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Shock at what he had almost done ricocheted through them both. Shaking, their minds merging, they clung together in the uneasy night. Still he tried to conceal what happened, but he might as well have tried to hide a ravaged corpse in a leaky paper bag. Blood and guts oozed out everywhere.

So be it, he thought at her, his arms coming around her more tightly. If I am to lose you, let it be honestly.

13

Enough

Dominique threw open his mind, sparing her nothing. Not that he could have. She had but to want him to remember, and he did, and she knew.

The lust-fueled daze. The erotic brutality. His willing participation.

His hunger for more.

With a long moan, she collapsed against him, buffeted by his emotional storms and memories. As her mind struggled to comprehend the worst of his blood-drinker instincts with her human understanding, he scooped her up and delivered her back to the cottage.

Samantha took one look at them and opted to return to her own home without comment. Gently, he placed Cassidy on the old wicker sofa in the living room, propped her head up with accent pillows, and sat on the cool tile floor beside her. Holding her hand, fingers twined, he kept their link as strong as she needed it to be.

Minutes passed. She drifted from horrified shock to dazed realization and finally surfaced with a gasp. In her mind, his memory of Bijou astride him still played in lecherous detail, and he sensed her pushing it away—pushing him away—fighting to regain a sense of her singular self. Her hand shook as she pulled it from his grasp.

He withdrew, granting her wish for distance, and sat with his head down, arms draped over his knees, waiting for whatever fate would decide to pile on him now.

“Do you think it was enough?” she wondered, sounding hollow.

He brushed against her mind just enough to understand what she meant. After escaping Bijou, he had done all he could to dilute her serum and her power over him by drinking from every vein he could find until the attached body threatened to falter. But was it enough? Had he washed her from his body, if not his memories?

“I don’t know.”

“You should probably get some more then.”

He looked up to see her staring at the ceiling, her face as empty as her tone. Her thoughts, however, roiled. He could hear them like distant thunder.

“Why am I never enough, Dominique?”

“You are more than enough, chérie.” He turned to kneel beside her and resisted the urge to reach for her hand. She needed to be separate right now. Maybe he did, too. “Never doubt it. Bijou manipulated me. You know this.”

She gave him a wretched look. “You know I don’t give a rat’s ass about that bitch. She basically roofied you. I’m glad you don’t remember more than you do.” Her fingers curled in her sweatshirt. “I know I can’t compete with a vampire sex pot, but—”

“It is she who cannot compete with you.”

Her throat bobbed on a hard swallow. “That’s not what I meant. Dominique, why couldn’t you trust me? After all we’ve been through, all that I know about you? No, I don’t like what’s happening to you one bit, and I wouldn’t have liked it any better two weeks ago. But at least I could have been there for you, helped you figure this out before it got to this point. Before you”—she swallowed a gasp, recalling the kill he had shared by choice with Bijou—“had to live with the consequences.”

“You know why. I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”

“Keeping things from me is only going to make that more likely,” she said with a weary sigh. When he remained quiet, she pushed herself into a seated position. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe all this really is too much for me. Too much vampire reality for my poor human brain.”

Despair roiled through him. He tried to subdue it, but it washed into her awareness like a rogue wave.

“No, Dominique. I’m not giving up on you. As long as you choose to be here and not with her, the human in you is stronger than the vampire. Of that I have no doubt.”

“You are the human in me,” he whispered. “My love for you will always be stronger than the darkness that calls me.”

“And yet, when it really matters, you don’t trust me. I’m not enough.” Again.

Her silent addendum might as well have been a physical blow. He had vowed to never desert her as so many others had. And yet…he had.

She was right. Falling under Bijou’s spell was not the worst of what he’d done.

This was.