He didn’t want to talk about them now. It seemed wrong, somehow, as though he lived a double life. In a way, you have. It was a different life, but he couldn’t forget it. If he forgot his past transgressions, he might forget how to be the man he was now. And he liked that man.

“I had a wife.” He chuckled at that understatement. “I had many wives. Ten, I think. After five, it becomes hard to remember. And then there were others, ones I didn’t marry.”

“Did you love them?” There was an unspoken qualifier at the end of her question, punctuated by the quaver in her voice.

“I didn’t love them more than you.” It was a frightening truth. He’d mourned them all, but he’d come to expect losing them.

The workmen, apparently finished with their job, shut the door with a reassuring bang. Cyrus thought of locking it, but since it hadn’t kept out intruders before, he didn’t see the sense in leaving the comfort of the bed.

“Did you make any vampires?” Mouse fidgeted as though embarrassed by asking.

He was about to answer, “What would it matter?” Then he realized the reason for her interest, and he couldn’t believe his stupidity. Of course she wondered.

“I would never make you become one of them.” He sat up, dragging her with him. He knew the tight grip he had on her arms must hurt her, but he couldn’t let her go. She had to understand his devotion was not dependent on his humanity. “Tell me you trust me.”

“I trust you,” she said hesitantly. “You wouldn’t make me one of them.”

“Tell me you love me.” It was suddenly vitally important to hear it from her, without explanation or dissection of their motives.

“I love you.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “I do.”

They made love again, frantic at first, with fierce kisses as they tumbled violently across the bed. Once he was inside her, though, wrapped in the reassuring warmth of her body, the urgency melted away.

Leaning above her on his elbows, he stared into her face. “Tell me again.”

She wet her swollen lips and pressed them close to his ear. “I love you.”

She repeated it over and over, and he let her.

No one had ever said it to him before.

Chapter 15
The Key

If not for Carrie’s extensive library of medical textbooks, Bella wouldn’t have survived an hour past sunrise.

And that was saying something, considering how close Max had cut it to sunup. He’d skidded sideways to the curb in front of the apartment just as morning washed down the street in a deadly wave. He’d dragged her body from the passenger seat with little care and bolted to the shelter of the recessed doorway.