Rio nodded soberly. "It's a rare birthmark. Maybe one in half a million human females are born with it, probably less. Women bearing the mark - women like you, Dylan - are very special. It means that you are a Breedmate. Women like you have certain...gifts. Abilities that separate you from other people."
"What kind of gifts and abilities?" she asked, not even sure she wanted to have this conversation.
"Extrasensory skills, primarily. Everyone is different, with different levels of capabilities. Some can see the future or the past. Some can hold an object and read its history. Others can summon storms or command the will of living things around them. Some heal with a simple touch. Some can kill with just a thought."
"That's ridiculous," she scoffed. "Nobody has those kinds of abilities outside of tabloid magazines and science fiction."
He grunted, his mouth lifting at the corner. He was studying her too closely, trying to peel her apart with that penetrating topaz gaze. "I'm certain that you have a special skill too. What is yours, Dylan Alexander?"
"You can't be serious." She shook her head and gave a dismissive roll of her eyes.
But all the while she was thinking about the one thing that had always made her different. Her unreliable, inexplicable link to the dead. It wasn't the same thing as what he was describing, though. It was something else completely.
Wasn't it...?
"You don't have to confide in me," he said. "Just know that there is a reason you are not like other women. Maybe you feel that you don't fit in with the world at large. Many women like you are more sensitive than the rest of the human population. You see things differently, feel things differently. There is a reason for all of that, Dylan."
How could he know? How could he understand so much about her? Dylan didn't want to believe anything he was saying. She didn't want to believe that she was part of anything he was describing, yet he seemed to understand her more intimately than anyone ever had.
"Breedmates are uniquely gifted," Rio said when she could only look at him in incredulous silence. "But the most extraordinary gift possessed by each is the ability to create life with those of my kind."
Jesus. There it was again - the deliberate reference to his kind . And now he was talking about sex and breeding?
Dylan stared at him, reminded swiftly and vividly of just how easily he'd been able to pin her beneath his powerful, fully aroused body in that hotel in Prague. It didn't take much to recall the heat of all that muscle pressed against her, though why the thought should make her heart beat faster, breath come harder, she really didn't want to know.
Was he setting her up here for a repeat performance? Or did he actually think she was gullible enough to be seduced into believing any of this stuff about being different, about belonging to some mysterious other world she knew nothing about until now?
And why should she believe it? Because of that tiny birthmark on the back of her neck?
One that still felt kind of warm and electric against her palm. She brought her hand down and tucked her arms around herself.
Rio tracked her movements with his keen, too-sharp gaze. "I think you've noticed that I'm not quite like other men either. There is a reason for that as well."
A heavy silence filled the room as he seemed to take his time measuring his words.
"It's because I'm not just a man. I'm something more than that."
Dylan had to admit he was more man than any other she'd known before. His size and power alone seemed to put him in a separate class. But he was all male, that she knew by the way he looked at her, his eyes hot as they traveled over her face and down her body.
He stared at her, unblinking, heatedly intense. "I am one of the Breed, Dylan. In your lexicon, for lack of a better term, I am a vampire."
For one stunned second, she thought she had misunderstood him. Then, all the unease and tension that she had been feeling since Rio had walked into the room vanished in a great rush of relief.
"Oh, my God!" She couldn't hold back her laughter. It barked out of her almost hysterically, a flood of disbelief and amusement washing away all her anxiety in an instant. "A vampire. Really? Because, you know, that makes so much more sense than everything I was guessing you might be. Not military, not a government spy, or a terrorist operative, but a vampire!"
He wasn't laughing.
No, he simply stood there, unmoving. Watching her. Waiting until she looked up and met his unsmiling eyes.
"Oh, come on," she chided him. "You can't possibly expect me to believe that."
"I realize it must be difficult to grasp. But it's the truth. That's what you asked for, Dylan. What you've been asking for since the moment you and I first saw each other - the truth. Now you have it."
Good Lord, he seemed so serious about all of this. "What about the other people living here? And don't try to tell me that there's no one else in this huge estate because I've heard them walking the hallways, and I've heard muffled conversations. So, what about them? Are they vampires too?"
"Some," he said quietly. "The males are Breed. The females living here in this Darkhaven are human. Breedmates...like you."
Dylan recoiled internally. "Stop saying that. Stop trying to pretend that I'm a passenger on this crazy train with you. You don't know anything about me."
"I know enough." He cocked his head at her, a move that seemed almost animalistic. Unconsciously so. "The mark on you is all I need to know about you, Dylan. You are a part of this now, an inextricable part. Whether or not either of us like that fact."
"Well, I don't like it," she blurted out, getting anxious again. "I want you to let me out of this room. I want to go back to my home, back to my family and my job. I want to forget all about that f**king cave and you."