Shea slept fitfully, her body cumbersome in the light of the day. Jacques lay beside her, motionless, his arm a heavy weight curved possessively around her waist. Several times she struggled to surface during the afternoon hours, but it was an impossibility. Once she heard a noise outside the cabin, and her heart pounded in alarm, but she was unable to summon up enough energy to do more than clutch the gun beneath the pillow tightly. She knew she was responsible for their safety, yet she couldn’t pry her eyes open or force herself to rise and check around the cabin to ensure no one was near.
The sun had long since sunk beneath the mountains before Shea managed to rouse herself. Hunger was a gnawing, relentless ache, but the thought of food made her stomach heave. She struggled to sit up, far weaker than she had ever been. She pushed a hand through her heavy fall of wine-red hair.
Jacques’ fingers circled her arm, slid the length from shoulder to wrist. She was small and delicate, yet she had such inner strength. It amazed him how brave and courageous she was, how compassionate. He found her intriguing, mysterious even. The world as he knew it had begun seven years earlier: pain, isolation, and darkness. The monster in him had grown, eclipsed his soul. At first he had had no emotion at all, simply a will that would never die, an icy determination, a promise of retribution made in exchange for his lost soul. He would find them—the betrayer, the human assassins—and he would destroy them. But once he had found his lifemate, despite the distance that separated them, he had begun to feel. To smolder with a black fury that would never cease until he had found a way to retaliate for the loss of his soul. Every emotion he possessed was dark and ugly. Until Shea had changed him. Since the moment he had merged his mind with hers, he had stayed there in that haven, a part of her, a shadow so quiet she didn’t always know he was there. He could not bear to be away from her.
Jacques’ fist tangled in her thick, luxurious hair. She stirred things in him he had no name for. He would never endure closed-in places again, never endure being alone again. And he would never allow Shea to place herself at risk. Silently cursing his weakened body, he brought the silken strands of her hair to his face, inhaling her fragrance.
“I’m so tired, Jacques,” she confessed, swaying slightly as she sat on the side of the bed. She found it strange to have someone to talk to, to wake up and not be alone. Shea should have been uncomfortable in the situation—she had never shared her life with anyone—yet with Jacques there was a weird familiarity, as if she had known him forever.
Her life had always been one of isolation, a certain distance always present between herself and others. Jacques had no respect for that barrier, slipping in and out of her head as if he belonged there. His touch was possessive, even intimate. Shea was bewildered by her own feelings, by her acceptance of their strange affinity. She was excited at her rare scientific find, perhaps holding an answer to the terrible disease that branded those so afflicted as nosferatu, unclean. The undead. Her kind was condemned to a life of hiding and loathing, always living in fear of being discovered. It was important to find out whether they were a separate species or whether some rare genetic code had given them a need for blood to sustain their lives.
Shea studied Jacques’ worn but handsome face. He looked young, yet ageless. He looked tormented, as if he had suffered greatly, yet he looked like stone. She could see the power in him now; it clung like a second skin. Biting her lip, she drew away from him, her emerald eyes thoughtful. The strength and power in him was growing. His body might be mending slowly, but his unusual capabilities seemed to be recovering at a much faster rate. It occurred to her that she should be afraid of the creature now lying motionless in her bed. It was apparent that he could be extraordinarily dangerous, was capable of extreme violence. Especially with his mind so fractured, his rage so deep.