"I am not burned." He didn't want her to see the flash of his fangs, which had sprung into his mouth the moment he had heard her voice. "Thank you, Miss Harper. Please go back to your seat before we encounter more turbulence."
"This was my fault." Liling looked down at the buttons on the carpet around his feet and stepped inside, closing the door behind her. "Please let me help you." She put her hand on his useless arm. "It's the least… I can…" She went silent as her fingertips brushed over the long, narrow recess in his flesh.
The place where Thierry Durand had brought down his blade and severed Valentin's arm from his body.
The towel fell from Liling's other hand as she gently traced the length of his scar, following it all around his arm. "How did this happen to you?"
"It was an unfortunate accident." He turned his head so he would not see the pity in her face. "There was only so much the physician was able to do to repair it."
"When did you have the reattachment surgery?" Her voice sounded thin and strained.
"Some time ago." He hated her seeing him like this, only half a man. He did not want to face her sympathy or her revulsion. "I am partially paralyzed, Miss Harper, not helpless. You may leave me to deal with this."
Instead of hurrying away, Liling stepped closer, bringing her other hand up to the scar, spanning it with all of her fingers. She bent forward and brushed her lips against the recess of flesh.
Valentin went still. "What are you doing?"
Her lips moved against his scar, but whatever she said was lost in the accompanying rush of sensation. Human warmth, effortless and beautiful, wrapped around his cool flesh and sank into him, until he thought he could feel it seeping into his very bones.
No lover, human or Kyn, had ever touched him like this.
The subtle curve of Liling's cheek brushed his shoulder as her small hands slid down to become the gentlest of bracelets. She looked up at him, tears making her black eyes wet.
"I'm sorry." That was what she was saying. "I'm so sorry."
Sympathy had always angered him, but hers only made him wish she had been there the night he had lost the duel with Thierry. Her touch might have saved him then.
It was too late now.
Valentin tried to move away from her, but discovered that he didn't want the moment to end. Before she could speak of her pity again, he brought his good arm up around her narrow waist, curling it around to pull her closer.
"No," he murmured when she stiffened. "Stay."
He closed his eyes as Liling relaxed and rested her hands on his chest, where the warmth followed and lingered, surrounding the cold stone of his heart.
He held her for as long as he dared, until the need to taste her became a beast clawing and writhing inside him. Then, very carefully, he took her hand and brought it to his lips.
That her compassion aroused him as much as her beauty made him even more disgusted with himself. "You should be careful. You don't know what you do to me, mein Mädchen."
"I'm touching you," she said, her voice low and shy. "I wish I could do more."
Valentin despised himself for using his talent, but it didn't stop him from asking her, "What more do you want?"
"I'd like to kiss your mouth." Her fingers turned in his, pressing against his lips. "And put my hands on you, and move them all over you. I want to be naked with you. I've thought about how it would be. How you would make me feel. I've dreamed of you with me, in my bed, and then I wake up all alone and shaking."
"You cannot desire me." He could not believe her words. L'attrait compelled her to make such claims, not her heart. "Tell me the truth. Liling. Now."
"I've wanted you since the first time I saw you," she answered, the words leaving her lips with halting reluctance, as if she fought saying them. It was the same with every human he compelled to tell him something they considered a shameful secret. "It was when you brought Luisa the camellias for the first time. I saw you and thought you were a prince out of a fairy tale. Then you spoke to her, and I knew that you were better than a prince. You treated Luisa with such kindness and respect." She swallowed. "I envied her your friendship."
Valentin's hand trembled as he slid it over her hair to cradle the back of her head. "Why did you never say anything to me?"
"You're an important man," she whispered. "I'm only a gardener. I knew I could never be with you."
"Liling." He kissed her forehead, the bridge of her nose, the curl of her upper lip, the curve of her jaw, and breathed in the luscious scent of her. "You were wrong."
Liling felt time stop, as if she would spend the rest of eternity held there, against Valentin's bare chest, her mouth tingling from the touch of his breath. She had just told him things she never wanted him to know, heard the words pour from her lips without hesitation. As if it meant nothing to confess her most private fantasies to a virtual stranger. How could she have done it? The weight of the humiliation alone should have crushed her.
But it was what he had said that smashed through the glass walls of her shame.
You were wrong.
He wanted her. Somehow, some way, this man felt the same attraction, the same longing.
"I don't believe it," she said, more to herself than him.
"Why not?" he murmured, tugging at her braid. "Each time you looked at me, mein Mädchen. I looked back."
"But I know who you are." She couldn't fit herself into this puzzle. "Luisa told me that you own the Lighthouse, and that you live in a mansion on the lakeshore. You own corporations, and you have chauffeurs and servants, and you—" She stopped and shook her head. "You could have any woman in the city. Any woman you want. Why would you even notice someone like me? I'm a gardener, I have no family, no money. I'm not American. I'm… I'm not even white."
"So?" He sounded amused. "I am not Chinese, and you noticed me. I will tell you a secret." He bent his head. "I am not American, either. I am Austrian."
Liling couldn't help the laugh that escaped her. "This is not happening. People like you and I don't… This is crazy."
"Is it." His fingers deftly worked her hair free and smoothed it across her back. "I adore this hair of yours. It feels like a cloak of black silk."
Her hand went to her hair as if to hide it. "I keep forgetting to trim it."
He caught her chin with his hand. "Never cut a single strand."
"It grows very fast." She caught her breath as his hand encircled her throat. "It would end up dragging on the floor. Mr. Jaus—"
"You are in my arms, Mädchen," he said. "My name is Valentin." When she didn't reply, his fingers tightened. "Say it for me."
Her mouth went dry. "Valentin."
His body vibrated against her, as if something inside him was breaking loose, and then he hoisted her up, his arm under her buttocks, and turned, taking her to the back of the cabin. She hadn't realized there was a bed until he laid her down upon it. The surface of the coverlet, something incredibly soft, teased the back of her legs as he stripped her jeans and panties from them.
"If you do not wish me to tear your shirt," he said, reaching for the front of his own trousers, "you must take it off."
Lost in a haze of passion and camellias, Liling found herself pulling her T-shirt over her head. He didn't wait for her to unfasten her bra, but yanked down the cups. They pushed her small breasts up higher, making them into an offering.
She didn't think he could see her, the cabin was so dark, but he stared down at her as if there were a thousand candles around them.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the cabin for several seconds. In the harsh white light, Liling saw Valentin's body. Broad, tight muscle and thick ropes of tendons bulged under his pale skin, which the storm gave an almost luminous glow. If he had been a statue, chiseled by a master's hand from a single block of flawless moonstone, he could not have been more perfect.
He was not a statue, however, but an aroused male, hard and eager for sex. His penis, thick and erect, testified to the fact as it strained in a swollen arc against his lower belly. A shiver went through her at the thought of being impaled by him, and then the folds between her legs ignored her fear and went damp as they throbbed and ached, as if he were already there, pushing himself inside her.
As much as she wanted that, shame swelled inside her heart. After they arrived in Atlanta, she would have to leave immediately for Florida, and have no contact with people who had known her as Liling Harper. She would never see him again.
This could be only a one-night stand.
His fingers caressed her cheek. "Don't be afraid of me. Liebling. I will never hurl you."
Tired of her own doubts. Liling pushed herself up, reaching for him as he came down for her. He lifted her from the bed just as the plane jolted, standing up with her, and she wrapped her legs around him, clinging instinctively to his powerful frame. Only after a moment did she feel the satiny dome there, nestling against the delicate recess between her thighs.
Liling turned her face to his, seeing that the pale blue eyes she had always thought so cold had changed, becoming lustrous and piercing, the pupils elongating. Bathed in the heady perfume of a thousand unseen camellias, she loosened her grip on his neck, sinking against him, enveloping the blunt head of his shaft, saturating it with the silky wetness seeping out of her slit as he stretched her wide.
He supported her weight, going no further than she had taken him, keeping her poised on the very tip of his sex.
"Is this what you want. Liling?" His voice had gone so deep and thick the words sounded slurred. "For me to fuck you before I even kiss you?"
His language and his question didn't frighten her; they freed her. She had taken lovers—she was no stranger to sex—but the men she had been involved with had treated her like one of her flowers, as if she might break if they did anything more than cuddle and pamper her. For once she wanted to be treated like a real woman instead of a doll.