She’d stared up at me with eyes filled with desire and love, the way she’s looking at me now, even if she doesn’t remember the love we’d shared then, and she’d said, “I want a son who looks like you,” but I can’t give her that now. I can’t ever have a child with Ivy. With anyone.
Anger burns in me at what has been taken from us, and I draw in a breath, cupping her face and whisper, “I’m sorry, Ivy.”
Her fingers tangle in my hair and she says, “Don’t be sorry. Just be with me, right now, right here. I don’t know what this is, but I know I need you right now. Please.”
She has no idea how many ways I want to make her say please, but I won’t. Not tonight. She has enough to fear without fearing just how primal my urges run. I’m not the same as I was. I can’t change that, not even if I tried. I kiss her hard and deep, and thrust into her, and I can’t control the way my gums tingle, but I fight it. I fight biting her.
She gasps again and gives a yelp. I pull back to find blood on her lips, her blood from my teeth. She captures a drop with her finger and looks at it and then me, a question in her eyes. She wants to know what I am. I catch her hand and my eyes meet hers as I lick the blood off her finger.
And I wait for her reaction.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Eli
Her lashes lower, and it isn’t fear that I see on her face. It’s arousal. While I don’t understand it or this, it speaks to every part of me as a man and a husband. And I am her husband. I have always been her husband. In that moment, I flashback again to a memory of her, of us, in the past, and I bury myself inside her, my cheek to her cheek, pumping into her, kissing her. Losing myself in her. The past fades into the present and we’re there again, living that moment, man and woman, not monster and woman, cheek to cheek, body to body. I savor her touch, her body, her taste, and I don’t want there to be an end because when it does come, there will be questions.
I owe her answers. For now, there is just us, and I’m kissing her and fucking her and she’s just as ravenous as I am. But not as hungry. She doesn’t know the hunger I feel, she doesn’t know how it controls me. I am lost in Ivy, the woman I have always loved, in her moans and soft touches, and she has become the only piece of heaven I have left.
“Eli,” she whispers, and I swear, for once it’s not my imagination, my wish, a past I cannot have back. In that instant, my name on her lips is real, she is real, and it echoes straight to my soul. I am consumed by her, by us, by what I have become and as I drive into her, the hunger is real. It’s all-knowing, all-consuming. My teeth sink into her neck, my mind reaching for hers, filling her with memories of us together. She gasps with the erotic pleasure, arching her body, her fingers sliding into my hair.
“Eli,” she whispers again, and when my teeth leave her neck and my tongue seals the wound, I pull back and stare at her. Our eyes meet and for a moment, the world is right here between us, with us. “I could make you forget,” I promise.
“You can try,” she challenges. “But I remember the first time. I won’t forget this. Or anything you just showed me.”
I can try.
I’m not sure what to make of those words or the idea that she remembers the first time, and hasn’t run away. She shouldn’t be able to remember that first bite, but then, I shouldn’t be able to live forever, either, but it’s possible. We stare at each other, our bodies joined, the pull of who we were and what we are almost a living, breathing being in and of itself.
I thrust into her and her head tilts back, her throat exposed where my mouth just tasted from her, her breasts thrust in the air, her pretty pink nipples puckered, aroused. I lean in and lick one stiff peak and she grabs my hair, moaning softly. I thrust into her and she bucks against me. My hands scoop up her backside and I lift her into me, going to my knees to press deeper, harder, into her gorgeous body. Over and over I drive into her, watching her, reveling in the bounce of her breasts, the passion on her face, and when she grabs the bed sheets and yells out my name, it’s done. Her sex clenches my cock and her body quakes and she drags me to that sweet spot right along with her. I thrust hard again, and again, and finally one last time, my face lifting to the ceiling with a roar of pleasure.
The minute I’m back to the present, out of the moment, I lean over her, hands on either side of her head. And when I stare down at her, I see a beautiful woman, a human woman whose life I will change forever. What the fuck am I doing right now, dragging her to a hell where monsters like me are real?
“This can’t happen.” I lean in and meet her eyes. “You need to forget what just happened.” I compel her.
And she stares right back at me and says, “No. I will not forget. And clearly, you don’t have the power to make me forget anymore.”
I lean back and study her in disbelief. We have to be fully bonded for her to resist my compulsion. What the hell is happening? I pull out of her, push off the bed and grab my pants, dragging them up my hips, standing with my back to her, hands on my hips.
“Talk to me, Eli,” she says softly. “I need to understand. I’m involved. You already showed me enough to know that I need to know more.”
I glance back at her, sitting there on her knees now, naked and beautiful, her wedding ring hanging between her breasts against her creamy white, perfect skin, and I don’t know what the fuck to do. Protecting her is what matters and I do that by killing those who might hurt her. I don’t do that by bringing her into my world and turning her into a target for others. I need to think and I need to talk to Marcus. That asshole clearly didn’t tell me all he knew, and maker or not, he will before this night is over.
“Get dressed,” I order Ivy, snatching up my shirt. “Or we won’t do anything but roll around in that bed naked. And as much as I want to do just that, that’s not how this ends tonight.”
I turn and walk toward the balcony.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Eli
The night that might have once been cold is nothing to me now. I don’t feel the changing seasons. I don’t get cold. I don’t die. I drink blood. I can kill and think nothing of it. I’m a monster that hunts monsters. This is what I have to offer to Ivy. I walk to the railing and grab the edge, flakes of snow that shouldn’t exist this early in the season falling down around me, on me. But then, this is a night that shouldn’t exist. And she shouldn’t remember me biting her. I only shared my blood with her one fucking time.
“Marcus!” I shout in my mind. “Get here now!”
Seconds tick by and he doesn’t appear. I shout again. I use every ounce of mental push I possess, but he doesn’t show up.
“Who is Marcus?”
At the sound of Ivy’s voice, I turn to find her in a hotel robe, staring at me, looking stunned. I’m just as stunned. “How do you know that name?”
She hugs herself. “You were shouting it.”
I close the space between me and her and catch her arms, walking her back into the room, out of the cold and snow. “In my head,” I say. “I was shouting it in my head.”
“I heard,” she says. “Eli, who is he?”
“He is no one you need to know.”