“I can smell your desire, Elizabeth. You can’t hide it.”
I met his eyes, tried not to flinch from the obvious difference in them, in him. “You’re delusional.”
“Our slaves become slaves to that craving. Eventually you won’t run even if I let you. You won’t be able to leave me. You’ll call me master, and I won’t even have to ask.”
“I don’t think so.”
He smiled. “You’ll see.”
“Just because my body responds doesn’t mean I want you.”
“No?” His smile grew. “What does it mean?”
Though I was tempted to throw the rest of my wine in his face, I managed to drink some instead before trying to reach him one more time.
“If I don’t look at you too long, or listen to you too hard, I can remember what it was like. I loved you then.” I took a deep breath and admitted the truth. What could it hurt? This wasn’t Jimmy anymore. “I loved you more than anyone in my life. Next to—” My voice broke, but I forced myself to continue. “Next to Ruthie.”
“Love is irrelevant.”
“Love is everything.”
He came off the couch in one swift movement, startling me so much I sloshed wine over my fingers. The Cabernet dripped onto the tabletop, so closely resembling blood beneath a full moon—crimson, almost black—that I had to set the glass down and glance away.
Jimmy hauled me up roughly by the elbows. Lucky I’d set aside the wine. “I told you not to talk about the past.”
“Loving you is definitely past,” I muttered.
“Good,” he said, and kissed me.
He was holding me too tightly, kissing me too hard. I could do nothing but stiffen and struggle. Not that struggling did me any good. He only held me tighter, kissed me harder.
He lifted his head. His eyes, onyx with a pinprick of ruby, stared into mine. “Kiss me back.”
“You can’t make me respond.”
His fingers clenched on my arms, and I fought a wince. “I bet I can.”
He let me go without warning, and the chair I’d been dragged out of hit me in the knees. I plopped into it. He punched several buttons on the wall—and I do mean punched—his fist shooting forward, the plastic crunching in protest.
The heavy drapes slid over the windows. The lights went out with a muffled thunk.
Across the room, more plastic protested, followed by thuds and swooshes from the area of the couch. I stood, though, as usual, I had nowhere to go.
“Come here.” His voice whispered out of the gloom; he sounded so much like himself my breath caught.
I could see pretty well in the dark these days. Not great, not everything, but considering there was no light and I could easily distinguish Jimmy’s outline as well as that of most of the furniture in the room, I was impressed.
He scooted across the distance between us—quick as a wink, literally. I didn’t have to fake my gasp of surprise when he touched me. Speed like that was a shock even when you were expecting it.
“Kiss me back,” he repeated.
Goose bumps rose all over me. The last time I’d heard that voice in the darkness, I’d have done anything.
Last time.
He caressed me with a gentleness that left me breathless. How could he not remember how it had been between us and touch me like that?
He couldn’t. Because he did remember; he just didn’t care. However, considering his order to kiss him back, this setting of seduction, maybe he did.
His lips brushed mine like a whisper. My mouth parted on a sigh. He tasted the same, smelled the same too. Shouldn’t he smell like a vampire? Rotting flesh, graveyard dust, something bad. But all I could smell was Jimmy.
I wanted to bury my face in his neck, draw in that scent so deeply I’d never know anything else. I wanted to brush my fingers through his hair, coast the tips along his eyelids, feel the flutter of his eyes beneath, his lashes against my skin.
Instead of tossing me onto the bed, he sat, pulling me between his legs, rubbing his cheek along my bare belly, resting his forehead between my breasts. My arms cradled his shoulders; my hands cupped his head. My heart gave one heavy thud and began to race. I couldn’t think when he was touching me like this.
His breath puffed across my skin, cool like a spring breeze. It felt so good, so right, as did his hands at my hips, his lips along the underside of my breast.
When 1 couldn’t see the occasional flare of red at the center of his eyes, when he didn’t speak and say horrible things, I could forget what had happened to him, to me. I could pretend it was then and not now.
In the dark, in my arms, I could pretend he was still Jimmy.
Chapter 37
I curled into him, pressed my lips to his hair and just held on. Amazingly, he let me.
I’d tried to talk to him of the past, tried to get him to remember love, but that had only made him retreat more deeply into the creature he’d become.