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“Are you sure?” he breathed.
“I wouldn’t have offered otherwise. You’ve got to need it after last night and just now.”
In the silence that followed, all her questions about who and what he was threatened to come between them, and he found himself wanting to answer them. On the surface, it wasn’t that hard: Rahvyn had resuscitated him after he died from a gunshot wound to the gut, and that was all he knew about the immortality stuff. The subject was a Pandora’s box, however. Everything that was under his surface, going all the way back to his past in that human lab and what had been done to him there, was bound to come out.
And he could not deal with that.
Good thing the single most powerful drive in a vampire was front and center in his mind.
Moving slowly, in case she changed her mind, he stroked her face. Then put his mouth to hers once more. This time, the kiss was deeper, and as he entered her with his tongue, he felt her hand slip onto his lower back. Putting his leg over hers, he gradually shifted so that he was on top of her—something that was made easier when she parted her thighs for him. As they intertwined, he got an even better sense of her body. She was strong, but softer than he was, and he relished the differences in her, so much smaller, so incredibly compelling.
When he finally broke the contact of their lips, he stared down into her yellow eyes. “You’re not afraid, are you.”
“Of what—you? No, I’m not.”
“I won’t hurt you.”
“I know.”
He kissed her cheek, and did the same to her jaw. Then he was nipping at her ear… before moving over to nuzzle her neck. Extending his tongue, he licked up her vein—
“Do it,” she commanded.
Closing his eyes, he was surprised as a sudden calm floated under his hunger. Deep inside of himself, he abruptly knew he could trust his self-control—but it was for a reason even more shocking than the fact that he was going to bite her.
It had everything to do with the dark spices flooding the bedroom:
He had bonded with Nalla.
And bonded males had one, and only one, prime directive: Protect their females against any threat, from any source.
Including themselves.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Downtown, in the abandoned office building, the elevator bumped to a halt in the basement, and Evan almost shot out and ran around all panicked, willy-nilly-nowhere—except at the last minute, before the doors could close and the Otis could be summoned upstairs by that killer, his brain kicked in and he jumped back inside and hit the stop button to freeze it in place. The alarm started ringing, but what did he care about that.
Stumbling out, he looked around at the buckets of black oil and red blood, got assaulted by gruesome memories, told himself to get the fuck over it.
That entity or whatever it was would not lose any time finding the stairs. What was going to save Evan, if anything did, was whether or not there was a fire door that he could barricade. If he could just secure this level, and if the trainer could come back, then—
Evan’s body wheeled around on its own and started moving fast, his feet shuffling and then running properly toward a dark corner.
“Wait, wait, wait—”
His head bobbed on the top of his spine as he kept looking back over his shoulder. But as much as he commanded his legs to change direction, and take him to that door with an EXIT sign, it was as if he were on autopilot.
And then came the same popping noise from where the main entry had been breached upstairs.
Over in the opposite corner, a flare of light and then the banging sound of a door once again flattening itself on concrete announced that Evan was officially out of time.
“No!” He began to hyperventilate as his feet stayed their course into the shadows. “Oh, God, no—”
He might be in the dark, but he wouldn’t be able to hide there for long. His heavy breathing was making too much noise, and—
His arm ripped forward with such strength, it spun him around, and before he could fall on his face, he threw a hand out and made contact with something that was cold.
Instantly, a keypad glowed blue at waist level.
