Something made her lift her head. She was very careful to keep her hands over her face and only peek out between her fingers. Through the open door leading into the hall, she saw what looked like a low bank of fog. It just seemed to hang there for a moment silently. She bit at her knuckles with her teeth. Fog. In the house. Of course there was fog in Lucian’s house. Wasn’t fog in everyone’s house?
Then Lucian’s tall elegance filled the doorway, blocking her view of the hall. His black gaze moved slowly over her face. She saw stark possessiveness in his eyes. She recognized it, when all she wanted to do was run. But she could no more have gotten to her feet than fly. “Go away, Lucian.”
“I have frightened you, honey. I am sorry. I was only teasing you.”
Her long eyelashes fluttered for a moment before she actually found the courage to look up at him again. Why did he have to have such presence? He exuded power. “Everyone I know can turn into a wolf. That’s what you were doing, wasn’t it? Turning into a wolf?” Her teeth bit down hard on her knuckles.
He crossed the room with his silent, easy stride. Her heart slammed painfully. She tried to make herself smaller. Lucian simply sank to the floor beside her, his back to the door, his body close to hers. He drew his knees up, every movement slow and deliberate so as not to frighten her any further. “I was showing off.” His hand touched her hair. “Nothing else, nothing sinister, just showing off.”
Jaxon winced. “Well, don’t do it again. People just can’t do those things, Lucian. They can’t, okay? You really aren’t able to do them, so stop thinking you can. It isn’t possible.”
His hand found her silky hair again, his fingers gently rubbing the strands together before his palm curved around the nape of her neck. He began a slow, soothing massage to ease some of the tension out of her. “Angel, we talked about this when you spoke with Barry about the wolf. You knew it was me.”
She shook her head adamantly. “I didn’t think you meant it literally. I thought perhaps that you had a wolf or a dog with you. You can make people think things with optical illusions. I thought you might have made Barry see an illusion, not that you were actually a wolf. That never occurred to me. You can’t turn into a wolf. No one can do that.”
“I am Carpathian, not human, though you persist in thinking me so. I have many abilities, and I have told you that.” His voice was deliberately soft and soothing.
“Well, you’re just crazy, that’s all. People like you don’t exist in the world, Lucian, so get over it already.” She rubbed her forehead. “You just can’t do things like that anymore.”
“You are not breathing, honey. Take a minute and listen to your body,” he advised. He kept his voice soft and persuasive.
At once she was aware of her heart beating too rapidly, her lungs gasping for air. Immediately she became aware of his heartbeat, slow and steady, the air pushing easily through his lungs. Immediately her body began to tune itself to the rhythm of his. Jaxon flung up her arms to knock his hand from her neck. “See? Right there! You can’t do things like this. No one can synchronize heartbeats exactly the way we do. Stop whatever you’re doing right this minute. You’re making me crazy.”
His hand had not moved from the nape of her neck, a curiously intimate position she found rather soothing in spite of everything. Jaxon sighed and rested her head against his arm. “You’re making me crazy,” she murmured again tiredly.
“You think you cannot accept the things I tell you, but eventually your mind will overcome its human limitations.” He said it so gently that her heart turned over.
The moment she gave in to the inevitable and relaxed against him, her heart and lungs immediately took on the slower, calming rhythm of his. Lucian pulled her into his arms and cradled her like a child so that she felt protected and safe. Jaxon stared up at his face, so still it could have been carved from stone, so beautiful he could have posed for the statues of the Greek gods.
“I don’t want to feel anything for you.” She traced his perfect mouth with one fingertip. “It would hurt too much to do that.”
He became shadow in her mind, carefully, so she wouldn’t recognize his touch, stilling the chaos of her thinking. He easily read her terrible fear for him.
For
him. Not really so much
of
him. “Listen to me, Jaxon, and this time hear what it is I am saying to you. Tyler Drake is human. He is not a vampire. He does not have supernatural powers. Drake has no chance against one such as myself. I have been in your mind, was with you as you examined the sites he chose to spy on this house. Did you think I really left you alone and unprotected? Did you really believe I would not know the moment you chose to leave this house? I will recognize his presence the moment he comes close to our property again. Tyler Drake cannot harm me in any way.”
“If you knew I was out of the house and looking for Drake, didn’t it worry you that I might run into him?” she challenged. A man like Lucian would have secured her protection, had he really known.
A faint smile took the edge of cruelty from his mouth. “I would have destroyed him from a distance. I am in your mind, honey. I can ‘see’ through your eyes. Anything I can see, I can destroy. If I connect with a person, and he hears my voice, I can destroy him. As I’ve said, I have certain abilities.”
She lay in his arms quietly, trying to take in what he was telling her. “Lucian, how can any of this be? How can someone like you exist all this time and not one single person know about you?”
“There are some who have found us out. We originated in the Carpathian Mountains, and we refer to ourselves as Carpathian. There are humans who hunt us, who seek to murder us, There are scientists who would take us apart in a laboratory. They fear we are vampire, and, although we are few, they fear our powers.”
“You scare me to death.”
“No, I do not. The differences are difficult for your mind to accept. Do not confuse that with fear of me. You know I would never harm you. I am incapable of harming you. You are my heart and soul. The air I breathe. You bring light to the terrible darkness in my soul.” He captured her hand and brought it to the warmth of his mouth. “There are moments when I feel you can collect all the missing pieces of my soul and put them back into place and make me whole once again.”
“Is that how you really see me, Lucian?” Jaxon’s large eyes looked into the dark, empty depths of his.
“It is who you are, Jaxon,” he said softly. “I need you. The rest of the world does not need you the way I do. To live. To breathe. You are my laughter and, I suspect, my tears. You are my very life.”
“You can’t feel that way about me when you’ve just met me. You don’t know me at all.”
“I have been in your mind many times, Jaxon. How could I not know you? You have already captured my heart. I am the one who must find a way to make you love me in spite of all my sins.”
“Do you have so very many?” she asked softly. He was turning her inside out with what he was admitting. He seemed so self-sufficient, how could he ever need anyone, least of all someone with all her problems?
“My soul is stained so black, my love, there is no real way to ever redeem it. I am a dark angel of death. I have carried out my duties for centuries and know no other way of life.”
“There’s that word again.
Centuries
.” A faint smile chased the shadows from her face. “If you’re such a dark, terrible person, why don’t I sense evil when I’m around you? I know I don’t have your”—she floundered for a moment, unable to think of the right word—”gifts, but I have a built-in radar system for anything evil. I feel the presence of it immediately. You can’t possibly have a black soul, Lucian.”