The wind scattered the ashes and took the noxious odor far from them. Lucian walked over to her and sat down so that their bodies were touching. “It is done.”
Jaxon heard his voice, soft and gentle as always, and when she looked up at him, his features were the same, beautifully masculine, rugged, perfect. Still, Jaxon felt his exhaustion, the hunger beating at him that he kept at bay with his strict discipline. It was there in his mind. She also found the reason for his delay in getting to the surface. The vampire had devised a trap, crude but effective. As Lucian had raced through the tunnels hollowed out by the vampire, a pack of rats had rushed behind him, attacking, biting, sent to slow him. As he fought them off, the tentacles shooting above ground had swarmed over and around him, pinning him in the earth long enough for the viper to inject a compound of poison into his system.
Jaxon gasped, her heart slamming hard at the explosion of pain she discovered in his memories. It was a lethal poison, a complex mix the vampire had manufactured that moved with speed throughout the nervous system, causing excruciating pain as it ate at the cells, gobbling them up as it replicated itself. It had taken Lucian a few minutes to slow the poison, analyze it, and manufacture the antibodies necessary to drive it from his system.
“I can’t believe you were able to do that,” she said, awed. “How can anyone do that? Drive the poison out of his own body?”
“It is not unusual for our people to do such things. Sometimes it is done by pushing the poison out through the pores. This was more like a battle—indeed, in the midst of a battle—because the poison was a combination of several very lethal compounds. Rather extraordinary for a vampire to concoct. I am sorry I had to disconnect, but you would have felt the pain, and that I could not allow.” His arm circled her slender shoulders. “Besides I knew you would handle things aboveground until I was able to reach you.”
“You monitored me even though I couldn’t tell what was happening to you,” she said with some annoyance. “That’s how you helped me, isn’t it? How come you know what I’m doing when we aren’t merged together? I ask just in case the information comes in handy someday—for instance, when I get tired of your arrogance and decide to have a flaming affair. Or better yet, when I want to make certain you aren’t running around on me.” She was running her hands over his body to assure herself he was fine.
His hand cupped her chin so that he could look into her enormous eyes, eyes that held a hint of the fire within her. “You seem disturbed, honey.” His voice was a drawling, teasing caress.
“Absolutely I am,” she vowed, but she had to look away from him or she would have burst out laughing.
Either that or kiss him. “You ‘allow’ me to be your partner, but you wrap me up in cotton wool as if I were a porcelain doll. I should know what’s happening to you all the time, just in case you have need of me.”
“I understand your nature, angel, probably better than you understand it, and I’m willing to provide you with everything you need to make you happy. But you have to understand, I will never allow your life to be placed in any real danger. If I cannot adequately protect you in a situation, you are not to be there. That is all there is to it. You are not to be there.” He said it softly, gently, like a lover. His voice made her heart somersault and set butterflies fluttering in her stomach.
She sighed and shook her head, knowing she was lost. He didn’t understand fairness, equality. He understood she was a woman. His woman. His nature demanded he protect her. To him, “compromise” meant she could be with him, even aid him, but only under specified conditions. Jaxon shook her head again before dropping it onto his arm. “I’m tired, Lucian. I’ve never been this tired before. How many hours before the sun rises and I can get some sleep?”