Julian kept Quinn tucked against his chest as the RV rumbled down the highway. The sound of the tires on the pavement did nothing to lull him to sleep. His mind was far too geared up for that right now. He’d carried Quinn into the bedroom and closed the sliding door to separate them from the others as soon as they’d returned to the RV. She needed her rest, and he needed a break from the tumult of images cascading over him.

It was difficult enough to deal with his ability around a normal number of people and vampires when he kept it turned on. The hotel had been a hive of activity that he’d been unable to avoid. Impressions had endlessly bombarded him with everything he touched. Normally he would have shut it down in order to have some peace, but he hadn’t dared to turn it off when it might be able to lead him to The Commission and help him protect Quinn.

So he’d kept it on and learned things he’d never wanted to learn about anyone. Some of it had been mundane, some of it awful. But he’d at least acquired a few things that would help them out.

A dull throb pounded against his temples from the remnants of the impressions he’d received. His teeth ground together as he recalled what he’d seen when he’d touched that boy in the hall. The things he’d planned to do to the woman with him, the things he’d wanted to do to Quinn, were things no one should have done to them.

The boy had been young, but he’d already left misery in his wake. Even at his worst, Julian had never condoned rape or the torture of those who didn’t deserve it. He’d killed innocents, but those deaths had been swift. Maybe it didn’t make him any better than the boy, but he believed it did, in a small way.

Julian should have killed the boy in order to save future people from his cruelty. However, it was not his place to be the judge, jury, and executioner. In the end, he could only hope the boy got what he so rightfully deserved, an excruciating death.

He hated not keeping his ability turned off, but from now on, whenever he was anywhere he might have to use it, he would have it on. Even if it meant he would suffer headaches and the influx of images better left unseen or unknown.

Quinn murmured something in her sleep before settling down again. Since Earl had walked back into her life, her nightmares had been more frequent, but she didn’t appear to be having one now. Lifting his head, he looked at the rays of the sun filtering through the curtains. He should stand in the sunlight again, yet he couldn’t bring himself to part with her in order to get up and do so.

Later, when she was awake, he would push himself through the burning rays of the sun. Quinn whimpered, her brow furrowed. He ran a finger over her wrinkled forehead, smoothing it out, before tracing his finger over the scar running across her eyebrow. The sweep of her dark lashes fluttered open. She blinked for a minute, seeming to try to place where she was.

“You’re safe,” he assured her as he bent to nuzzle her ear.

“I know,” she whispered, her hand enclosing around his and clasping it to her chest.

Against his hand, he could feel the flux of her power as she connected with him in her own way. Her exquisite eyes ran lovingly over his face. He brushed his lips over hers in a light caress that left him craving more as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Her fingers threaded through his shortened hair while her tongue tasted his lips. His arms locked around her, and he pulled her flush against his chest.

Looking to erase the last of the images from the hotel, he opened himself to Quinn. He’d seen what Earl had done to her as a human, knew what he’d done to her when he’d held her prisoner, but now all he got from her was an endless wave of love so deep it rattled him and caused his desire for her to arc ever higher.

“You need to rest,” he murmured against her mouth.

“I need you,” she replied, and nipped at his lip hard enough to draw blood. His body jerked against hers when she pulled his lip into her mouth, sucking the blood from it before she nipped him again. “Now, Julian, I need you now.”

She released his lip as she leaned back to tug off her shirt, the only thing she’d worn to bed. His gaze voraciously drank in her toned body before he bent to place a kiss against her chest. He pulled his own clothes off as he greedily tasted the salt of her flesh and caressed the silk of her skin.

He could live for an eternity and never get enough of the taste and smell of her. Never get enough of the way she moved against him or the sounds she emitted when he was inside of her. His fangs pierced the tender flesh of her neck. Her blood rushed hotly in, filling his mouth, making him stronger. The taste of her blood was ambrosia on his tongue. Her hands rested against his chest as her fangs pierced his shoulder.

Releasing his hold on her throat, he placed his mouth against her ear. “Mine.”

In response, a flood of her power spilled into him, causing his deadened heart to leap to life. For nearly fifty beats, the long dead organ pounded within his chest once more. A rush filled him, making him lightheaded on her power.

Her unusual ability to breathe life back into a heart that had ceased beating five hundred seventy-six years ago was growing stronger every time she used it. Like the woman beneath him, he would never get enough of feeling that organ pounding in his chest once more. It was a gift no other vampire had ever received, and she gave it to him as openly as she gave herself.

Releasing her bite on him, her mouth turned to his ear. “I love you.”

He pulled her closer against him. “And I love you,” he whispered as he lost himself to her.

***

“Are you leaving your ability on all the time?” Quinn asked Julian as she traced the muscles of his abdomen down to the trail of blond hair leading toward the edge of the boxers he’d pulled on.

He ran his fingers over her hair, letting it slide through his fingers. “When it’s not just you, me, and the others, yes.”

She tilted her head back to take him in. “Why?”

“I need to know everything I can, all of the time, if I’m to protect you.”

“You can protect me without driving yourself crazy.”

“I’m handling it.”

“I know you don’t like having it on all the time.”

“I don’t, but I’m adjusting to it, and one day I won’t have to keep it on at all.”

“One day we’ll know peace,” she breathed hopefully.

“We will,” he vowed and kissed the tip of her nose.

“What’s it like, to know all of those things or see them, or whatever happens to you when you touch people and things?”

“Sometimes it’s an influx of images that flip rapidly through my mind. Sometimes it’s only what the person has most recently done, but if I dig deep enough, I can often pull more from them.”

“It sounds overwhelming.”

His fingers stilled in her hair; his eyes were like arctic ice when they met hers—a rich, deep blue, but chilly and distant. She didn’t have to hear his answer to know what he was going to say.

“It can be. Sometimes I wonder how I ever survived after first being turned into a vampire between the bloodlust that comes with awakening, the path of carnage I left behind me, and the bombardment of images from people and things that beat against me. My ability nearly drove me mad in the beginning. I don’t know how a Hunter or an Elder didn’t end up taking me out when they take out so many young ones.”

She didn’t know how anyone could handle all of that, but somehow he had managed to.

What would her life had been like if he’d never stepped into it? What would have become of her if he’d been killed before they ever met? She would have been so lonely.

She’d been doing well in her town with her apartment, job, and friends, but she’d only been surviving. She hadn’t started to really live again until Julian crashed his way into her life.

“In many ways,” he said as his fingers ran through her hair once more, “my new ability was more frightening to me than being a vampire. I could wrap my mind around the vampire part of me. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that people and things now endlessly revealed secrets to me, and they would continue to do so for an eternity. The first time I ever successfully turned the ability off, I almost cried. I thought the only way I’d ever know such peace again was in death.”

Quinn went completely still against him. He gazed down at her with love evident in his gaze, as was his vulnerability. She knew what it had taken for him to admit any of this to her, to reveal how out of control and helpless he’d felt at the beginning of his vampire life, but that revelation had bared him to her in a way he’d never been bared before. She’d seen part of what his ability was and what it was like for him when she’d fed from him, but she knew now she’d only scratched the surface of it, because that was all he would allow her to see.

“Finally having the chaos silenced was a glimpse of heaven I never believed I’d ever have,” he said.

She struggled against the pinpricks of tears in her eyes. If she cried now, he would end this conversation. “And now it’s noisy again because of me.”

“There is always peace within me when I’m with you. Even if we’re fighting for our lives, you bring a tranquility to me that suppressing my ability never could. You are my heaven now.”

He already owned her heart and soul, but those words caused her to fall further in love with him. “You’re mine too,” she replied honestly.

His arms locked around her as he held her flush against him.

“Would you let me see what your ability is like for you?” she asked as she ran her fingers over the bite she’d left on his shoulder.

He went completely still against her. “You don’t want to see the things I have.”

“I want to know everything about you.”

His jaw locked as his teeth grated together. “Quinn—”

“There’s nothing left to shelter me from, Julian. I’ve seen the worst of vampires, of you, of myself. I can handle this.”

“I know you can, I would never doubt that, but I don’t want you to be upset.”

“Upset? Oh,” she said as realization sank in, “because you’re doing it for me now.”

“For us.”

The black stubble lining his jaw tickled her lips when she kissed his chin. “Us,” she said and sank her fangs into his neck. He would open himself up to her, or he wouldn’t, but she needed this connection with him again right now.

His potent blood filled her mouth. He remained tensed against her when she felt the pathways between their minds opening and his love engulfed her.

But though she felt his love and caught glimpses of his past and what he’d endured throughout his life, his mind remained mostly blocked to hers about his ability. She didn’t push against him. If he wasn’t ready to share this with her, she wouldn’t force him. He would reveal it to her when he was ready, but she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of hurt. She’d believed they were beyond this point of withholding things from each other.

She went to withdraw her fangs before he could sense her disappointment, but then she felt a wavering within him. A piece of his mind that she hadn’t realized was blocked suddenly gave way before her. What had been behind the wall flooded over her.

Quinn stopped herself from recoiling as she was bombarded with an influx of images that made her feel like someone was smashing a hammer around the inside of her brain. Synapses she’d never known existed in her mind fired like stars she could actually see somehow. It was as if she stood outside herself, looking in, and then she realized she stood outside of Julian looking in.

It was his mind firing so beautifully across millions of nerve endings spreading out before her like intersecting highways. She’d never seen anything more magnificent or tumultuous in her life. It was as entrancing as it was frightening.

Dizziness assailed her, and she couldn’t make sense of what she saw. There were children, men, women, then dogs, horses, two lovers, blood, death, laughter, love, children again, more lovers, cars, and a screeching noise that echoed so loudly in her head she didn’t think it would ever stop.

Car accident, she realized even as laughter then sobs swelled within her mind.

“Easy, Dewdrop.” Somehow Julian’s soothing voice managed to pierce through the endless images cascading over her. His voice ran across the roadways of his mind, vibrating them and causing more bursts of white to flare up. “Feel me, hear me, and take the images one at a time.”

She waded through the pictures tumbling through her mind while she focused on him and his words. She became more aware of the heat of his body beneath her fingers and his blood slipping down her throat. Tendrils of pleasure slid over her flesh when his fingers trailed lazily over her lower back. His lips nuzzled her hair as his love for her shoved its way through the chaos of his mind.

Somehow, he managed to shelter her from the influx until she settled on an image of Hawtie sitting at the bar laughing. She couldn’t hear what Hawtie was saying, but love enveloped her and she realized she was watching Hawtie through Clint’s eyes.

Hawtie faded away to be replaced with people she’d never seen before. The woman was crying, her head in her hands as the man screamed at her. The scene faded away when the man raised his hand to slap her.

More images ghosted through her mind, but not as swiftly as before, and she understood these were only the brief impressions of things Julian gathered from objects and people. Most of them were an endless parade of everyday life, of loves and disappointments, forgetfulness and failures. The more solid images were short commercial breaks in her mind that seemed to go on forever after all of the smaller snippets, but probably only lasted ten to twenty seconds at most.

Releasing her bite on him, she licked the blood away from his neck and rested her face in the hollow of his throat. She took in the scent of her blood within him, binding them together for the rest of their days. He was hers, she was his, and it took everything she had not to shed the tears burning her eyes.

If she cried now, he would block her out again, but she ached for him. Her ability was frightening in its intensity, overwhelming in its insidious thirst for more, but it was nothing like his.

“How do you not go insane?” she inquired when she felt stable enough to speak again.

He chuckled as he splayed his hands across the small of her back. “I did a little in the beginning, but then I think I was always a little insane, even as a human.”

She rested her cheek against his chest, her gaze focused on the dwindling sunlight filtering around the curtains.

“It can be overwhelming, but I’ve learned to control it. At one time, I used it to drive people crazy and as a way to torture others,” he said.

“I know.”

“I twisted it. I let it—”

He stopped speaking when she rested her finger over his lips. Lifting her head, she gazed down at him. The growing shadows creeping across the room obscured half of his face. “I know,” she said. “I’ve seen what you’re capable of, what you’ve done, and I’m still here.”

“You are.”

She pulled away from him as she realized something. “Your phone hasn’t been going crazy.”

“I turned it off.”

“Julian, they’ve probably been trying to get a hold of you.”

“I’m sure they have, but you needed your rest, and I wasn’t going to be away from you.”

“But—”

“No buts, they can go twelve hours without me. They’re going to have to go longer some days.”

“In the future they will, but right now they have to know they can get in touch with you if it’s necessary.”

“You are number one, Quinn. Don’t ever doubt that. They’ll still be there when I turn my phone back on, and if we’ve already lost some of them because they couldn’t handle it without me for a few hours, then they weren’t worth having with us in the first place.”

“We’re just starting to work with them, and we promised them protection.”

“I never promised to be available to them twenty-four seven. That would be impossible. Part of the promise of protection was to have the regulators also be available to offer them protection. Besides, if it was important enough, they could have called one of the others. Mine is not the only number they have. I may be the one who will be ruling over them the most, but they also have a number for Chris, Luther, and Melissa.”

Even though they were using burner phones, Julian had insisted that no one outside of their small circle have any way to contact Devon and Cassie. The others could be contacted if there was an emergency and Julian couldn’t be reached. If no one had come back here to disturb them, then it must have gone smoothly while she’d been asleep. However, she had no doubt Julian would have dozens of messages when he turned his phone back on.

Rolling over, he grabbed his jeans from where he’d tossed them on the floor and pulled the small cell phone from a pocket. He turned it on before sliding into the bed again and settling himself behind her. Stretching his legs out along her sides, he pulled her against his chest as he leaned on the wall. She stared at the phone he held before them as the voicemail button lit up before a number appeared above the text box.

There were over twenty new text messages that he didn’t bother with before the voicemails. After listening to the voicemails, he deleted them and called Vern. She relaxed against him, relishing the vibrations in his chest as he spoke with Vern in an authoritative tone so different than the man who held her tenderly against him.