"Truly." Jason buried his face in her shoulder, knowing he had no wish to go on existing without her.

Three hundred years he'd walked the earth, he thought, and only now, as he contemplated a future without her, did he realize the true meaning of loneliness.

Chapter Eight.

He had promised himself he would make love to her only once, and then let her go. But he found it was a promise he could not keep.

Monster that he was, he could not keep from sampling her sweetness again and again, and each time he possessed her only increased his appet.i.te for more.

Holding Leanne in his arms, he wished he could keep the sun from rising in the morning, wished her face, her beautiful green eyes filled with love, could be the last thing he saw before he slept, the first thing he saw upon rising.

He had made love to her as tenderly as ever a man loved a woman. Each moment he had spent in her arms had brought him the most exquisite pleasure he had ever known, and the most excruciating pain.

The l.u.s.t to possess her wholly, as only a vampire could possess a woman, pulsed through him, and only the love he had for her made it possible to keep his accursed blood l.u.s.t at bay, to touch the living warmth of her skin, to kiss and caress her, and not bury his fangs in her neck and alleviate the awful thirst that plagued him.

Still buried deep within her sweetness, he held her close, listening as her breathing returned to normal. She whispered that she loved him and then, her eyelids fluttering down, she fell asleep in his arms.

So young, he thought. So trusting.

He felt his fangs lengthen as he gazed at the pulse throbbing in the hollow of her throat.

One bite, just one. Slowly he bent over her, his tongue stroking her neck, tasting the musky heat of her skin, the salt of her perspiration.

A growl rumbled in his throat. His whole body shook as he fought the need to dip his fangs into her flesh, to swallow a single drop of her blood. A single drop. She need never know that a monster had sipped her sweetness.

Hating himself for his weakness, he bent over her, his teeth gently p.r.i.c.king the tender skin in the side of her neck. Her blood was as warm and sweet as he'd imagined, and he hovered over her, torn by a driving need to take more, to stop fighting what he was and seize what he wanted. She was his for the taking; she would be his for all eternity...

She moaned softly as he bent over her once more, and then she whispered his name.

Filled with self-loathing for what he'd almost taken from her, he drew back, surprised to find that he was weeping.

"Sleep, Leanne," he whispered brokenly. "Dream your young girl's dreams. You're safe from the monster tonight."

Leanne dreamed of darkness, a vast, overpowering darkness. And in the darkness she saw a man with hair as black as ebony and eyes as blue as a midsummer sky. He was dressed all in black. A cloak the color of death billowed out behind him as he walked toward her, as graceful as a panther stalking its prey, but it was his gaze that captured her, mesmerizing, haunting, filled with the pain and suffering of three hundred years.

She should have been afraid of him, afraid of the power in his eyes. Instead, she reached out toward him. Let me help you.

He shook his head, and she saw that he was weeping, and his tears were the color of blood. No one can help me, he said, and the anguish in his voice was more than she could bear.

I'll do anything, she promised. Anything you ask, only let me ease your sorrow.

Anything? he asked.

Anything, she replied, and then he was upon her, wrapping her in the folds of his cloak. His dark eyes blazed with an unholy light as he lowered his head toward her. She closed her eyes as she felt his mouth cover hers in, a searing kiss, and then she felt his teeth at her neck, a sharp pain, a sudden sense of lethargy.

A scream rose in her throat, a scream that brought her awake with a start.

Heart pounding in her breast, she sat up, reaching for Jason, only to find herself alone in the bed. She gazed wildly around the room, but he was nowhere in sight. Through a crack in the drapes, she saw that it was dawn.

She sat there for a long moment, and then, with a hand that trembled, she touched the side of her neck. Was she imagining things, or did she really feel two small puncture wounds? Slipping out of bed, she started for the bathroom, only to stop when she remembered there was no mirror in the bathroom.

There were no mirrors anywhere in the house.

She shook her head vigorously, refusing to even consider the bizarre possibility that came to mind as she climbed back into bed and drew the covers up to her chin.

She was just letting her imagination run wild.

"Just a dream." She spoke the words aloud as she closed her eyes. "Just a dream."

Leanne stared at her reflection in her bedroom mirror, but all she saw were the two small puncture wounds in her neck. For the fifth time in as many minutes, she touched her fingertips to the tiny holes. As before, heat seemed to flow from the wounds and Jason's image danced before her eyes.

She had looked at those marks in the rearview mirror time and again as she drove home. Looked at them and shuddered. Looked at them and tried to find a logical reason for their existence.

Now, still staring into the bedroom mirror, she tried to laugh at the ridiculous image of Jason bending over her, his teeth turning into fangs, biting her neck. She'd been watching too many vampire movies, she thought, had read too many books by Anne Rice and Lori Herter. She was losing her grip on reality. The marks on her neck were probably nothing more menacing than a couple of mosquito bites.

Leaving the bedroom, she went into the kitchen, grabbed a dust rag and began dusting the living room furniture. Her apartment had been sadly neglected since she met Jason Blackthorne...

Jason. He'd been gone when she woke up. A note told her he'd been called to court to testify in a case, but that he'd meet her that night after the show.

She'd never seen him during the day.

She thrust the thought away, plugged in the vacuum, and ran it over the living-room rug.

She put the vacuum away, then changed the sheets on her bed and bundled up her laundry. Carrying it downstairs, she stuffed it into one of the machines, then went back upstairs to fix lunch.

She'd never seen him eat.

Sitting at the table, she cradled her head in her hands. It couldn't be. For all her talk to the contrary, in her heart she didn't really believe in vampires. There had to be a logical explanation for the oddities in his life.

There had to be.

She wondered if he was still in court, and then, because she couldn't wait until after the show to see him, she grabbed her car keys and drove to his house, her laundry forgotten.

She'd left his key under a flowerpot on the front porch. A sudden unease filled her as she unlocked the ma.s.sive front door. Without thinking, she dropped the heavy bra.s.s key into the pocket of her jeans, then stepped into the entry hall. She'd never before noticed how still the house was.

"Jason?"

She tossed her car keys on the small table inside the front door and walked through the house, seeing it all again as if for the first time. The rooms were all dark, the sunlight held at bay by the heavy drapes that covered all the windows. She explored every room, every closet, looking for the door that led to the room where Jason slept during the day.

She shuddered at the thought of seeing him lying in a silk-lined casket, sleeping the dreamless sleep of the undead during the hours of daylight. Unbidden, unwanted, came a rush of images as she recalled every vampire book she had ever read, every horror movie she had ever seen. All had vividly portrayed vampires as the embodiment of evil, preying on unsuspecting mortals. She felt a rush of nausea as she imagined Jason stalking some helpless woman, sinking his fangs into her neck...

She pressed her fingers to the marks in her own neck, shuddering as she imagined Jason biting her, drawing her blood.

With an effort she shook the image from her mind. In the den, she paused before one of the paintings signed J. Blackthorne. Jason had told her an ancestor had painted it. She ran her fingers over the distinctive signature, and then she went into the kitchen and picked up the note Jason had left her that morning.

Returning to the den, she compared the handwriting on the note to the signature on the painting. They were the same.

With growing certainty she continued her search. There was a service porch off the kitchen-and a door-a locked door. She stared at it for a long moment, and then she placed her hand against the wood and knew, without doubt, that Jason was behind the door.

Getting a chair from the kitchen, she sat down to wait.

He felt her presence in the house as soon as he awoke. He'd been aware of her nearness all day, aware of the turmoil in her mind. He knew he could use the power of his mind to put her at ease, to make her forget the questions and suspicions that troubled her. But he could not do such a thing. She deserved the truth, and he would give it to her.

He shrugged the quilt off his shoulders and stood up. His feet felt weighted with lead as he climbed the narrow stairway and unlocked the door.

She would know the truth the minute she saw his face.

Leanne's heart climbed into her throat as she watched the doork.n.o.b turn and the door swing open.

"Jason."

A faintly mocking grin touched his lips as he met her gaze. "Sorry to keep you

waiting so long."

"You know I was here?"

"Of course."

She glanced past him to the darkness beyond the doorway. "What's... what's down there?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"You don't believe me?" He flicked on a light switch. "Perhaps you'd care to see for yourself?"

The thought of going down those stairs filled her with dread, but she had to know, had to see for herself.

Summoning every ounce of courage she possessed, she stepped past Jason and walked slowly down the stairs, wondering, as she did so, if she was making the biggest mistake of her life. What if he followed her? If he was truly a vampire, he wouldn't want anyone to know where he rested during the day.

She paused at the foot of the stairs and looked around, but there was nothing to see, only a patchwork quilt.

And a small mound of earth. She swallowed hard. Wasn't there some kind of vampire edict that made it mandatory for the undead to rest on the soil of their native homeland?

"What were you doing down there so long?" she asked when she returned to the laundry room.

"Sleeping."

There was no emotion in his voice, no inflection of any kind; it was merely a simple statement of fact.

"I thought..."

"You thought to find a coffin." He gave a slight shrug. "I tried sleeping in one once, but I found it..." He paused a moment. "Distasteful."

"How long have you been... been a...?"

"Three hundred years."

It couldn't be true. She glanced around, thinking how bizarre it was to be having such an outlandish conversation in a laundry room. And even as she tried to tell herself she must be dreaming, she knew that everything she had feared was true. She felt it in her heart, saw the truth of it in his eyes.

For the first time, she noticed how pale he was. His skin was drawn tight over the planes of his face, and there was a burning intensity in his eyes as he stared at her throat.

Unconsciously, she lifted a hand to her neck. "How could you keep such a secret?"

"How could I tell you?"

"But... we made love..." She stared at him, the horror of what she'd done making her sick inside. She'd made love to a man who was a ghoul.

The revulsion in her eyes sliced through him, and he cursed the hand of fate that had turned him into a monster, cursed the hunger that clawed at him even now, urging him to drink from. her one more time.

For a moment Jason closed his eyes. Her nearness, her goodness, reached out to him. She shouldn't be here, not now, not when the desire to feed pounded relentlessly through him. The remembered taste of her blood on his lips, warm and sweet, drew a groan from deep in his throat.

She was close, too close. Needing to put some distance between them, he went into the living room. Standing in front of the fireplace, Jason braced one arm on the mantel and stared at the ashes in the hearth. A blink of his eye brought the cold embers to life.

A sigh rose from deep within him. She knew what he was now, knew where he rested during the day, something no mortal but Jolene had ever known before. With that knowledge she held the power to destroy him... but it didn't matter. Losing her would destroy him as nothing else could.

She followed him into the parlor, as he'd known she would, though she stayed on the far side of the room. Foolish girl, he thought, didn't she realize the danger she was in?

Leanne rubbed her fingertips over the two small wounds in her neck. "You did this, didn't you?"

"Yes."

A look of horror filled her eyes. "Am I...?"

"No!" He shoved his hands into his pants pockets, his fists clenching and unclenching as he fought to control the thirst raging through him. "I may be a fiend of the worst kind, but I would never condemn you to a life of darkness."

She touched the wounds in her neck again. "Then why?"

"Last night was to be our last night together." He met her gaze, begging for her understanding, her forgiveness. "I wanted to taste your sweetness just once."