LITMIR.BIZ

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as the darkness lightened with dawn’s approach.

      “Bryan’s dead?” she asked, her full lower lip trembling slightly.

      Damn. She was beautiful. It wasn’t just the golden blond hair and those mesmerizing green eyes; it was the vulnerability about her that drew a man to her, that made him want to protect her. While she was physically stronger now than the sickly girl he remembered from their meeting so long ago, her sensitivity belied an ethereal fragility. Those eyes shimmered with tears that softened him until he realized that it had to be an act. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

      She shook her head. “He can’t be dead.” Her voice cracked with what seemed like genuine distress. “Not Bryan…”

      “Did you think you could do that to him and he’d live? There’s no way a human could survive that. But then you might have forgotten…since you’re not human any longer.”

      A breath shuddered out of those trembling lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

      “Yeah, I know all about your damn secret society of vampires.” And he wasn’t dead even though he’d been warned any human who learned of its existence would be killed.

      “I wasn’t talking about the society,” she murmured, her voice growing fainter as the sky lightened. “Bryan…” Tears shimmered in her eyes. “He can’t be dead…”

      “How could you not know that he died?” Liam asked. Even though two decades had passed since his brother’s death, Liam still missed him. With only three years separating the half brothers, they’d been more like friends than siblings—even though they’d lived in separate homes.

      “I—I had to give up everything from my old life,” she explained. “My family. My friends. I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t keep in touch with them.”

      Bitterness overwhelming him, he released it in a short chuckle. “But yet you’re here for your sister.”

      “I haven’t been there for my sister,” she said, guilt dimming the brightness of her eyes. “I haven’t seen her in twenty years…until tonight, until you put her in danger to draw me out. Why?”

      “You know why.” Or at least he had been convinced she would know, but her confusion and surprise over his brother’s death seemed genuine. “For Bryan…”

      “Bryan wouldn’t want you to hurt me,” she pointed out. Correctly.

      “You’re doing this for yourself,” she said. “For revenge for something I didn’t do—for something I never could have done. I couldn’t have hurt Bryan. He was my friend.” Her voice cracked again with undeniable pain. “My best friend…”

      Liam’s head pounded, maybe from the fight with the professor. The vampire had nearly strangled the life from Liam. If not for this woman’s interference, the professor probably would have killed Liam. Despite his boot-camp training and sixteen-year career in the marines, Liam hadn’t been able to match the monster’s strength. While he’d made a point of learning everything about the secret society, he wasn’t one of them. He was a vampire hunter, but the only vampire he’d ever sought to kill was her.

      Maybe his head also pounded because of the doubt now plaguing him. What if she spoke the truth? What if she knew nothing about Bryan’s murder?

      Her body went limp beneath his, her face paling as the sky grew lighter. He could kill her easily now. He wouldn’t even need the special weapon he’d made to fire the stake into her heart. He could impale her chest with his bare hands. Then he would finally have the revenge that had driven his life for the past twenty years.

      Unless she was innocent…

      Then he would become the cold-blooded killer he’d thought he had been hunting for two decades. He would be just as much a monster as a member of the Secret Vampire Society.

      Chapter Two

      Strong arms encircled Jennifer as the man carried her down the dimly lit, underground corridor. She hadn’t been carried since she’d been a child. Hadn’t been loved or protected in so many years. Since she’d become a vampiress, someone had been interested in her—so interested that he’d actually made her feel unsafe, and she’d been hiding from him as much as she’d been hiding from her sister. That man didn’t love her, though.

      This man didn’t love her, either. And he certainly didn’t intend to protect her. Liam McKiernan intended to kill her for what he thought she’d done.

      “Why didn’t you just leave me for dead?” she asked, her voice raspy as her strength slowly ebbed back. “Or wouldn’t that have been good enough for you? You want the satisfaction of killing me yourself.”

      “Is this it?” he asked, his pale eyes squinting as he peered through the shadows.

      She glanced toward the door, in front of where he’d stopped, and nodded. “It’s my apartment.” And she had no idea why she’d let him bring her here except that she hadn’t been thinking when he’d asked where she lived. Jennifer had barely been conscious. The rising sun had weakened her physically and the news of Bryan’s death had weakened her emotionally.

       Poor Bryan…

      How could this man think that she would have murdered her best friend? She struggled against his grasp, trying to slide down his body. But he held her tight.

      “Where’s your key?”

      “Above the door.” What did it matter now if he knew where she lived or where she hid her key? The only way she would be able to stop him from killing her would be if she killed him first.

      He clasped her against him with one arm, her face buried in his throat, as he fumbled above the trim. To kill him, all she had to do was bare her fangs and sink them deep in his throat. She’d never done it before, had never drank from another being—she’d only drank the processed blood the society supplied at places like Club Underground. But she was tempted to bite now, her fangs distending inside her mouth.

      He smelled of musk and male sweat from his earlier physical struggles. Hunger clutched at her, tightening the muscles in her stomach, as the urge to taste him overwhelmed her. Just as he jammed the key into the lock and threw open her apartment door, she slid her tongue down the side of his neck.

      He shuddered and finally released her, kicking the door shut behind them. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, his voice rough while his pale eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Do you think you’re going to kill me like you killed my brother?”

      “Bryan’s your brother?”

      “Was,” he brutally reminded her of the death of her best friend.

      Regret and grief overwhelmed her now. She backed away from him, through the brick archway that led from the foyer into the living room. He followed her then gasped, staring at the artwork propped against, and hanging from, all of the weathered brick walls. He circled the room before stopping in front of the portrait of his brother.

      She’d painted Bryan as a teenager, the sun shining on his bright smile while the wind ruffled his brown hair. His eyes were wide with innocence and warmth. He couldn’t be dead. Not Bryan…

      “You must be Liam,” she said. But she saw nothing of the freckle-faced redhead in the auburn-haired stranger she’d struggled with in the alley. The kid was in one of the portraits, too. Although they’d only met once, she’d remembered the mischievous boy Bryan had loved so much. She had painted Liam in a tree with his older brother standing beneath him, ready to catch him if he fell.

      Liam reached out and ran his fingertip over the ridge of the thick oil paint. “You did these?”

      She nodded then realized he had yet to pull his gaze from the painting, so she replied, “Yes.”

      He moved along the wall to another portrait. “Is this you?”

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