“I’m so sorry,” Selma whispered into his shoulder. She pressed her lips against the fabric of his shirt, constricting her arm around his chest and easing the ache there. “For how you lost her, but also for the way you grew up. You should have been cared for by the woman who brought you into this world, despite the circumstances.”

He shrugged, fighting the pull of the chasm in his gut at the too-vibrant memory. “She couldn’t handle losing her first child, nor her husband. It might have been different, had she not had either when she was caught.”

“Did you ever meet her? Her older daughter?”

“My father killed them both the day after she died. He was wild with sorrow and fury and blamed them for taking her away. I never met either of them.”

But he’d thought about her—his human half-sister. He’d even wondered if they’d had anything at all in common, despite being of different races.

“Kain.”

The pity in her voice cut through his memories, and he looked down at her to see it reflected in her eyes as well.

“Maybe now you see why I can’t do to you what my instincts are screaming at me to do.” He searched her eyes for the dawning realization of what horrors he was saving her from, but all he saw there were empathy and sorrow.

Selma moved her hand from his chest to his cheek, cupping it gently. “I’m not like her. And you are not like your father.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but she pressed her lips over his before he could find the words.

Softly and gently she kissed him, and the tenderness of it made heat rush throughout his body, soothing the old pain in its wake.

“Let me prove it to you,” Selma mumbled without lifting her head from the kiss. “Give me this one night to prove to you that you are so much more than your past and your instincts.” Another kiss, so soft he could have imagined it. “Let me repay you just a little of everything you’ve done for me.”

17

Kain

He should have said no—should have refused her offer, because he knew he’d never get enough if he allowed himself another taste. But it wasn’t instinct that made him pull her up so she lay on his chest, nor his body’s desperate need that slowly answered her kiss.

It was that soft ache that seemed to be so tightly connected to the little Breeder he’d claimed. It bloomed from where she rested against him, down through his stomach and all the way out into his fingertips, where it transformed into something else—a lightness that soothed his fear.

Her kiss turned just a tad more demanding when he gave in, the pressure of them against his increasing ever-so slightly before her tongue dipped into his mouth.