Page 121 of Vampire's Choice

She told herself to stop thinking about what lay ahead. This was not that moment.

A rush of male approval followed the thought, a reinforcement flavored with admonishment. He knew the value of staying in the present, too.

A heartbeat later, there was no room for anything but what happened next.

Every vampire saw third marked relationships around them. Every vampire was told there was nothing that fully explained the marking experience itself.

Elisa’s words were in her head. I was never alone again. But it’s terrifying, Ruth, because with the wrong Master, loneliness can take on a depth and pain even Hell cannot match.

“Tell me how it normally works.” As she finished the mark, savoring the blood she’d taken as part of it, he spoke aloud. Perhaps because he was struggling with what was going on inside of him like she was.

“The vampire can move through the mind, into the heart, past the heart. Into the soul. If the human…the servant, is open to that, it’s a startling feeling, but not painful.”

“And if he’s not open to that?”

“If he’s human, the vampire can push in anyway. Take over. They can…destroy the human from the soul outward if they so desire.”

“Would you wish me to try to resist your entry? See if I can keep you out? You like a fight.”

“Not for this. No. Please.” Her hands were on his biceps, as she pushed up enough to look at him. The black blood red in his eyes had gotten notably larger, only a small amount of silver and white visible. When she told him, he looked surprised, then thoughtful, but the energy vibrating off his taut muscles said that was one of many things he was processing.

“Does it work in the other direction? Can I come into your soul?”

Only a heartbeat ago, she’d felt that was a very real possibility. “I don’t know.”

Merc held her gaze. She felt him there inside her mind, as she was in his. Together, of one accord, they started to descend, on parallel tracks. Their bodies responded to the mental effort, pushing against one another, sinking into a closer embrace.

She saw so many images in his head. As she reached the heart level, she saw flashes of the child he’d been, the dark, cold world where he’d been abandoned. Then the adult male he was now, the journeys of heart and mind, the lessons learned, tragedies felt…

His discovery of a world that wasn’t about fighting, killing, surviving. Flashes of Marcellus, the angelic Legion. An amazing glimpse of a sky full of winged warriors, the silver spires of a place beyond them.

Machanon. Where the Prime Legion gathers for leisure.

When he’d first seen Machanon, some part of him had recognized it as a place he belonged. He’d rejected that. Angrily, fiercely. He’d spent his life walling himself off from rejection, hurt, refusing to deceive himself.

Then she saw the recent memory, Marcellus speaking to him, giving him a different view of it, a place where he would be accepted.

Such thoughts weren’t like flashbacks. They were experiences that had made such a strong impression they were in his heart. Having someone believe in him…he’d never had that. Never acknowledged it.

A tear touched her lips as she wondered at the things he was feeling in her own heart, finding his way within her, two beings twining into one. She could focus on his journey, find out, but it was too much. She stayed where she was, inside him.

His hands were on her hips. He’d removed the shorts, and was easing her down upon his cock, adding another explosion of sensation to what was happening to them both. Bringing them as close physically as they could possibly be.

She’d reached the soul level, but when she leaned into it, it didn’t let her through the way his heart had. Guided by embedded instinct, she exerted more pressure.

He stiffened, and she jerked back, but it was too late for defense. An urgency seized him. She gasped as he gripped her under the arms, fingers spreading over her rib cage, bringing her up closer to his face so he could latch onto one breast, suckle her hard. His cock drove up into her. It was an abrupt contrast, but it didn’t disrupt the connection. It widened the universe of possibilities inside themselves into a raw, rougher world. A scarier one.

The power he could wield as an incubus wrapped around her, a full body cocoon. The first climax hit with the brutal impact of a car crash. It took away every choice she had, planting a seed of fear, even as she drowned in the pleasure, two climaxes, three climaxes…

“Merc…”

She couldn’t capture what was going on outside their bodies, except for a brief glimpse of his dark gaze. He was pulling in her sexual energy, and this time he’d roped her life force to it. He was intending to kill her.

No, not Merc. The incubus inside him, the demon. It had taken her attempt to enter his soul as an invasion. A threat to be eradicated. Merc was right. She was about to discover another way a vampire could die.

She tried to fight it, to fight him, crying out in his mind, because her throat was strangled with passionate cries, begging for more. She was experiencing what his victims had, their fear, their realization they were about to die. He’d told her all of that with flat dispassion, though she’d sensed far more beneath it.

But she wasn’t them. She wasn’t human. She was a vampire. This conflict was merely a different version of one she’d dealt with all her life. The conflict between what she wanted and what she had to be. The strengths that didn’t seem to outweigh the weaknesses.