“I trust you. I don’t trust Matthias.”
“She’s his daughter.”
“And she’s a dhampyr. She’s very valuable. Her blood is worth more than diamonds to those interested in the immortality ritual.”
I was surprised by how cold he sounded. “He wouldn’t just hand her over to the Amarantos Society.”
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.”