Bloodlust Denied by Christina Phillips Page B

drinking so none would guess he needed neither to survive.
    “Who is Thanatos to you, Morana?”
    “My beloved.” A soft smile touched her lips before she took another sip of soup.
    Well, fuck. He hadn’t expected her to be so direct. But what had he expected? He’d kidnapped her. He’d stripped her and tied her to his bed. Why should she coat her words in honey simply to save his feelings?
    He had no feelings.
    “How long has he been your lover?” And how many other times had he stood by and watched Morana fuck another man?
    “Thanatos isn’t my lover.” The diamonds that had been a part of the Havenshire treasury for more than a century sparkled on her wrist as she dabbed the corner of her mouth with the linen napkin. “He’s my adopted brother.”
    So her adoptive brother stood by and watched her—
    He cut the thought dead. The brother was clearly a pervert but at least he wasn’t Morana’s lover.
    “Do you have any blood brothers or sisters?”
    Tension coiled in the room, as though he had just stepped over an invisible barrier erected around her heart. She wasn’t going to answer him, and that increased his desire to know. To discover everything about her life and her past and the fascinating path that had led her to that alley and into his existence.
    “My only brother is dead.” The bitterness in her voice was barely discernible but to his preternatural senses, her loss screamed in soundless agony.
    “How long ago did he die?” Not long. He knew that much.
    She flicked him a startled glance, as if she’d expected him to sympathize with her loss, perhaps murmur meaningless platitudes.
    “A long time ago. Another life.” The corner of her mouth quirked in a private, mirthless jest.
    As the next course was served and he was unwillingly thrust into the tainted archives of his past when he had truly lived another life. A time when death had claimed all he loved, everything he had ever been. Memories he’d buried in unmarked graves.
    He attacked the venison on his plate, momentarily imagining sinking his teeth into the meat. But that wouldn’t assuage the dull rage that churned through his gut or pounded through his brain. He dropped his pretense of eating and leveled his gaze across the table to where Morana sat staring at him, spellbound.
    “Were you with him at the end?” He hadn’t meant to ask such a thing. And yet her love was so pure, it bathed her in a halo and he knew she would not have allowed her brother to die alone.
    The way he’d let his beloved die alone.
    The moldering memory rose like a putrid corpse from the black fog in his mind. He gritted his teeth, pushed the recollection aside. It was long ago, and even then there had been nothing he could do to change the hand of Fate.
    Fuck, but he loathed Fate. He had spent the rest of his existence spitting in Fate’s eye. But it meant nothing, because nothing could change the past and the past was the only thing he craved with all of his shriveled heart.
    “No.” Her voice was a whisper in the eons of time that separated them. He dragged his attention back to the present, back to the woman who sat opposite him. The only woman who had ever sat with him alone in this grand, empty dining hall.
    “Why not?”
    She looked down at her plate, clearly debating whether to accede to his demand. Or maybe she was just recalling another time, another place.
    Finally she raised her head and for one eternal second he saw the monumental depth of her loss. A loss that surely encompassed more than her brother, more than anything a mere mortal was capable of withstanding.
    “Fate had other plans.”
    A chill trickled along his spine at her choice of words. But they were only words. It didn’t mean she could read his mind or see into his hollow soul.
    “And now your guilt eats at your heart and conscience, until you fear for your sanity.” He offered her a twisted smile. How well he understood except for the fact he no longer had a heart and had