Dark Fire by Christine Feehan. Dark Series – book 6

His palm stroked back wet strands of hair from her forehead. His eyes burned into hers. “You have an astonishing penchant for feminine-style violence,” he commented drolly.

“I’m beginning to think violence might be the only way to handle you.” Tempest inserted a hand between herself and the wall of his chest and steadily increased the pressure until she lost her own strength. If he didn’t notice subtle hints to let her go soon, she would resort to violence, and then he’d be sorry. A serious dunking just might do his inflated male ego some good. She glared at him again, hoping to wither him on the spot. “I don’t believe in love. It’s a myth. People use it to get their way. There isn’t any such thing. It’s mere physical attraction.”

Darius practically tossed her out of the pool. “You actually believe the nonsense you spout? I am the darkness. You are the light. I am a predator. You hold compassion and goodness within you. Yet I must teach you about love?”

“Your ego is showing again,” she declared, a faint haughtiness in her voice. “You know, Darius, it isn’t necessary that we think or believe alike all the time. I don’t have to see everything your way.”

Something deep and dark and terrifying flickered in the depths of his eyes, and she held her breath. He blinked, and the illusion was gone, leaving her wondering if she had seen only the flames of the candles reflected in his eyes.

“You have clothes on the sheet. Get dressed, Tempest. I must feed.”

The moment he uttered the words, she became aware of her heart beating strongly. It sounded overly loud to her, like the beat of a drum. Worse, she could hear his heartbeat. The water pouring from the walls, too, was nearly deafening, whereas the night before she had hardly noticed it. And she heard something else-a high-pitched, far-off sound ominously like what she imagined a great number of bats might make.

Tempest took a deep breath, her teeth biting nervously at her lower lip. She didn’t like Darius’s using the word feed. She didn’t like the fact that her hearing had suddenly become so strangely acute. What did it all mean? He had bitten her several times. Could he infect her with whatever made him the creature that he was? Slowly she pulled on the clothes he had supplied- something else she didn’t want to examine too closely. They weren’t her clothes. Just where had they come from? “You’re in way too deep this time, Rusti,” she murmured aloud.

Darius was beside her, immaculate, elegant, powerful.

He ruffled her hair affectionately. “Stop talking to yourself.”

“I always talk to myself.”

“You are not alone anymore. You have me, so there is no further need to continue this habit. Are you ready?’ His black eyes flicked over her pale face, settling for £ moment on her trembling mouth. It amused him somewhat that periodically she scared herself with her own rousings and anxieties. It amazed him that she wasn’t always terrified of him, that she accepted his difference: the same way she accepted differences of skin color or religion. The same way she accepted animals.

Tempest unexpectedly reached out and took his hand “Even if you are the most arrogant being I’ve ever encountered, thank you for last night. It was beautiful, Darius.”

It was the last thing he’d anticipated, and it moved him as nothing else could. He turned his head away from her so that she would not catch the shimmer of tear; that suddenly touched his eyes. That in itself was a small miracle. He had not believed himself capable of tears yet he wanted to weep because she had thanked him Despite her anger at him, her fears of his powers am this place, their night had meant enough to her that she had thought to thank him.

As he took her toward the surface of the mountain he realized it was the first time anyone had thanked him for anything. His role as his family’s provider and protector had been established long ago and was thus now taken for granted. This small woman, so delicate yet so courageous, made him remember the reason he had chosen the role of provider and protector.