Shapes slowly came into focus. Tall, ominous stone towers. The severe arch of a red bridge. A swelling sea breaking against a jagged rock wall. He staggered back. Guilt flooded him as if he knew what was going to happen but was powerless to stop it. Memories pooled in the recesses of his mind. Oh yes, he’d dreamt this before. Almost every night since Eve had warmed his bed nearly two months ago. Except now the details were crystal clear.
It was 1912. The spicy stench of sulfur and gunpowder wafted through the air. An orange harvest moon peaked high in the sky, casting rays of gold on the horrors reaping in Fort Point’s courtyard below. The Crimson Bay Massacre had blown wide open, with the vampire race refusing to feed. Ruan’s Primus, Lilith, had instructed him to keep watch at the easternmost light tower for therian movement.
He’d been approached by her top guard, a tough sucker with a gnarly slash tearing across his cheek who went by the name of Kane. Kane had ordered Ruan to guard a chamber door in the underground structure of the fort. Told him his order superseded any other, that this was a military mission and he was their khiss’s highest-ranking military official.
Ruan did as he was told. He stood guard for what felt like hours. Until his knees jellied and his eyesight blurred from lack of blood. He wasn’t supposed to be at this post . . . wasn’t supposed to look at what was hidden behind the chamber door. He was a guard following a very specific order. But he’d heard something.
A woman’s voice. Was that . . . chanting?
Opening the heavy iron door a sliver, Ruan peered into the room and gasped. Sitting cross-legged upon a whitewashed stone tablet in the smack-center of the room was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. Long, flowing blonde hair cascaded down the front of her chest like a waterfall. Porcelain white skin. A teasingly thin chemise gown that left little to the imagination. A leather-bound book sat in her lap. Hovering over it was a ball of shimmering white light that expanded and contracted—breathed raw energy.
When her sky blue eyes met his, the orb of energy hissed, then extinguished with a blast of frigid air.
She slammed the book closed and jumped off the tablet. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Ruan nodded, unable to stop his fangs from tingling behind his gums. They picked up the tantalizing fragrance of her blood. She’d taste good. Sugary sweet. Familiar. His throat parched as his feet closed the distance between them of their own volition.
“Do you mind?” She tucked the book under her arm and pursed her lips. “Lilith will kill me if I don’t figure this out.” A grenade exploded somewhere in the fort, rumbling the walls and floor. “And I don’t have much time.”
“For what?” He wasn’t informed what was happening behind the chamber door. But he certainly didn’t expect to find a mundane wielding some sort of magic. He stepped deeper into the chamber, itching to know why Lilith had put this breathtakingly beautiful woman under lock and key.
“I don’t think it’s any of your business.” Her gaze skipped down the black lines of his standard haven uniform, stopping at the gun and knife on his waistband. She took in everything about him, from his steel-toed boots to his black military pants to his long waves of blonde hair. “Shouldn’t you be at your post?”
Her analytical stare stirred something in Ruan’s chest. He wanted more of this warmth flowing through his veins, more of this skipping heartbeat in his chest. He stepped closer still, listening to the sudden rush of blood beneath her perfectly milky skin. It was the most beautiful melody he’d ever heard.
She mirrored his progress, stepping back, protectively clutching the amulet settled into the heart of her neck.
Ruan had seen it before, hadn’t he? That oval cut of onyx. The strong silver chain . . .
He brushed off the feeling as absurd. He’d never seen this woman before . . . he’d have remembered such timeless beauty. And he certainly had never seen the amulet she wore.
She backed away further, her cheeks draining of color.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He resisted the insane urge to comfort her by sweeping a straggling strand of hair over her crown of honey blonde. Something inside him twinged. Like he’d comforted her by stroking her hair a time or two before. But that wasn’t possible. How could he possibly know how to soothe away the worry lines in her angelic face?
She folded her arms, clutching the frayed-edged book in her grasp like he was here to steal it from her. “I’m not stupid. They said someone would come.” She circled the tablet, putting it between them as a barrier. “You have to leave.”
Like a chunk of stone could keep him from her. Not even time could keep him away.
Ruan winced at his own thoughts. Tunneled his fingers through his hair. Not even time could keep him away? Man, he really needed to get a rein on the thoughts running rampant through his mind. He wasn’t making sense.
“Who told you someone would come?”
“Lilith and Kane. They said a man would try . . .” She paused and sighed. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Get back to your post so I can get back to business.” She raised her chin—a gesture too dominant for the softness of her expression.
But he didn’t want to go back to his post. He didn’t want her to stop eyeing him curiously or talking to him in that satin-soft voice of hers. It was a lover’s caress on his ears. He wanted to bask in the soft lilt of her sigh. He needed more. He opened his mouth to say as much, then clamped it shut. He’d known her, what, two minutes? And he was about to jump out of his skin? This was ridiculous.
So was the notion that she could order him around, he realized. He may be required to take orders from Lilith, his Primus, but she was a mundane. A mundane with a secret . . .
“I’ll leave when you tell me what you were doing in here when I came in.”
“Don’t you mean when you barged in without invite?”
“Are you always so cryptic?”
“Are you always so nosy?”
An odd sensation crept up Ruan’s spine. It was the tingling, hair-on-end shiver of déjà vu. There was something so familiar about this woman . . . about this feeling rumbling inside him. He’d met her before, had this same kind of snappy banter with her, but where? When? His heart tugged against his rib cage. He drank in the soft, delicate features of her face. High cheekbones. Sleek, slim jaw that was clenched ever so tightly. Perfectly dainty ears.
“Can I at least have your name?” He said the words without thinking, knowing she wouldn’t answer the question from the moment they flew off his lips.
She hesitated, her attention shifting to the iron door from whence he came. “Eve . . . my name is Eve. Now will you go?”
Eve. It couldn’t be.
Ruan steadied himself as the floor of the fort shook beneath his feet. It took him more than a second to realize it wasn’t the floor shaking at all. It was him. He felt punched in the gut. Hollow. Carved out. His legs little more than twigs supporting the lead weight of his body. He wavered to and fro like a flag in the whipping wind, until he thought he’d swing so heavily to one side that he’d face-plant on the unforgiving stone floor. He closed his eyes. Forced himself to steady.
She’d returned . . .
But she was dead, he reasoned with himself, in spite of the coiling and striking of tension in his gut. He’d killed her nearly a hundred years ago, in the early eighteen-hundreds. On their wedding night. He’d lived every second regretting the decision to drink from her vein during their intimate marriage ceremony. And now she’d come back. How was this possible? Could the gods have forgiven him for the sin he committed against her and returned her soul to earth?
“Eve?” He was around the tablet in a heartflicker, one hand wrapping around her tiny waist, the other ghosting over her hair. She squirmed in his arms, struggled against his hold.
He swallowed down the tears rising hot and fast in his throat. “Eve, is it really y
ou?”
“Let me go,” she gritted between clenched teeth.
“Never again.” He had to breathe deep to make sure his heart hadn’t stopped beating completely. Eve came back. She was here. Her hair was a shade darker than he remembered, and the blue of her eyes was more muted . . . but the more he breathed her in, the more he knew . . . deep down in his gut . . . it was Eve.
“Let me go or I’ll scream.” She clutched the book even more protectively in her arms.
But she didn’t remember him at all . . .
His gaze settled on the luscious curve of her lips. “Nothing will take you from me now. Scream or not, I’ll love you still. I’ll find you after they take you away from here. And you’ll love me as you did before.”
Her eyes widened, though Ruan could’ve sworn it wasn’t out of fear. There was a spark of remembrance there. There had to be. Souls could retain imprints from past lives, couldn’t they? Wouldn’t the intense passion they shared have marked her soul like it marked his?
This time she didn’t shrink away—just eyed him curiously, her own breath catching. “How do I know you?” She gave him her best annoying glare. “You don’t look familiar.”
God, where did he start? There was so much to say. Too much.
The warmth of her body flowed through the space between them, making him hot with desire and dizzy with anticipation. He couldn’t wait to be together again. To finally live after so many years of being dead inside. “I met you a long time ago . . . it’s felt like an eternity . . . every moment that has gone by without you by my side has been pure torture.” The words hiccupped in his throat. “I can’t believe you’ve come back.”
When the silence in the room nearly burst from the pressure, she said, “I don’t understand a word you’re saying. I’ve never met you before. I’m sure of it.”
“And I’m sure you have, though not in this life.” Ruan watched gold strands of hair sweep over her shoulder as she shifted against him. His gaze fell to her heaving chest, to the lush vein pulsing at her neck. His stomach pinched with a hunger pang and he looked away.
Another rumble shook the room, matching the quivering of Ruan’s insides, causing curtains of dust to fall from the ceiling.
“I’m not going to tell you again,” she said with a shiver, the conviction nearly erased from her tone. “Release me.”
Shaking his head, Ruan held his ground.
“The moment I scream, they’ll kill you. You’ll be dead with the snap of a finger.”
“No.” His heart throbbed. He dizzied under its extreme clench. “If I die it will be because I loved you too deeply.”
She blinked slowly. “What did you say?”
“I said I don’t know if my heart can bear this. My love for you is too strong—too overwhelming. My body can’t take it.” She didn’t know him. She didn’t remember. She had to remember. “Eve, love doesn’t die just because the heart stills. It carries over. It carries on. I don’t mean to frighten you . . . it’s just that now that I’ve found you again, I can’t let you go . . .” He paused, not knowing how to continue or how much more to say.
She stilled in his arms, put down the book, her arms coming to rest on his biceps. “No. I mean, what did you say before? Repeat what you said . . . exactly.”
His breathing slowed. Was he breathing at all? He spoke each word carefully. As if the weight of the world rested on his tongue. “I said if I die it will be because I loved you too deeply.”
Electric currents shot between them, sizzling the blood in Ruan’s veins. Eve began to tremble, the lights behind her sapphire and amber eyes sparkling like gems. Something stirred within her, he knew it. “This doesn’t make sense, I know that, but . . .” Hope roared in Ruan’s heart. “I’ve heard that before, haven’t I?”
“Yes.” It was coming back to her. Ruan fought the smile pulling at his mouth. “It was part of your vows to me on our wedding night . . . one hundred years ago.”
“It can’t be . . .”
“You vowed to love me forever.” Ruan closed his eyes and let her marriage vow roll off his tongue. “You said the love we shared was eternal. That it consumed your soul fully . . . your heart couldn’t possibly support the depth and breadth of our love. You said . . .” Ruan opened his eyes and stared into hers, willing her memory to surface. “That if I woke in the morning to find you still and not breathing, you will have died because you loved me too deeply.”
She covered her mouth with her hand. “No, but it can’t—I can’t . . . that can’t be right.”
“Yet deep inside, you know I speak the truth. I may be guilty of many things, Eve . . .” Gods below, if she only knew the guilt he’d borne for a hundred years. “But I’ll never lie to you.”
She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. He staggered back, surprised, and wrapped his arms around her middle as tight as he could without breaking her in two. God, she smelled good. Like coming home after being cast away in a foreign land for far too long.
“I’m so confused,” she said, her voice strangled with tears. “What you’re saying can’t be true, yet I can’t help feeling that I really have spoken those words before. I’ve spoken them to you, but I don’t even know who you are.”
“I’m Ruan . . . your best friend. Your lover.” He paused, stroking feather-light hands over her hair and down her back. He whispered into her ear, ever so gently, “I’m your husband, Eve. Your soul mate. And now we can finally be together the way we were meant to be.”
“But Lilith said I’m meant to be here . . . with her.” Her attention shifted to the leather-bound book on the tablet between them. “Reading through this.”
“What is it?”
“It’s the Grimorium Verum. It holds the prophecies for your race.”
He knew the tome she spoke of, but it was rumored to have been destroyed. Why would Lilith demand Eve, a mundane with no connection to their haven or their khiss, sift through their most sacred records? “Where do you fit into all this, Eve? What have you gotten yourself into?” He skated tender hands over her shoulders.
She stared at the amulet lying still on her neck. His gaze followed. “I have my own role to play in all of this. I’m supposed to help your elders pass to the Ever After.”
Now it was Ruan who was confused. “You’re mentioned in the Grimorium’s pages? Have you seen for yourself?” Surely, this was Lilith’s twisted way of manipulating someone to do her tedious work for her. Translating Valcish couldn’t have been an easy feat. He wondered how long it took Lilith to teach Eve their long-lost language. And how long it would take to translate every word in the tome.
“Yes. My role is written in red and white.” Eve’s heart pounded so strongly against him, it could’ve been his own. Her fingers, lusciously soft as they brushed against his cheek, caused his hands to quake and his knees to weaken. His body responded to her warmth by shooting adrenaline to his core and lightning rods to his lap.
“What else have you read?” Ruan forced out, trying not to focus on the need scorching through his body. “Am I mentioned too? Is my path as clear?”
As if the same need were building in her too, Eve shifted against his hip, then lifted her eyes to his. “I’ve only skimmed the surface of the tome. But if you believe that I belong at your side then I’m sure your path was foreseen, and documented, at some point.”
“And what do you believe? Where do you belong?”
She stretched up on tiptoe and kissed him—the sweetest answer he’d ever received. Her tongue darted into his mouth then out again. He moaned as his stomach somersaulted. She pulled back as if her abruptness startled her too.
Blood in Ruan’s veins drained to his toes. Passion shattered his heart into a thousand jagged pieces that tore through his chest. Sighing, his lips found hers again.
She wrapped her arms around him tight, her body a perfe
ct fit in his embrace.
As her tongue dipped into his mouth, curling along his with increasingly passionate strokes, the fire smoldering in Ruan’s middle erupted. He spun around, perched Eve on the edge of the stone tablet. He skimmed his hands over her hair, her cheeks, all the while studying the intimate details of her mouth and lips with his own.
He’d waited a hundred years for this. He’d painted this scene a thousand times in his head, in his dreams.
“You are more beautiful than I remember,” he mouthed against her lips. “Infinitely so.”
Eve breathed into him, her body pressing against his, melting like wax off a candle. Hands moving fast, Ruan slid the straps of her gown down her shoulders, revealing the most heavenly soft skin. He smudged a line of kisses along her jaw, down her neck to her collarbone, then snapped his gaze up to hers when a bolt of bloodlust fired through his veins.
Fingers tunneling through his hair, Eve dragged his mouth down to her bare chest and arched back.
He kneaded her breast, feeling her heart pound beneath his hand, and suckled her other nipple into his mouth. She was here. She’d returned. His love. His wife. His soul mate. His heart erupted with pure white heat. Love.
Eve whimpered in response, her body arching back until she was lying flat on the tablet, stretched out before him.
He parted her thighs, feeling the gulf between their bodies close with a connection that reached through time. It was beyond lust. Beyond love. He ran a sweeping finger along her center and found her beautifully bare. She moaned, her mouth gaping open.
A sharp spike of lust rammed through his shaft, shattering what was left of his restraint.
One hand skating small circles over her slick heat, another palming the flat span of her stomach, Ruan growled and raised up to find her lips again. Her mouth was supple. Open. Inviting. His tongue swept in and out in unison with his fingers in her core. She arched up, her body releasing a naturally drugging scent with each rise and fall of her hips. It was the sweet, hypnotic fragrance he’d associated with her. Only her.
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