"Not your life. My life."
Her heart skipped several beats. She clenched her fists against the fear pounding through her heart.
“What do you mean?"
"Your life force is linked to mine. As long as I live, you cannot die." She groped for the edge of the bench, her knees suddenly weak. “Oh God, Michael, you're kidding ... right?"
"No. Unless you're beheaded, or have your neck broken, you cannot die.” There was no remorse in his voice, only an odd harshness that somehow spoke of pain.
She ignored it. She was immortal? As eternal as the moon and the stars ... and Michael?
"I am not immortal, Nikki. You noted that yourself some days ago." "Damn it, Michael, that's not the point."
"Then what is?” he asked wearily.
"I don't want to spend eternity with a man who lives his life in shadow, a man who could rule my every thought and desire!"
He made no comment, but his anger rolled across the darkness towards her. Energy burned at her fingertips. She clenched her fists against it. “Could you control me now, if you tried?"
He seemed to hesitate. “I don't know."
She closed her eyes, fighting terror. Michael wasn't Jasper. He wouldn't want to control every aspect of her life. At least not now. But what about one hundred, two hundred years from now? What would happen when he tired of her?
"Questions that mean nothing, because nothing will ever evolve from this. You do not want me in your life, Nikki, and I...?” He hesitated. “...cannot have you in mine." Cannot, or would not have? Either way, it made little difference. “Then why save me? Why not let me die?"
Again he hesitated. “Had you died in Jasper's trap, he could have raised you as one of the undead. I couldn't have stood that."
She rubbed her arms. What a choice. Life as the undead, or life everlasting. Both had their drawbacks, though in far different ways. “How could you possibly share a life force, Michael? How is something like that even conceivable?"