Sheree glanced around. There was nothing to be seen for miles but acres of forest. And the moon slowly climbing higher in the sky.
“Derek, what are we doing here?”
“I had to get out of there. All of them watching me, waiting for me to . . . to . . . hell, I don’t know what.”
She nodded, every instinct she possessed urging her to flee even as the rational part of her mind told her that was the worst thing she could do. He was a predator. She was prey. If she ran, he would give chase.
He paced back and forth, restless as a caged animal. Tension radiated from him like heat from a blast furnace. When he glanced her way, his eyes were tinged with red.
She cringed when he grabbed her hand. “Come on.” His voice was rough, like sandpaper dragged over stone.
“Where are we going?”
“You wanted to see me feed, didn’t you?”
Before she could reply, they were on a dark street in a city she didn’t recognize. Keeping a tight hold on her hand, he tugged her along behind him, lifting his head now and then to sniff the air.
A short time later, he scented his prey. She knew it by the feral gleam in his eyes when they began to follow a middle-aged woman. Sheree wanted to cry out, to warn the woman she was in danger, but found she couldn’t.
Helpless, Sheree trailed behind Derek as he followed the woman out of the town square and down a deserted street. When he called to her, she stopped walking.
“You will stay here,” he told Sheree.
Nodding, she whispered, “Pease don’t kill her.”
He didn’t answer, only growled softly before going to the woman.
Sheree couldn’t be sure, but she thought he spoke to her, and then he folded her into his embrace, his head lowering to her neck, his hair falling forward so Sheree couldn’t see what he was doing. But she didn’t need to see to know. Almost as if it were happening to her, she knew what Derek was feeling as he drank from the woman. It was more than nourishment, though she had no words to describe it, only a sense of fulfillment, as if she had been empty before.
It was over in minutes. In her mind, she heard him tell the woman to forget what had happened, to go home and rest.
Smiling, the woman went on her way.
Sheree’s heart skipped a beat when Derek strode toward her, his eyes dark. His arm slid around her waist, holding her tight as he transported them back to the hills above the castle.
His eyes glittered with a fierce light. “Now you.”
She turned her head to the side, heart pounding wildly, hands clenched at her sides.
“Don’t be afraid, wife. I won’t hurt you.”
“I . . . I’m not afraid.”
His laughter mocked the fear she couldn’t hide. “Aren’t you?”
“Just take what you need.”
“Ah, Sheree.” His laughter stilled as he drew her gently into his embrace and inhaled her scent. “You are all that stands between me and madness.” He cupped her face in his hands, lowered his head, and kissed her, a sweetly lingering kiss that chased all the doubts and fears from her mind. Vampire or werewolf, she knew he would never hurt her.
Sheree slid her arms around his neck as he deepened the kiss, sighed as the rest of the world fell away and there was only the two of them, locked in each other’s arms at the top of the world. She leaned into him, wanting to be closer, closer, to taste him and touch him, to rake her nails down his back, to mark him as hers.
But there was no time. The moon would be full tomorrow night. He still needed to drink her blood and then the serum.
But he seemed to have forgotten that as he carefully lowered her onto the ground. Aware that this might be their last night together, he made love to her slowly, arousing her again and again, only to pull back, drawing out the pleasure until, at last, he sank into her, his body becoming one with hers, flesh to flesh.
“Heart to heart,” she murmured as he moved deep within her.
“And soul to soul.” He whispered the words in her ear as, with one last thrust, he carried her to the stars and back.
Much later, when they were dressed again, he pulled the vial from his pocket. Holding it up, he turned it this way and that. It glowed with an eerie luminescence in the moon’s light.
“Like the eyes of a monster,” he remarked bleakly.
“Like the eyes of the man I love,” she corrected, brushing a kiss across his cheek.
His gaze moved to her throat.
“Now?” she asked.
He blew out a breath, then drew her slowly into his arms. As always, only a few sips of her precious blood soothed and satisfied him as nothing else. He sealed the wounds, then, refusing to meet her gaze, he turned his back toward her.
“Derek . . .” She started to touch him, then withdrew her hand. “If things were the other way around and I needed your blood, you’d give it to me, wouldn’t you? Without question?”