Carpathian 22 - Dark Predator

tear-drenched eyes another moment. One hand passed over her face, wiping away all evidence. He brought his palm to his mouth and tasted her tears.
    You can’t order me not to cry.
    “Of course I can. And by all that’s holy, this one time, you will obey me.” Palming the back of her head, he pressed her face tight against his chest.
    At first she was tense and stiff, but within moments, as the heat of his body seeped into the cold of hers, she went soft and pliant in his arms. He should have allowed her to step back away from him, but it was easier to maintain some semblance of control over her when he held her. In truth, his arms had become an iron cage and he wasn’t altogether certain if he was consciously or subconsciously holding her to him, but found he couldn’t drop his arms. He brushed his hand down the length of her hair.
    Few modern women seemed to have long hair anymore. A long-ago memory surfaced as he buried his face in those silken strands. Women walking by in long dresses, chatting, vessels of water in their hands as they made their way back to camp. He had noted them because they seemed so happy. Three days later when he retraced his steps looking for where he’d lost the trail of the vampire, the same women lay in a torn and bloody heap in the mud, their eyes staring up at the red moon, their faces like wax, their hair in twisted dirty hanks.
    Don’t. Marguarita suddenly wound her arms around him and held him to her.
    The gesture was so unexpected and shocking he nearly stepped away from her. He had held her captive, but now, although she was far weaker than a male Carpathian, she seemed to have taken him over.
    Please don’t remember. It hurts you. I know you say you don’t feel it, but you do. It washes through you and settles deep inside you. Just don’t remember anymore. Not right now.
    He rubbed his chin on the top of her head. Strands of hair tangled with the heavy shadow on his jaw, almost as if her hair could weave them together. “Why are you so upset?”
    You accept your own death so easily. You look forward to fighting a master vampire. You would have burned in the sun. You just act like nothing touches you, but it’s destroying you from the inside out. All those deaths. You think they don’t affect you, but they do. You see your own death, not because you fear becoming vampire, but you can’t live with the pain of who and what you are anymore. And you aren’t like you see yourself, not really.
    Her fist clenched and she hit his chest in a small rhythmic drumming. He doubted she even knew what she was doing, or surely she wouldn’t dare to strike him. It was hardly more than a tap so he chose to ignore her indiscretion, puzzled by the things she said. He covered her fist with his palm and pressed until she became still.
    “I do not feel, Marguarita, as much as I would like to. I have even lost my memories. These things you speak may have existed in another lifetime—long ago—but I no longer have recollection of them.”
    That’s not true, Zacarias. I swear to you, it is not the truth. I am inside of you and I see the battles, the memories, and I feel the pain. The sorrow is so intense and overwhelming, unlike anything I have ever experienced—and I have lost both of my parents and know sorrow. I can’t make something like this up. I wouldn’t.
    How could she feel his pain when he didn’t feel it? Was she simply projecting her own feelings onto him? The connection between them grew stronger each time they used it, but still, it would be impossible for her to feel what he did not.
    “Show me,” he whispered against her ear. “Show me what you see in me.”
    One minute he was Zacarias De La Cruz. Carpathian warrior. Hunter. Alone. He was ice inside. Brittle and cold. Glaciers moved in his veins. And then she poured into him like warm thick honey, filling up every empty space inside him. Finding every dark corner, every secret tear and rip inside his mind. That warm honey spread through the ice, finding every broken connection, building bridges, filling the holes, restoring broken connections.
    Electricity sizzled, arced and snapped in his head. He felt her every breath. Inhaled with her. Her heart beat and it was inside his own chest. She was inside of him until everything he was, everything he was about was filled with Marguarita, filled with all that warmth. With her blinding light. The heat melted the ice encasing him, melted faster than any barricade he could