"From what?" "From the worst of me." She gave a slow shake of her head. "I was never afraid of you, Andre. I'm still not afraid." "You damn well should be ... Frau Roth." He bared his fangs and pinned her in the amber glow of his transformed eyes--one brief moment's warning, enough for her to back away from him or hit him or scream. She couldn't know how hard it was for him to give her even that much. He moved closer to her, crowding her with his body, even as he told himself he still had honor, that the fire living inside him hadn't yet burned away all of his humanity. But that was a lie. He felt the bleak hollowness of that hope crumble the instant his fangs bit into the tender flesh of Claire's throat. She gasped. Her hands came up between the hard press of his body against hers, her palms flattened across his sternum. He felt her sudden tension, her jolt of shock and adrenaline as he caged her in his arms and drew the first taste of her warm, rich blood into his mouth. At first, he fed with mindless hunger. Gulp after gulp, driven by the primal need for nourishment. But through the haze of his blood- fevered mind, as he drank from Claire's vein, he began to feel something... else. Her blood scent swamped him, filling his head like the sweetest intoxication. The rapid beat of her pulse against his tongue now blossomed into a visceral pound that echoed in his own blood. Possession rose within him, dark and dangerous. He held her fast in his bite, savoring the taste of her as his body went rigid with the need to claim her in a more carnal way, as well. He felt her fingers digging into his back as he drank from her, breath rasping in soft, shallow pants against his ear. His senses filled with her.
A low, humming power flowed into him, power he felt roaring through his cells and into every fiber of his body. Deeper still, into the fabric of his soul, the core of his entire being. Claire was the first, the only Breedmate he'd ever drunk from, and now there could be no other for him so long as she lived. All that was Breed in him came alive as though he'd been asleep all his life and now overflowed with a profound awareness of this female--now and forever. An eternal stamp, a bond of blood. A connection to her that he could not undo except by death, hers or his own. "Andreas." Claire's soft cry of distress tore through him like a knife. Horrified at what he'd just done to her--to both of them--he sealed her wound with a quick sweep of his tongue and reeled back on his heels. Her cheeks were flushed dark rose, her breath sawing through her parted lips as she stared at him in abject shock. Reichen felt her dread like his own. Every intense emotion she felt from now on would be his, as well. "Andre," she whispered, lifting her hand up to touch his healing bite. Her face was twisted with a miserable sort of confusion. "Oh, my God...What have you done?" He took a step backward, leveled by shame. Claire belonged to another male. Not him.
She had given herself to Roth, whether Reichen liked it or not. She was already blood bonded, as Roth was blood bonded to her. Now, with this unconscionable breach of that sacrament, Reichen had imposed himself on that bond. In drinking from Claire, he had irrevocably linked himself to her. He would be drawn to her always. Aware of her always. It was the most sacred gift a Breedmate could give one of his kind, and he had taken it from her--stolen it--in an act of pure selfish need. "Forgive me, Claire," he murmured. Sick with himself for how deeply he wanted her, with or without the drumming intensity of a blood bond, he drew farther away from her. He drifted backward, inching toward the door. "Ah, Christ... Please, forgive me."
Chapter Nine
Andreas, wait." He didn't wait. No, he wouldn't even look at her. Spinning around, he was at the door faster than her human eyes could follow the motion. He threw the door open to the cold night. Stepped onto the concrete stoop outside. "Andre..." The brief glance he cast at her over his shoulder was feral and hot. His fangs gleamed stark white, frighteningly large. Claire could still feel their sharp points at the tender spot on her neck. If she lived a hundred more years, she didn't think she would ever forget the shocking, sensual pain of his bite. Or the pleasure. God, the searing, wondrous rush of pleasure to feel Andreas suckling from her vein. It had damned them both in an instant. She knew it, and so did he; the truth of it had been written across the taut lines of his face, and was now, in the tormented glow of his gaze as he paused to stare at her under the light of the streetlamps. She was not his to claim. Claire had to remind herself of that fact when her legs started to move instinctively toward him. She belonged to another by blood and vow, if not by love.
Another who would have felt the emotional spike in Claire's body as if it were his own. According to Breed law, there was no greater sin than to betray the sacrament of the blood bond. But as Andreas wheeled around and leapt off the stoop, and Claire ran to the door only in time to see him disappear into the night, she knew a far worse sin. The sin of having given herself to someone as his blood-bonded mate while her heart still yearned for another. Thirty years ago, she had been a young woman barely into her twenties--naive about so many things, not the least of which was the existence of another race of beings that thrived on blood and darkness, incredible beings that were somehow human ... yet far from it. She had been a student abroad on her own for the first time when she was assaulted by a vampire in this very district of Hamburg. She'd been spared from the bite by another like him, not a crude beast who lunged at her from the shadows but a tall, golden, sophisticated gentleman named Wilhelm Roth. He took her into his home--his Darkhaven, as she would learn it was called--and offered her his protection while she was in the city. Claire had liked Wilhelm Roth and his mate, a timid young woman named Ilsa who bore the same odd birthmark on her ankle as Claire had on the side of her neck. Claire learned a lot in those first few weeks of living among the Breed as Wilhelm Roth's ward, including the fact that it was entirely possible for her to fall in love with one of their kind, which is exactly what happened once she met Andreas Reichen. After four months together, she'd been devastated when Andreas had abruptly vanished from her life.