She shrugged. “About three-thirty, but I’m only guessing.”
“Two hours, then.”
“Until what?”
“Sunrise,” he told her.
She looked at him sharply, holding his head in her lap now. “And what happens at sunrise, Diego?”
He averted his eyes, but he’d heard the knowing in her voice. She’d either known what he was all along or she was beginning to figure it out. “If you can help me back to the house, get me to my room, I’ll be fine.”
“Before sunrise, right? I have to get you to your bed before sunrise? And then you’ll be fine?”
“Yes.”
She tipped her head to one side, staring at him, and he saw her deciding not to press him for the truth. Not now, at least, when he was in imminent danger from a cut that shouldn’t have been all that serious. And certainly shouldn’t have bled as much as it had. He saw her looking at the amount of blood on the floor around him, and he read her thoughts almost without trying.
“You’re going to have to tell me sometime,” she said softly. “But at least now you won’t be in any condition to make me leave tomorrow night.” She pulled his uninjured arm around her shoulders and got to her feet, helping him to rise with her.
His knees nearly buckled beneath him, and she got a better grip around his waist and said, “Diego, this is worse than it ought to be. It’s not that bad a cut.”
“It’s the blood loss. And the pain. If I make it till morning, I’ll be all right.”
“Right. If you make it till morning.” He looked bad. He looked worse than bad, he looked near death, she thought.
They walked—stumbled, really—together to the house, and she got him inside. Somehow they managed to get up the stairs, and at his bedroom door he paused, leaning on the wall as if it was all he could do to remain standing.
“Key…in my pocket.”
Nodding, she thrust a hand into the pocket of his khaki trousers and felt around, finding the key and pulling it out, and quickly unlocking the bedroom door. Then she helped him inside, into utter blackness.
“I was dying to get a look in here,” she told him. “But not like this.” Her attempt at levity fell flat, though. They shuffled forward through inky darkness, and then he fell onto a bed that she hadn’t even seen. She leaned over him, feeling around to get her bearings. She got him straightened out as best she could. Then, holding her hands in front of her, she made her way back to the open door, guided by the light that came from beyond it, and found, as she had expected, a light switch just inside the doorway. She flipped it on and turned for her first glimpse of his bedroom.
And then she blinked, because it was just an ordinary bedroom, with one notable exception. “There are no windows,” she said softly. She looked at him, lying there on the bed. “Why are there no windows, Diego?”
He didn’t answer. He was lying still, and his skin was startlingly pale. She hurried to the bed, climbed onto it beside him, kneeling there, her hands on his shoulders. “Diego? Diego, just tell me what to do—please.”
He opened his eyes to mere slits. “I…need…”
“What? Tell me what you need and I’ll get it for you. Just tell me. Diego? Diego, what is it?”
He stared at her, trying hard to keep his eyes focused, she thought, but she could see the pupils dilating and contracting over and over.
“I’m dying,” he said.
“No! No, Diego, you are not. Tell me what to do. Tell me.”
He tipped his head back as his eyes widened in a burst of pain and his mouth opened wide, and she saw his incisors. She jumped from the bed, moving backward away from it, but only three steps. And then she stopped herself, swallowed hard, stood still, staring at him. “My God, it’s true. I’ve been thinking it all night, but I just didn’t think it was possible. You’re…you’re…”
“A vampire,” he whispered. “But you already knew, didn’t you? Isn’t that why you came?”
She frowned. “You’re talking crazy now. It’s the blood loss, I guess.” She swallowed and moved close to him again. “You saved my life, Diego,” she whispered. “And I know you’re the one who spoke to me that night so long ago. It seems like forever. But I know it was you. You’re the reason I took what time I had left to do what I wanted. You’re the reason I’m even here.” Lifting her chin, she nodded once, firmly, unsure whether he was even hearing her. And it didn’t matter. She was talking mostly to herself, anyway.
She moved to the bed, put one knee up on the mattress, then the other, and leaned close to him. “I’m dying, anyway. I have nothing to lose. Take what you need, Diego. Take it from me.”
He opened his eyes and met hers again, and his were glowing now, glowing from somewhere within, glowing and sort of…feral. It was frightening, and yet she couldn’t look away. Lifting her hand, she reached behind her head to pull her hair around to one side. She slid her other hand beneath his head to lift it gently from the pillows as she bent even closer. His cool lips brushed against the warm skin of her neck. Taking a breath, then another, she closed her eyes, bracing herself. His mouth parted, and his hands slid upward to gently cup the back of her head. Then his grip turned fierce, and he bit down with a growl that reverberated right to her soul.
Chapter 10
He was lost. Lost in a red haze of ecstasy, of healing, of hunger and of desire. Lost until the luscious elixir that rejuvenated his life force and alleviated his pain finally got around to clearing his head. Only slightly, though. Yes, feeding kept him alive and eased the pain that was dulling his mind. But it replaced that fog with the bloodlust, which was nearly as mindless.
With the force of sheer will, he withdrew his razor-sharp incisors from her butter-soft skin and lifted his head.
She stared at him, her eyelids heavy with the opiate effect of the vampire’s kiss and the heavy weight of passion that went hand in hand. In his kind, feeding and sex were urges that were intertwined, and sating one fed the need to sate the other. In the victims, it was very similar. Sharing blood was an act as intimate as—no, more intimate than—intercourse. It was powerful.
As he stared into her beautiful eyes, he wanted her.
And then, drunk with the act he had just committed, she whispered, “Please?”
He blinked against his own aching need, shook his head, pushed her from him. “No.”
But she gripped the hem of her blouse and tugged it over her head. Her breasts bounced as the fabric released them, round and full and soft. “I need you,” she told him.
And then she leaned over him again, her lips meeting his, opening, suckling his lips and teasing with her tongue. “I’ve always needed you…”
He didn’t have a choice. He wasn’t made of stone. He was a creature of passions, for God’s sake. Blood and sex and life were all blended together in him, and there was just no way to avoid this. He’d never wanted, never needed, like this before. Never.
Not even with Cassandra.
He wrapped his arms around Anna and returned her kiss, and it felt as if the fires of hell itself rose up and wrapped around them.
And then it felt like heaven instead.
Her mind vanished, and all that remained was her body, her senses. And pleasure, mind-blowing pleasure that left her quivering and weak. But gradually, very, very gradually, she came back to herself and realized that she was lying naked in his arms, and that she’d just had hours of passionate sex with a man who’d been near death.
No, not a man.
A vampire.
Her mind didn’t want to wrap itself around that, but there was no other way to explain what… She raised her hand and pressed it against the skin of her neck. Yes, there were wounds there. Puncture wounds, two of them, tiny, swollen and tender.
He’d admitted the truth. And if that hadn’t been enough, he’d bitten her neck.
He’d drunk of her blood.
He was a vampire.
Blinking and waiting for that truth to sink in, to make sense, she decided at l
ength that it never would. She didn’t feel afraid of him. She didn’t feel any need to run away. In fact, she felt…she felt better than she had before. He’d shown her his true self. He’d let her into his lonely world.
For whatever time she had, she would embrace this new reality. What difference did it make, when she would be dead herself in a few weeks’ time?
She sat up a little, propped her tired head on her hand and smiled down at him. He didn’t smile back. He lay very still. Very still.
“Diego?”
She touched him. “Diego, are you all right?” And then, when he still didn’t respond, she shook his shoulder. “Diego, wake up!”
But there was no response.
God, she’d killed him! She’d become so lost in passion that they must have knocked the tourniquet loose and—
Even as she thought it, she turned to inspect his arm. The tourniquet was still in place, but the wound…the wound was…it was vanishing.
She blinked her eyes, rubbed them, then leaned closer, staring at something that couldn’t possibly be real. The cut in his arm was mending itself, the skin pressing together in a kiss and sealing itself. In minutes there was only a faint red line remaining, and even that faded before her eyes, growing paler by degrees.
Carefully, her heart in her throat, she loosened the tourniquet and then stared hard at the arm. There was no more bleeding. How could there be, when there was no cut?
If I make it till morning, I’ll be all right.
She guessed it must be morning, then. And by day, it seemed, his wounds healed. But even stranger was that fact that he certainly didn’t seem alive right now. He seemed like a corpse. Except, not stiff. And not cold, either. In fact, he felt warmer than he had since she’d been here.
Slowly, she slid out of the bed and stood staring down at him. Should she check for a heartbeat? Did vampires even have one? How could she tell if he were alive or dead? Or undead? How could she know?
Blinking, she backed away. All right, she would just have to wait for nightfall, then, wouldn’t she? That would tell the tale. She would wait for nightfall. And he would wake. Or not.
And if he didn’t, then she supposed…she would have to bury him.
Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over, and she rushed back to the bed, flung herself onto it and wrapped her arms around him. “Don’t be dead, Diego! Please don’t be dead! I don’t care what you are. You gave me my life. You did. You convinced me to live, for the first time, for the only time, with the tiny bit of time I have left. And I am so grateful to you for that. You really are my guardian angel, even if some people would call you a demon. And I don’t want to lose you now. Not now. So please, don’t be dead, Diego. Please?”
She wept harder than she had ever wept before, even that day in Mary’s office. And eventually she fell asleep there, her head on his chest, her arms linked around his shoulders, sobs racking her body every few minutes even then. She slept hard for what amounted to most of the day.
By the time she roused, it was well after 7:00 p.m. Being summer, sundown wouldn’t come for a couple more hours yet. And he was still unresponsive, but since it wasn’t yet dark, there was still hope. In fact, with his arm showing no sign it had ever been injured at all, she had more hope than before.
She was refreshed and feeling absurdly good. He would wake up. He had to.
She couldn’t seem to stop smiling. And her attitude was so positive that she couldn’t wait for Diego to wake so she could share another perfect, blissful night with him. In the meantime she decided to kill time as best she could. She started with a glorious hot shower, lavishing herself with the best-smelling soaps in his overstocked bathroom.
She got creative then, bundling her hair up on top of her head but leaving it loose enough that curling tendrils spilled around her like a crown of spiral silk. She made a sarong from a nearly sheer silk throw, in a French vanilla cream color that she thought was the height of romance. She searched the house for candles, lined his bedroom with them, and set a lighter nearby. And then, with around half an hour to go, she realized she was half-starved, so she filled her belly with fruits from the island, downed a glass of icy cold water, brushed her teeth and returned to the bedroom.
She lit all the candles, and then she tried to strike an alluring pose near one of them as she waited for him to rouse.
Minutes ticked by. And then more minutes. She began to fear he might really be dead, after all.
But finally his nose twitched. And then it wrinkled.
Suddenly he sat up fast, eyes flying wide, and shouted, “Fire!”
“No!” She hurried to the bed and put her hands on his shoulders. “No, Diego, it’s just candles. There’s no fire.”
He scanned the room, wild-eyed, and bounded from the bed without even looking at her, then stood there staring at the tiny flames that surrounded him. And then, finally, his gaze found hers and a little of the wildness faded.
She smiled, relieved. “Thank God,” she said, sliding from the bed. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to wake up or not. I mean, when you sleep, it’s as though—but then the cut, it healed, and so… Oh, I’m just so glad you’re alive, Diego. So glad.” She moved closer to him as she spoke, and by the end she was sliding her hands up over his shoulders and resting her head on his chest.
He put his hands on her shoulders, as well, but didn’t wrap his arms around her as she had expected him to do. He seemed tentative. Probably just hadn’t caught up with himself yet. When you slept that deeply, you must wake up a little disoriented, right? He needed to process everything, to remember the night before, to—
“I need you to put the candles out, Anna. I’d do it myself, but I could easily go up in flames without a snuffer, so…”
“Go up in flames?” She lifted her head, because he didn’t sound confused or disoriented.
“After last night, I suppose there’s no longer any question in your mind about what I am.”
She smiled shyly, lowering her eyes even as she lifted her palm to press it to the marks on her neck. But then she frowned. “They’re gone,” she whispered, her eyes flying to his.
“They heal at the first touch of sunlight.”
“Oh. Just like your injuries do.”
“Mine heal during the day sleep. The touch of sunlight would be a whole different problem for me.”
“I see. And fire?”
“My kind are highly flammable. I only keep a supply of candles on hand in case my power sources fail and light is needed.”
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry…about the candles.” She quickly went around the room, blowing them out one by one until they stood in total darkness, the scent of smoldering wicks and hot wax too much to bear.
He opened the bedroom door. “Have you eaten?” he asked.
“Yes, I…I’m fine. Full. Thank you.”
“Good. The journey will only take about four hours. Giving me ample time to get back before sunrise, but only if we leave within the next—”
“Journey?”
He stopped at the foot of the stairs, turning to look up at her. “Back to the mainland. Did you forget I was taking you back tonight?”
She blinked rapidly, her heart taking the blow that felt like a blade straight through it. Her throat constricted, and though she opened her mouth to reply, she couldn’t force out a sound.
“Why don’t you…” His eyes moved down her makeshift outfit, that had felt like a seductress’s peignoir before and now felt like a silk throw. “Change,” he finished.
“I…I thought…after last night…what we shared…”
“It was the bloodlust, Anna.” He looked away when he said it, unable to hold her eyes, she thought, probably because he knew he was being a coldhearted bastard. “When a vampire feeds from a living being, sexual desire is…one of the side effects. It’s nearly irresistible.”
She blinked, her eyes burning with tears. “That’s all it was? It would have happened…with anyon
e?” she asked.
“No, not with anyone. But with any beautiful woman, probably, yes, it would have happened.”
“Then it meant nothing,” she said softly.
“It didn’t mean what you want it to mean. Can we leave it at that?”
She was silent for a moment, but inside, way down deep where he couldn’t see—or could he? She was burning with anger, humiliation and rage.
“I gave you my blood,” she said softly. “And I gave you my body. And you won’t even give me a few weeks on your precious island before I die?”
He lowered his head. “I will visit you again before you die,” he told her. “And I’ll repay your favor at that time. But until then, it’s best you go.”
Blinking rapidly, she lowered her head. “All right, then.”
Suddenly it felt as if someone were poking around inside her brain. Her head snapped up, and she found his eyes on her, the intensity in them telling her that he was doing something. Trying to read her thoughts? So she filled her mind with the image of walking along the beach, saying goodbye to the island.
“If you don’t mind,” she said softly, “I’d like a few minutes alone. I’m going down to the beach. I’ll gather up any more of my things that might have washed up today.”
He seemed to relax a little, and he nodded. “That’s a good idea. I need to pack a few things for the trip, anyway. I’ll meet you at the boat in…half an hour?”
She nodded and headed back up the stairs to his bedroom, where she pulled her clothes on as fast as she could, then grabbed the lighter from the nightstand and tucked it into her pocket.
She was staying on this island. She was staying for the rest of her life. As near as she could figure, that might be another four to six weeks. So she was staying. Whether her guardian vampire liked it or not.
Chapter 11
It was killing him to treat her as coldly as he was. He didn’t want to. He wanted to scoop her right up off her feet and carry her back to bed. He wanted to ravish her over and over. He wanted to drink from her again. He wanted to feed her, too. Feed her from his own veins. Share the Gift with her.
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