Insatiable

“People got hurt,” she said, shaking her head. He had to understand that it wasn’t enough that Dimitri was gone. If he was really gone…

“I know,” he said, and lifted her wrist in its air cast and kissed it. “And I want to spend eternity making it up to you.”

“It wasn’t just me,” Meena said, the tears in her eyes making it hard for her to see. “They kidnapped my best friend. Who was pregnant. They bit a chunk out of her husband’s neck as he was trying to stop them. And she went into early labor because of what happened. She could have lost the baby. She almost did.”

Lucien stroked her. “How can we make it up to them?” he asked. “A college savings account for the baby, perhaps? I’ll open one for them and move a million dollars into it tomorrow.”

“Lucien!” Meena stared up at him disbelievingly through her tears. “You can’t just go around paying people off to make up for your mistakes. You burned down a church!”

“I know, Meena,” he said. He reached up to capture some of her tears with a thumb. “But what do you want me to do? How do you expect me to make amends? I’ve already made an anonymous donation to the church. A sizeable one that should take care of any reparations not covered by their fire insurance-”

Meena sucked in her breath. “No. That doesn’t make it right. You turned into a-”

He laid a finger over her lips to silence her before she could get the word dragon out. “There were mitigating circumstances,” he said. “Your brother shot me. With a stake. In the back.”

She winced. “I know,” she said. He’d lowered the finger. “And you’ll never know how sorry I am about that. But, Lucien-”

“Whatever else may have happened, Meena-whatever else I may have done wrong, and I’m not denying that I did many, many things wrong that night-please allow me to point out that, despite what you insisted I would do, I killed neither your brother nor that Palatine guard you’re so fond of…despite meticulous efforts on their behalf to murder me. They’re still both very much alive today.”

Meena sucked in her breath. “Because of me,” she said. “I saved them. I put a tourniquet on one and I sent the other to the maternity ward with my best friend. But, Lucien, I can’t keep on doing that. I won’t always be there. I can’t keep watching the people I love almost get killed because of you. Oh, wait, excuse me. Almost get incinerated-”

“That’s why,” he said, leaning his head down to place his lips where, a minute before, his finger had been, “I suggested that we go away. Thailand. Remember?”

Meena stared up at him, her face wet, her mouth still tingling from the kiss.

She definitely didn’t feel numb anymore. Not anywhere. The tears and his lips had taken care of that problem.

“I can’t go to Thailand with you, Lucien,” she said, starting to shake her head. How could he not understand?

“Of course you can,” he said. “Why not?”

His hand was already traveling up her thigh, already slipping beneath the short skirt of her new-used-black dress.

“A…a million reasons,” she said.

“I know you’re frightened, Meena,” he said in his deep voice. His dark-eyed gaze seemed to have a hypnotic pull on hers…the same kind of pull his fingers seemed to have on her.

She was having a hard time remembering how angry she was with him when he was touching her the way he was. How could she ever have been frightened of him? Of those lips, which were kissing her, right now, on her neck?

“And you’re right to be,” he went on, in his deep, low voice. “There are unspeakable horrors in the world, the likes of which you can’t even begin to imagine. What happened to you that night-that day-was inexcusable. Those things-those creatures-should never have touched you. It’s my fault you were ever put in a position where they were able to. And you’re absolutely correct: none of what happened to you can ever be righted with a check, no matter how sizable.”

“I don’t want your money, Lucien,” she murmured. The feel of his mouth on the skin of her neck was almost more than she could stand. She was ready to start tearing off her dress right there on the bedroom floor.

“I know that. And I will never allow you to be put in that kind of danger again,” he said. The hand he’d dipped beneath her skirt had reached her panties. Now his fingers skimmed the lace trim along the inside of her thigh. “But in order for me to protect you the way I want to, you have to come live with me. So we can be together. Really be together.”

“In Thailand,” Meena said, her eyes closed. She’d thrown her head back against his chest, her throat arched in tantalizing invitation.

“Or wherever you want to go,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be Thailand.” His mouth moved toward her throat.

Meena’s heart thumped again. It all sounded so perfect. The two of them would go away together. Maybe to Thailand. Lucien would protect her. He could because he was so big and strong. Also rich. She wouldn’t need to worry about Leisha or Jon or Adam or Alaric or the baby or anyone else she cared about getting killed.

Because she’d be gone. She’d be far away from them. She’d only have Lucien to care about.

But…

Something tickled the back of her mind. The same thing that had always bothered her whenever Leisha mentioned the baby. The same thing that had bothered her when Yalena had shown her a picture of her boyfriend on her cell phone…

The pit of nothingness.

She opened her eyes, surprised to find that Lucien’s mouth was open and on her throat.

“Wait,” she said, jerking away, her pulse suddenly racing, her breath catching in her throat. “What are you doing?”

He looked down at her expressionlessly. The hand beneath her skirt stilled. “Nothing,” he said carefully. “I’m not doing anything to you, Meena. Except loving you.”

She reached up to touch her neck. She was relieved to find that it was dry.

But all it would take, she knew, was one more bite, and then her drinking a little of his blood…

And she would become like him.

She knew it. He knew it.

Meena got to her feet, suddenly feeling as if the walls of the room were closing in on her.

Her heart was racing as fast as a rabbit’s now. So fast, in fact, that she was worried it might actually fly out of her chest.

What am I doing? she asked herself. What am I doing here?

Alaric Wulf had warned her not to go to her old apartment. He’d told her…he’d made her promise she wouldn’t go see it.

Had he known? Had he known that Lucien would come there to find her and that he’d do this to her?

Of course he’d known.

And she hadn’t listened. Oh, God, why hadn’t she listened? She was just like all the people who never listened to her.

Because only now was the very great danger she was in actually begi

She didn’t have any weapons.

And even if she did-could she really kill the man she loved, even if it meant…

…her life?

She paced from one side of the room to the other and then back again, taking quick, shallow breaths.

“Meena,” Lucien said, looking at her curiously. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. Could he read her mind?

Yes. Of course he could. Or partly, at least. He always could.

Fine, then, she decided.

Let him read it now.

She came to a stop in front of him, her toes balanced on the edge of the pit.

“I can’t do that,” she said. “I can’t…do that.”

He looked up at her from the floor where he still sat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Oh, don’t lie to me, Lucien,” she said, exploding. “After everything else I’ve been through because of you? Your freak of a brother trying to kill me? An army of vampires trying to drain me of my blood and drink it? And you’re going to sit there and lie to my face?”