Broken Heart 08 Must Love Lycans (15 page)

“No,” he admitted. “And neither can I.” He meant to move away from me, but I wrapped my arms around his waist. He stilled immediately. “Don’t do that, Kelsey.”

“Why?”

“It makes me want what I cannot have.”

“I killed someone a year ago.” My confession threw him off—in fact, he was so stunned by my admission, he forgot to feel guilty and tormented. I could sense him trying to regain his control, and not quite succeeding. “Let’s go in the living room,” I said kindly. “I like all the books.”

“All right.” He sounded guarded, and I felt the weight of his caution. And his ever-present ardor. He couldn’t hide that he wanted to have hot, feral, sweaty sex with me.

I had no doubts that we would have each other.

It was inevitable. Like sunrises. And taxes.

I took his hand and for a second, I thought he might try to shake free of my grip. Instead, he brought my hand up and turned it to show my wrist. He planted a kiss on my fluttering pulse.

I almost melted into a puddle right there.

He led the way into the living room and settled onto the couch. I considered my seating options, and chose his lap.

“I’m not sure I will be able to conduct a rational conversation this way,” he said.

“You’ll manage.” There was a green throw draped over the back of the couch. I snagged it and put it around us. “Better?”

He rolled his eyes.

“I’ll tell you about what I did,” I said. “But you have to answer one question first. You have to be honest—no omissions. And you have to buy me cupcakes.”

“What do cupcakes have to do with this question?”

“Nothing. I just really want some. Okay. Here it is: Are we married werewolves?”

He blinked down at me. “I am a werewolf, you might be a werewolf, and we are not married.”

“Oh.” I felt disappointed. I don’t know why. I’d never had the urge to be married before, mostly because I had never been able to find a guy who was emotionally honest. It was why, too, I’d never had sex. There were a few almost scenarios, but men couldn’t hold back their true feelings when lust ran rampant—and I couldn’t focus on keeping my mental shields strong during an act of socalled love. All too often (okay, every time), I would find out how a guy really felt about me, and it ruined the moment. Doused the fires. Killed me a little inside. I hadn’t found a single man who’d wanted
me
. Sex, yes. To impress my mother, yes. (Not the sex part, the dating-me part.) Show me love and tenderness, no. Sad, wasn’t it?

“The nightmare you had earlier … it has something to do with you killing this person?”

“Yes.” No regular nightmare would propel a reasonable woman into the arms of a werewolf. The longer we were together, or maybe it was proximity thing, the harder it was to build psychic walls. I wondered if this new aspect (aka empath fail) was because of my werewolf issues, or because of Damian’s bite, or because of the connection I felt with him. Maybe it was all three, tangled in knots as emotions often were.

I wanted to tell him the whole story. Maybe because I wanted to see how he’d react. Or maybe I just needed to share with someone who didn’t know anything about what had happened—and maybe wouldn’t judge me as harshly as everyone else. And he knew more about me, about my secrets, than anyone else.

“Tell me what happened, Kelsey.”

“Okay.” I took in a breath, and began again. “The whole empath thing is why I became a psychotherapist. That, and my mother really wanted me to be one. Anyway. I had this patient named Robert Mallard. He was a sociopath. Well, a psychopath, but he was trying, at least I thought he was trying, to get well. Not that you can fix a sociopath—or psychopath. You can’t. So I … I gave him what I thought were good emotions. I tried to give him what he didn’t have, but I didn’t consider that he wouldn’t know what to do with emotions. Sociopaths don’t really have a moral core.

“He started killing girls. Blonde, blue-eyed teens. He wanted to drink their essence. He had this whole ritual, you see. He brought the last one to me … to my house. He’d figured out I was an empath—and that was my secret, Damian. No one knew. But Robert said he saw me for who I really was, and he wanted to free me. He wanted us to be together, so he brought me an essence to share.”

I told this story many times before—except for mentioning I was an empath. That little nugget of information was mine alone. Until now, of course. But the other stuff had become rote. I knew which facts were more important than others, what the police and then the FBI wanted from me. They had case files, some had written books, Robert became a footnote in a couple of psychological profiles, and closure. Everyone had closure—except me. Robert had killed his first girl in Texas—while on vacation with some of his friends. The next three … and the final fifth (if you didn’t count me, and no one did, since I’d lived) he had killed in Oklahoma. Crossing the state lines had made it federal—that and when they’d established he was a serial killer.

I looked up at Damian. I was blocking his emotions because … well, I didn’t want to know how he’d feel after all. I’d opened myself up to his judgment, but it wasn’t like I could hide from my past. The whole world—well, the human world—knew about me and my mistakes. “I’ve known for a long time that I was an empath, but it was only a few years ago that I figured out I could do more than sense what someone was feeling. I can absorb other people’s feelings … and I can give them feelings, too.”

Damian’s expression went flat. “
Give
them feelings?” He stared at me, his whole body stiff with sudden, righteous anger. “Is that what you did to me?”

Chapter 6

M
y psychic shields slammed down, hard and cold and fast. Me and my romantic notions of being connected to Damian …
Hah!
I easily severed our emotional link—and he felt it, too, because he flinched as if I’d slapped him.

“Really?” I asked with only a slight quiver in my voice. “You’re so nettled by your attraction to me, you’re gonna blame me for how you feel? And should I return the favor by blaming you for turning me into a werewolf? Oh, but wait. I’m sure that’s my fault as well. After all, if I hadn’t forced you to like me then you wouldn’t have bitten me.”

I clamored off his lap; then I looked down at him, deeply hurt by his accusation. “If you want to believe that I used my abilities to manipulate your emotions, then you’re a coward. You feel what you feel—you can own it, or you can discard it, but don’t you dare try to escape responsibility for what
you’ve
allowed into your heart.”

I felt numb and exhausted. I had nursed a sliver of hope that I’d found something different, something just for me, no matter how little time I had to enjoy it. I was scared, no, terrified, of what the future held. What would it be like to be a werewolf? What would it be like to die? Would it hurt? Would it be quick? Would I be missed?

It was a morbid turn of thought, but unsurprising, really. This was a familiar place. When Robert attacked me, I didn’t think anything. It was instinct and fury and motion and terror. But before that moment, I had plenty of time to ponder my mortality—while he cut the girl, while he waxed poetic about essences, while he wooed me with blood and death.

Damian stayed on the couch, slipping into his Statue Man mode. Inside the maelstrom of my own mind, I heard my mother’s voice say, “Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.” She did love a good Benjamin Franklin quote. I often responded by quoting back Dr. Phil—complete with Texas twang. Margaret Morningstone did not like hearing the advice of her competition flung at her (which is, of course, why I did it).

“I would like to rest, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll take the couch.”

“Thank you.” I walked to the bedroom. The lamp was still on, the huge bed with its oversized pillows and thick covers. I wanted to cry, and I knew the value of a good keening, believe me. But mostly I was exhausted and sad and really not in the mood to indulge my tear ducts. Something hot and heavy and dark sat in my chest, like an ancient stone, moldy and crumbling.

I plopped on the bed, pulled my knees up to my chin, and sighed.

“Kelsey.”

Startled, I looked up to see Damian standing in the doorway.

“Do you need a pillow and blanket?” I asked. It was inane, but the only reason I could think of why he would unbend himself, and his pride, to approach me. It felt kinda weird offering the man comforts from his own bed—then again, it was the least strange thing to happen today.

He entered the room, just a few steps, his solemn gaze on mine. “Forgive me.”

“Tomorrow,” I said softly. “Promise.”

“I’m sorry.” His voice sounded like a rusted hinge.

“Don’t apologize much, do you?”

He shook his head.

“I appreciate how hard it was for you, Damian, but I was kinda hoping to drown in my own self-pity while lamenting about the sad lack of cupcakes in my life. It’s something a girl has to do alone.”

“You’ve been alone too much.”

“True,” I said. “But that’s always been the way of it.”

“Please. You needed me and I failed you. I never want to do that again, Kelsey. Tell me the rest.”

“I’ll share my secret, if you’ll tell me one of yours.”

“All right.”

I shrugged. “He killed the girl. I begged for her life. Pleaded for mercy. I tried to give him some, even, but he’d built this psychic wall. He was furious that I rejected his gift. He decided I wasn’t worthy of being his soul mate. He had the knife. And he knew exactly where to puncture her heart. I felt her die.” This part …
this
part I hadn’t told anyone. “She wasn’t scared—not at first. She’d resigned herself to dying. She felt sad, and then when he stabbed her, there was this sudden fierce blaze of terror.” I looked up at Damian through my lashes. “That shouldn’t be anyone’s last emotion. How can you have peace after this life if you’ve left it in abject fear?” I shook my head. I didn’t really want a response. Besides, I wasn’t finished. “I fought with him over the knife. I got a few cuts, a couple of punctures, but somehow I turned it on him. It pierced his heart, the same as it had hers. There was blood everywhere. I don’t remember calling the police, but when they found me, the phone was in my hand, and the nine-one-one operator was still talking to me. I couldn’t speak. I don’t know where I went”—I tapped my temple—“I just sorta realized I was in the hospital. Two days gone. I can’t remember a single minute.” I huddled into myself, drawing the throw around me tightly. “That’s why I was scared. I woke up and it was like he was there all over again … It was a dream, I guess. Or being in the dark. I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry he hurt you, and that he took the girl’s life,” said Damian. “But I’m glad you killed him.”

“I’ve never been sorry that I killed him,” I said. “But I’ll always regret not being able to save her.”

“I know well that feeling.” He said nothing for a while, his eyes shifting away, his stare turning distant—not coldly, more in a remembering kind of way. “I was married once.”

It had never occurred to me that Damian had been married. Other than the fact he was the loneliest soul I’d ever met, and he tried very hard to stand apart from others, I had started thinking of him as mine. The idea he had belonged to someone else grated on me. It was irrational, but I think we’ve established my lack of logical approach to most things.

“Our marriage was an arrangement. We liked each other. I would even say that we were happy. I am a royal lycan.” His lips turned up in a sarcastic smile. “The crown prince. She was a noble from the Roma, not by blood like I am. The Roma have their own ideas about nobility.” He paused. “Her name was Anna.”

Her name was a soft rush of sound, as if he’d been afraid that by saying her name, he was giving it power. I understood the hold that the dead had over the living. I saw a young girl’s tear-streaked face, her blue eyes wide, her life draining away. I had no doubt that Anna was dead. I couldn’t imagine any female walking away from Damian. He had his own orbit. If you got too close, like I had, then you were pulled in.

“What are Roma?” I asked. The Moon Goddess had mentioned them, too. I supposed I should learn the lycanthrope hierarchy, especially if I was gonna switch species an’ all.

“They are considered cousins of the lycans because they can only shift during the full moon. They are mostly human.”

“And are arranged marriages common between Roma and royals?”

“No. Ours was the only one. Roma are Roma and full-bloods are full-bloods.”

“And royals are royals?”

“Yes. We shared a lycanthrope heritage, but are worlds in apart in every other way. Our populations were dwindling. Infertility was high among our females, and our children were dying very young. I believed that interbreeding with the Roma might save the full-bloods. I was wrong.”

My shields were snapped firmly in place, but I detected the horror in his tone. He felt guilty and responsible, which seemed his driving motivation for all his decisions. His sense of duty was hard-core.