He didn’t like the sound of that and found himself skimming his gaze through the surrounding area, searching for any threat that might be lurking nearby. But as usual, even the insects were quiet, perhaps sensing he and Victoria were more than human and thereby dangerous.

“I want to know how you can be hurt.” That way, he, too, could learn to protect her from harm.

She backed away from him to lean against a tree trunk. “Telling anyone of a vampire’s weakness is punishable by death, for both the vampire who tells and the one she confides in. That is why my mother was left in Romania. She spilled our secrets to a human and is now locked away until my father decides how best to slay her.” There at the end, her voice trembled.

“I’m sorry about your mom. I don’t want anything like that to happen to you, so please don’t tell me.” He didn’t fear for himself, but for her. He’d find out some other way. Through Riley, maybe. They had their moments of civility.

Strangely enough, his companions didn’t react to her pronouncement. They’d been silent since he’d woken up in this new present, actually. Yes, they normally remained silent after a trip into the past, but not for long. By now, they should have been back to their normal selves.

He could feel them, so he knew they were in there. Why weren’t they talking?

Victoria peered down at her feet. The slipper shoes were gone, exposing her black-painted toenails. Black. Huh. She enjoyed colors; he remembered her wistful smile while she’d gazed around Mary Ann’s home. He wondered if colored polish was against vampire rules. If so, had she gotten in trouble for dyeing sections of her hair blue?

“I didn’t tell you the punishment for sharing vampire secrets to scare you,” she said, “only to warn you what can happen to us if you tell anyone else. Even Mary Ann.”

“Seriously. You don’t have to tell me.”

“I want to.” Deep breath in, out. “Vampires are vulnerable in our eyes and inside our ears,” her hand moved to each place as she spoke, “two places our hardened skin cannot protect.” Now she held out that hand to him. “Let me see one of your daggers.”

“No way. I don’t want a demonstration.”

A laugh bubbled from her. “Silly human. I’m not going to poke out one of my own eyes.”

Then what was she going to do? His arm was shaky as he handed her the blade.

“Watch.” Gaze never leaving his, she raised the weapon and struck herself in the chest.

“No!” he shouted, grabbing for her wrist and jerking it back. He was too late, and he expected to see blood. All he saw was a torn T-shirt. The skin underneath bore not a scratch. Didn’t matter to his nervous system, though. His heart was racing uncontrollably, and sweat was beading on his skin. “Don’t ever do that again, Victoria. I’m serious.”

Another of her carefree laughs drifted between them. “You are sweet. But there can be no stake through the heart for one such as me, so worry not. A blade such as this is nothing to me.” She held it up and he saw that the middle was bent. “To kill us, though, to burn through our skin and reach our sensitive organs, all an enemy needs is this.” She dropped the knife and lifted her hand, the opal ring she always wore glinting.

Keeping her palm flat, she slid her thumb over the jewel, pushing the opal over the gold and revealing a small tumbler filled with a thick, bright blue paste.

“Je la nune,” she said. “This is…well, I guess the best way to describe it is to say that it is fire dipped in acid then wrapped in poison and sprinkled with radiation. Never touch it.”

The warning was unnecessary. He’d already backed up a step. “So why do you carry it around?”

“Not all vampires follow my father. There are rebels out there who would love nothing more than to hurt me. This way, I can hurt them.”

“If it’s so corrosive, how does the ring hold it?”

“Just as there are fire-resistant safes for human valuables, there are je la nune resistant metals. Not many, but a few. My nails are painted with one of those melted metals to keep them from burning off.”

She dipped a long, square-shaped nail into it, closed it, then raised her other arm and slashed her wrist. Flesh sizzled and blood instantly sprang free, trickling down her arm. She was grimacing, pressing her lips together to silence her moans.

“Why did you do that?” he snapped. “I told you I didn’t need a demonstration.”

A moment passed before she was able to speak, panting as she was. “I wanted you to see. To understand its power.”

He wrapped his fingers around her wrist, holding her arm steady for her. “Will you heal?”

“Yes.”

He could still hear the pain in her voice. The skin remained broken and torn, the blood still leaking. That blood was redder than any he’d ever seen, brighter, with what looked to be tiny little crystals that caught the fading sunlight and sparkled. “When?”

“Soon.” Her eyes closed—but not before he’d seen her gaze stray once more to the pulse hammering in his neck. Her teeth clenched together, sharpened.

Still she continued to bleed, to pant. Why would—Realization hit and he scowled. She’d never planned to tell him. Would have just suffered until they separated. “You’ll heal when you drink, won’t you?”

She nodded, lids slowly opening, gaze finding his, locking. A shuddering gasp left her. The force of her hunger was like a living thing between them. Thankfully, her resistance was crumbling; he knew it was. Finally.

He released her arm to cup her cheeks. “Drink from me, then. Please. I want you to.”

Those sharpened teeth sank into her lower lip. “Don’t worry. I can feed later tonight. I’ll be fine.”

“I want to be the one to help you. To heal you the way you healed my lip that night.”

Her hands tangled in his hair, her expression tortured. “What if you hate me for feeding from you? What if I disgust you? What if I become addicted to your blood and try to take from you every day?”

Oh, yes. She was crumbling. He leaned down, slowly, so slowly she could stop him at any moment, and pressed his lips against hers. “I could never hate you. You could never disgust me. And I’d love to see you every day. I’ve told you that already.”

Her lashes, so impossibly long, fused together as her lids dropped to half-mast. “Aden,” she breathed, and then kissed him. Her beautiful lips parted and her tongue flicked out. He opened his mouth, welcoming her inside, then met her tongue with his own.

She tasted of the honeysuckle she smelled like, sweet and floral. Her arms wound around him, holding him close. It was a strong grip, bruising, and he loved it. His hands slid into her hair, one gripping, the other angling her for deeper contact. His first kiss, and it was with the girl he’d dreamed about, wanted for so long, would perhaps want forever.

It was everything he’d craved, yet so much more. She was so soft against him, soft where he was hard, the little moans in the back of her throat so sweet. The rest of the world faded until only she mattered. Until she became his world, his anchor in this increasingly wild storm.

Everything Elijah had predicted was coming true. First his meeting with Victoria, then this soul-shattering kiss. He knew what would follow, was expecting it, but nothing could have prepared him for the wondrous moment when she pulled from his lips, lowered her head to his neck and sank her teeth deep. There was a sharp sting, but it was fleeting, an intoxicating warmth soon replacing it, as if she were pumping drugs straight into his vein while she drank from him.

“I’m fine,” he told her, in case she worried. He didn’t want her to stop. Even when dizziness swirled in his mind, his body becoming weightless, he didn’t want her to stop. He stroked her hair, urging her to continue.

Her hands tangled in his hair, massaging his scalp. Her tongue pushed against his flesh, urging the blood to flow straight into her mouth. Distantly, he could hear her swallowing. Finally, though, she pulled back, panting.

He moaned at the loss of her. “You shouldn’t have feared that,” he said. Had he gotten drunk and walked into a tunnel? His words were slurred and he sounded far away. “I loved it. Didn’t think you were an animal at all, promise.”

“Aden?” she said, horror in her tone. It was the last thing he heard before his knees gave out and he collapsed onto the ground.

SIXTEEN

MARY ANN PICKED at her dinner, Chinese takeout her dad had brought home. He’d only been home for half an hour, and Riley had stayed with her until the very last second possible, having returned after he’d escorted Victoria to their home. She’d wanted to invite him to eat with them, to introduce him to her dad, but she had let him change into his wolf form and jump out her window because she wasn’t sure her dad was ready for him. Her dad would have thought the study session had been nothing more than a make-out session.

But she missed Riley already. His intensity, his protectiveness. She valued his opinion and needed a sounding board for what she was considering. She could wait and try to sneak her father’s files as Aden had suggested—something she hated doing only because it involved stealing from her dad, her best friend, the man who loved her more than anything and never did things like that to her—or she could ask her father directly, something that could cause him to hide the files Aden wanted just to keep her away from them.

One was unethical, one was just plain risky.

So which path should she take?

The others considered her a bit of a goody-goody, she suspected, but her dad’s well-being was just as important to her as Aden’s. There had to be a way to please them both.

“Not hungry?” He scooped a small mountain of noodles onto his plate. “I thought orange chicken and beef lo mein could tempt you even if you were full of junk.”

Sighing, she pushed her plate away. “I’m just…preoccupied.”

His fork paused midair, noodles dangling from the prongs. “Anything you want to talk about?”