Once Bitten, Twice Burned (Phoenix Fire #2)(58)
Author: Cynthia Eden

Still human in that respect.

He braked his motorcycle—one he’d kept stored at Bran’s Castle—near the edge of the St. Louis Cemetery. “Where do you feel safe?” he asked as he turned to face her.

Her gaze was so dark and deep. But before, when she’d faced off against the humans, her gaze had changed.

For an instant, I saw flames.

Ryder knew that his growing suspicions about her were right. She wasn’t vampire, at least, not completely. The power of the phoenix was still inside her, struggling desperately to get out.

Which side would win? The vamp side? The phoenix? Or would they both just tear her apart?

I won’t let that happen. He would do anything necessary to protect her, even if he had to protect Sabine from herself.

“Where do you feel safe?” he pushed her. Because wherever the hell that was, he would take her there. Her trust in her family and friends had been ripped away. She needed reassurance, and he’d damn well give it to her. She needed—

“With you.” A soft confession.

He blinked.

Her lips lifted in a sad smile. “It’s probably crazy, I know it is, but I feel safe when I’m with you.”

He could only stare at her. Did the woman realize just how much power she was starting to wield over him?

No one. No one had ever made him feel the way she did. No one else ever would.

Her legs were on either side of his. Her body hugged his.

And each breath that he took made him need her more.

He wanted to take her out of the city. Get her as far away from everyone else as he could. They could disappear. Vanish. He had plenty of money. They could start a life somewhere else.

Anywhere else.

Jaw locking, Ryder turned away from her and revved the motor. Her arms curled around his stomach, and he felt her put her head over his shoulder blade. The woman fit his body. So well.

Too well.

His gaze cut into the dark. Were more enemies watching? Seeing the weakness that he couldn’t deny?

The motorcycle flew away from the corner. Ripped through the waning night.

He took them from the city. Away from the lights of the town and away from the danger that waited in New Orleans.

“A cabin.” Her voice came quietly, barely rising over the growl of the motorcycle. “At the edge of the swamp. We’d go there all the time when I was a kid.”

Her safe place?

I’m her safe place.

“Take the next exit,” she told him as her hold tightened. “Then turn right.”

The motorcycle sped off the exit ramp. Rushed around the narrow turn.

“Go straight. Drive until the road ends.”

He’d do anything to make the sadness leave her voice.

He followed her instructions, taking the turns, and glancing back to make sure that no headlights appeared in the distance. The road looked empty.

Appearances could be so very deceptive.

Then they were barreling down a small, dirt road. A gate waited up ahead with a NO TRESPASSING sign hanging from its gates.

Ryder drove right through the sagging gates. The cabin waited near the edge of the water. Small, but it looked clean.

He parked the bike in the back. Then Ryder let Sabine lead the way inside. She took a key from beneath a brick—did they always hide their keys in such a spot? And she opened the door, ushering him inside.

He expected the cabin to smell musty, closed-in, but the area was filled with a sweet, light scent.

The place was as clean on the inside as it was on the outside. A tidy table. A comfortable couch. The walls were lined with pictures of a much younger Sabine and her brother.

Damn but she’d been a cute kid. A heartbreaker, even when she’d had long pigtails.

“I was happy here. Always . . .” She rolled her shoulders. “But I guess it was stupid to come here. My dad or Rhett could have told Genesis about this place.”

He pulled her into his arms. Pressed his mouth to hers. “Let them come.” Didn’t she understand yet? No one was going to take her again. He wasn’t leaving her side, no matter what the hell happened next.

Her hands rose to his shoulders. Held tight. He liked the bite of her nails on his skin. Liked her bite more.

He kissed her again and his tongue pushed into her mouth. The kiss wasn’t wild or rough, not like before. Because this time, he wanted to comfort her.

To make her feel safe.

He kept the kiss light. A hard task, when his instincts demanded that he take. When Ryder felt his body tightening, he pulled his mouth from hers. Ryder pressed his forehead against Sabine’s. “You’re not alone.”

She’d never be.

He caught her hand. Pulled her toward the couch. She looked up at him, so sexy that she made him ache. His c**k was fully erect, eager for her.

But this time, she needed more.

“My family betrayed me, too.” A confession that few had ever heard from him, but he wanted to share his past with her.

She sat down on the edge of the couch and stared up at him. Waited. Her lips were red from his mouth.

“I’ve walked the earth for a very, very long time, Sabine.” Longer than she probably realized. He’d stopped aging long ago. “As far as I know, I was the first vampire.”

Her eyes widened. “You—”

“I took a sickness when I was human. A disease that ravaged through me, seeming to consume me from the inside out.” He could still hear the sound of his own desperate screams. His mother’s wild pleas for help.

Help had finally come.

But it hadn’t been what he’d expected.

“The disease spread to others in my family.” A plague, that was what they would call it in the Middle Ages. A virus. A sickness, now.

“I recovered.” Flat. He held her gaze. “Most did not. Only my brother and I were spared. Everyone else . . . they perished.” The deaths hadn’t been easy. So much suffering. Agony. The bodies had been twisted. Spotted. Blackened. The rotting stench had filled the air. Death had come to his land.

“My brother was weakened from the disease. He could barely walk. His skin was mottled, scarred, but I—I was fine within a few nights.” His body had been strong.

Too strong.

“My blood has always been different.” Or else the virus would have ravaged him, too. “Something was . . . off with me.” He’d known it from the time he was just a child. There had been a darkness in him. An instinctive urge to hunt. To be the predator.

To destroy prey.

Evil? Maybe. Maybe that’s what he was. But he’d always tried to fight his deadly instincts, as best he could.