hungry,
she melted inside.
I am reading your thoughts.
The voice brushed intimately at the walls of her mind, a flutter of butterfly wings creating the same sensation in the pit of her stomach.
“Well, stop.” Corinne pulled out of his arms, the only sane thing to do with her heart pounding and her body turning to molten fire. “We have to stop. You know we do.” Her heart wasn’t going to take much more; it was already working far too hard.
He rested his forehead against hers, breathing heavily, attempting to recover. “I’m sorry, honey. Think of something mundane for me.”
She laughed softly, nibbling at the corner of his mouth. “Lisa and I need clothes. We’ll have to go back to our house and get enough clothes to last a few days until these people lose interest in us.”
Dayan’s hand curled slowly around the nape of her neck. His fingerprints were like a brand on her skin. She could feel it all the way down to her toes. And she was melting again, coming apart inside, her heart somersaulting dangerously. He straightened slowly, his black eyes staring down into her beautiful gaze. “Those people will not lose their interest in you, honey. You cannot go back to the house. I will get the things you and Lisa need and bring them to you. Make me a list.” His voice was low, a whisper of sound like velvet over skin.
Corinne closed her eyes to shut out the sight of him. He was overwhelming at such close quarters. Every breath she took, she inhaled his masculine scent. Clean. Wild. Male. “You can’t go through our things, Dayan. It just wouldn’t be right. One of us will have to go with you.”
He shook his head slowly. He didn’t blink. Everything he did, he did with a fluid power, a ripple of pure energy impossible to ignore. “To keep you safe, Corinne, I can do this small thing.” He said it softly, patiently. “These people sprayed the stage with bullets where Desari was singing. She is a beautiful, vibrant woman, unique in this world, yet they were willing to murder her, to silence her voice for all time. They managed to wound Desari, Barack and me. We were lucky that Julian was there along with Darius to save us. I am not so willing to take a chance with your life. Or the life of your child.”
“You said those men were gone. They aren’t going to send someone around so quickly. We need our things, Dayan. Sooner or later we’ll have to return. And Lisa is famous — anyone can find her.” Corinne tapped her fingernail against her palm. “We could hire bodyguards.”
His features remained expressionless, yet he went completely still, something deep within him roaring silently, raging immediate denial. For one moment Corinne thought she saw red flames flickering in the depths of his black eyes. Her breath caught in her throat. She took a step backward, but his hand was still wrapped around the nape of her neck, anchoring her to him. “What is it, Dayan?”
His smile was slow in coming, his teeth very white. “What is it you see that you could possibly fear in me, honey?”
“I don’t know... sometimes you look like something more than you are. I know that doesn’t make sense, but you can look very intimidating.” She brushed back her hair, a small shiver running through her body. “Let’s go back.”
“I do not want you to be afraid of me, Corinne. I realize it is unexpected the way we met and came together. You were not looking for such a thing, but it has happened. We cannot pretend or go back.” His thumb was moving over her skin, a small caress, feather light, but so erotic she was shivering beneath his touch.
“I was talking about going back to your house,” Corinne clarified, attempting to move out from under his hand. Was he using his unique mental telepathy to “push” her in a direction he wanted her to go?
Dayan shook his head sadly. “I thought we had covered all of this, honey. I am a wanderer, a poet, a musician. I am a male who has roamed the earth in search of one woman. I know that woman to be you. If I influenced your decision in my favor by using telepathy, our relationship would not last. What I want with you, I want for eternity.”
Corinne turned away from him, from his brooding good looks and the smoldering intensity of his black eyes. He needed someone to love him. He looked so alone, standing tall and confident, yet so
hungry
for someone to love him. God help her, she wanted to be that woman. For just one time in her life she wanted something to be real.
Dayan reached out and took her hand, needing to pull her smaller body close under the protection of his wide shoulder. He simply walked beside her in the night, enjoying the moment, thankful he could feel it, savor it. Thankful she was in his world.
“Every line of every song, every note I’ve ever played was written for you, played for you. The other half of my soul. My heart. In the hope that you were somewhere in my world and you would hear.” In her frail condition, Dayan didn’t dare reveal the truth of what he was to her. He knew the healer would find a way to save her life. There was no other possible outcome. He was very concerned that there might not be a way to save the baby. He was a shadow in her mind, connected to her. He knew she was willing to trade her life for her daughter’s life. He was not. He was her lifemate. It was his sworn duty to see to her health.
Corinne blinked back tears at the utter sincerity in his voice. “You can’t say things like that to me, Dayan.” If he did, she would be lost and so would he. How could she resist him?
Dayan smiled down at her, tightened his fingers around hers. With every step he took beside her, he felt the heat rising between them, felt the way she was wrapping herself around his heart. It was the little things, like feeling her hand so small, entwined with his. Her breath. The scent of her. The way she smiled. He loved the way she smiled, the way she moved. The way she fought so desperately to protect him from possible loss.
Deep within his heart he was learning about true terror. The thought of losing her was beyond the scope of his imagination. He had never experienced fear in his adult life. Even during battles with vampires, he had experienced no ripple of feeling through the long centuries to give him the wisdom to handle such an intense emotion. Terror. He tasted the word. Could he face the loss of his lifemate without ever having lived with her, without ever having the time to love her and bind her to him? Dayan knew he would not want to. His life had been bleak and empty, so barren and cold he had been losing his ability to create songs, to feel the music inside of him. But now, with Corinne close to him, songs and words and notes were pouring out of his soul, begging to be heard.
She was the world. Colors and excitement and beautiful poetry. He would not lose her to mortal death. He knew now where his ability to play, to create, had come from. It was her half of his soul. He had been left with some small part of her light when they had been split, to find their way back to one another. He felt the songs in her, the music. It was in the way she walked, the way she flowed through a room, her small, slender figure so balanced. It was in the turn of her head and the way her smile lit up a room.
There was something about Corinne, something that had drawn his eye immediately. Lisa was beautiful, tall and blond and quite obviously a model. She belonged on the covers of magazines. Corinne’s light shone from the inside out. Just watching her made Dayan smile. When he touched her mind to share her thoughts, he found she was thinking of others, how they felt, what they needed. She was happy despite the fact that she had recently lost someone she loved, and believed she herself was going to die soon.