She was in bed stark naked with a man she knew relatively nothing about. He wasn’t even a man. He was some powerful predator she found sexy. Gasping, she shoved at the solid wall of his chest and, grabbing for the sheet, wrapped it around her. “I don’t know you at all. I can’t believe I slept with you.”
Lucian’s face was more sensual than ever, a slight, puzzled frown making him so attractive, Jaxon wanted him outlawed on the spot. “Do not modern-day women sleep with their husbands?”
“We aren’t married. I didn’t marry you. I would have known if I had done that. I didn’t, did I?” She shoved a hand through her hair, sending it flying in all directions, then had to grab hastily for the sheet slipping so precariously. She glared at him, daring him to smile at her predicament.
Lucian found that his centuries of self-control stood him in good stead. He kept his features completely expressionless when he wanted desperately to smile with the joy flooding his heart. She melted his insides, turned him into something gentle, when he had been so certain there was no chance for him to feel such things. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and kiss her until her eyes went dark with desire and her body went up in flames with his. “What do you think a lifemate is? We are married in the way of the Carpathian people. We are bound for all eternity, one to the other, body and soul.”
She jumped out of bed, trying to be dignified with a sheet swirling around her like a toga, bunching at her feet, preventing freedom of movement. “There you go again with words like eternity. See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. We’re not in the least bit compatible. And I don’t sleep around. You’ve done something to me. Some black-magic trick. Voodoo. I have a few morals. I don’t sleep with just anyone, you know.”
A smile hovered dangerously close. Lucian’s black eyes gleamed at her, moving over her with a slow, burning possessiveness that said more than any words could possibly express. “I am not just anyone, Jaxon, and I am more than grateful that you do not’sleep around.’ ” He moved then, a sleek jungle cat stretching lazily.
At once her heart was pounding overly loud and she was backing away from the bed, her eyes wide in her face. “You’re asking me to be something I’m not, Lucian. You didn’t give me a chance to think about things.”
“What things? What was there to think about? I must rest in the ground. I cannot do so if you are not beside me. You have a penchant for getting into trouble.”
At once her dark eyes flashed fire. “That’s it! I’ve had it with you. You don’t even seem to know what you’ve done. You show no remorse at all. I’m the one who has to do all the compromising, except there is no compromise. You simply decide I’m going to do something, and then I do it. And it hurt like hell!” With that parting shot, she stormed from the bedroom. The hem of the sheet trailing behind her caught on the edge of the door and brought her up short. Jaxon simply allowed the sheet to flutter to the floor, giving Lucian a last glimpse of her soft, pale skin and beautiful curves before she disappeared from his sight.
Lucian stretched again, reveling in the feel of his strong muscles, in the way his body felt so alive. He wanted her again. He would want her for all time. The day could never come when he was fully sated. He was smiling, unable to stop. She was such a perfect miracle to him. Right now, when most women would be hysterical at the thought of conversion, she was giving him hell for being an arrogant Carpathian male. Lucian knew she was going to have to come to terms with what she had become, and it wouldn’t be easy on her, but it had been necessary to ensure her continued safety. Jaxon was not a woman to be put on a shelf. She would always be in the thick of things, no matter what he decreed. Once Lucian had accepted that fact, accepted her personality, her protective nature, he had taken the only course open to him to prevent disaster.