Haunted by Your Touch

Her words resonated deep inside him. Maybe because he didn’t have anyone, either.

He glanced to his right. The bright sun struck her hair, bringing out the buried highlights.

“Even if you did find someone you could trust like that, he wouldn’t live long enough. Not generations like you. The years pass quickly. Sooner than you think, you would need to replace him with someone else.”

“So what I’m looking for is a keeper who’s reliable, trustworthy, and immortal?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Great. Can’t be too many of those walking around.”

She met his gaze. For a long moment, their stares clung. He knew the precise moment when she realized that he was the closest she would ever come to finding that.

A flush crept over her face. Her voice rushed forth then. “Don’t think I’m expecting you to do that for me. I don’t need you to be my savior.”

He looked back to the road, biting back the mad urge to say he would do that for her. To put an end to his lonely existence… would it be such a sacrifice? As long as he could have her every night. As long as he could keep her with him forever. His hands tightened on the wheel. Impossible. He couldn’t keep her. She was a lycan, not a pet. As long as she lived, she was a danger. To the world. To her immortal soul… to him.

Besides—she didn’t want him. She wanted her life back. Her freedom.

“Let’s just hope your hunter comes through.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “Let’s hope.”

“You can sleep here.”

Lily peered into the guest bedroom, her feet nudging across the threshold. Either he had changed his mind about their enjoying each other for the reminder of the month, or he’d had his fill of her. For some reason, both possibilities made her feel hollow inside.

Something had happened to him during the car drive home. He stared at her as if she were a stranger, the gold fire of his gaze banked, remote. “There’s plenty of food downstairs. Help yourself to anything you like.”

She strolled into the bedroom, dropping her bag on the center of the bed. They had stopped off at her house and gotten a few things to last the month.

Facing him, she crossed her arms. “No jail cell again?”

“I trust you won’t run.”

She smiled, but the curve of her mouth felt brittle. “Do you?”

He advanced on her, and she forced herself to hold her ground. “You said you wouldn’t. And I don’t think you would be foolish enough to try.” He stopped directly before her, his eyes at a hard glint. “I would hunt you. And find you.”

This close, he flooded her, their breaths mingling hotly. Her skin tingled, every pore vibrating in awareness of him. His eyes dilated, the white flame back again at the centers as he read her desire, the beast in him waking and responding.

She felt him, the attraction deep, primal. Beyond her experience. Heady, euphoric. His earthy male scent filled her nose. She tasted him without touching, the salt of his skin coating her tongue, making her salivate.

Hungry for more, she inhaled, a gaspy sound on the charged air. Then, with a blink, the light vanished from his stare. Without another word, he turned and left. She chafed her hands over her arms, willing the goose bumps from her flesh, willing her heart to still its impossibly fast tempo. Looking around, the room suddenly felt bigger and emptier without him in it. She felt alone, but she was accustomed to that. No reason her heart should ache with an expectation for more.

Basic survival at month’s end. She craved nothing more.

But she did. She hungered for more. For life.

For him.

Silence hummed around her as she stepped into the darkened hall and strode toward the winding stairs. Her feet landed unerringly on each step. She moved with ease, as if it were not dark at all. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom, seeing everything as if midday light poured through the house’s many windows. A symptom of her newly altered state, she knew. Even her hunger did not belong to her but to her newly altered self. Lily, the lycan.

She’d eaten alone hours ago. No sight of Luc other than his knock at her door and terse words informing her that dinner was downstairs. Alone in her room, little else had occupied her save thoughts of the future… and Luc. Luc and the future. Neither of which meshed together… but for some wild reason she could not separate the two.

In the foyer, she paused, turning away from the hall leading into the kitchen. Moonlight spilled a wide, irregular circle on the tiled floor. She moved, gazing through the front door’s stained glass to the outside world. Turning the lock, she opened the door and stepped outside. The night throbbed all around her. Alive. Pulsing.

She listened, hearing everything in the silence. The wind. The rustle of branches. The scurrying of a small animal nearby. The pulse of the city a half-hour drive from here matched the quick thud of her heart. Closing her eyes, she let herself feel, absorb her new world. Lifting her face skyward, she could see the waning moon even with her eyes closed. Could see it. Sense it. Feel it. Linked, bound to it, she took another step, reveling in the lush, vital world throbbing around her.

Then there was the faintest shift. On the air. In the quickening of her blood. A scent that had not been there before. She whipped around with the speed of a hurricane, the tiny hairs on her arms prickling, telling her she was no longer alone.

One moment nothing was there. Only the whispering night. The next, he was there, unfurling before her like a great wall.

He grabbed her. The biting pressure on her arm made her cry out. “I told you that you could not escape me,” he growled.

“I wasn’t—”

“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” His eyes glowed, twin torches in the moon-soaked night. “Wouldn’t feel it the moment you stepped foot from your room?”

Anger swept over her. She wrenched her arm free and growled into his darkly furious face, “I told you I would stay—”

“I don’t put a great deal of faith in the word of a woman. Or a lycan.” He uttered both woman and lycan as if they were the foulest epithets.

“What’s wrong? Some girl do you wrong?” A muscle in his jaw ticced fiercely, and she knew she’d hit a nerve—the truth. “I’m not her,” she hissed, absurdly jealous over any woman who had possessed enough influence in his life to affect him. Unlike her. Someone he merely babysat, waiting to see whether he needed to destroy her before the next moonrise.

A long moment passed before he gave a slow nod. “Maybe not, but you can’t be trusted any more than I could trust her.”

“Yeah? Trust this!” Unaccountably angry, she kicked him hard in the shin and tried to break free. To run, as he’d accused her of doing. Maybe it was his comparing her to another woman, maybe it was the entire hopeless situation.

Or maybe it was just that she was falling for someone she could never have… .

He grabbed her again and shook her. “And why should I trust you? She was a dovenatu and she couldn’t resist the darkness. You’re a lycan. How can you fight it?”

“I’m not her. I’m Lily. And I wasn’t running away. You don’t know me at all. I’ll face this thing. I wouldn’t risk hurting anyone. I would die before I did that.”

Their gazes locked, clung. Impossible words filled her heart. A ragged breath lifted her chest, and, unbelievably, she spoke the words her heart battled to deny. “I want to stay here.” It was true. She didn’t feel that burning need to escape him anymore.

His glittery eyes devoured her. For a moment she feared he would shake her again. Or strike her. That muscle in his jaw ticced wildly. The savage beat of his heart bled into her from where his hands gripped her. She waited, braced and ready.

With a groan, he pulled her into his arms, crushing her in a hug so tight that she feared he might break one of her ribs.

Then they were kissing, dropping to their knees on the ground in a feverish tangle of limbs and hot, melding