“You are my responsibility, you know.” His words smudged my hopes, but didn’t dash them. Need coated his expression, under the worry.

Need that I felt vibrating through every inch of my body.

“Is that all I am? Your responsibility?” A silly question. A girl’s question. And I was no girl. Not the one he’d had an affair with.

I kind of missed that girl. She’d been an optimist. A cheerleader. A believer in great love.

“Ah, mon chou.” He slid the back of his fingers down my jawline and over my throat, his touch so soft I barely felt it. And his gaze weighed even more heavily on me, filled with such need that I barely believed my own eyes.

Did my eyes reveal the same?

“You never understood the way I felt. I made sure of that. You still don’t. And maybe that’s for the best.” He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, some of his normal amusement was there. My stomach sank. His guard was back up.

And I needed to put mine back up, too. To step away. To go to bed. Alone.

But when he lowered his face to mine, almost painfully slow, all I could do was tilt my chin to meet him.

His mouth touched mine softly, feather light before moving away, then another light touch. I ached for him, and tried to push harder against his lips, but he held me firm, intent on his soft assault.

Still moving slowly, he tugged off my clothes, one piece at a time, leaving soft kisses in his wake. He pulled off my bra, then knelt in front of me and continued his soft attack on my breasts.

“Claude,” I muttered. I gripped his hair and turned his face up so I could meet his gaze. I didn’t say anything else, but I knew he could read the need in my eyes.

“I love the way you say my name,” he said, his voice rough with need. “When I’m inside you, your blood filling my mouth, I forget myself. My past. My need for anything but you.”

Bet you say that to all the girls was on my tongue, but the glib joke didn’t make it past my lips. His eyes shone in the dark when he looked at me, reflecting his feelings without guile.

“When you didn’t return my call, I almost came for you. I wanted to drag you back. Force you to accept my apology. Convince you to love me.”

The world stopped, and then spun. I gripped his shoulders and took a long breath. “Claude—”

“Whatever happens. You should know that.”

Dread rose in my stomach, mixing with my desire, curdling it. Whatever happens. What exactly did he think was going to happen? I couldn’t make myself ask the question though, couldn’t ruin the moment.

“I would have gone with you. If you had come,” I said finally.

A smile peeked out from his cloud of emotions, and he laughed softly. “Ah, mon amour, I’m glad to know that.”

Even though it’s too late.

He didn’t say it, but I heard the words all the same.

And then his mouth was on mine, no longer gentle. He took what he needed from me, and I took from him. Desperate to have him all around me, I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. He carried me, I thought toward the bedroom, but we only made it as far as his dining room table.

I pulled his shirt off, then struggled with his belt, only managing to push his pants down just enough for his cock to spring free. He pushed his tongue against mine, mouth bruising my lips, and I gripped his hardness. Satisfaction swept through me when he moaned, long and low.

Then, hands on my hips, he pulled me to the edge of the table and thrust into me with one hard, swift motion. I cried out at the sudden fullness.

This time he didn’t ask. His teeth pierced my breast near my nipple, and he sucked the wound and the nipple hard. The orgasm hit me immediately, spiraling through me as he pumped into me harder and faster with every beat of my heart. I held on to his neck with one hand, and pressed the other behind me for balance as pleasure hit me in waves.

His fingers digging into my hips, he shouted my name against my breast, then stilled.

Minutes passed, then he pulled me into a tight hug. Face buried in my neck, he took a deep breath. A fuzzy haze of pleasure enveloped me, and his scent filled my lungs. And for a moment, hope pierced my worry. Maybe we could make it through this together. Maybe we could take down Nicolas and find out what happened to my brother. Maybe we could come out of this not only triumphant—but together.

Chapter Twelve

Claude promptly ruined my hopeful mood.

“I’m almost glad that you overheard them, because it lightens my load to know that Luc is innocent. But then, everything is worse. Because they know you’re helping me. Even if they didn’t see you, they know because I took you to that witch’s den. I’m so sorry, Beatrice.”

My guilt that had been building since he’d knocked on my door suddenly needed an outlet. He believed his friend to be innocent, and I hated to make things harder for him, to make him question his place in the world. But he had to know.

He pulled me in close and nuzzled my neck, threatening to distract me. But I couldn’t let him.

“I’ve seen Luc before. In a vision. I’m sorry, Claude, but he isn’t innocent.”

He stilled in my arms. “What did you see?”

Out with it all. I was literally naked in his arms. Might as well be emotionally naked, too.

“My brother Eddie disappeared when I was ten years old. He was older, nineteen. We—we never had the chance to become close, you know? And I’ve always wondered if we would have been—if we’d had the chance.”

“I remember you mentioning him before. What happened to him?”

I shrugged, and he stepped back and helped me hop off the table. Underwear. Surely I had underwear somewhere around here.

“He disappeared. His body was never found. No information other than part of his jacket found on a street corner known for drug dealing. Some blood at the scene came back as his.”

Ah-ha. My underwear. I dressed quickly, but Claude didn’t worry about his shirt. I did my best not to let my eyes roam over his hard chest. I couldn’t afford for either of us to be distracted right now, not until I’d gotten all this out.

“And you saw Luc? That is…difficult to believe.” His joking tone returned. “Perhaps you think all us vampires look alike?”

I tugged my shirt over my head and met Claude’s guarded expression on the other side. He might wear the grin of a man unaffected, but he wasn’t as nonchalant as he wanted to appear.

“The detective came by so my parents could identify the piece of jacket. He took it out of the bag and set it on top. My mother was—well, she was upset. Both of my parents were. They left the room. The detective followed.” My voice sounded hollow to my own ears. Shouldn’t I feel something sharper? But I didn’t. I just felt numb recounting the story that had changed my life.

“Leaving you alone with the fabric.”

“Yes.”

“Getting a vision so young would be…unusual.”

Unlikely. Near impossible. That’s what he meant, but I silently thanked him for his word choice. “My parents thought—everyone thought—that it was just my imagination. That I had a nightmare that was so realistic it made me think it had actually happened. The nightmare part was true, it reoccurred for years after his actual disappearance. And I eventually convinced myself that was the real order of things. That I’d had a nightmare about my brother being attacked, and that it was so vivid I got confused.” I took a deep breath at the thought of the nightmares. “But it was a vision that caused the nightmares.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw Luc, smiling. I saw his fangs flash. A dark car. I felt Eddie’s pain.”

“That is all?”

A rush of anger overtook my numbness. “It was enough,” I growled.

He came to me and pulled me into a tight hug. I leaned against him, breathing his scent, for a brief moment allowing myself to relax.

“I convinced myself that it was just a nightmare. And it made sense. I didn’t show any signs of psychometry again until after high school. I took a standard test when I enrolled in the police academy. The OWEA wasn’t far behind. My lack of a college degree didn’t even slow down their offer when my results came back.” I laughed, but it was halfhearted at best. “You should have seen my parents’ reaction. They didn’t even realize it ran in our family.”

“It isn’t always active in those who carry the gene.”

“Or it’s too weak for them to ever notice.” I shrugged. “Either way, they weren’t pleased. Then again, they haven’t been pleased by too much since my brother—” I shook my head. What was the use in dwelling on the past, on things I couldn’t change? Not much.

His hand slid down my arm and I fought the urge to step back into the safety of his embrace.

“My brother wasn’t an angel. He had been into some bad things before he disappeared. We were poor, and he wasn’t happy about it. He…wasn’t averse to making money however he needed to.” Dealing drugs. Who knew what else? For someone so young, he’d gotten himself into a lot of trouble. “But whatever he did, he didn’t deserve to just disappear like that.”

“Have you looked into his case? Since joining the OWEA?”

“Nope.” And it had taken every bit of my willpower and self-control not to at times, while at other moments I felt ill at even the thought of looking in that file. It was a Pandora’s box, ready to shit all over the bit of a life I’d built. Once opened, I’d never be able to close it.

“Perhaps we should speak to Luc about this.”

“You don’t believe me.” Something in my chest twisted. I hadn’t expected him to believe me—not exactly. But it would have been nice to be surprised for once.

“It’s not that. I just—”

“Need more evidence than my word. I got it.”

“Beatrice.” He slid his hand under my chin and tipped it so I would meet his gaze. “I’m so sorry for the loss of your brother. I believe that you believe what you saw was real, and was Luc. I do not doubt your word. But, the memories from childhood…they’re so easy to alter in our own minds even as we seek clarity. They’re shadows of reality. I’d hate to condemn a man I trust based on such memories.”