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"No," she said. She let out a short bark of a laugh. "No, I promise you, I don't know. I'm not even sure I want to know."
She was trembling now, legs shaking beneath her as she started to get to her feet. He cocked his head, watching her. Studying her for a reaction that would tell him more about who - and what - she was. "You're afraid."
Her face went a bit paler. "I'm terrified, you sick son of a bitch! You killed my boss. You killed several cops and federal agents - "
"I told you, the agents were mostly unharmed," he interrupted to remind her.
"I don't care what you say. I don't believe you," she replied hotly. "You're a cold-blooded psychopath. At best, that's what you are. At worst, I don't even want to think about what you might be. You're a monster!"
Chase took a step toward her, watching her chest heave beneath the loose terry-cloth robe that barely covered her the more she struggled to stay on her feet. "Now you're angry." "Stay away from me," she said as he came closer.
He looked at her exposed skin. The plunging V of her robe showed him an ample slice of the markings that covered her chest and torso. Those markings were still the same dusty mauve they'd been when he'd first spotted them last night in the hotel suite.
They couldn't be glyphs, he realized now. His own were pulsing and alive with color - a visceral reaction to his heightened emotional state - and yet hers, despite her fear and rage right now, remained static, wholly unchanging. "These markings of yours ... how the hell can you have them?"
"Haven't you ever seen burn scars?" She tugged the robe closed to hide them as color rose into her cheeks. "Not that it's any business of yours, but when I was a baby, there was an accident. I was burned all over my body."
Although the story seemed plausible, and she certainly seemed to believe it herself, Chase wasn't convinced. "I've seen burn scars before and they don't look like that."
"Well, mine do," she said. "And I think you should know that I also have a serious medical condition. I'm not well. I need my medications."
He scoffed, unmoved by the obvious line of bullshit. "You don't look sick to me."
"I'm telling you the truth," she insisted. "My meds are in my pocketbook, back at the hotel. I can't go more than eight hours without taking them. It could be deadly for me."
He took another step toward her, close enough to see the desperation in her citrusy green eyes. She glanced down toward the fireplace tools, then made a hasty grab for an iron poker. She wielded the thing like a blade in front of her, about to make a hard jab at him with it.
Chase flung the length of metal out of her hands and across the room with the power of his mind alone. Her jaw dropped, eyes going wide as the poker went airborne. It hit the hardwood floor with a jarring clatter before skidding to a stop twenty feet away.
"You're not very strong, Tavia." Chase closed in on her before she could even realize he was moving. She blinked up at him in alarm as he brought his hands down on her shoulders in a subtle but firm hold. "Not very fast either."
She struggled against him, but he held her easily. Even if her mortal brain worked to process what it was witnessing, her instincts were immediately ready to take him on. Eyes blazing, her chin hiked up in challenge. "Is that what this is about for you? You want someone to put up a fight for you before you finally kill them?"
This close, it was impossible not to notice how beautiful she was. Her caramel-brown hair fell in glossy waves that broke at her shoulders, framing high cheekbones, a gracefully curved jaw and elegant throat. Her bright green gaze, even swamped with anger and fear, radiated keen intelligence. Inky black lashes fringed those eyes, softening the sharp wit with a doelike innocence. Her mouth was generous, dusky pink, full lips made for kissing. Among other things. Chase drank her in, his earlier suspicion of her morphing into interest of another kind, no less powerful. An unbidden, unwelcome desire needled him in that moment, intensifying and darkening now that he was holding her just a breath away from his mouth.
No delicate waif, this was a lean, athletically built woman who stood only a few inches less than his six-and-a-half-foot height. She had a swimmer's body, perfectly proportioned muscle, toned and strong and agile. She seemed naturally fit, not shaped by the rigors of a personal trainer and strict diet. Each curve and angle was a flawless construction of female anatomy - scantily covered by one large scrap of draping terry cloth - and his male body responded in rising approval.
He could feel her anxiety spike as he studied her. His nostrils tingled with the scent of her fear and outrage, something more than simple Homo sapiens adrenaline shooting through her veins. Scowling, he tried to process what his senses were telling him.
He bent his head toward her, face moving in close to the side of her neck. She went utterly still as he dragged in a long breath against her skin, sniffing her hard. "You don't smell human." "Oh, God," she moaned, her voice vibrating through him. "Please don't do this."
Hunger lashed him for the mistake of getting this close to her throbbing carotid. It was far too easy to imagine penetrating the soft flesh. Drinking from her open vein.
He wondered what she would taste like. Would her blood be tangy, mundane copper, or something more exotic?
Taking her vein was probably the fastest way to determine if she was, in fact, human or something other. But he knew one sip would be too much. He needed to starve this thirst out of himself, not feed the addiction. And Tavia Fairchild was off limits completely until he got to the bottom of who, and what, she truly was.
Chase searched her gaze. "Tell me the truth, Tavia. You know you're not what you're pretending to be."
"I don't know what you're talking about," she insisted. "You're crazy."
"No," he said, giving a rough, humorless laugh. "Not quite crazy, not yet. I'm sane enough to see that you're keeping a secret. So tell me what it is. Tell me what you are. Did Dragos do this to you?"
She made another futile attempt to break out of his hold. "You're a lunatic! I've never even heard the name Dragos until you said it at the police station."
When she turned away from him, Chase reached out and lifted her face back to his. He watched, waited, expecting to see her pupils start to narrow into thin vertical slits the way his were now. But there was no change in the rounded pools of black that stared back at him. She couldn't be Breed - no matter how certain his instincts were that nothing else could explain her. Impulsively, he put his finger to her lips and forced his way into her soft, wet mouth to check her teeth for the presence of fangs. There were none, of course. Only a straight row of blunt human pearly whites.
She clamped down on his finger with them, biting him hard enough to draw blood.
