"Pianist meets masochist. I think it's appropriate."
Victoria gave him a playful shove with her shoulder. And instantly regretted the action as the length of her arm came into contact with the lean muscle of his. His face hung inches from hers. In that single moment, they were back in her car sitting in his driveway and the laughter in his eyes transformed into something else, something liquid and unsettling. Her eyes glued to his, she leaned toward him in unconscious response, the amulet scorching her skin beneath her shirt.
He met her halfway and then froze, his lips a hair's breadth away from hers, almost unwilling to bridge the last remaining space between them. Her pulse leapt, uncontrolled. Christian's cool breath fanned against her lips until she saw it in his eyes, the familiar coldness emerging and then shutting her out as the planes of his face transformed into a furious rigidity. He pulled away and Victoria jerked back as if she'd been burned.
"I can't," he said through clenched teeth, standing and backing away from the piano to put as much space between them as possible.
"I'm sorry." Those two words eclipsed any sense of hurt she felt and she scowled at him.
"What is your problem?"
"I'm sorry, it's complicated and—"
"Save it," Victoria said, easing herself off the bench and gathering her things. She was proud of the firmness of her voice. "I heard you the first three times so the message is pretty clear. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I get it."
“Tori—”
"If you don't like me, just stay away from me. Go play your mind-games with someone else!"
She kept walking until she got to her car. Victoria couldn't understand Christian Devereux. He was like a human rollercoaster. One minute, they were laughing and having a great time, and then the next, he was angry and withdrawn, the latter usually after being in close proximity to her. He'd wanted to kiss her too—every instinct inside her had known that. But just like the other times, he'd let her get close and then pull away leaving her jolted and confused, and utterly devastated.
CHRISTIAN SAT ON the piano stool, feeling like a total cad. All the laughter in the room had left with her. He sat in the silence, his body shaking as the hunger ripped through him, razor-sharp. His control had been iron-clad until the moment she'd leaned into him, her natural appeal impossible to resist and his lips had almost been touching hers when he'd felt the points of his teeth pressing against the inside of his mouth. Reality had come swiftly—and violently—after that.
Victoria couldn't be more wrong; it wasn't that he didn't like her. He liked her far too much. He could recall every part of her face as if it had been etched into his mind—the wide, slanted emerald-green eyes, the dimple that flashed in her right cheek when she succumbed to a full fledged smile, her inky, blue-black hair flashing tortuous glimpses of the long neck that dipped sinuously into the curve of her collarbone. She walked with the provocative grace of a dancer, and when she stepped into a room, he could think of little else.
Christian knew he was being reckless when it came to Tori Warrick. But for some reason he couldn't control himself when he was around her. He hadn't felt his human age in years but something about her made him feel like a fumbling awkward teenager. The moment she'd stared at him with those eyes on the piano stool, it was all he could do not to take her in his arms and do, well, what it was that he did. It had taken every ounce of his strength to step away.
Every vampire instinct in him wanted her with a savagery so intense it was decimating, and the only way he could control it had been to stay as far away from her as possible. But fate had not cooperated with his intentions, throwing them together at every turn. And despite his repeated avowals to stay away, each time he failed, drawn like a moth to a flame mindless of its own destruction.
When he'd seen her crying the last time, something in him had been desperate to comfort her and for a time, like her, he'd actually thought they could be friends. After she'd left, he'd run twenty miles just to get her out of his head, and even then she'd lingered, driving him to hunt with a ruthless violence he'd long since forgotten. This time, he knew with certainty that giving into his impulsive desire to be around her had been a mistake ... a terrible, irreversible, stupid mistake.