Well, guess that was what gob-smacked looked like on Axe.

As Elise waited for him to put into words whatever he was thinking, she found herself shaking her head. “You know … it actually feels really good to just tell someone that.”

He rubbed his face and then looked away, to the fire. In the flickering light, the tattoos up that one side of his neck seemed to move over his skin. He seemed … dangerous. Sexy. And very removed from her, all of a sudden.

“I thought you would be relieved.” Elise frowned. “And I mean, come on, it’s not like you wouldn’t have found out if we did have sex.”

“I don’t think anything less of you, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“You don’t? Then you have a strange way of showing it.”

He shook his head decisively. “Nah, not at all.”

“So what’s the matter?”

“You want honesty, huh.”

“Yes.” She pulled one of the two loose blankets across her lower body and crossed her arms over her shirt-draped breasts. “Whatever it is, I want to know.”

He muttered something under his breath. Then spoke quickly. “I want to know who the male was … so I can go and kill him.”

Elise blinked. And then connected the dots. “Oh, my God, it wasn’t like that. At all. I wanted it to happen—”

“Fuck, now I really feel like murdering the motherfucker.”

Elise broke out in a laugh, and when he glared at her, she put her palms up. “I’m not making fun of you, honest. I’m just … I’m giddy with relief that you don’t think less of me.”

“I don’t. At all. I’m jealous as shit, but I don’t judge you.” There was a pause. “So who was he?”

Shifting her gaze to the fire, Elise opened up her memory banks. “He was a male who I fed from. It was all witnessed, of course. But one night—I’m not even sure why—I decided I just wanted to know what it was like. The whole … experience.”

Axe started to growl. And then cleared his throat to cut off the noise. “Sorry.”

She had to smile. “It’s all right. I’m complimented.” For that, she got a grunt. “Anyway, I went to find him, at his penthouse apartment downtown. I made an excuse and snuck out of the house. He was in the glymera, of course, and a friend of my father’s.”

Now she frowned. “He was surprised, but he didn’t tell me no. I was very young, my mother had recently passed after a failed birthing. There was … so much sadness in my house, I think I just wanted to escape it. We had sex, I wouldn’t even call it making love. To me, it was only a lot of body parts interacting, I can’t say as I really enjoyed it.”

As she fell silent, she could feel his burning eyes on her.

“Finish the story,” he said in a low voice. “It’s not over, is it.”

“No.” Elise took a deep breath. “I’ve always been a little different from other high-born females, you know? I mean, nothing like my cousin Allishon—I’m not reckless or anything. I just wasn’t into festivals and dances and events. One evening, no more than a week or so later, my father asked me to join him at a dance and the male was there … with his shellan. I never thought he was mated, you know? It never dawned on me to ask. I mean, in the aristocracy, there are so few males to go around for feedings, and as long as there are witnesses when you take a vein, there is no sex to worry about. But I felt awful as I looked her in the eye. And he clearly hadn’t told her. He ignored me the whole night, which was appropriate, and the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. Not because I was emotionally attached to him, but because I had used him, and he had let me … and together, we betrayed her.” She exhaled long and slow. “He was killed in the raids … so was she. They were childless. My regrets live on, though, and always will.”

“He was a fucking letch.”

“I was pretty sure he had done the same thing with other females he was feeding. Otherwise … why the penthouse? It wasn’t where he lived or stayed with her during the day, you know? It was all just so messy—and the reason I started to focus on psychology. I wanted to understand how people’s emotions work, and we vampires are not so different from humans in that regard. For example … like, you know what was really nasty of me?”

“What.”

She couldn’t believe she was speaking so freely, but Axe’s silent, non-judgmental listening was unheard of in her world. “After I met his shellan, there was a part of me that was relieved he was mated—because then he wouldn’t say anything. I had kind of worried about that. After just losing my mahmen, I didn’t want to lose my father, too, on account of my not being mateable. Can you imagine how selfish that is?”

“Sounds more like self-preservation to me. And you know … whoever you mate is going to be the luckiest male on the planet.”

For some reason, the way he said that hurt—probably because he was clearly indicating her future hellren wasn’t going to be him. But that was crazy on so many levels.

“Actually, I’m never getting hitched.” When he frowned at her, she shook her head. “I don’t want anyone telling me what I can and can’t do. I’ve had enough of that from my father—I mean, everything in the house is his way, his preference, what he can handle within his rigid system of social expectations. Which isn’t much. I want to be on my own, and I’m going to figure out a way to do it. I’m going to finish my degree and find a place in the world—no clue what it’s going to be, but I’m going to get my own money so I can move out and then …” She laughed in an awkward burst. “And yes, my father is going to disinherit me, and I’ll be dead to the glymera and my bloodline. But it’s going to be worth it.…”

Wow, she’d never even articulated the plan to herself, much less someone else.

“Anyway,” she went on, “some dream, huh? Nothing like a little self-destruction to spice things up.”

“I don’t think it’s self-destructive.” Axe stared into her eyes. “I think it’s awesome.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” He splayed his hands out and then curled them into fists. Then cracked the knuckles one by one. “This is going to sound stupid.”

She waited. “What will?”

“The fact that you want to be on your own even if it costs you everything? It makes me trust you.” He shrugged as if he were trying to downplay what he was saying. “It makes me believe what you said, that you aren’t like the rich people who killed my father. Because those types? Never would have walked away from their lifestyle—and before you say that I’m generalizing, maybe I am, but if you can’t find it in yourself to extend decency to commoners in a life-and-death situation? You sure as shit ain’t leaving your fur coats and your diamonds and your big-ass house on the hill behind, ever.”

Elise exhaled sadly. “I’m really sorry about what happened to your father. I hope you know that.”

Now it was his time to laugh in a short burst. “The really sad thing? What they did to him, how he died, isn’t the half of it.”

She wasn’t surprised as he hand-and-footed it over to the fire and put more logs on the flames.

“I think I should probably go,” Elise murmured as he spent an excessive amount of time nursing the hearth.

“Yeah.” Abruptly, he looked over his shoulder. “It’s not because I don’t want you.”

“Good.”

But the mood had shifted and there was no going back to where they had been. She believed him, though, when he said he still—

“Can I see you tomorrow night?” he asked without looking at her.

“Yes. Where?”

“Here.” He poked at the burning logs, a shower of sparks raining down on his bare forearm, not that he seemed to care. “I have a long training session tomorrow. I won’t get off until late, but you said you weren’t going into the library or anything, right?”

“That’s right. What time?”

“I’ll let you know. Probably four? We’ll still have some time.”

“I’ll be here then. I can just wait for you? If you trust me here alone—”

“I’d trust you with my life.”

The fact that he said that absently really made her believe that he meant it. And that warmed her through and through, more than the fire did.

“Then we have a date.”

“Is that what it is,” he drawled. “What else would you call it?” She started to get dressed, stumbling when it came to getting her bra hooked. “And I’m going to be the first to say, I can’t wait to see you again.”

When she was finally back in what she’d been wearing, she stood up with her coat. “Good day, Axe. If you think of me, you can text me, you know. No pressure. I just want to put that out there because I think you might not even if you wanted to.”

He got to his feet, and as he stretched his back, there were a series of snaps and pops—and yes, she admired his muscles under the tight T-shirt he had on. “Let me walk you out.”

They were silent as they left the room—but he caught her and redirected her to the front door, not the one off the kitchen.

“You’re going to be cold,” she said as she stepped out into the night and he followed.

“It doesn’t matter.”

And indeed, he stood strong against the frigid wind, unbending, magnificent.

“Be careful,” she told him. “You know, in the training. I imagine it can be hard.”

He made a noise in the back of his throat that could have been anything from a Yup to a Whatever.

“Okay, then …,” she murmured.

For some reason, the darkened windows of the little cottage made the homey place seem as cold and empty as space itself.

She didn’t want to leave him there all by himself.

But what choice did she have?

“Well, good day—”

Before she stepped off the stoop, he grabbed for her and brought her in against him. But he didn’t kiss her. He just cradled her close to his chest, holding her tightly. And oh, she held him back.

She got the impression it had been a very long time since he had hugged anyone. She also knew that he didn’t want to let her go.

The embrace was, she would reflect later, even better than any promise of mind-blowing sex.

And then she was gone.

Axe stood on the front steps of his father’s cottage for the longest time after Elise dematerialized. Under his skull, his brain was bucking like a bronco, what he and Elise had shared so outside of the norm of where he usually went with females—hell, with anyone—that he felt rattled down to his marrow.

It had been so long since he’d connected with another person.

And yeah, he didn’t like what he was feeling now—the things she’d told him about herself sticking around in his thoughts, processing and re-reprocessing, calling up all kinds of emotions he could really fucking do without. It was so bad that the only thing he could think of to do was go and find a fight somewhere. He knew how to fight. Knew what to do, how to strike, how to avoid getting hit—hell, he’d known that before he’d gone into the training program.

Whatever had happened in front of his fire back there?

No fucking clue how to handle it. Or its aftermath.

It was easier when he’d just seen Elise as a becky to fuck. Now? She was a person.

When he finally headed back inside, his stomach rumbled with hunger, but there was nothing to eat, and besides, he was used to an empty gut. As he shut the door, he intended to go take a shower and then crash, but he didn’t get that far. For some insane reason, he was drawn to the kitchen, to the door in the far corner, to the creaky old stairs that took him down into the basement.

He fucking hated the basement.

When he got to the bottom of the steep steps, he put his hand out into the pitch-darkness for the lantern on the hook. Cranking up the glowing kerosene wick, he almost hoped it wouldn’t come alive—

The illumination was yellow like the fire, fixed like the moonlight.

And the ghosts of the past came alive as he looked at his father’s workshop.

Breathing deep, he could still smell the wood chips and the sawdust that carpeted the dirt floor like honey-colored snow.

Even though nothing new had been made down here in over two years.

Holding the lantern out, he went over to the tall table with its scarred top and its countless tools and the drawings that had been tacked to the bare wall studs behind it. There were blocks of wood that would never see an artistic form and then figurines that were half-whittled, the rabbits, birds, squirrels, and flowers looking as if they were struggling to pull free of their squares.

There was also an extensive shelving system across the way, where his father had lined up his finished products. It was like a woodland scene, the winsome creatures frolicking together in a miniature forest, the fauna crouching, rolling over, running, climbing, sitting pretty, among tiny, intricate trees and perfectly carved rocks.

Axe hated to see what his father had been able to do.

The skill was that of a master, the end results the kind of thing that belonged in museums or under the protective, nurturing care of collectors.

And yet they were sitting here in the basement.

He wanted to light it all on fire. Just burn it all.

It was too fucking pathetic that the male had stayed down here all day, every day, making this shit because he was hoping a female who had left him for a better offer might be impressed when she came back.

But see, Axe had always wanted to say, she ain’t coming back.

And he’d been right.

His father had been such a gentle male—an uneducated one, but a gentle soul for sure. And commensurate with his nature, he hadn’t dealt with the betrayal by drinking and getting violent, by turning into a man-whore, by abusing the little boy who had been left behind with him. Instead, he had simply faded away, becoming a ghost that drifted in and out of the rooms and ended up haunting this space down here.

Axe had hated him for the weakness.

And yeah, a part of him still did.

But the tragedy that night of the raids had fucked all that righteous anger up—adding a watershed of self-hatred and guilt on top of the psychotic sundae he’d already been carrying around with him 24/7.

God, why the hell was he down here?

Well, that was a no-duh if he’d ever seen one.

Axe ignored the fact that he stumbled a little as he headed back for the stairs, and he took the lantern up with him, leaving it at the top by the door into the kitchen.

Needing something, anything, to focus on aside from his precious little fucking feelings, he went back to his leather jacket and got out his phone. Except he wasn’t sure exactly who he was going to call or text.

Not Elise, that much he knew.

He didn’t get to his nearly empty contact list, though.

Somebody had left him a voice mail, and it wasn’t a number he recognized.

As he played the message, he frowned—but two words in, and he knew who it was.

Good evening, Axwelle. This is Elise’s sire. There is an additional service you could provide me, and I would be most grateful if you would call upon me tomorrow eve, an hour after sundown. I shall look forward to your presence. Thank you.

What the hell was this about?

From out of nowhere, the hum of his addiction started to vibrate, that thing he had always thought of as part cancer, part dragon, standing up on its hindquarters and starting to roar.

The good news? At least he wasn’t thinking about Elise. The bad news?

Once that hum started talking to him? It would rise and rise until he had to deal with it … and there was only one way that had worked for him now that he’d quit heroin—

The phone went off in his hand, the electronic pattern of sound loud as the pop! of a gun in the quiet house.

He answered before the second ring was over. “Novo.”

“Hey.”

As background noise made her hard to hear, he frowned and turned up the volume with his thumb. “Where are you?”

“At a club. You know that Euro-trash one Peyton goes to all the time.”

“Yeah.”

He took the phone away from his ear and checked what time it was. Also noted that he was running out of battery life. Shit, he’d forgotten to charge the damn thing in the restaurant—when you lived without electricity, you learned to vampire volts when you could and recharge your stuff everywhere.

When his fellow trainee didn’t say anything further, he frowned. “You drunk and need a pickup? ’Cuz you know I don’t have wheels.”

“No, I need to ask you something.”

“What.”

“You want to fuck?”

Axe popped his brows. And for a split second, he entertained the idea of the female coming over and the pair of them hardcoring it all over the fucking house, breaking furniture, slamming into walls, letting the fire die because their body heat was more than enough to keep them warm.

“Is that a yes,” she drawled in a low, sexy voice that should have been better than an actual hand down his pants.

Keeping the phone to his ear, he walked over to the fireplace, bent down, and picked up the blanket Elise had wrapped around herself. As he put it to his nose, he breathed deep.

And missed her so much he dropped the damn thing like he’d been burned by it.

“I don’t shit where I eat, Novo,” he heard himself say.

The come-on went out of her voice immediately. “Thanks for suggesting sex with me would be excrementally awesome.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I won’t get emotionally attached,” she muttered dryly. “Trust me.”

“I know.” He thought of the asshole Peyton and the dumb-ass’s little Paradise obsession. “We got enough fucked-up dynamics in the group already, though, and someone would find out. That shit’s hard to hide even if you do it vanilla.”

“Fine. See you at class—”

“I’ll take you to The Keys, though.”

“When?” she demanded.

“Night after tomorrow.” He closed his eyes and rushed through the rest: “We’ll go together. It’s guest night. You’ll find what you’re looking for there. I know I always do.”