He uses that same calm voice from his vision, as if he’s attempting to seduce me. His eyes are penetrating as well. I’m afraid he’s going to try to compel me. I drop my gaze to my feet and shake my head. “Believe me, I wish I wasn’t.”
In the blink of an eye, he comes around the couch and gently lifts his hand to my face. I flinch away from his touch, but his skin comes into contact with mine anyway. “I am not a monster,” he whispers, stroking my cheek with the back of his hand. “But I do need to know what you know of our world. I need to know how you’re involved with my missing vampire. I need to know what you’re hiding from me. If you will cooperate and try not to fear me, then I shall try to control my needs and desires.” His eyes rake over my body, and he swallows. “Though you tempt me so greatly.”
I don’t trust him, but hope explodes within me anyway. “Cooperate with you how? I already told you I don’t know about your vampire. What else do you want from me?”
He crowds my personal space again. I begin to tremble as fear twists my stomach into tight knots. I yelp when he suddenly grips my head in his hands. “I just need the truth, but I’m afraid I can’t trust your words. I will have to use my gift.”
Fear keeps my voice a whisper. “Your gift?”
“Don’t be afraid, Nora. If you don’t fight me, I won’t hurt you. I’m simply going to take a look at your memories. Memories cannot lie.”
He intends to sift through my memory? I’ve heard rumors of stronger vampires who could do amazing things with their compulsion powers. Clan leaders—masters—usually have extraordinary gifts that set them apart from other vampires. Make them stronger. I’d always hoped those stories weren’t true. But they are true. I can feel it in his thoughts and intentions.
Henry is going to get in my head and look at my memories. He’s very excited to do it. He’s curious about me—a human with the power to read minds who walks among his world.
I know the moment he accesses my mind. I feel his presence slip inside my head. The invasion of privacy is unbearable, and I automatically try to kick him out. Pinching my eyes shut, I mentally push against the unwelcomed presence. He fights back, pushing hard against me. “Do not resist me.”
“Get out of my head!”
Pain pounds behind my eyes, crushing against my brain and my skull. It hurts so badly I have to fight the urge to vomit. My nose begins to bleed. A tortured scream rips from my lungs. Still, every instinct I have propels me to eject him from my mind.
I fight as hard as I can. I’m strong, but Henry’s stronger. He breaks through my mental barrier, shattering my will. I collapse in his arms.
Parker dashes toward me. “Nora!”
“She’s all right,” Henry reassures Parker as he lays me on the nearby sofa. “She will not resist me anymore.” He smiles at me, swiping my hair off my forehead. “Will you, love?”
I want to shout and curse and scream at him, but I don’t have the energy. My brain is mush, and I’m barely hanging on to consciousness.
Henry wipes the tears from my cheeks and places his hands on my head again. “No,” I croak.
“Forgive me. I must.”
He enters my head again. I try to fight it, but I can’t. My memories surface against my will. While Henry absorbs them, he’s still touching me, and so, gives me a running commentary of his own thoughts at the same time. He starts with my most recent memory, because he’s curious as to why I’d screamed. He sees me wake up, sees me touch his bedpost, and gasps when he watches me fall into my vision.
I’m stuck in the memory, but I can hear Parker close by our side. “Sire, what is it?”
Henry can see my vision. He watches the scene of him and his lover play out, standing, as I did, like an outsider. “My, my,” he rasps. As shocked as he is by my ability, he’s aroused by the vision. He likes watching himself. “So it’s not just mind reading that you are capable of. You are an extremely powerful human, aren’t you? How does it work, exactly? Have you always had this gift?”
“T-that’s n-none of y-your b-business.”
Henry chuckles. “Actually, this vision is very much my business, don’t you think?”
I refuse to answer that and pray he’s watching the vision and can’t see my blush.
“Sire, what’s happening? What do you see?”
Henry chuckles. “Would you like to describe it to him, Nora?”
The tone of his voice makes me wish I could punch him in his smug face. There’s nothing I can say right now that wouldn’t sound pathetic, encouraging, dirty, or like a denial of attraction, so I keep quiet.
Henry sighs, sad that I’ve not taken his bait. “Nora has been gifted with a form of psychometry,” he explains to Parker. “She can see visions of the past when she touches objects—such as my bed. Isn’t that right, Nora?”
Parker gasps. “With a gift like that, she could help us find Nadine. We could take her to—”
“All in good time, Parker. Allow me to concentrate, if you will.”
“Forgive me, Sire.”
Parker goes quiet, and Henry’s attention shifts back to the vision we’re both stuck in. His arousal increases. He sees me watching the scene and likes the thought that I saw him—as if I’d had a choice in the matter. But, whether I’d wanted to or not, I had been turned on by it when I saw it, and he can tell. He feels my attraction and groans. “Nora.” He sounds agonized. “Sweet Nora, you torture me. I can feel your desire.”
As the words escape his lips, he reaches the part of the vision where he’d bitten the woman and feasted on her blood. He watches me scream. Just as he’d felt my desire before, he feels my revulsion now. He feels my memories just as I’d felt them when I experienced them. My stark terror over what is the most intimate treasured act among his kind hurts him. It’s the closest that two vampires can get to one another, and he’s desperate to share that bond with me.
Henry lets go of me and pulls out of my head. The look in his fevered eyes screams of his hunger. His desire. “I could give you pleasure like you’ve never known,” he says.
I’m not sure if he means the sex or the biting, but either option terrifies and repulses me to a state of panic. I shake my head. “No thanks.”
He smiles, as if my declaration amuses him. “Don’t be so hasty, love. I felt your arousal as you watched us. You’re attracted to me.”
“My body responded instinctively. That’s all it was. You’re hot, but knowing what you are, you lost any attraction I might have felt.”
He gives me a knowing smile, as if he doesn’t believe me for a second, and places his hands back on my head.
“Not again.” I groan.
“I must. I don’t have the answers I need yet.”
I know there’s no point in arguing this time. Fighting him before did nothing but give me a horrid migraine and make me physically collapse. I really don’t want to lose consciousness, with Henry so close.
He dives once again into my memories. My attempts to fight him do nothing. I’m too weak, and he isn’t being gentle anymore. He works faster now, watching the night that Parker found me with shock and wonder. He’s amazed by how a human could know about the underworld, fear it as much as I do, and still face it head on.
He’s curious about Xavier and what kind of man he is that I would be desperate enough to face my greatest fear just to be rid of him. He skims over my memories of the months I lived next door to Xavier. As he swims through my past, I feel his anger. He works himself into a rage watching all of Xavier’s attempts to spy on me and drug me. He can barely control himself as he witnesses the visions I’d witnessed. Feels the things I’d felt. Hears the thoughts I’d heard. He wants to kill Xavier.
“You see?” I say, trying to change the direction of his thoughts. “I don’t know anything about your missing vampire.”
“No,” he agrees. “You are as innocent as you claim, though you are so much more than you pretend to be. Your gifts are remarkable.”
“Look, you got what you wanted. Stop invading my privacy now.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”