"No."
"Then why are you being so nice to me?"
He cocked his head as if puzzled by her question. "Do I need a reason?"
"Yes."
Vane was completely baffled. Humans needed a reason to be nice to each other? No wonder his kind avoided them.
"I don't know what to say," he admitted. "I didn't know there were rules for giving gifts or for trying to make someone feel better. You looked so sad as I walked by that I only wanted to make you smile."
He took a deep breath and handed her the credit slip. "Keep the necklace, please. It looks good on you, and I have no one else to give it to. I'm sure my brother wouldn't want it. He'd probably shove it someplace real uncomfortable if I gave it to him. And if he didn't, that would scare me even more."
Finally, she laughed. The sound lightened his heart instantly.
"Is that a smile?" he asked.
She nodded and sniffed delicately before she laughed again.
Returning her smile, Vane reached out and cupped her cool cheek. She was so beautiful when she laughed. Her dark amber eyes sparkled. Before he could stop himself, he leaned down and kissed the tears from her lashes.
Bride couldn't breathe as she felt the heat of his lips against her skin. No man had ever treated her like this. Not even Taylor, whom she had hoped to marry.
She inhaled the warm scent of Vane's skin. It was tinged with some sort of aftershave and a rich, masculine scent.
God, it felt so good to be held right now when her whole life was falling apart.
Before she realized what she was doing, she had her arms wrapped around his lean waist and had laid her head against his strong chest. His heart pounded heavily under her ear. She felt strangely safe here. Warm. Most of all, she felt desirable. As if maybe she weren't a total loser, after all.
He didn't protest her hold. Instead, he held her there with his hand still on her face while his thumb gently stroked her cheekbone. He leaned down and placed a chaste kiss on the top of her head.
Heat flooded her. A deep-seated need tore through her body. It was one she didn't understand.
In all her life, Bride McTierney had never done anything other than what she was supposed to. She'd graduated high school and lived at home with her parents while she went to Tulane, where she had seldom dated and had spent more nights than not in the library.
After graduation, she'd gotten a job as a manager at the mall until her grandmother had died and left her the building that now housed her shop. And here she had worked every day without fail. No matter how sick or tired she was.
Bride had never taken a step on the wild side. Fear and responsibility had ruled her life from the moment of her birth.
Yet here she sat, holding a complete stranger in her arms. A gorgeous stranger who had been kinder to her than anyone else.
And she wanted to taste him. To know just once what it was like to actually kiss a man who looked like this.
Lifting her head, she looked up at him and trembled with a deep-seated desire she didn't comprehend. But she felt it all the way through her.
Don't…
She squelched the voice of reason, reached up and pulled the band from his hair. Freed, those long dark strands framed the face of heaven.
The heat of his hazel-green eyes scorched her. He dipped his head down until his lips hovered dangerously close to hers, as if he were asking her permission.
Breathless, she closed the distance and laid her lips against his. He growled deep in his throat like some animal before his kiss turned hungry, passionate.
Bride was thrilled and amazed by his reaction. No man had ever seemed to enjoy kissing her as much as this one did. His strong hands cupped her head as he ravished her mouth as if he were starving for her and her alone.
Vane pulled her to him as the animal inside him roared to life. It wanted her with a desperation that bordered on madness. He could taste her own passion on his tongue. Hear her heart beating in rapid time to his.
Most of all, he could smell her desire and he wanted more. The animal inside him wouldn't be satisfied until it tasted her fully.
In his world, sex had no emotional meaning. It was a biological act between two creatures to ease a female's fertile time and a male's urges. If the two wolves weren't mates, then there was no chance of pregnancy, nor was there any form of sexually transmitted diseases between them.
If Bride were one of his people, he'd already have her naked on the floor.
But she wasn't a she-wolf…
Human females were different. He'd never made love to one of them and he wasn't sure how she would react if he took her the way he would one of their females. Her kind was very frail in comparison.
In all honesty, he didn't know why he was so hot for her now. It wasn't normal. Not once in all the centuries he had lived had he ever even contemplated taking a human lover.