He put his hands on the glass window pane.
“We ruled the world then, until I looked around and saw it was a world full of death and pain. The children begged for mercy, the women fled, and the men were in agony.”
She shook her head, trying to shove away the images that his words pushed into her mind.
“My father was the leader. The most powerful vampire in existence, and he didn’t expect an attack to come from the one he trusted above all others.” His laughter held a cold, bitter edge. “Maybe that’s why I was able to take his head. He trusted me too much to expect a betrayal.”
He’d killed his own father? She hurried forward.
He turned to her. “You’re supposed to back away when a man makes a confession like that. When he tells you of the bloodlust and the death, you should be afraid.”
She was. Her breath felt cold in her lungs. “You haven’t hurt me.” Not once.
“Not yet,” he said, his jaw tightening. “My father wanted me to be just like him. There was a village that was trying to resist him, trying to fight back against us. They called us devils, and my father wanted to show them what hell was truly like.” His eyes were cloudy with memories. “I saw the children there. Terrified. And I saw my bloody past…it had to stop.” His lips thinned. “So I stopped it.”
There was pain there, filling the air all around him.
Then he smiled, and it was a chilling sight as his fangs flashed. “I could tell you good things, you know. About how I’ve saved lives. Stopped killers. But the scales never really balance, and I’ve always known, deep inside, that my father was right.”
“Shane…”
“I am just like him. I have the same darkness. It pushes me. It calls to me. It tempts me.” He paused. His eyes narrowed. “Or it did, until something else tempted me more.”
He tempted her. Danger, darkness, a vampire with a past so bloody and tortured. But he tempted her.
“My earliest memory,” she heard herself whisper, “is of being trapped by blood and fire. The fire was closing in on me and the blood…it was on my hands. My feet. I was screaming, but there was no escape for me.”
He didn’t speak. It was his turn to listen.
“I always knew something bad had happened to me, but I never could break through and figure out just what it had been. When I asked my mother, when I’d tell her about the nightmares that would never stop, she’d just whisper—”
Olivia broke off because now her mother’s whispers made a strange sense to her. And they left her chilled.
“She’d wish that I would have peace,” she finished, voice breaking. “And that the darkness would leave me alone.”
Only it never had. The darkness had been a living, breathing thing inside of her. Whispering sometimes, twisting insidiously within her. And she’d sought out killers, others who must feel that same darkness because she’d wanted to control herself.
Wanted to stop whatever it was that seemed to live in her heart.
Djinn?
Yes.
Her gaze fell to his throat. “I can’t believe Pate just let me go. Isn’t he worried about what I might do?” A few wrong words had sent Holly to the floor.
“I’m not worried,” Shane said softly. “Because you’re strong. Far stronger than you seem to realize.”
His words brought her eyes right back up to his.
“I want you,” he told her, the words stark and hard. “And I will always want you. I look at you, and I f**king feel complete. Like I found something I didn’t even know I was missing.”
She wanted his words to be true. Wanted the strange connection she felt with him to be real.
Because she hadn’t felt that connection with anyone else.
“I won’t let anyone hurt you. Any who comes after you—human, vamp, werewolf—they’ll have to go through me first.”
He sounded so fierce. Her vampire.
She leaned into him. Put her hands on his shoulders. Made her choice. “And anyone who comes after you will have to deal with me.” Because she wanted to see where this would go. Their connection, their desire…where would it take them?
She didn’t care about some fated nonsense. She cared about the way he made her feel.
For so long, she’d felt as if she were the secret freak in the room, even when she was with killers.
But with Shane, Olivia felt as if she were desired, wanted, more than anything else.
As if she mattered more than anything else.
“Don’t bite me this time,” Olivia told him. “I want to see what it’s like, when it’s just us.”
He gave a jerky nod.
She pushed onto her tip-toes and rose against him. Her lips pressed to his mouth, and her tongue slid over the crevice between his lips. Slowly, she licked the line there, savoring him for a moment even as the blood heated within her veins.
His lips parted and her tongue slid inside. His hands settled along her hips, his long, strong fingers curved around her ass, and he pulled her against the aroused length of his cock.
“Just us,” she whispered against his mouth.
Would it be as good this time? Without that strange blood link?
He kept kissing her, and the kiss became even deeper, so sensual that she trembled.
He lifted her into his arms. Carried her away from the window and down a narrow hallway. He took her into his bedroom. Stripped her. Lowered her onto the bed.
“Your clothes,” Olivia gasped. “You’re still dressed!”
He caught her legs and, gently, carefully, pulled her to the edge of the mattress. “I won’t bite,” he promised her, “but I will taste.”
He leaned over her. His mouth pressed a kiss to her throat, right above her racing heartbeat. He licked her, sucked the skin, had her moaning, and then he moved down.
Down her neck. Down her collarbone. Kissing. Caressing.
His fingers slid over her br**sts. Strummed her ni**les. Had the desire coiling so tightly within her. Then his mouth replaced his fingers. He took her nipple into his mouth and sucked, he laved her flesh, he had her h*ps arching up against him and her breath panting out.
Desire rolled through her on a red-hot wave. She wanted his clothes gone. Wanted to feel every inch of him against her. In her.
But he was kissing her stomach now. Being so careful not to hurt her. Being too careful when she needed, wanted, him to be wild right then.
“Shane!”
He parted her legs. “I told you, I get to taste.”