The wooden floor and high ceiling of the old church did acoustic wonders for his voice. It echoed all around her, caressing from all sides, even though he spoke in an intimate growl. Holly felt the reverberations down to her toes.
“You can’t be here.” It sounded childish and she was reminded once again of being young and afraid of the dark. She was also struck by how vital he looked surrounded by the cold decorations. Candlelight flickered in his pale, blue eyes. They shimmered with a molten silver flash as he winked.
“Darlin’, there’s no place I’d rather be than here with you.”
“It’s a church…or it was a church,” she protested.
Dillon laughed and goose bumps rose on her arms for the second time that night. His laugh was a lover’s laugh, soft and intimate and knowing. He saw past the question and into her heart and his eyes twinkled with merriment at the doubts they uncovered there.
“Churches? I like churches. They have wine, women and song. What more could a fella want? Besides, if you can be here why did you think I couldn’t? We’re the same, love. The same.”
She jumped when he reached to pluck a rosebud from the centerpiece on the table. It was identical to the rose she couldn’t bring herself to touch. She let her hand fall down to her side and this time he noted her movement with a raised brow as he brought the dark red flower to his nose. He inhaled as she froze and held her breath. She had almost breathed in unison with him, but had stopped herself just in time.
Dillon’s lips tilted in another secret smile.
“And where is your gunslinger tonight?” He didn’t ask because he needed an answer. He asked to point out the vacant spot by her side.
“Not far.” Holly’s spine stiffened.
“Worlds away, darlin’. Worlds away.”
Dillon trailed the rosebud along the ivory top of the tablecloth as he slowly moved to narrow the divide between them. She couldn’t look away from the delicate crimson petals tickling over the starched white linen. It was as if she was hypnotized by the contrast, blood red on white, and she forgot to move to keep distance between them.
When she did look up from the rose in his hand, only the width of the table separated their faces. His knowing eyes were only three feet away. Emotions swirled and burned beneath the humor. Again, he was offset by their surroundings. While the flowers waited, cool and aloof and untouchable, Dillon was here and now and hers to touch if only she would.
Holly breathed. She had grown lightheaded as she forgot to take in air. The crisp scent of pine joined with the heady scent of the rose now growing warm in his hand.
He looked none the worse for wear. His new shirt was a dark, rich red like the flower in his fingers. It was a loose, button-up crinkle of satin and the glimpses of pale, muscular chest she caught as he moved looked perfect. There was no trace of a wound. His long legs were hugged by shiny black leather that sat low on lean hips. His boots gleamed. Winters had almost killed him, but the episode in the graveyard seemed as if it had never been.
He had been lying on the ground, helpless, and she had stepped between him and the blade. Now, he stalked and teased and noted her despair.
“Whether I’m with Winters or not doesn’t have anything to do with you.” She grasped at reason, at anything that would keep him away.
“Doesn’t it?” Dillon’s smile gentled. “You’re pretending at being human with him. You’re holding on to the past instead of embracing the future.”
“I’m still Holly,” she insisted.
“Of course, you are…and more. But to him, you’ll always be something he thinks he should kill.” He lifted the rose from the tablecloth and teased it across his lips. Again, she was nearly hypnotized by the contrast of its silky petals against his firm, pale skin.
“You did this,” she reminded him and herself before she became lost in the rose kiss.
He actually flinched. Holly saw his fingers tighten on the rosebud and his lips tightened as well.
“Yes, I did. I made you and the queen made me. We can’t change the past.” His tension eased back into persuasion. “We can only enjoy the future.”
Holly looked around at the room full of flowers. Was this what it came down to? Was there no other choice, no other way? On one side was a warm human existence she could never be a part of again and on the other side was Dillon.
If she took two steps she could be in his arms. He would hold her tightly and never let her go. She saw forever in his eyes and, surprisingly, it warmed her. Had the rejection she’d suffered made her sink so low? The room was still cool, but her cheeks flushed. Did he know she was tempted and torn between what she wanted and what could be?
“Did you know, I dream of sunrise? Bird song, rooster crow, the thunder of a herd on its way to the river, a saddle creaking beneath me. We didn’t choose this life. The queen chose it for us. I didn’t choose it, but I’ve thrived. I’ve survived. I’ve lived and you can too.” As if he sensed her weakness, he rushed to take advantage of it.
“You’re dead,” Holly argued.
“Not anymore. There were times when I…faded. Times I hardly remember.” The rose drooped in his fingers as his eyes hazed, lost in thought.
“When you made me?”
“No, darlin’.” His eyes refocused and his gaze locked with hers. “I can’t claim to forget that. I remember every gasp, every sigh, every drop.” Again, Holly’s cheeks burned.
“Then, what are you saying? You’re not an innocent pawn. You’ve done evil things—”
“And enjoyed them,” he interrupted. He took a deep breath, a sigh that lifted his shoulders and she thought she glimpsed wicked memories in his eyes.
“And that’s supposed to make me feel for you? Make me want to be like you?” His eyes lost their twinkle. He was serious, passionately serious about this moment as he sought to woo her and win her over to his side.
“You are like me. You and me…we’re vampires. It’s not something you can fight or change.” She wanted to look away. When they twinkled, his eyes held her. As pools of seductive persuasion, she found them impossible to ignore.
“You’re wrong. I have fought it.” Holly held on to her hard-won victories, few and far between as they might be. Dillon nodded his head, sadly.
“And you’re hurting, hungry, tired. Your whole body aches with it.” She had no doubt he felt her pain. Their bodies were so in tune. She had no secrets from him. Her soul was laid bare.
“I—”
“You want to sink down into someone’s arms at the end of a long night.” He wouldn’t allow her to prevaricate. He spoke before she could even begin to argue. As he spoke, he held her gaze with his and moved around the table. “You want to wash away the pain and hurt and ugliness of the world.” He was coming closer, too close, but she no longer saw anything to gain by moving away. “You want to feel and forget and love again.” How could you run from temptation if it lived in your own heart? “I can give you all of that.” He was on her side of the table now. He moved between her and it and he filled her vision, blanking out the roses and the dancing flames. “I can bring you pleasure and peace.” His words had left her raw and exposed, but she tried to argue.
“I’m not a monster.”
“You’re beautiful.”
He believed it. Holly saw herself reflected in his eyes and she didn’t cringe away when his hand smoothed over her hair in a light caress.
“I don’t want this.” Her voice broke as if it couldn’t speak what felt like a lie on her tongue.
“You’ve never wanted anything more.” His other hand came up and with it the scent of roses. He teased the bud across her cheek and down to her neck where a certain tender spot flared to life as if in recognition of his touch.
“Winters…” It was a protest, but it was also a reminder, a reminder for her own ears that the man filling her senses and her world at this vulnerable moment was not the man she truly wanted.
“He will never love you the way I can love you. H
e’ll always have doubt and guilt and what ifs swirling through his head. The only thing in my head is you,” he said it so quietly, so lightly, without a hint of laughter in his voice.
Holly lifted her hands and she was almost surprised when they didn’t move to push him away. Instead, they rested lightly on his chest. His shirt slid beneath her fingers and the satin was warmer than his skin, but as he pressed her close, heat rose where their bodies made contact. It was warm and right and inevitable.
His breath was on the side of her face and it quickened when she moved her hands to hold on to his shoulders. He leaned over her, but it didn’t seem as if he tried to overwhelm. This time, she had a choice. This time, he waited even as his body and his eyes and his touch naturally seduced.
It was wrong. All this time, she’d been swearing to Winters she wouldn’t give in to the beast. But Winters didn’t care. Wouldn’t care. Would never care. And Dillon did. He saw the darkest parts of her and wanted her anyway. He read her like a book from her head to her toes and he wanted her anyway.
He mmmmed low in his chest and nuzzled his face into her hair. Holly felt the sound against her breasts. She shouldn’t want to hold him. It shouldn’t feel good to be held by him. But. It. Did. So good it was nigh unto perfect.
Nigh? Unto?
Holly’s brain sputtered and coughed against the unfamiliar words. She wasn’t in a trance. She wasn’t under Dillon’s control, but she wasn’t exactly one hundred percent at the top of her game either. Her heartbeat and her breathing synchronized with his when he was around. What if her reasoning was affected as well?
Holly tried to pull back, but Dillon tightened his hold. He knew. He had a hundred years experience on her. He had probably known before she had that this was not going to go down this way. He had known she was going to fight before she knew it herself.
“Don’t.”
She didn’t know who said it, her or him. It sounded too plaintive to have come from her Maker. Too heartfelt. Too raw. He was practiced and polished and the perfect monster…wasn’t he?
She looked up at him. The shifting light from the candles played over his face. In the flicker of dancing shadows, his eyes were haunted and hungry, his angular jaw was tense, his lips slightly open as if he prepared to speak. He didn’t look like a vampire. He looked like a man on a precipice, a man whose feet stood upon a ledge. She just didn’t know if she was the drop or the lifeline.
In that moment, she thought she saw the real Dillon and for one long, aching second she thought the real Dillon might have been a man she could have loved…if she’d never met Jarvis Winters. The hunter’s brown eyes kept her from completely losing herself in her Maker’s blue ones.
Then, Dillon changed. He narrowed his eyes and his body tensed. He tightened his hands into fists. Her heart skipped several beats and she gasped at the sudden pinching pain. She didn’t know if it was a trick of candlelight or a misperception caused by the dizzy-making irregularity of her heartbeat, but his eyes lightened, perceptibly going from sun-kissed sky blue to a glittering glacial ice.
And yet, he smiled and the skin around his mouth still crinkled. He held her and his thumbs still traced lazy patterns on her back. He looked into her eyes and his gaze still called to her. The seductive, persuasive cowboy from moments before wasn’t gone, but he was…different.
“You belong to me.” Every word held a hint of the deep, deep South. He no longer sounded like John Wayne getting ready to croon Nine Inch Nails. He sounded like…mint juleps and Confederate gray.
Holly knew it came from the queen. Somehow she knew. She was in Dillon’s arms and he was completely aware. He was enjoying every moment of holding her. If certain parts of his anatomy were any indication, he was enjoying it too much, but he had…faded. Just as he said he sometimes did.
For the first time since the flare of the match had brought Dillon to her attention, Holly realized she was very, very afraid. Before, she had feared that she would give in to her own desires. She had been afraid of Dillon because of the temptation he represented. Now, she knew, it didn’t matter what she decided to do.
She was lost.
The vampire who held her was still Dillon, but he wasn’t tempered one little bit by the man he had once been. The other vampire he called his queen had taken away every last vestige of his humanity and Holly was left with the result. He was a full-on ravening vampire who had been rejected. He was amused by her puny resistance, but he didn’t intend to stand for it any longer.
Somewhere, out in the night, was a vampire more powerful than her Maker and that vampire was now using Dillon like a weapon.
It was Dillon’s hands that held her and his body that caused a primitive thrill to race from her neck to her thighs. She hoped the thrill was simple fight-or-flight instinct pouring adrenaline into her veins. She was afraid that the vampire in her didn’t want to fight or flee.
Dillon closed his eyes in anticipation. Her own were wide open and filled to the brim with salty emotion. Could she actually regret not giving in before the queen interfered? What did that say about how far she had fallen? She actually pined for what might have been if she had joined with Dillon willingly, passionately and without remorse. That, more than his descending mouth, made her struggle.
His laugh was familiar, but not. It held shades of otherness she didn’t want to decipher. When his face nuzzled into her neck, it was Dillon’s familiar mouth that opened on her skin. It was his teeth that gently pierced her skin. It was his hands that held her while he drank and his moan that rumbled in his chest.
Holly fought the swoon and the pleasure that came with the pain. Dillon took what she couldn’t afford to give even as she held back the one thing he wanted above all else.
Tomorrow, in this room, there would be champagne and wedding cake and laughter. Tonight, there was only this cold, cold finality. In the middle of flowers she hadn’t felt worthy to pick, Holly slipped from Dillon’s arms. The wooden floor should have felt cold. It didn’t.
“Forever.”
The promise was uttered in a whisky-kissed drawl. She thought she felt Dillon’s lips on her forehead, too hot, strangely hot, before he pressed the forgotten rosebud into her hand. She closed her fingers over it tightly, as if it was something vital to hold onto, as if holding onto it would save her.
“Forever.”
Alone, surrounded by cold, dying flowers, the word was ominous and held no comfort for her. She didn’t want this forever… If forever meant fear and weakness then she’d like to stop forever right now and get off. She wouldn’t let Dillon or his queen steal her last hold on humanity.
She was Holly. And that was forever.
Chapter Sixteen
There was something uniquely depressing about sitting on a motel bed alone, watching a cable news channel at two a.m. Jarvis had showered. Damn strawberries. The forty-degree temperature of the cold water spray hadn’t done one bit of good once the scent of her shampoo hit him. Even the harsh scent of the cheap, miniature hotel soap he’d unwrapped in a desperate attempt to counteract hadn’t been able to fight the fruit. Of course, he had opened the new bottle and held it under his nose like a fine wine that needed to breathe.
Icicles were forming on unmentionable parts, and the cheap soap was burning his eyes, and he was still tasting strawberry-scented kisses when he gave up and toweled off.
She hadn’t come back.
He hadn’t gone after her.
Winters flipped channels. Someone making lampshades out of moss and seashells or someone selling virtually goldish earrings or a rerun of a crime drama that was so gruesome it could probably give Jack the Ripper exciting new ideas… All were as depressing as cable news.
Winters flicked off the set.
Holly’s lips had warmed against his. She had started to burn. The physical change as her skin became heated from contact with his had been dizzying. It went to a guy’s head. Knowing he could give the heat to her. Knowing they generated that kind of spark together.<
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Then, there had been the other, darker result of their kissing.
Holly was hungry. She needed blood.
He wasn’t that far gone. He’d put a stop to it. Maybe a little bit more forcefully than was warranted, simply because he hadn’t wanted to stop. He was angry with her, but he was angrier with himself. For starting something he couldn’t follow through.
He had known what he was doing.
How could he deny it? He was an experienced vampire hunter. He knew what vampires did. And even though Holly wasn’t your average run-of-the-mill vampire she was a vampire. She had even warned him off. Don’t tempt me again. And he’d gone there anyway. Part of him wanted to do whatever it took to erase Dillon’s memory.
Okay, so yeah, he was a vampire hunter, but he was also a man. He burned with anger every time he thought of her in Dillon’s arms. When she’d actually come to the beast’s rescue, it had taken the burning anger up a notch into full-on jealousy. That hadn’t been pretty. He wasn’t proud of it. He was definitely not proud of how he had hurt Holly.
It hadn’t been fair to act horrified when she tried to take what he had pressed right beneath her nose. He’d seen her wrangle the hunger. He’d seen her maintain control again and again and again, but he had known what he could do to her. And he had done it. And part of him actually gloried in the idea that he could make her lose control.
Talk about playing with fire.
His hand went up to the tender spot on his chest. He didn’t like that his fingers trembled, but they did. Other, more intimate, reactions troubled him as well.
He was so not in Kansas anymore.
More like he was on a decadent pathway to paradise if he’d only enjoy the stroll.
He could still feel her hot mouth and the slide of her even hotter tongue.
A thump interrupted a dark fantasy he was never going to admit to having.
Winters went for his blade and came up facing the door. Slowly, he moved to stand in front of it. There was a hush now, a too-quiet absence of sound that seemed ominous. It wasn’t your normal dead-of-night silence. He closed one eye and leaned to look out the tiny hole in the middle of the door intended to give guests the ability to gauge whether or not to open the door. The view he got of the night outside did little to dispel his uneasiness. There was nothing there…if you trusted the view you got from a smudged peep hole with distorted glass that bent reality in unusual ways.
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