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"No." The word came out choked, forced past her lips. "Please, Gideon. I don't want to talk about this anymore."
She was trying desperately to hold herself together, he could see that. But she was really shook up, dealing with something more visceral than simple grief or fear.
She was terrified.
He studied her closer, seeing the depth of her fright in the trembling that raked her from head to toe where she stood. Good God, what the hell could have put her in such a state?
"Savannah, did someone threaten you somehow?" His blood seethed at the thought. "Did someone hurt you?"
She shook her head, silent as she withdrew into her apartment and left him standing at the open door. He followed her inside, uninvited, but he wasn't about to walk away and leave her alone to cope with whatever had her so stricken with terror.
Gideon closed the door behind him and strode into the cramped living room. His gaze strayed toward the bedroom to the left, where a suitcase lay open on the bed, a few articles of folded clothing tossed inside.
"Are you going somewhere?"
"I need to go away for a while," she said, still drifting ahead of him into the small living space, keeping him at her back. "I need to clear my head. The only place I know where I can do that is back home in Atchafalaya. I called my sister this afternoon. Amelie thinks it's best if I come home too."
"Louisiana?" he said. "That's a bloody long way to go just to clear your head."
"It's my home. It's where I belong."
"No," he said, a clipped denial. "You're panicked about something and you're running away. I figured you to be stronger than this, Savannah. I thought you liked heroes who stood fast and pursued the truth, no matter the cost."
"You don't know the first thing about me," she shot back, and pivoted to face him. Her dark brown eyes pierced him with a hot mix of fear and anger. She crossed her arms over her chest again, a wounded, self-protective stance.
He walked toward her with unrushed strides. She held her ground, watching him approach. She wasn't retreating now, but she kept those arms braced tight against herself, barring him--maybe barring anyone--from truly getting close.
Gideon took one of her hands in a firm, but gentling, grasp. "You don't need to protect yourself against me. I'm one of the good guys."
He took hold of her other hand too now, and drew her arms down to her sides. Her breast rose and fell with each shallow, rapid breath she took as he reached up to cup her delicate jaw in his palm. Her skin was creamy smooth under the pad of his thumb, her plump lips soft as satin, the color of a dusky wine rose.
He couldn't resist the need to taste her--if just this once.
Curling his fingers around her warm nape, he brought her toward him and brushed his lips over hers. She was sweeter than he'd imagined, the heat of her mouth and the tenderness of her kiss awakening a need in him the way a thirsting man must crave cold, clear water.
Gideon couldn't keep from dragging her deeper against him, testing the seam of her lips with the hungered tip of his tongue. She let him in on a pretty moan, her hands coming up to his shoulders, clinging to him in delicious surrender.
He swept her denim shirt off so he could feel the bare skin of her arms. A mistake, that. Because now the pebbled peaks of Savannah's unbound breasts were crushed against his chest, an awareness that burned right through his black leather jacket and T-shirt, arousing him as swiftly as if she'd been standing fully naked before him.
He felt the sharp tips of his fangs elongating as desire swept through him like a wildfire. Good thing his eyes were closed, or the heated glow of his irises would betray him to her in an instant as something other than human.
Gideon growled against her mouth, telling himself this swift, dangerous passion was simply the result of a long, self-imposed drought.
Right. If only he believed that.
What he felt was something far more surprising. Troubling, too.
Because it wasn't just any woman he wanted in that moment. It was this one only.
Maybe she sensed the dark strength of his need for her. God knew, she had to feel it. His cock was a ridge of steel between them, his veins pulsing with a drumming demand to take her. To claim her.
"Gideon, I can't." She broke away and sucked in a hitching breath. Her fist came up to her mouth, pressing against her glistening, kiss-swollen lips. "I'm sorry, I can't do this," she whispered brokenly. "I can't start wanting something that feels so right when everything else around me feels so terribly wrong. I'm just so confused."
Hell, he was too. Confusion was a wholly unfamiliar feeling for him. This woman had knocked him off his axis the moment he met her, from her quick-witted comebacks at the library, to the intense attraction she stirred in him, just to be near her.
He hadn't come to her apartment looking to seduce her, but now that he'd kissed her, he wanted her. Badly. Their kiss left a fierce desire pounding through him for the first time in more years than he cared to recall. It took all his self-control to cool the hammering of his pulse, to make sure the amber was extinguished from his eyes before he met her gaze. To coax his fangs back to their human-like state before he attempted to speak.
Savannah heaved a sigh. "I've never been so confused in all my life. And you're right, Gideon. I am scared." She looked so vulnerable and sweet. So alone. "I'm scared that I'm going crazy."
