’s happening right now.”
“It might not last very long.”
Hope rushed
through me making me dizzy. “Then”—I kissed him again—“there’s no time to waste. I want you. I need you. Right now.”
“I thought you said there were more important things to deal with.”
“They can wait.”
“Agreed.”
He gathered me into his arms and carried me to the bed, laying me down on top of it. His kiss was so hard it felt like it was bruising me. His tongue slid over my jaw, down my throat to my chest. He pulled up my tank top to bare my breasts and his mouth closed over my right nipple, sucking it in hard, his tongue swirling over the very tip. I gasped from a mix of pleasure and pain. He raised his gaze to mine and I saw a desperate need mixed with a heavy dose of caution.
I shook my head. “It’s okay. Don’t stop.”
“I want you so much.” His voice caught on the last word.
“I want you, too.”
His hands moved to my skirt, unzipping it and pulling it off me as I removed my top all the way. He tore off my panties with one quick pull, then returned to cup my sex, sliding his fingers back and forth between my legs.
“Declan . . . please . . .” It was little more than a moan.
Maybe this was another dream. If so, I wasn’t going to waste a second of it. I forced myself to sit up and quickly undid his pants, sliding them down over his hips. His erection jutted out long and thick and all I wanted was for him to be inside of me.
“Take off your shirt,” I told him, knowing I sounded demanding.
He hesitated before he pulled the black T-shirt off over his head. I got up on my knees on the bed in front of where he stood and ran my hands over his chest, over the scars that showed where he’d been wounded so many times in the past. I kissed his lips and then ran my mouth over those scars as I wrapped my hand around his length and slowly began to stroke him.
“Jill—” There was more than a hint of desperation in the way he said my name.
I smiled and kissed him again. “This is a sign.”
“A sign?”
“That it’s all going to be okay. That we can be together.”
“I don’t know how long this will last.”
Hooking my hands behind his neck, I pulled him down with me on the bed.
“Make love to me,” I whispered, then moaned and held on to him tighter as he began to push himself into me. His hands trembled as they gripped my thighs.
“Like this?” he asked gruffly.
All I could do was nod.
He had next to no experience with sex, but damn, he was a natural. It was so good to feel him sliding inside of me. I’d tried very hard not to think about this, knowing it wasn’t a possibility. Most of the time he was simply my emotionless traveling companion, my platonic protector, and hoping for more could only lead to disappointment.
“Fuck, Jill. You feel so good. You smell so good. Too fucking good. I think you’re driving me crazy.”
That made two of us.
I couldn’t think, only feel. The worries of the Nightshade, of my blood, of the vampire who’d attacked me earlier, even of seeing Matthias again, faded away to nothing. There was only this incredible moment with Declan and I wanted it to last forever.
“Declan—”
I arched my back and cried out with pleasure as he began to move inside of me with long, deep thrusts.
After a moment, his tone changed. “Jill . . . fuck, there’s something wrong. Your scent . . . it’s—it’s too much . . .”
I leaned back and grasped his face in my hands and looked up at him. I gasped as I saw that his eye had changed from gray to black, his upper lip peeled back from his teeth in a fierce grimace.
“What is it?”
His thrusts became quicker and harder, and he clutched my shoulders painfully hard before his hands moved to my throat. Fear ripped through me.
“No,” he growled, his teeth clenched together. “I want to ... fuck—I want to taste your blood, sink my teeth into you—”
He growled again, only this time it sounded like a wild animal. He let go of his crushing grip on me and a split second later I heard a loud rip. Shocked, I looked to see what was happening. He’d grabbed the mattress to either side of me and shredded it to ribbons.
His face loomed over mine, red and furious. A vein stood out on his forehead and the blackness of his eye scared the hell out of me. It was the same as a vampire’s eyes when they were hungry and ready to attack.
I was suddenly and completely afraid of him. Afraid he was going to lean over and tear my throat out while he still moved inside of me.
“Declan, no—” I braced my hands against his chest, my previous desire for him turning to cold fear. “You need to control yourself.”
“Fuck,” he snarled and finally pulled out of me. He pushed back from the bed, staggering back a few steps, then tucked himself back into his jeans and zipped them up.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“It’s—” His jaw was clenched so tightly it looked painful. He grabbed hold of either side of his head. “Fuck!”
Then he raised his still-black gaze to mine again. Mixed with the rage there I could have sworn I saw hate. His hands became fists and he moved toward the bed again.
Panic clutched at me. He looked ready to kill.
I scrambled back, falling right off the bed, and landed hard on my ass, then crawled backward from him as he drew nearer. I held a hand up. “Declan, try to think. Something bad’s happening and this isn’t you.”
“This is me.”
“What’s going on? Please tell me. I can help you!”
“You can’t help me. This is because of you. My need for you turned into this. You don’t know what’s going through my head right now. You wouldn’t like it very much.”
I didn’t need to know for sure. I could see it. He wanted to tear me apart.
He swore and came at me fast, his bare arms flexed, showing taut, sinewy muscle.
“No, Declan, don’t—” A scream caught in my throat. I was certain he was going to hit me, but instead he plowed his fists right through the wall, above where I was pressed up against it, reducing the drywall to a splintered crumble.
His breathing was erratic, his face only inches from my own.
I shook with fear, afraid to touch him, afraid to move. “What is this?”
“I can’t touch you, Jill. Not again. Not like this. Not even when it’s all I fucking want in the world.”
Before I could say anything, and I wasn’t even sure what I could say, he grabbed his shirt and left the motel room, leaving me there alone, naked and shivering on the floor.
My blood might not kill a dhampyr. But it made him want to kill me.
3
AN HOUR LATER, DECLAN HADN’T RETURNED. IT GAVE me way too much time to worry about what had happened.
It was like a stranger had been looking out at me through his eyes. While he and I didn’t exactly have a long history together or, for that matter, anything in common apart from our current on-the-run predicament, we had an understanding, both spoken and unspoken.
He’d chosen to leave the government-funded research compound to accompany me. To protect me. To ... be with me.
A lot of money had been spent developing Nightshade. The person who’d created it hadn’t left any written notes behind; the formula was entirely in his head.
I shivered and pulled my thin sweater closer to me as I sat on the edge of the bed staring at the door of the motel room, waiting for it to open.
It was my blood that had set him off. Declan was affected by it—his vampire side was. My blood wouldn’t kill a dhampyr, but it would weaken him—we learned that lesson when a scientist we’d gone to for help had used it against Declan to try to kill him. The scent, however, now triggered his bloodlust.
It might be true that he was an assassin who’d killed countless vampires in his life, but he would never deliberately hurt me. Once I’d gotten used to him and his fearsome appearance, I knew this for a fact. I felt safe wi
th him.
However, I hadn’t felt very safe an hour ago. I’d felt scared to death—for him and for myself.
I paced back and forth in the small motel room between the bathroom and the window, so many times that I practically wore a line in the carpet. I went to the window and peered outside at the dark and nearly deserted parking lot, a million questions racing through my mind. Where had he gone? Was he okay? Was this—whatever it was—going to wear off? Get worse? Hurt him?
I tried to think about something else because this was eating me up inside. My mind wandered back to being at the bar and reading the newspaper. My picture, my sister’s plea for help. She had no idea what had happened to me that day—a day that was still crystal clear in my memory.
I remembered the chemist—the parachemist, since he dealt in formulas meant for preternatural uses—who’d grabbed me and put me between him and Declan. Declan wanted the prototype formula he’d had. It was only in its initial stages. One sample. And it had been injected into me.
My sister knew nothing about this. She might have seen some security camera footage of the hostage situation, the standoff between Anderson and Declan, but she’d have no idea how it had turned out. Just a fleeting image of me running away and being pursued by a large, scary-looking man with a gun who’d just shot someone in the head and left his dead body bleeding on the lobby floor.
With a shaking hand, I picked up the motel phone and held it to my ear. I pecked out the numbers and waited as the phone rang once, twice, three times. Voice mail picked up and the familiar sound of Cathy’s voice brought the sting of tears to my eyes.
She lived here in Los Angeles. From where this motel was, her house was only about ten miles away. Despite speaking to her weekly on the phone and sending tons of emails, I hadn’t seen her or my nieces since Easter when I’d stayed at her house for the weekend. I missed her so much.
I opened my mouth to say something after the beep, but pressed my lips together. The silence stretched like bitter taffy until I lost my nerve and hung up. This wasn’t the time. And it wasn’t fair to just leave her a message that explained nothing.