Primal Instincts (25 page)

“Why?” he asked. “How?”

She threw back her head and laughed.
Damn, her throat is gorgeous!
Her green eyes gleamed with a sexy hint of red when she looked back at him.

“They let us Clan girls drive, you know. That’s
how
I’m here. The answer to
why
is multipart.”

“Is life a quiz?” he asked.

“It’s a test.” She sighed. “Always a test. Of loyalty. Of friendship. Of honor. Of will.”

“Of survival,” he added.

They agreed on so much, he and this Clan girl who was oh-so-inappropriate for what he thought he wanted. That was how it was supposed to be with bonding, wasn’t it? Two minds, souls, bodies meshing perfectly. How could anyone not want such perfection?

How could anyone not be terrified of it?

“Do you know how the Tribes deal with bonding?” he asked, and felt the shiver of horror that went through her mind and body in response. “Tribe females belong to the strongest males. They exist to
be bred. They are bought and sold and fought over. Mortal slaves are used for sexual pleasure, but every Prime knows never to become involved with a vampire female. Use their bodies, stay out of their minds. Breed them, then pass them on to their next master as quickly as possible. Try not to taste them; never let them taste you. Never even look into their eyes. There are all sorts of superstitions about how females drain Primes’ strength, many examples of their evil ways. The whole point is to keep Primes from bonding with females.”

“And look how well that’s worked out for the Tribes. They’re all crazy!”

“From a Clan princess’s point of view, I suppose you’re right.”

“It should be right from a Family Prime’s point of view, as well.”

He shrugged. “I was born into Tribe Minotaur. Deep in my gut I still believe females need to be controlled.”

“You need to work on that.”

He grinned. “You love it, woman.”

“What I love in the bedroom is completely—”

“My business.”

She didn’t deny it. “Are you taking this history lesson somewhere?”

“My sire owned a breeder and fought all the time for the right to keep her to himself. He kept her too
long. She got her fangs into him.”

Her green eyes flashed with anger at his ugly description of Tribe life. She sneered. “What happened? Did they live happily ever after?”

“They did,” he answered. “They still are. But their bonding destroyed the Minotaur Tribe.”

“And this was bad how?”

Her rising anger licked hotly at his senses, turning fury into an aphrodisiac. There was good reason she was known as Flare.

How very like a Clan female not to see that there was a tragic side to the triumph of his parents’ love story.

“Their bonding changed my world,” he went on. “Most of my growing up was done in a Family crèche. My adult life is spent actively opposing what’s left of the Tribes. But should the Tribes’ way of life be completely destroyed? Are they completely wrong? Would I have found better solutions for them if I’d remained within the Tribe structure? I have some doubts about the wonder that is bonding. You’re not the only one facing the inevitable with some issues.”

She pulled away and stomped across the kitchen but stopped at the doorway and grasped the frame so hard the wood cracked beneath her fingers. The pull they had on each other stretched painfully tight between them.

She couldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t let her if she
tried.

“Damn it!” She whirled back to face him. “I vowed to leave you for your own good, before this . . .
instinct
took complete control. I wanted it to be my contribution to the Dark Angels. I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize your leadership.”

“I appreciate that.”

She took his words as sarcasm. Her temper continued to blaze. “I believed you were trying to save the Clans and Families—from mortals, from Tribes, from ourselves. I want to believe in your mission, Tobias. Now I’m not sure what your mission is. To make us like the Tribes? To rule the immortal world?”

What the hell is she talking about?
“How can someone I’m bonding with completely misunderstand what I meant?” he asked, bewildered.

“You dissed your
mother
! You praised the Tribes’ treatment of women.”

“No, I didn’t.”

She repeated back to him, verbatim, everything he’d said about his family history.

Ouch.

He had to admit that coming from her, it didn’t sound good.

He held up his hands. “Maybe I didn’t explain myself properly. Aren’t we supposed to just
know
everything about each other?”

“I guess not,” she said.

In a way this was a hopeful sign. It showed that they were individuals who could confuse and annoy and misunderstand each other.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m worried about my kid, there’s a Prime still out there we have to find, and my back hurts. Sometimes I get a little . . . maudlin, confused, about the past. My parents’ bond was wonderful for them. I’m proud to be a Strahan Prime. In the long run joining the Family was good for many of the Minotaurs, but there were deaths, and there’s still plenty of hatred and sworn vendettas. Their bonding didn’t help promote peace, didn’t help bring a reasonable solution to the Tribes’ problems. I want peace.”

“Even if you have to kill to get it?”

“Yes. I’ll fight the Tribes because they make it necessary, but I want the Tribes to survive. They aren’t nice people, but they are a pure expression of our ancient predator nature.”

“Twisted. Evil.”

“But we need to acknowledge their culture and persuade them to want to change. Historically bonding is the worst sin to them. I don’t know how that came about, but I also know it’s caused plenty of problems among us
civilized
vampires too.”

She nodded. “The mortals have no idea how mild the fight for Helen of Troy was compared to some of
our bonding tales.”

“So maybe I’m a little scared of bonding.”

“You see it as a weapon? Something that can turn on you?” she asked.

“Maybe. A little.”

“Point taken.” She eyed him suspiciously. “Are you scared of bonding in general or of bonding with me?”

“Yes.”

Francesca threw back her head and laughed.

The sight and sound nearly drove him to his knees. He loved her laugh. It sent sparks flying through his blood. Her lovely, long exposed neck when she tilted up her chin was the most erotic sight in the world. Primes would kill for the chance to pierce that soft, warm skin, though he’d strike first if anyone tried. He ached for the chance to fight off a challenger, to prove to her and the world whom she belonged to.

Tobias rubbed his fingers across his mouth, his aching fangs. His vision was trying to switch into the spectrum where he could see lust as heat and blood. He had to keep himself under control. “Stay on target,” he muttered. “You were leaving to keep from jeopardizing the Angels? To help me? I do appreciate the thought—but didn’t you think I’d have to come after you?”

“I hoped you’d be stronger than that.”

“In other words, you wanted to torture me?”

She laughed again. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to the Reynard Citadel. Not tonight. My mom gave our pilot the holidays off. She did that on purpose to keep me here, you know.”

“You said you have a pilot’s license.”

“Am I supposed to steal a plane?”

“A Dark Angel would.”

“I’m not—”

“You are.”

“You don’t know my Matri.”

He took a step toward her. She took one toward him. They weren’t able to stay apart even though they tried.

“Your Matri has made you scared of bonding, angry at being with a Prime, angry at being part of our world.”

All of her deep resentment, her anger as thick and hot as lava, throbbed through her, into him. It was a barrier between them, and he had a temper of his own.

“Tell me,” he said.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

He was on her in a heartbeat, his hands gripping her, his gaze boring into hers. “It wasn’t a request.” His voice was raw with jealousy. “Who is he?”

Francesca didn’t want to talk about this. This was her private soul, her secret heart. This was the pain that kept her fighting, kept her alive, kept her strong.

“Strong for what? Strong for who?”

“Get out of my head!”

“I can’t. Damn it, you know I can’t.”

He was there, stalking around the walls of her consciousness, looking in the windows. “Sneak thief,” she snarled, curling tightly around her memories. She wouldn’t go there. Let them lie dormant.

Let them turn to poison inside you? Let the poison permeate everything we could be?

She hated her hunger for that word—
we.
She and Tobias together, forever. Images flashed through her of their hands entwined, their bodies entwined, their beings, ambitions, and lives entwined.

She fought the images that built a barrier around her memories of a mortal lover.

“I’m here. He’s not. You’ve wasted enough time, Francesca.”

Her conviction wavered. Had it been a waste? The waste of her life, her love, her time—

Patrick could never be everything she needed, wanted. She couldn’t give herself freely. She’d held back. She’d
had
to hold back, for her species’ sake. For her Clan’s sake.

The pain came out in a banshee howl.

“Oh, goddess, I never even tasted him! Not once. I loved him but I didn’t dare . . .”

“Loved who? Talk to me, Francesca. Let me help.”

Tobias was holding her tightly yet somehow tenderly as she clawed and fought to get away. She tasted blood but couldn’t tell if it was his or her own. Was that some trick of bonding?

It was Tobias’s blood—yes. His pleasure still reverberated through her, pushing back her panic. He’d let her sink her fangs into him.

It made her crave what she could share with him.

She spat onto the floor. “Damn you! You’re trying to make me forget him.”

“I’d like to,” he answered. “Ow!” He shook her. “Keep your claws in, woman, and listen to me.”

His hands closed hard around her wrists, trapping her like the silver manacles the Tribes used on their females.

Francesca went completely still. Her voice was as cold as ice. “I will not be your prisoner.”

“You’ve been a prisoner all your life,” Tobias retorted. “I can feel all the invisible chains winding through you. Let them go.”

“You mean let him go!”

She struggled, snapped at him, kicked him, but Tobias would not let her go. All the time his thoughts caressed her.

“You are my prisoner,” he told her. “But I’m yours too. You have as much power over me as I have over you. We don’t have to be crippled by it. Loving this mortal has left you crippled for years.”

No! No! No! You don’t understand! You can’t understand! No Prime can understand—

Love? Don’t be ridiculous. Calm down.

Strahan’s thoughts closed around hers like a vise. Velvet darkness shrouded her pain.

When the soft darkness faded, Francesca was lying on the guest room bed, sheltered in Tobias’s arms.
Just as it should be, damn it all to hades.

She lifted her head from his shoulder to meet his dark gaze. “I don’t want your help,” she told him. “Not like that.”

He stroked her hair away from her face. “I only knocked you out because your hysteria was going to wake up everyone in the house.”

“How kind of you to think of everyone else.”

He ignored her sarcasm. “It’s what I do.”

“I wasn’t hysterical. I was . . . all right, I was, but it was your fault.”

His fingertips traced her cheek, her throat, between her breasts, back up the side of her face in a slow, sweet circle. His touch lingered on her skin.

“I don’t understand how it’s my fault, Francesca.”

His complete honesty kept her temper from flaring again. “You want me to forget him,” she said. “That’s infuriating, humiliating, wrong—”

He put his fingers over her lips. “It’s arrogant for me to want you to forget someone you loved. And it is wrong. But I can’t help wanting everything you are to myself. It’s a Prime thing.”

She snapped at his fingers. “Is it any wonder I hate Primes?”

He kissed her with just enough fang to draw a drop of blood from her lower lip. His tongue tasted it and twined with hers. A shudder of pleasure went through them both.
No mortal can do this for you.

So very true.
I never wanted him the way I need you.
Francesca hated to admit it but couldn’t deny it.

“How did you want him? Tell me about him, Francesca,” Tobias said. “I need to know why you hurt for him. I won’t try to take away the pain if you don’t want me to. I won’t try to take him from you. Your memories, your history, belong to you.”

His sincerity touched her very deeply. “Thank
you.”

“You know a lot more about me than I do about you.”

It was true enough. Francesca took the hint, but it was incredibly difficult to let go of the secrets she’d kept to herself for so long.

“His name was Patrick.” The words came out as a rough whisper. “He was a big, blond jock, a hell of a lot smarter than he looked. So funny, and kind, very comfortable with who he was. He never knew I was a vampire.”

“You didn’t believe he’d be comfortable with what you are?”

“I never wanted him to know. We met in college. I was this snooty rich girl. He was on a sports scholarship.” A sound rose in her throat, half sob, half laugh. “We did homework together. He taught me how to cook. He was a vegetarian when we met, but a vampire and a vegetarian could never work out. At least I managed to get him to eat fish.”

“Why didn’t you want him to know who you truly are?” Tobias asked. “Vampire females have taken mortal lovers before, even had children with them. Ben and his lady had a son.”

They were in Ben Lancer’s house. Ben had been lovers with a Corvus female for decades before she was called home to her Clan because she was the Matri’s heir. Francesca knew that story very well. The
story of the Corvus female’s mortal romance was her story as well, but she hadn’t had decades with Patrick. She hadn’t had children with him.