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Being near people caused too much pain from hearing their every thought, feeling, and emotion. Her senses were always on overload, leaving her stressed and drained. She would pray to the Goddess for assistance in shutting out the noise but to no avail. She also prayed the Goddess would take away her psychic abilities, but those pleas also fell on deaf ears. She quietly accepted her fate and hoped one day to learn why she was cursed with such a
gift
.

Lying with Valya, there were no thoughts, no emotions, and no noise, nothing. There was no one else, just the two of them. The rest of the world had evaporated into thin air, leaving the night to her and Valya alone. For as long as she could remember, she had prayed for release from the mayhem and pandemonium she had lived with all her life. Now, the answer to that prayer left her feeling unsettled…and vulnerable.

And Valya was there. He
was
her knight in shining armor, her Guardian.

His hand drifted over her back, her muscles tightening beneath his touch. He began stroking her like a kitten to calm her fears. She settled back onto his chest, his light touches sensitizing her skin. She sensed the unease in him.

She knew it was because of her, but she didn’t know what to do to soothe him. She had no experience with these types of emotions. She had no knowledge of men, but there was something deep within in her that wanted, no, needed to ease his pain. His hand felt warm against her skin as he continued to stroke and pet her. It felt so good to be held and touched.

Perhaps Valya would find ease with her touches.

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Raising her hand slowly, she began to stroke his chest, mimicking the motion of his own hand as a guide. At first, there was a sharp intake of breath as she stroked her fingertips over his nipple down toward his abdomen. When she flipped her hand over to drag the back of her nails upward, he shuddered and grabbed her wrist. His voice was strained as he spoke.

“Don’t,
mio dusa.
You hold much power over me, and I fear what would happen if I were to lose control.” Without releasing her wrist, he settled it over his heart, trying to regulate his breathing and restrain the beast from claiming what was rightfully his. She didn’t pull her hand away. She accepted his will and his strength, and for that, he was pleased.

“That is the third time you called me that,” she stated softly as she lay motionless so as not to cause him any more pain. “What does that mean?

Mio dusa.
”

“It is old language. It means
precious heart
, for that is what you are to me.”

She blushed anew, embarrassed at such an intimate name after knowing each other for so short a time. Then she remembered she was lying atop of him, and he was naked. Where she felt comfortable before, now she blushed with embarrassment.

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Why not?”

“It doesn’t seem…proper.” Shyly, she averted her eyes. She couldn’t face him as she made her request, silly as it sounded. He chuckled, huskily, sending an erotic shiver down her spine. He moved his hand again, lower toward the rounded curves of her backside. He chuckled again as she gasped, both recognizing their state of undress. She couldn’t meet his gaze.

She had no thoughts, no words for him. She just wanted the embarrassment to end. He took pity on her.

“As you wish, Richelle. I will not call you that again.”

“Thank you,” she meekly said as she exhaled.

“Until you ask me to do so.”

Then she did meet his gaze, his dark eyes smoldering like red-hot embers as he looked upon her. Their eyes locked for what seemed an eternity.

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* * * *

He wanted an eternity with her, and he would have to convince her of the same. It would take time to teach her and even then, many things about Immortals would frighten her. He could only hope she would learn to accept their life together, for there was no other choice for either of them.

However, now was not that time. Night was upon them and he had to rise. He had to hunt, to feed. With great difficulty, he set Richelle aside and began to rise. She tried to hold him down.

“No, Valya, you need to rest.”

“No,
mio
…Richelle. I need to fly. Night is upon us, and I need to fe…find food. To build my strength.”

“Then let me go and find food for you.”

He growled low at her innocent suggestion, staring at the slender length of her throat and then lower to the creamy swell of her breast. He refrained from licking his lips as he tamped down his baser longing to take her up on her offer. She had no idea what he truly hungered for. Only the blood of his life mate would sate that hunger. His life mate’s blood, her blood.

With her porcelain skin and delicate taste, she reminded him of moonflowers, large white trumpet flowers that carried a subtle scent and bloomed only at night. He pictured her sitting in the meadow bathed in moon glow. She was an ethereal beauty, and she belonged to him. He shook his head to rid himself of her enticing image before he did something they would both regret. She was young and green. She had to learn about Immortals and what that would mean to her, to them.

“No, you cannot provide me with food, not now. You need time to learn, to understand wha…who I am.”

* * * *

Cocking her head, her brows furrowed in confusion.
Does he believe I
am that naïve? That Duncan would have neglected telling me anything of
his people?
Since she was thirteen years old, she had known of the Immortals, not everything, but enough to calm her when fears would plague her in the night. She would waken from nightmares of faceless, dark figures

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chasing her. Faceless all except for one…the old man in the priest’s collar.

She could never forget that face in a thousand nights.

Malice was reflected in those brutal eyes. They were the ones she remembered from the night her mother died—black as coal they were. His eyes bored through her as if to find her heart to rip it out. There was no mercy in him when he murdered her mother, and there was no mercy in him when he chased her in her dream. She somehow knew that if he caught her in the dream, then she would be destroyed. No matter how hard she tried, she never was able to elude him.

Until Valya appeared.

Valya would appear in her dreams and stand between her and the old priest. He did not kill the priest, but he stood as an immovable wall between them, protecting her and keeping her from harm until the priest dissolved into the evening mist. Valya would then turn and take her in his arms, stroking her hair and whispering words of comfort and of love.

He was there only in her dreams, but she could feel him as if he were in the same room. It confused yet calmed her. She should have been afraid of him. She was merely a child of thirteen and he was a man, but she never felt fear when she was with him. She felt safe. She felt…excited. A young girl’s blossoming at her first love.

It was then Duncan began to tell her of Valya and the Immortals. It was fantastic—a race of people who lived to be centuries old and whose sense of duty protected all people, be they mortal or Immortal, from evil. She found it hard to believe Immortals subsisted on the blood of living creatures, but she was enamored by the romanticism of spending your lifetime searching for your one true love.

With so few female Immortals, many of the males sought their life mates in the mortal world, choosing to live among them and protecting all they could from evil until the day they found and claimed their mate. It made sense to her why she had visions of Valya in her dreams, not merely because he had saved her as a child from the old priest, but because she was indeed Valya’s life mate.

She found comfort in her dreams, but during the day, she teetered on the edge of anxiety. It was difficult enough closing out the world invading her mind every moment. Then Duncan told her about her past filling her mind with terror: movie myths of Vampyres and the living dead; evil men hunting

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her, and death. She withdrew into herself, trying to shield and protect herself from the outside world. Yet the thought of being Valya’s life mate filled her with a giggling glee. He was powerful and handsome, and though she was a wisp of a girl in the throes of adolescent adoration, one day she would become a woman.

And now that day was here. She was lying with Valya, he naked and aroused and she wearing nothing but a slip. She was waiting for her fears from her youth to resurface, but they didn’t come. Rather, being alone with Valya, she felt tingly, and her heart fluttered in her chest, racing like a hummingbird’s wings. Every part of her touching him felt as if it were electrified, leaving her skin sensitized to his touch, especially as he stroked her lower back, encouraging her to arch farther into his embrace. The anxiety didn’t come. Instead she was as aroused as he.

“I know what you need, Valya. I know of your race and I know what you need to sustain your life. I know how you…feed.”

He stared at her wordlessly, as if gauging her reaction to the knowledge of what
he
was. Richelle sensed he was waiting for the feeling of revulsion mortals experienced when they learned of the nature of the Immortals. She did not feel revulsion, but rather she emanated understanding and compassion. His body hardened against her. He pulled her closer into his body, if that were even possible considering she was already lying atop him.

He leaned forward and inhaled the fragrance of her hair. Lifting his hand, he touched her tresses lovingly, wrapping them around his hand. His desire for her she sensed was almost reverent compared to the lustful feelings she had sensed from her attacker.

“You may know much, Richelle, but you understand very little,” he crooned hotly into her fisted hair before lightly pulling her head back so he could gaze into her eyes. “You are still so young and have never dealt with any of my people. You will need time to learn all that you need to know, and I will not always be a patient teacher. But, for now, believe me when I say I must find my own food this night.”

She gazed back into his eyes, filled with a longing she could not name but one she had a growing desire to fulfill. Perhaps he was right to call her young, to think of her as naïve. In all her twenty-eight years, she had never had a man affect her so much and fill her with so much emotion. She had always stayed away from people, men especially, as their licentious

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thoughts infected her mind like a virus. She couldn’t block them, get rid of them, or escape them, so she found it was easier to avoid them.

She did not experience the jabbing pains of uncontrolled thoughts when she was with Valya. With him, she felt the gentle waves of his emotions filling her with power. Even when she could feel his more intense emotions, the mounting desire that seeped from every fiber and pore of his being, she felt no pain. He was using his power to build the wall around her mind, something she had never learned to do. Again, he was protecting her. She was filled with such longing and wanted to fulfill his needs as well.

“Please Valya, let me do this for you.”

* * * *

Her eyes pleaded with him and almost unleashed the beast he was trying so hard to restrain. Almost. He felt the warm muzzle of the black wolf nuzzling his shoulder, drawing his gaze from Richelle. In the black eyes of the wolf, he could see the offering of life. Without alarm, without concern, he willingly offered his blood to feed him.

“You do not know what you offer,” Valya said.

“I know you saved Richelle.”

“She was mine to save.”

“And for that, I offer freely what you need.”

Valya contemplated the noble beast that was offering his life for saving the life of Richelle. While it was not uncommon among his people to take the blood of a beast of nature, it was not as rich or as plentiful as that of a healthy mortal. Taking enough to sate his hunger would kill Richelle’s wolf companion. There was no way he could accept the death of such a noble creature, but he had very little strength left—certainly not enough to return to the city to find mortals.
“I will be as gentle as possible, brave alpha.”

“Shadow. My name is Shadow.”

Valya nodded in acknowledgement as he flooded the beast with

pheromones to soothe him and lull him into a calm. The great wolf lifted his head, exposing his throat. Valya drew his head back as he widened his jaws and his canines elongated. Valya felt Richelle’s fretting concern as he raised his head and bit into the black wolf’s throat.

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Reserved as he fed so as to not frighten Richelle, he kept his hunger at bay. He took only enough to renew his strength until he could leave the cave to find another to slake his hunger. Mindful not to cause any undue damage, he carefully withdrew and swept his tongue over the pinpricks to close the wound. The large wolf’s head lolled as he loped to a corner of the den. He toppled over, joined by his mate, who licked his nose before curling beside him.

Valya fell back upon the makeshift bed and was immediately covered by Richelle. Though his eyes were closed he could feel Richelle’s hands stroking his hair and face just as he had stroked hers to calm her. When he opened his eyes, he could see hers were glittering with unspilled tears.

“Will he be all right?”

“He will be well when morning comes,” he replied with tenderness as he stroked her hair, then let his arm fall to his side.

At his words, she let her head drop to his chest. He opened himself to her emotions of relief and gratitude for not taking the life of her wolf companion. Lifting her head, she smiled shyly as her fingers trailed over the bridge of his nose and then over his lips. She shivered as he sensed a feeling of uncharacteristic wantonness wash over her—she wanted to kiss him. He did not sense disgust at the sight of him taking blood, she simply accepted it…it was what it was. He watched as she stared at his mouth while chewing on her bottom lip. He smiled devotedly and removed her dilemma by leaning up and brushing his lips against hers. He smiled against her lips when she tried to prolong his kiss, but he pulled back. She watched his smile fade as his expression took on a serious countenance.