Embrace the Night

Page 224



Her head fell back, and she was drifting, floating on a crimson sea, every fiber of her being awash with sensual pleasure.

She was desolate when he took his mouth away. "Sarah?"

She blinked up at him. His face swam before her eyes, and she blinked again, wondering why she felt so strange.

"Sarah? Sarah!"

"Hmmm?" She stared up at him, though it was an effort to keep her eyes open, to focus. His skin was no longer pale. His cheeks were flushed; the blood-lust was gone from his eyes. A distant part of her mind told her that her blood had done that for him.

Gabriel swore under his breath, cursing the insatiable hunger, the weakness, that had driven him to take that which he had no right to take. One day he would take too much and it would kill her.

He cursed under his breath as he swept her into his arms and carried her into the kitchen. Filling a glass with water, he held it to her lips, insisting she drink it all. And then he carried her up the stairs and put her to bed.

"Stay with me," she begged. "Stay until the sun comes up." "I will."

"Am I your slave now?"
"No."

"I wouldn't mind, you know, being your slave."
"I would. Go to sleep, Sarah."

"You'll be here tomorrow night? You won't destroy yourself? Promise me." "I promise."

"We'll find a cure," she murmured as her eyelids fluttered down. "I know we will. And if we can't… if we can't…"

He listened to the soft sound of her breathing as sleep claimed her.

"And if we can't," he said, finishing her thought in his own way, "then we'll meet death together, for I won't be parted from you in life again."

The house was deadly quiet. Alone in the pink bedroom, the covers drawn up to her chin, Sarah stared