Authors: Virna Depaul
It had nothing to do with the bullet Louis had shot him with.
The thought of him suffering so made her feel as if her
own heart was being ripped out. All she wanted to do was hold and comfort him.
Hesitantly, she started crawling toward him.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.”
He was saying the words over and over again, until she was right beside him, calling his name.
“Ty!
Ty!
”
He seemed oblivious to her presence.
Gritting her teeth, she reached out and touched his arm. “Ty.”
His head snapped up at her touch. His mouth was closed and she couldn’t see his fangs, but the lower part of his face was still smeared with blood. Louis’s blood. The feral look in Ty’s eyes terrified her. But as she stared at him, she saw the intensity of his regret. She saw his humanity.
Her fear and panic didn’t go away but it did subside.
Swallowing hard, she felt him shake even harder. She squeezed his arm in what she hoped he’d interpret as a reassuring gesture. “Ty,
está bien
,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“No,” he choked out. “This is what I am now. A monster. A freak.”
It was exactly what she’d thought about him, but she protested anyway. “You’re not a monster. Louis came after us. And you saved me. You saved both of us.”
He didn’t say anything more. Turning his face toward the wall again, he shook and shook. Somehow, before she knew what she was doing, she had her arms around him to comfort him.
And he let her.
Slowly, his shaking lessened.
She started to pull away. In response, Ty wrapped his own arms around her, pulling her even closer into his embrace. “No. Please. Don’t go.”
He sounded so vulnerable, though he wasn’t. Still, his
raw plea awakened long-ago emotions in her, ones she had never wanted to relive. The memories were unbearable.
Gloria had clung to her when she’d crawled into Ana’s bed at night, begging her to keep her safe from the monsters—the ones in the closet, the ones on the street, the ones that their mother brought home with her.
She’d always told Gloria she’d protect her. That she’d keep the monsters away. She wanted to tell Ty the same thing, but she couldn’t. In the end, she hadn’t been able to protect Gloria. Ty knew that. He would come to his senses, ashamed of his moment of weakness.
He was the strong one. Not her. She pulled away again.
“I have to go,” she insisted. “
Debemos ir
, Ty. Back to Belladonna.”
Ty heard what Ana was saying and forced himself to release her. Together, they stood up. Every barrier that had come between them, plus a few new ones, crashed back into place.
Taking a deep breath, accepting what she’d said about having to leave, he fought for self-control.
“I need to call Carly. Explain what happened so she can do damage control. Listen to the police radios.”
She nodded. “Tell her to send a car for us,” she said.
Right. Because they couldn’t very well go back to the nightclub to retrieve the car they’d driven there. Police would be all over the place, doing what they could to find the man’s murderer.
Him.
Revulsion crawled up his spine and he fought back waves of self-hatred.
His actions as a vampire sickened and infuriated him. Why couldn’t he control what he was? How he acted?
He’d been proud of his position in the FBI, proud of serving a country that wasn’t even his. He could lose it all.
Quickly, he called Carly and explained what had happened. As always, she was cool. Calm. Detached.
“The car will be here shortly,” he said after hanging up, then forced himself to look Ana in the eye.
To his surprise, she stepped closer to him.
She smelled good, musky and real, but underlying that was the scent of … what? Disgust? Fear?
At least she wasn’t running from him or fighting him off. Ana was strong, he’d give her that.
“Why did you attack him?” she asked, her voice tremulous.
“I heard you screaming.”
She shook her head. “No. You couldn’t have. I definitely wasn’t screaming. I was letting him kiss me. I was trying to get information about Miguel from him.”
He noticed spatters of dried blood across her face and raised his hand as if he could wipe them away, then dropped it. “I lost sight of you on the dance floor.”
She winced. “It all happened so fast. He pulled me outside, but I was making progress. I was close, so close to getting him to talk—”
“I heard you scream,” he said, his eyes haunted. “You kept crying out the word
no
, over and over again.”
“Ty,” she whispered, “I don’t understand. He wasn’t raping me. I never screamed. I never said the word
no
.”
He stared into her eyes. In the split second before he’d thrown Louis off her, he’d
felt
how grateful she was that he’d come out when he did, but her lips hadn’t moved. He sighed. Nodded.
“I read your mind,” he said. “I didn’t know it at the time, and I didn’t mean to do it, but … you wanted it to stop. That’s what I was hearing. Your thoughts.”
“You can—you can read my mind?” Her expression
and voice were horrified. Her knees gave out and her body buckled. “You never told me that was one of your powers.”
He caught her, and held her upright. Once again, he was surprised when she didn’t pull away from him. “Would you have wanted to be around me if I had? Besides, I can only do it on occasion. If I really try. But I don’t try. I’ve never tried to read your mind, Ana. I promise.” Of course, he didn’t tell her what he suspected either. That he’d most likely inserted himself into her dreams and had sex with her. He hadn’t forced her. Hadn’t controlled her thoughts the way he had with Bobbie. Everything they’d done had been consensual. But right now, especially with the memory of Louis’s hands on her, it was the last thing he wanted to discuss. “I didn’t mean to read your mind tonight. It just happened. I swear.”
“Okay, I believe you.” But she pulled away from him. Crossed her arms over her chest.
“You’re scared of me now,” he said.
“I—” she began, but his cell phone rang.
He waited for her to finish speaking. When she didn’t, he answered, then clicked to end the call.
“That’s the car. The driver is just around the corner. Let’s go, princess.” He strode forward and brushed past her, knowing she’d follow.
After all, where else could she go?
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
The luxury town car was driven by a quiet man with what
Ana suspected was a deliberately forgettable face. Seated in the back, she and Ty didn’t speak on the drive to Belladonna. That was just fine with her. Her stomach was roiling, and she was afraid of what would happen if she dared open her mouth.
Ty’s phone rang and he answered. The call was once again brief, with him listening and replying only, “Thank you,” before disconnecting.
“That was Carly,” he explained. “She put out some feelers. Looks like witnesses at the club saw two people in the alley with a man identified as Louis Corazon before they somehow disappeared. Their descriptions are vague and conflicting. Some said it was a man and woman, some said it was two males.”
“That’s … good?” Ana murmured.
She almost rolled her eyes at her questioning tone. Of course it was good. She was a parolee, for God’s sake, one who hadn’t notified the parole department of her change of address before leaving Seattle. If someone connected her to Louis’s death, she could end up back in prison. Somehow, given the events of the evening and everything that had happened in the past week, she’d forgotten that. She was risking not just her freedom but her life by being here.
In a short time, the car pulled up to Belladonna. Without
a word, Ty escorted her into the main house and to her room. As they walked, he seemed to take particular care not to touch her. When they reached her bedroom, he wouldn’t meet her gaze.
After what he’d done, she shouldn’t be surprised. Unless he was avoiding looking at her because she’d let Louis kiss her.
Seconds passed and she realized he was ashamed of what he’d done. Ashamed of what he was.
And dear God, she could relate to that. Even before she’d been sent to prison, long before that prosecutor had picked apart her life in front of a jury, she’d hated what she’d done to survive. Most of all, she’d hated what she was and the life to which she’d been born. It broke her heart to know that Ty was struggling with those same feelings because he’d been turned into a vampire. That hadn’t been his choice, any more than her own misfortune had been.
“Ty—” she began, but she didn’t know what else to say. How could she comfort him when she knew so little about what he was? His vampire side was fully capable of taking over. Yet as violent as he’d been with Louis, as viciously as he’d hurt him, Ty had never abused Ana. Hell, the most damaging thing he’d done to her was kiss her, and she couldn’t deny that even after tonight, even knowing what he was, she wanted him to kiss her again.
His gaze had snapped up when she said his name. They stared at one another for long moments and he reached out to stroke her cheek. But even as she held her breath, he lowered his hand.
“Good night, Ana.”
As he walked away, she blindly opened the door to her bedroom and turned back to close it. He hesitated at the end of the hallway and glanced back at her, giving her one last glimpse of his pale, tortured face. His blood-splattered
clothes. And even when he turned and disappeared around the corner, she kept seeing him.
She tried to mold her image of him into a monster. Tried to envision him as he’d been less than an hour ago, fangs bared as he went for Louis’s throat. Instead, she saw him as he’d been crouched in that parking garage, arms covering his face, horrified by what he’d just done. She saw him as she had in her dreams, communicating with every word and touch that he yearned for her. Just as she yearned for him.
In other words, try as she might, she saw all of his humanity and none of his vampire side.
Unbelievable, she thought, and leaned her head against the doorjamb.
Despite everything, despite the fact he’d killed Louis in a few seconds of lethal violence, consumed by unnatural rage, she still wanted him. With all her heart.
Ty stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower, utterly exhausted. He didn’t even bother taking off his contacts—he didn’t have to. Apparently a vampire could wear contacts 24/7 with no ill effect. He let the water beat down on him, thinking that exhausted wasn’t the right word.
He was soul weary.
Something that would only get far worse over the next several decades. This, he thought, is what I have to look forward to. Years upon years of seeing my human side diminish more and more. More violence. More loss of control.
More loss, period.
Bracing his hands on the shower wall, he let the water wash away the blood of the night’s kill and swirl down the drain until the tub was white. The horror stayed with him.
He’d killed before. Several times. But before, the kills had been fairly controlled. Foreseeable results of targeted missions, where he’d had time to prepare himself with method and means. He’d never killed with his bare hands—with his
teeth
—in such a vile display of primal rage. He’d never killed as a vampire rather than a man.
He wasn’t entirely sorry. The man, Louis, had shot him, but more important, he’d been about to shoot Ana. Despite her shock at witnessing the violence tonight, she had kept things together. Instead of running from Ty, she’d comforted him. Held him. And even now, the memory of her embrace spiked his desire for her.
He tensed with frustration, wanting only to run his hands over her body and confirm that the bastard he’d killed in that alley truly hadn’t hurt her. The need to mate with her, possess her, claim her body once and for all hit him hard. Then no one she ever tried to seduce again would dare touch her for fear of what he’d do to them.
Instinctive jealousy kicked in. His fists clenched on the tile wall as he fought to control himself. Unwillingly, he imagined her with Louis.
She had let another man kiss her when she belonged to him. He
had
taken her, if only in his dreams.
In his mind, she was his and always had been.
He growled, overwhelmed by rage and possessiveness. Yet he managed to hold on to his self-control. He managed not to exit the shower, storm down to her room, break down her door, and cover her body with his. He didn’t want to scare her any more than he already had.
To her, he was a monster.
The pure white wall in front of him faded to black. Ty stared into the abyss. Slowly, ever so slowly, he was becoming like the vicious, unthinking creatures that had slain his sister. The terrifying ability to perceive his
transformation as it happened was about to shatter his mind.
Something snapped him out of it. Instinct again.
He had smelled her …
His head snapped up and he took a deeper breath.
Was he imagining it?
No, he could smell her close by. In his room. Here and now.
And he could hear her. Faint footsteps edged closer to the bathroom door.
What the hell was she doing?
His fangs elongated. His dick was already hard. Throbbing for her. Ready to claim her.
He watched as the doorknob to the bathroom door turned and the door pushed open slightly.
He heard her call his name. “Ty?”
Was she asking for permission to come in? Did she really think he would deny her?
He had to. She had no idea what was waiting for her. No idea what he was thinking. He wasn’t sure he could do it, but he took a deep, shaky breath, and tried.
He really tried.
“Don’t,” he gasped out. “Don’t come in, Ana.”
The door didn’t open any further as she hesitated. “Why?” she asked.
“I want you too much. I—I don’t want to hurt you.”
He waited for her to close the door and leave. He prayed he could let her.
Unbelievably, she stayed where she was. “I know you won’t hurt me.”