Carpathian 04 - Dark Magic

in him that melted when he was in her mind, in her presence. He had a terrible feeling that when his body merged with hers, he would be lost to all good sense.

Chapter Three
    The sun set slowly, slipping lower and lower in the sky before disappearing behind the mountains to be swallowed by the sea. Red and orange burst across the sky, dramatically replacing its blue with the color of blood. Far below the earth, Gregori's heart and lungs began to function. Automatically he scanned his surroundings to ensure that all safeguards were in place and his lair was undisturbed. He sensed the hunger in his wolves, but no alarm.
    Beside him, slender Savannah still rested. His arm curved possessively, protectively, around her waist.
    His leg was across her thigh, cutting off all possibility of escape. Hunger rose, voracious, ravenous, so sharp and engulfing, it was close to lust. Gregori floated to the basement level, needing to distance himself from temptation.
    Savannah was finally here with him in his lair. She might be fighting him—and herself—every inch of the way, but he was in her mind, reading her easily. Much of her fear of him stemmed from her attraction to him.
    Carpathian desire was all consuming, totally binding, and given solely to one lifemate. One rarely Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    survived the passing of the other. Mind, body, heart, and soul were bound together for all time.
    The wolves converged on him eagerly, joyously. He greeted each of them with the same patience and measured enthusiasm. He felt no favoritism. Indeed, he had felt only emptiness until Savannah had come, until he had once more touched her mind with his.
    As he fed the wolves, Gregori allowed himself to remember that black moment in the Carpathian Mountains when Savannah had told her wolf that she had to flee from the Dark One, flee to America, her mother's homeland, to escape Gregori and the intensity of her feelings for him. It had taken every ounce of self-control he possessed to allow her to leave him. He had retreated to the highest, most remote mountain he knew. He had traveled the forests of Europe as a lone wolf, had buried himself deep in the bowels of the earth for long periods, coming out only to feed. The darkness within him had grown until Gregori could no longer trust himself. Twice he had nearly killed his prey, and while that should have shaken him, it had caused hardly a ripple of concern. That was when he knew he no longer had a choice.
    He had to claim her, to possess her. Had to come to America and await her arrival in San Francisco.
    Savannah didn't understand that if he did not—if instead he sought the dawn, or his darker nature prevailed and he turned renegade, became the dreaded vampire—he would be condemning her to a bleak, unbearable existence of utter aloneness and emptiness. She would not survive. Savannah's mother did not fully grasp the complex relationship between the male and female of their species. Born a human, neither did she completely comprehend the danger a Carpathian as powerful as Gregori represented.
    Savannah's mother had wanted her daughter to be independent, not realizing that a Carpathian had no choice but to find his or her other half. Raven Dubrinsky had not done her daughter any favors by giving her the illusion of independence.
    But for the first time in his life, Gregori was indecisive. Until he officially claimed her, all Carpathian males, including the vampires, would be unsettled, thinking they might usurp his position and claim her for their own. For her own protection, he needed to complete the ritual binding them for all eternity. For the protection of mortals and immortals alike, he had to claim what was rightfully his. He had waited a dangerously long time. Still, he hated to force Savannah to his will when she was so reluctant. Gregori swept a hand through his thick hair, prowling through his home like a caged panther. Hunger was gnawing at him, rising sharply with every passing moment.
    He padded across the floor to the balcony and lifted his head to inhale the night. The wind carried the scent of game. Rabbit, deer, a fox, and, faintly, farther away, humans. He sent his call into the night, drawing his prey to him with the casual ease of a master. It was sometimes difficult to remember that humans were beings with intellect and emotions when it was so simple to control them.
    Gregori leapt from the second-story balcony,