“If I was lucky enough to have someone I loved,” she countered. “And that person was stolen from me—you bet I would.”
If she was lucky enough to have someone to love, she had no one. He sensed that in her, understood it. Yet she wasn’t bitter and alone. She was a nurse, someone who had chosen to care for others. Someone who chose to help people fight through their darkest moments and that made her brave. He realized now that was the part of her that called to him. He saw the fighter in her, the healer. And now, he was going to need her to fight for herself. He was going to need to be her healer. It was a role he never thought to want himself in, someone who was depended on, someone who might fail someone he cared about, as he’d failed his family. But it was too late. He’d bonded with her, he’d saved her. And now, he’d be damned if he was going to fail her.
He scooted closer to her, and eased the pillow out of her hands and tossed it away. She pulled her knees to her chest and he moved so that his hand was on top of them, his knee pressed to hers. “Marissa, there’s no easy way to explain this to you, so I’m just going to say it, and then we can deal with it together. The Werewolf world is in the midst of a century long civil war which leaves the vampires dealing with many of their rogues. I came to Temple hunting the wolf that attacked you. Wolves can be natural born, or created by a virus much like rabies. If you’re bitten, you’re infected.”
“Oh,” she gasped. “I…you mean—”
“You’re okay,” he said, sliding his hand around her neck. “You’re going to be fine. But yes, you’re infected by the virus and like a human bitten by a rabid animal there are effects. But because we are sharing blood, I can help you hold off those effects until we get you a permanent cure.”
“What effects and what permanent cure?”
“I have to kill the wolf in the next thirteen days, before the next full moon.”
Her eyes went wide. “How does killing it kill the virus inside me?”
“We don’t know,” he said. “And we have a scientific team that’s worked on it as long as I’ve been around. The full moon triggers the change to a shape-shifter. If the change doesn’t happen, the virus dies in the infected person’s body. And the person doesn’t change if the wolf that infected them dies before it occurs. That’s all we know with certainty.”
“So when the next full moon comes, I turn into that…that thing?!”
He framed her face with his hands. “I won’t let that happen.”
“What if you don’t kill it?”
“I will.” He could hear her heart racing and feel the rise of the wolf in her.
“But—”
He kissed her, a deep passionate, hungry kiss. She dug her nails into his back, and clung to him. He could taste her passion, smell it. She tore her mouth from his. “Why do I feel like I could climb out of my skin right now and into yours? Why do I feel like some animal in heat?”
“Emotions feed the virus,” he said. “The wolf—your wolf—is trying to make itself known. You need an outlet to release the energy.” He bit his wrist and held it to her mouth. “And you need this to dilute the virus. Drink.”
“I don’t want to drink,” she said between her teeth, and then buried her face to his chest, her lips and teeth scraping his nipple, before she tilted her head back and all but roared with anger. “I don’t want this…thing inside me.” She rose to her knees and pushed him to his back. “Why is this happening to me? Why did you let this happen to me?”
That demand tore at his gut and anger rolled inside him. Not at her—but at himself for ever leaving her alone in that bar. He rolled her to her back, ignoring her protests, his blood spraying on the white sheets, on their bodies. Her wolf was no match for his vampire, not now, not ever. He held her hands over her head with one of his and then let his wrist drip over her mouth. The second it touched her lips, her tongue lapped at it. A few seconds later, she was holding his wrist to her mouth on her own, hungrily drinking. Watching her, a deep emotion stirred inside him like nothing he’d ever felt. Evan silently cursed, furious that he’d let her inside his world, that he cared about her more each second he spent with her. But she was his, as no other ever had been, even if she never knew it, never wanted him or his world. And he wasn’t going to let her die—no matter the cost.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Marissa blinked awake in a dark room, but didn’t move. The pillow beneath her head was soft, the sheet across her body, also soft. Not sandpaper, she thought, with a silent ‘thank you’ for a moment of normalcy. It was all a dream, a nightmare. She inhaled, and the spicy scent of Evan flared in her nostrils, and she realized no it wasn’t a nightmare. She thought of their long hours of passion, of lying with him and talking through her fears over what was happening to her. Of him telling her about his brothers, about his world, and how just hearing his voice, listening to him explain it all, had calmed her. She felt something for him, beyond the obvious incredible attraction, that she’d never felt for a man. Not even Kevin—the attorney she’d had a brief engagement to. She didn’t want to believe it was the blood, or some hero syndrome. She needed something real in her life right now. With Evan, she didn’t feel alone. When the truth was that she was alone. She had no one to even miss her if this all ended badly.
Emotion started to tighten her chest and she shoved it away, afraid of inviting another visit from the inner wolf she wanted to deny existed, having no idea how long it had been since she’d fed from Evan.
The sound of male voices, one of them Evan’s touched her ears, but she couldn’t make out the words. She rolled to her back, noting the darkness outside the windows to match that in the room. No wonder she was starving. She threw off the cover, and as dire as she felt a shower was, the clawing hunger in her stomach was quickly deepening, and not in a nice way.
She pushed to a sitting position, flipped on a light because she didn’t even want to think about how well she could see in the dark. Denial might not be an answer to her problems, but it was her friend right now. So was the fact that today had been her day off of work. That was, if she’d only slept one day. Oh God. Please let her have only slept one day. If she’d simply not shown up to work, she’d lose her job.
She rushed to the closet and shoved her arms into a long pink terry robe, and headed down the hall, towards the voices. She made it all of a few steps when the conversation stopped. Marissa continued forward, only to draw up short at the sight of the two men consuming the tiny space of her small kitchen, both staring at her.
Evan leaned against her outdated, yellow fridge, his hair tied neatly at his neck, so big and broad, and delicious that her knees threatened to go weak. And beside him, she was remotely aware of the man next to him, who leaned on her equally outdated and yellow stove, and looked remarkably like him, his dark hair also tied at the nape.
But it was Evan she was drawn to, Evan whose intense inspection, dark and hot, she focused on. Evan who seemed like her friend, who’d become her lover, who was looking at her with a glint in his eye that said “mine.” Who was also a vampire. She swallowed hard at that word, at that reality, and willed herself to be afraid, to have caution. Her body didn’t agree though. Just looking at Evan set her heart pulsing, and her nipples tightening. He might be a vampire, but he was one heck of a gorgeous vampire, and man oh man, the way the snug black tee hugged his chest, was sinful.