of families. Or friends. Or even the joys of using one’s skills in the way you climb a cliff. I want to learn all of those things. I will rely heavily on your expertise so that I fit smoothly into your world. I might know the ways of the vampire and how to shift, I might have seen history, but the things that are important to life—a wife, a child, family—those things I have no knowledge of. I hear your laughter, feel the closeness of your brother and sister and I want to feel that with them as well. I want Jubal to be my brother and Gabrielle to be my sister. I would like for your parents to think of me as a son. Only you can give me those things. Only you can teach me the right way to be part of something I have never had the chance to experience.”
Her eyelashes fanned her high cheekbones. Her tongue darted out and touched her lower lip. His heart shifted in his body. She had all the power and didn’t even realize it, believing he would grow bored with her.
“I observed history, I didn’t feel it. I saw the foreign lands and recognized they could be beautiful, but I saw them in shades of gray, without emotion, without color or feeling. I have facts at my disposal, millions of them, and I know war, but little else. I need you, Joie.”
Joie swallowed hard. He was breaking her heart. The stark, raw admission was brutally honest. She could feel his need and hunger beating at her. She had chosen service as her profession because it was inherent in her character to respond to the need of others, to protect them from harm. This man who seemed so completely invincible was exposing his deepest vulnerability to her.
More than that, she felt as if her entire life she’d been apart from others, standing to one side and not quite fitting in. With Traian, a being far removed from her understanding, another species, in his company, she felt as if she belonged. If she did this, if she stepped off the cliff and let herself fall with him, she knew she’d go all the way, heart and soul. There would be no turning back for her. He would be part of her, inside so deep she would never be able to get him out, even if he walked away from her.
She took a breath, her gaze moving over his face. Wonder. Magic. The combination was stamped into every angle and plane, the set of his shoulders and the defined muscle of his chest. It wasn’t just his physical beauty, the sheer athleticism of him, the power he exuded; the draw was in the single-minded focus he turned on her when he looked at her—as if she was the most beautiful, intriguing woman in the world. The only woman. And he needed her desperately.
He just sat across from her looking at her. Waiting. She moistened her lips. She had to get some distance to get some perspective. “I need to take a shower.”
“You do not have to. I can make you feel refreshed.”
Joie hastily shook her head. “I enjoy my showers. I like the feel of the water on my skin.”
“Is that an invitation?”
Was it? Had she chosen a shower because the thought of him naked was firmly entrenched in her mind? She didn’t know, but the erotic images playing through her mind faintly shocked her.
Joie stared at him, at the hard angles and planes of his face. At his dark, fathomless eyes. If the attraction between them was merely physical, Joie would have thrown him on the bed and ripped his clothes off right there. But he stirred unfamiliar feelings in her—deep and frightening feelings for a woman in charge of her own destiny. She was terribly susceptible and the plunge was going to be very long, the fall very hard, but it was beginning to look as if she wouldn’t be able to break his mesmerizing spell on her. She was certain she should try a little harder but . . .
With indecision written so clearly on Joie’s face, Traian felt as if his world was balanced on the point of a needle. He was afraid to move. Afraid to speak. He knew their joining was inevitable. He would have her. She was his. She belonged to him. But he still wanted it to be her decision. He wanted her to want him