I made sure to leave my link to my fledgling wide open as I spoke. "The false kind. The pitying kind."

Sweet girl.

Nathan smiled. "The type you think I'm giving you."

"Maybe it's what I'm giving you," I suggested, not unkindly. "In any case, he doesn't want me the way he did then, so he won't pursue me as he did before."

And I wouldn't be tempted the way I had been then, because I wouldn't want the secondhand, watered-down kind of love he could offer me, if he did see fit to do so.

I wouldn't be the next best thing to yet another lost love.

Nathan had heard the unspoken portion of my statement. "Then why do you want mine?"

Why did I? I'd been attracted to Nathan from the moment I'd met him. I'd been infatuated with his devotion to his mysterious dead wife and unofficially adopted son. Then he'd become my sire, and that brought its own kind of feeling. But why did I love Nathan?

I opened my mouth cautiously, not sure what would come out. "Because I see the way you loved Marianne. I see the way Cyrus loved Mouse. And I wonder… " My unexpected sob interrupted my words. "I wonder if someone could ever love me that way."

Wordlessly, he pulled me into his arms.

I couldn't stop crying. Although I considered myself pretty much in touch with my feelings, there was obviously one emotional area. I'd boarded up. Now, all my frustration and pain crashed through the barrier I'd erected, and I couldn't hold it back any longer.

Someone could love you that way. I would have, if you'd given me the chance. Cyrus's thoughts stung me with a barrage of images, of moments that had never occurred between us. Lying with him in his big bed at the mansion, my lips curved in a contented smile as he held me. Cyrus watching me with pride as I moved gracefully across the ballroom, the picture of beauty and elegance in a couture gown. The same gown in a rumpled heap on the floor as I climbed into bed with an unidentified young man, then a flash of his dead eyes as I feasted from his throat.

Gagging, I sat up.

"Carrie, what's wrong?" Nathan went from comforting to urgently protective in a split second.

Tell him, Carrie. Tell him what's wrong.

Blood running in rivulets from my scarlet-stained mouth, flowing down my neck, between my breasts. Cyrus's cold hands on my shoulders, his rough tongue lapping the blood off my skin.

"No!" I clutched my head, desperate to make the visions stop, but terrified Nathan would guess the root of the problem and harm Cyrus in some way.

He did guess, but instead of tearing to the living room and ripping Cyrus to pieces, he gripped my shoulders and shook me gently. "Come on, Came, you can stop him. You re in control Just concentrate and shut him out."