He wanted...God, he didn't even know what to want when it came to this woman.
I know what you're going through, he admitted quietly. I understand loss, Elise. I've been there too.
Ah, hell.
What was he doing? Some ancient part of him roused in a defensive panic as soon as the words left his tongue. He hadn't aired out his bleak history in ages. He knew he was exposing the soft belly of a long-sleeping beast, but it was too late to call the admission back.
Elise's expression muted from distress to tender surprise. A sympathy he wasn't sure he was ready to accept. Who did you lose, Tegan?
He cast his gaze out over the moonlit water and the twinkle of lights shining across the way, thinking back on a night he'd relived a thousand times in his mind. More than five hundred years of imagined alternate scenarios--endless things that he could have, would have, should have done differently--but the outcome never changed. Her name was Sorcha. She was my Breedmate a very long time ago, when the Order was new. She was abducted by Rogues one night when I was out on patrol.
Oh, Tegan, Elise whispered. Did they...hurt her?
She's dead, he replied, simple stated fact.
He didn't think she'd want to know the horrific details of how her captors had sent her back to him, abused and violated, a broken shell of who she had been. God knew, he didn't want to talk about the guilt and rage that had torn at him when Sorcha had come back alive--but only barely, drained of her blood and her humanity. To his horror, she'd come back to him a Minion.
Tegan had lost his mind, certainly lost his self-control, in those dark days following his Breedmate's abduction and return. He'd fallen into the grip of Bloodlust, and had come deadly close to going Rogue.
All for nothing.
Death, when it finally came for Sorcha, had been a mercy.
I can't bring her back, and I can't take away what happened.
No, Elise said softly. Would that we could. But how long does it take before we stop blaming ourselves for everything we wish we'd done differently?
He looked back at her now, unused to this feeling of affinity. But it was the regret in her eyes that made something inside him thaw just a little. You didn't give your son the drug that corrupted him, Elise. You didn't push him over that edge.
Didn't I? I thought I was protecting him, but I held him too close all the time. He rebelled. He wanted to be a man--he was a man--but I couldn't bear to lose my child because he was all I had left. The more I tried to keep him close, the harder he pulled away.
Every kid goes through that. It doesn't mean you caused his death--
We argued the last night I saw him, she blurted out. Camden wanted to go to some kind of party--a rave, I think he called it. There had already been a few Darkhaven youths who'd gone missing, so I was worried something might happen to him. I forbade him to go. I told him that if he did, he shouldn't come back home. It was just an empty threat. I didn't mean it...
Jesus, Tegan muttered. We all say things we regret, Elise. You were only trying to keep him safe.
Instead I killed him.
No. Bloodlust killed him. Marek and the human he paid to create Crimson killed your son. Not you.
She crossed her arms over herself and gave a mute shake of her head. He didn't miss the sudden flood of tears that filled her eyes.
You're shivering. Tegan shrugged out of his heavy leather coat and draped it around her before she could refuse him. It's too cold. You shouldn't be out here.
Not with him, he thought, so very tempted to touch her now.
Before he could stop himself, he was raising his hand to her cheek and smoothing away the wetness that streaked down her fair skin. He caressed her face, letting his thumb brush across her lips. It was all too easy to recall how sweet her mouth had been, pressed against his wrist. How heated her tongue had been when she lapped at him, drawing strength from his blood.
How the feel of her body, hungry and writhing next to his, had inflamed him.
He wanted that again, with a ferocity that stunned him.
Tegan, please...don't. Elise sighed, closing her eyes as if she knew the direction of his thoughts. Don't do this if you don't mean it. Don't touch me like that if you don't...if you don't feel it.
He lifted her chin, tenderly sweeping his fingertips over her petal-soft eyelids, compelling her to see him. They opened slowly, dark lashes framing pools of beautiful light amethyst.
Look at me, Elise. Tell me what you think I'm feeling, he murmured, then bent his head to hers and pressed his mouth to her parted lips.
The warmth of her kiss was like a flame, kindling the cold space in his chest. He let his fingers thread into the short, silky hair at her nape, holding her against him as he slid his tongue along the seam of her lips. She parted for him on a gasp, trembling in his arms as he tasted the wet velvet of her mouth.
When her hands came up to touch him, Tegan was the one to tremble, shocked by the sensation of being held, astonished by how much he needed it--how much he needed her. It had been so long since he'd allowed himself this kind of intimacy. The centuries of solitude had been their own comfort to him, but this...
The craving for this woman seared him with its intensity. His gums throbbed with the emergence of his fangs. Even behind his closed eyelids he could tell his irises were throwing off amber light, evidence of his desire for Elise. His skin was tight, his dermaglyphs prickling with the sudden rush of blood that would deepen their color to vivid shades of indigo, burgundy, and gold. He knew she had to feel the hard ridge of his cock, which was wedged between their bodies, pushing against her abdomen.
Elise had to be aware of all his body's responses to her--she had to know what it meant-- yet she didn't shove him away. Her fingers curled deeper into his shoulders, holding him with an intensity he could hardly fathom.