Christine Feehan - Dark Possession

She inhaled sharply. «You don't really know, do you? Manolito, if you don't know, and I don't know, we could be in real trouble.! am not Carpathian. I was born in Seattle. I went to school there and then to Berkeley, in California. If it's true that you've exchanged blood with me, I know I haven't gone through the conversion. I would know if I had to sleep in the ground. I'm still just me.»

«That cannot be so. I remember taking your blood, binding us together. You are a part of me. I cannot be mistaken.»

She opened her mind and memories to him. «I'm telling the truth when I say I haven't met you before. It's the truth that I saw you at a party in the Carpathian Mountains, but we were never formally introduced. I am physically attracted, but I don't know you at all.» Okay, wildly physically attracted, but this was serious and she could overlook it-she hoped. Everything was falling into place. The things Riordan and Juliette had told her were beginning to make sense. Her heart thudded hard.

He was silent, assessing her memories of him, dwelling a little too long over the one he found of a man coming into her house and attacking her. He felt the lengthening of his sharp teeth and the demon within roaring for release. Very carefully, he hid his reaction. She was coping with enough, and if he had somehow brought her into his life without her knowledge-or his-raging like he wanted to because she hadn't been safe would only make things worse.

«If what you say is true, MaryAnn, then how is it we are lifemates? Speaking the ritual words cannot connect two people who arc not one. I could say them to every woman I met, but it would do me no good.»

«Maybe you made a mistake,» she ventured. «Maybe we aren't really connected.»

«I see in color. I feel emotions. I can think of no other woman but you. I want no other woman. I recognize your soul. We are lifemates.» His voice was firm, brooking no argument.

MaryAnn couldn't find an argument. While it was true that she didn't know everything about Carpathian life, she knew enough that the possibility was strong. Judging by her reaction to him alone, she had to admit it was probable. «All right. Say we are lifemates, Manolito. You say you wronged me in some way and that is why you're stuck here. Why do you think that?»

His thumb slid up the back of her hand, stroking tiny caresses over the silky smooth skin. He bent his head to nibble the pad of her thumb while he thought about it, the gesture automatic, sexy, burning through her with ease. «I felt like I was being judged for something I had done to you. I should know if I wronged you.»

«I should know, too,» she conceded, trying not to react to the feeling of his teeth scraping erotically over her thumb. How could such a small thing be felt in the pit of her stomach? Or make her womb clench? Or her

breasts feel swollen and achy? There was no way she could ever let this man touch her in a bedroom. She'd never get over it.

«I'm reading your mind again.»

«You do that a lot.» She wasn't going to apologize. «Stop being so sexy. I'm trying to think here. One of us has to get us out of here.» She sent him a smoldering look from under her lashes, but he only grinned at her, his smile sending need skittering over her body as easily as his caresses had. She was in trouble. Big trouble. Huffing out her breath, she pulled her gaze away from his, determined to find a way to free them.

«Could that be the wrong, Manolito, because tying us together without my consent and taking my blood without my knowledge shouldn't be okay by anyone's standards. Maybe you need to feel remorse in order for us to get out of here.»

«I can say I feel sorry for claiming my lifemate, but it would not be true.»

She sighed. «You aren't exactly getting into the spirit of the thing here. If we want out of this shadow world and you somehow wronged me, shouldn't we be figuring out what you did?»

«The wrong cannot be binding us together. That is a natural act for a Carpathian male. I would be wrong not to bind our souls. I would turn vampire and you would eventually die of heartache.»

She snorted. «Of heartache? I don't even know you.» But she'd grieved for him. Cried for him. Had been clinically depressed and now she was feeling hot and bothered and exhilarated in spite of the fact that she was surrounded by ghouls and insects and spiders the size of dinner plates. She tried again to make him understand. «What if I was married? You didn't even wait to find out. I could have been.» Because a lot of men thought she was fine.

His fingers tightened around her and tiny flames leapt in his eyes. «There is only one man for you.»

«Well maybe you were late in coming. The point is, I could have been married. I had a life before you came along and I liked that life. No one has the right to turn someone else's life upside down without that person's consent.» She forced herself to look into his eyes. «I don't love you.»

His eyes went very black, liquid heat, turning her inside out and stealing reason along with her ability to breathe. «That may be, ainaak enyem, but it cannot change what is. You are my lifemate, the other half of my soul, as I am yours. We are meant to be together. I must find a way to make you fall in love with me.» He leaned close, so that she felt the warmth of his breath on her skin, so that when he whispered to her, she felt the brush of his lips, soft and firm and tempting, over hers. «Rest assured, palafertul, that I will focus my complete attention in that direction.»

Her heart went crazy, pounding and slamming so hard she thought she might have a heart attack. «You're lethal. And you know it, too, don't you? Were there other women? Maybe that's your big wrong.» And the thought set her teeth on edge, even though it was silly. He hadn't known her, he still didn't, but reason didn't seem to enter into her emotions. That strange wild thing hiding deep within her began to awaken and stretch, raking with sharpened claws at the inside of her belly.

Horrified, MaryAnn jumped up, yanking her hand away from his She was buying into this entirely. The nonexistent shadow world. The lifemate of a man she didn't know. A species that dealt with vampires and mages. Nothing made sense in this world, and she didn't want to be there. She wanted Seattle, where the rain came down to clear the air and the world was right.

MaryAnn felt Manolito's restraining fingers circling her wrist, hut when she looked down at his hand, it was gray. She blinked. All around her, the rain forest was vivid and bright, the colors so brilliant they nearly hurt her eyes. The sound hit her then, the continual drone of insects, the rustle in the leaves and the shifting of animals moving through the underbrush as well as the canopy overhead. She swallowed hard and looked around her. The water was pure and clean and rushing with enough force to sound like thunder.

She reached for Manolito, clutched him to her, afraid she would lose him. His form seemed solid enough, but there was something not right about his response, as if part of him was otherwise occupied. «I think I just did something.»

«You are fully back where you belong,» Manolito said, relief in his voice. «We need to get you to safety before the sun comes up. You may not be Carpathian, MaryAnn, but with at least two blood exchanges, you will suffer the effects of the sun.»

«Tell me what's happening.» She hadn't liked that other world, but being alone in this one was terrifying. «I don't want to be separated from you.»

The anxiety in her voice turned his heart over. «I would never leave you, especially not when danger surrounds us. I can fully protect you even with my spirit locked in this world.»

«What if I can't protect you?» she asked, her dark eyes filled with trepidation.