His penis pulsed against her tongue, under her lips. His testicles pulled tight against his body. And he felt heat spiral through him, the heat of her mouth,
then
the heat of the light. The light she was giving him.
But just as his muscles tensed and he was about to come, he pulled back, dropping his hands from Jane’s hair to her arms, lifting her to her feet.
“Jane, I have to be inside you.” His voice was low, rough, demanding.
She stared up at him, her lips rosy from rubbing over him and damp. And for the first time since Rhys met her, he couldn’t read her expression. Fear ripped through him, intensifying the need pulsating in his veins.
Then she stepped back and
unknotted
the towel, letting the white cloth fall away from her.
Her pale skin glowed like pearls in the lamplight. Her small, round breasts creamy and topped with raspberry nipples. Shapely legs and dark curls at the apex of pale thighs, soft, inviting. She stole his breath, all sense,
reason
. She was his only thought. Janie.
Beautiful.
Then his gaze finally centered on the jewel glinting between her perfect breasts. Topaz and diamonds twinkled against her skin.
The necklace.
“I wore it for you, because I am the very person it was intended for.
Like you said.”
Rhys’s
gaze jumped back to hers. She wore a small, unsure smile. But in her green eyes, he saw courage and knowing.
She took a step toward him, but she didn’t need to take any more. He closed the small gap between them, pulling her tight against him, his mouth finding hers.
He walked her backward, until the backs of her legs hit the edge of the bed. She lost her balance and sat heavily on the mattress.
A laugh started in her throat, but he caught her shoulders, pushing her down on the bed.
She stared up at him, her eyes wide. He knew he must look wild, half-crazed. He was.
The sight of that necklace.
Of her body splayed out before him. This was his woman.
His.
His hand slipped between her thighs, massaging her with rough, greedy strokes. She didn’t reject his possessive touch, writhing against his hands. She was ready for him. His finger slid into her wet vagina easily.
He moved his hands to her knees, spreading her wide, and he entered her, impaling her to his hilt with one thrust.
She cried out, the sound one of shock, but also pleasure. Her muscles embraced him. Her arms held him.
And they began to move, coming together, drawing apart. Their craving to touch each other, feel each other, uncontrollable, hungry.
She arched under him, her breasts thrusting upward, her vagina constricting around him.
He watched her.
The pleasure on her face.
The sinuous movements of her body.
The emotion darkening her eyes.
And just as her muscles pulsed around him with her release, he felt them.
Their lengthening.
The sharp pierce of them against his lips.
The tang of blood on his tongue.
Under him, Jane clenched her eyes shut and arched up against him, her body begging for release, crying out to him for it.
He threw back his own head, his teeth bared.
“I love you, Rhys! I love you.”
He stopped for a fraction of a second, her words shaking him to the core. But then her confession, like the necklace, served only to intensify his hunger, to make him insane with need to have her.
He fell forward, his canines plunging into the fragile skin of her neck at the same time his cock filled her to her womb.
She screamed out, a keen filled with devastating ecstasy.
And as he drank in her bliss, her release, he joined her in their unnatural rapture.
What had he done?
Rhys stared down at Jane. She slept; he knew she slept. But it wasn’t an ordinary sleep. Not the drowsy half-awake/ half-dozing state created by demanding sex.
Her skin blended with the whiteness of his sheets, and her hair clung to her face in a cold sweat. She looked frail, ill.
And he’d done that to her.
His gaze dropped to the twin marks on the side of her neck. The wounds still seeped a tiny bit of blood. The redness stood out violently against her white skin.
He shoved off the bed, backing away from her.
Away from what he’d done.
But the puncture wounds mocked him. The crimson blood hurt his eyes.
This is what you are. This is what you do. What made you believe you could ever change that?
He stared at her a moment longer. Then he quickly covered her chilled body with a blanket. He started to move away from the bed again, but hesitated. His eyes moved back to his marks on her. He leaned forward to lick the wound, which would instantly heal it. But he stopped.
Maybe he should let her see what he was. What he could do to her. Not that she would understand.
He moved away from her, pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed. How could she understand? He didn’t.
He paused to look at her once more.
Her sweet face.
Her generous lips.
The crescent of her dark lashes against her cheeks as she slept.
He had to get out of here.
He had to think.
He pulled on his clothes and left the room.
By the time he reached the living room, he was trembling. Rage and self-hatred coursed through him, merging with the warmth of Jane’s blood in his veins. Even in his anger, he could still feel her, taste her. Her sweetness served only to make him more furious.
He was a monster.
His glass and the decanter of scotch still sat on the library’s coffee table where he’d left them. He poured himself a full glass and downed it. The burning of the liquor on his tongue and throat didn’t even remove the flavor of Jane.
He fell into one of the overstuffed chairs and stared blankly into the unlit fireplace.
How could he have been so foolish? So stupid and naïve to think that he could just go back? That he could just return to the man he once was? Hadn’t two hundred years taught him there was no going back?
He refilled his glass, this time taking only one large gulp before setting it onto the table.
The man in the alley.
Christian.
Lilah’s
death.
It was all there now. And while the shock of it all, the horror, made him understand why he’d wanted to forget, how had he? And how had he allowed Jane to become involved in all this?
He dropped his head onto the back of the chair and closed his eyes. Jane. He’d left her at her rundown hotel. He had let her go. Even though, from the moment she walked into that bar, he’d wanted her. But he
had
let her go.
So how had she come back to him? That much he truly didn’t remember. And why had she stayed after she woke up with him that first night?
And who had found him after Christian’s attack?
He lifted his head, his eyes coming open.
Of course.
Sebastian.
Rhys didn’t have any trouble finding his little brother. Now that his memory was fully intact, Rhys knew exactly what club Sebastian was going to, and it definitely wasn’t White’s.
He found Sebastian on the dance floor of
Carfax
Abbey, surrounded by vampires and vampire-wannabes. Rhys simply stood behind him, until Sebastian sensed him there.
“Rhys.” Sebastian peered at him through the haze of red neon and flashing lights. “What are you doing here? Are you— are you—”
“Yeah,” Rhys said flatly. “I’m back. We need to talk.”
Sebastian nodded,
then
turned to shout over the pounding techno to the mortals and immortals to tell them that he had to go. Several of the ladies actually groaned with disappointment.
But Sebastian didn’t linger to console them. He followed Rhys through the doorway that led to the back hallway and the freight elevator.
Once they were inside, creaking up toward the apartment level, Rhys glanced at Sebastian. “So was there any reason that you decided not to tell me that I was acting like the world’s biggest jackass?”
“I wouldn’t say jackass.
Although all the ‘Ready the carriage’ stuff got a bit annoying.”
Rhys turned, glaring at his brother. “Why didn’t you stop me? Make me listen to the truth?”
“You wouldn’t have heard it. You wanted to forget. And I wanted that for you.”
Rhys reached for the grate as the elevator shuddered to a stop. He threw it up with more force than was necessary, the metallic sound thundering through the hallway.
“Why?” Rhys asked as he stepped into the hallway, striding angrily toward the apartment. “Why, when the truth was going to come back eventually?”
“Because you wanted Jane.”
Rhys came to a halt, turning back to Sebastian. “What?”
“You wanted Jane. That’s why you repressed what you were. You wouldn’t have her otherwise.”
Sebastian had never struck Rhys as particularly insightful; he was generally too self-indulgent for that. Yet he had somehow deduced
Rhys’s
deepest yearning.
Still, the realization that his baby brother might be something more than a vain hedonist twit didn’t make Rhys any happier.
“So did you convince her to stay?”
Sebastian
nodded,
a smug grin on his face.
“Yep.
Told her that the doctor told me you needed to be supervised at all times, and I was too busy at the nightclub to do it myself.”
“And she offered to stay?”
“No, not really.
I had to bribe her, and remind her that you saved her life.” Sebastian grinned again, proud. “I bribed her with a lot of money.”
Money?
Rhys never would have taken Jane as a woman who would take a bribe.
“Of course, after you two knocked boots, she told me she couldn’t accept the money. She said it made the situation feel cheap.” Sebastian shook his head, clearly amazed by that level of integrity. “You two really are made for each other.”
Rhys ignored the last statement.
“Then why did she stay after that?”
“You.”
Sebastian gave him a “duh” expression. “Well, and I did offer her a legitimate job at the nightclub.
As our accountant.
But she only took that because she is a little desperate for a job, which I was counting on.”
Rhys stared at his brother. Jane was going to work at the nightclub? No.
“Pretty ingenious, huh?”
Rhys grabbed the lapels of Sebastian’s designer suit coat and shoved him against the wall, pinning him there.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Sebastian rasped, his breath knocked out of him.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What I’ve done?”
Sebastian shrugged off
Rhys’s
hold. Rhys let him. “Yes. I gave you the chance to be with the woman you love.
Because you couldn’t do it yourself.
And this is the t
hank
s I get?” He pointed to the wrinkles in his coat, raising an eyebrow at Rhys. Then he straightened the mussed garment.
Rhys stared at him for a moment,
then
stated, “I don’t love her.”
“Do I smell smoke?”
The question was so random, it took a few seconds for Rhys to understand that Sebastian was referring to a children’s rhyme about lying.
“How old are you?”
“Two hundred and eight, and still young.”
“I give up,” Rhys muttered and headed into the apartment. He walked directly to the library and to the decanter of scotch. He knew he wouldn’t find any answers there; he already knew what he had to do. But it might make him calmer until the time came to talk to Jane. Right now she needed to sleep. To recover from what he’d done.
Unfortunately, Sebastian followed him.
“Listen, I did what I thought was right,” he told Rhys. “What I
know
was right.”
Rhys topped off his glass,
then
went to the window, his back to his brother. He leaned a shoulder on the window frame, took a sip of his drink and looked out at the city skyline. Somehow it had seemed prettier when he’d thought it was
London
.
Or maybe it had just been prettier through Jane’s eyes.
He closed his own.
“You know, I liked you better when you were repressing,” Sebastian said flatly.
Me, too
, Rhys immediately thought, but he opened his eyes, still not turning back to Sebastian. “That person doesn’t exist.”
Sebastian was quiet for a moment. Rhys heard him shift in his chair.