Hi,

It's too late and I can barely keep my eyes open, but I just had to update tonight.  Once you've read this, you'll know why :-)

Lara

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Chapter 65

I stared at him. "What kind of guidelines are we talking about?"

He leaned forward. "Did you kiss him?"

Soft. Sharp. The words were like a punch in my gut.

Air, reason, and thought left me in one sickeningly fast moment- I was too discombobulated to do anything but stare, wide-eyed. How could he even ask? Thanks to our bond he knew perfectly well that Andy and I hadn't kissed – or done anything else for that matter.

I got up. "I have no idea what kind of game you think you're playing, but I'm not staying to find out."

He quirked an eyebrow – a slow and precise motion. "You did not, then? Why?"

"That's none of your business."

Alexander got up, slow and swift, a predator that was more than that. Threat and power, fear and emotion. Like nothing else I'd ever seen. I shook the emotions away, brushed the thought off, stuffed it back into that bursting iron casket I kept locked deep in my heart.

I backed away, the steps almost unconscious and instinctive, never letting him out of my vision.

A blink. A second lost.

He was standing in front of me, and I hadn't seen him move, hadn't even started to weigh possibilities and options.

"Is it not? How long will you play this game little witch? How long will you be able to pretend?"

Standing my ground, not crumbling under the weight of his stare was the only thing I could do, and it took all I had not to give in and just run.

"Pretend what?"

"That you are someone else. You are hiding more things than you like to admit. From your friends. From the Circle." He stepped closer. "From yourself." Another step, and he was almost within reach. "From me."

Saliva pooled in my mouth, the urge to swallow strong and harsh. The stillness of a vampire like a lifeline someone had thrown me. If I could only reach out and touch it with my bare hands.

"You may be able to hide from them, but you cannot hide from me. Your games find an end tonight. There will be no more possibilities, no speculations, no sweet non-threats you can voice in front of me. This night I will demand truth from you, and I will demand it in one thing only. Give me one honest answer and you are free to leave and go home. Refuse to give it to me and I will take your blood." The barest hint of a smile. "After all blood does not lie."

A rushed intake of breath. "You want to talk about honesty? You're asking me to be honest? To put my trust in you when I know you're not telling me things either? Tell me how this is fair?"

He pushed forward. Shock drove through me, a violent blow, hot and cold showers of goose bumps on my skin. His hands were on my upper arms. I shoved my palms against his chest, but it was as futile as shoving against a brick wall.

"Nothing is fair in this world, little witch. One honest answer is all I demand. One answer and you are free to go."

I stared at him. There was some sort of trap somewhere, but I couldn't see past his eyes, too distracted by his closeness. All I wanted was to leave, put enough space between us to clear my head.

I nodded slowly.

The pressure around my arms eased. "Why were you willing to save me when the Lumenis attacked me in Italy?"

I sucked in air. The world closed in on me. Nothing was in existence but the deep blue abyss in his eyes.

"You stood between me and the ones you call kin by blood," he said. "Why? Give me the real reason. I want to hear it."

I was staring into his eyes. I couldn't stop looking. Dammit, I just couldn't.

"No more lies between us. No doubts. No if and why. Give me the truth, Anna."

I pressed my eyes shut, shook my head, the motion like a violent shudder.

He drew closer. "You were willing to protect me. Why would you care?"

Truth and lie. I couldn't tell. I could never tell with him.

I pushed against his chest. Turned my head, tried to shut off the bitter-sweet amalgam of emotions inside.

"I don't care about you. You are nothing to me. Nothing." The last word came out as a whisper.

He drew me to him and before I knew what happened there was no space between us. No pockets and shadows, no niches I could go to and hide. Deny what I had been denying for a long time. Too long.

"Give me the truth, or I will take it from you. Decide."

I felt the tip of his fangs scrape my neck. Heavy breathing that was not my own. His hands moving from my arms to my shoulders and back. I shuddered, violently. A pull, invisible and inexplicable – nothing I could grab and take a hold of with my hands. The urge to give him what he wanted, no matter if it was going to hurt me.

Decide. No if and why.

The tips of his fangs grazed my skin, moved upward. Agonizingly slow. Never stopping until they were replaced with something soft and wet. His tongue flicked out, traced the place where my pulse was, and I was lost.

"You," I gasped. "It was because of you, dammit."

He froze. Not in the kind a human would. It was the stillness that belonged into shadowland and night, spaces most humans could not feel and sense.

His arms felt like a cage I was caught in. Unmoving. His scent like a suffocating drug investing my system. If I stared into his eyes, breathed his scent any longer, I'd drown and suffocate, and I'd do it willingly.

I swallowed, trying to push away from him. "I answered your question. You said I could go if I did."

Time unhinged, slowed in the low-tide trudge of nothingness. Acceleration, movement and explosion. Mayhem inside my system.

Not the sweet pain on my neck I expected. Not the drawing of blood. It was beyond anything I could have imagined in my mind, not among the scenarios that had played out in my head. A soft touch, mesmerizing, excruciating. He breathed along my neck. Nothing was in motion but the soft motion of cool breath against my skin.

"I lied," he said softly.

I lost seconds, minutes. Maybe more than that.

I was pressed to his chest and his lips were on mine, parting wet flesh with this tongue and teeth. And I was kissing him back. His hands, soft and cold against my back, pressing me even closer – as if he wanted us to be one. My fingers, like in a reverted mirror, wandered up to his hair. My mind lost. I was drowning, and I didn't care. He tipped my head, bent me backwards, moved in like a storm that would leave nothing standing.

There was only this moment, no questions, no ifs and whys. No doubts.

Thoughts left me, fast and sudden, until all I could see and feel was him. Until I was buried underneath a cloud of sensations that knew no end and no beginning.

* * *

I'm falling. Sinking further into a hot-cold menagerie of soft black smoke. In here, the concept of time is reversed, non-existent. Unreal.

Here in the darkness I can't see him, but I know he's there, watching me. He's there. Everywhere. No matter where I look, where I turn to, there's only him. Mind and Body.

He's touching me. It's that spot again. Soft and slow, like he knows exactly what it does to me. What he does to me.

My gasp is swallowed by his tongue and teeth. Another kiss that leaves me breathless, strips me from all I thought I was, leaves me raw and naked – all for him to see and take.

Time blurs, vanishes into another episode of touch, taste and smell. A dark, wet dream that's so intense and vast, I keep telling myself it can't be real.

Sheets rustling. He's moving against me and I fall right into another violent explosion, even bigger than the last one. There's nothing I can do to stop it. I fall apart, come undone – again. I hear my own ragged breathing. It's the only sound that rises above the soft murmur of bed sheets and cloth.

He tells me to say his name, makes me repeat it. Again. And again.

Fingertips graze along my skin, move up my abdomen, tantalizing tender flesh. They come up to my shoulders and trace a line up my arms, mapping it out. They never stop. Not until our fingertips connect. He locks our hands, presses them into the mattress above my head. My pulse leaps into my throat. For some reason the motion seems more intimate than what we've done before. It tells me he wants to touch all of my body, and more.

Before second thoughts can trickle into my system, he's there, kissing the base of my neck – just another spot he made me give up this night. I wonder how many more he's going to take.

I'm past caring. I raise my hands, touch him. I kiss him, long and hard, rake my fingernails down his back, demand my name in return to his. I want to make him give up parts too. I want to be the conqueror, claim and take as much as he has.

I can meet him, here where it's dark.

This night there are no doubts, no consequences, no if and why.