Beneath it all, he felt her sorrow, the weight of Pater’s words implanted in her mind and heart. She would never believe the Carpathian race would accept her with her tainted blood. If Nicolae called the healer, Destiny would never allow him near her. She would run. There was no way to erase what the vampire had wrought. Nicolae could remove all traces of the virus. He could restore her strength. He could give her unconditional love, but he could never remove those words.
Because his words are true. Her hands found his hair, tunneled her fingers deep into the mass of silken strands. She wanted to lose herself in sensation. She couldn’t make the words false, but she could put them somewhere in a little corner of her mind, replace them with something that consumed her: the bubbles popping against her bare skin; the silken strands of dark hair sliding through her fingers. I love your hair.
You are supposed to love me. And it is not true. Vampires twist the truth until you can no longer see what is. You know that, Destiny. More than most, you know what they do.
In this instance even a grain of truth is far too much. She swept her tongue across the pinpricks, closing the tiny wounds with her healing saliva, lifted her head and met the dark intensity of his gaze without flinching. “You can love me with your heart and your mind and your soul. You can be my salvation when the memories come to haunt me, Nicolae. You can be my everything, but you cannot change what I am. A vampire put something hideous deep inside me. It is evil and dark and dangerous. I’ve lived with it most of my life, and I know. You can love me, even with that terrible flaw inside me, but you can’t change it. I can’t change it. It isn’t going to go away because we want it to. I recognize darkness in others. Others will recognize it in me. Like calls to like.”
Her voice was a thread of sound. Exhaustion lined her face. Nicolae couldn’t bear the way she was looking at him with such a mixture of love and regret. His hands moved over her body with exquisite tenderness, washing the remnants of blood and poison from her skin. “Destiny, I’ve found you to be stubborn and independent but never dense. Are you deliberately not understanding that we are two halves of the same whole? We are alike. Like did call to like, and I am it. I am what you got.”
She was warm and safe huddled in the shelter of his arms, cradled by his body. The water lapped pleasantly against her skin, bubbling and fizzing against every sore spot. The flames flickered and danced and released a fragrance conducive to healing and comfort. Destiny lifted her gaze to Nicolae’s face, studied the hard angles and planes. A slow smile found its way to her mouth. “Lucky me.”
Her words twisted his heart. “How do you do that, little one? It bodes ill for our future. One moment I am determined to chastise you severely as you so obviously deserve, and the next all I want to do is kiss you senseless.”
Destiny framed his face with her palms. “It’s a gift. I much prefer the kissing.” The pad of her thumb moved over his jaw, traced his chin. “You have such shadows in your mind. You think I was wrong not to call you to me, but I wasn’t. Why would you think yourself less important to me, less to me in some way than I am to you? Do you think you’re the only one with rights? I do not want your protection at the expense of your life. You’re the target here, not me. I’m merely the bait used to draw you out. Fortunately, one of us is able to think in tight situations.”
His breath escaped in a hiss of impatience and frustration. When her soft mouth began to curve in amusement, he gave her a little shake. “Now is not the time for you to laugh, Destiny. I am still shaking from your near miss on the street and in the cave.”