His gaze drifted behind her. He tilted his head as if listening. To see if the vampire was still close by? But after a moment, his eyes turned back to her. “I thought I was the only one left alive.”
Simple. Hollow. Cold.
She shivered. What would it be like to think you were the last of your kind? The only one left on the whole earth? Lonely.
But the vamp had said there was another like Cain. A phoenix female.
A muscle flexed in his jaw. “I’ll have to kill her.”
Shock rippled through Eve. “Why?” His response was the last thing she expected.
“There’s a reason there haven’t been many of my kind in this world.” His hands fell away from her as he headed toward the open door. Sunlight fell inside, but the light just made the angles and planes of his face appear even harder. “Who else knows our weaknesses?” Cain murmured. “Who better to attack . . .”
She rubbed her arms. “You’re telling me that the reason there aren’t a lot of. . . of phoenixes running around is because you guys kill each other off?”
He didn’t glance at her. “Only the strong survive.”
That didn’t make any sense to her. Even vamps didn’t hunt each other to extinction. “What about the old phrase that there’s strength in numbers? I mean, come on, Cain. It’s not like you killed your own mother or anything, right?”
His shoulders stiffened. “My mother wasn’t a phoenix.” Slowly, he shut the door and turned back to face her. “And I didn’t have to kill her. My father eliminated her when I was a boy.”
Eliminated her. His words were cold. Callous. Was her face supposed to be feeling so icy? “Why?”
“Because the beasts within us have two drives.”
She didn’t speak. Just waited. Beasts within . . . the phoenix was a type of shifter. A beast held inside the body of a man. Trapped inside—until the beast broke free.
The fire frees him.
“To mate,” Cain said.
Her breath heaved in her chest.
“And to kill.”
“You kill what you love?” she asked through lips that seemed numb.
He shook his head. “We don’t love.”
So certain. So chilling. Did he hear the too-fast beating of her heart?
He gave her a smile, and she knew that he did hear that telling beat. “Didn’t you realize it, baby? I truly am a monster . . . the worst one walking the earth.”
He wanted to scare her. He’d succeeded. But Eve made herself walk toward him. One foot in front of the other. He could probably smell the fear rolling off her, but she didn’t care.
“If you are so evil”—as he kept telling her—“why’d you come for me? Why not leave me to die with Wyatt?”
“Wyatt wasn’t going to kill you. Death would have been too easy.”
She flinched. She’d never thought of death as particularly easy.
Cain moved toward her, stopping less than a foot away. His hand lifted and curved around her cheek. “When we rise, we’re at our most dangerous.”
Eve believed that. She’d seen the beast stare back at her when he rose.
“My mother tried to kill my father when she learned that he . . . wasn’t human. She attacked him. Stabbed him in the heart.”
That wouldn’t have been enough.
“When he rose, the beast had power. The beast was in control.”
Cain kept talking about a beast and she was understanding that . . . well, despite all his power and fire, maybe deep down he was just another type of shifter. A very, very deadly type.
Trace had often talked about his beast as if he and the wolf were two different beings. Maybe it was the same for Cain. Maybe there was the man. And there was the phoenix. The one she’d seen staring back at her from eyes that burned.
“My mother tried to attack again.” His voice roughed. “She realized that I was like my father, and she tried to kill me.”
A child? Her own child?
“Humans can’t love monsters,” he said, frowning at Eve as if she should understand that fact. “Not even the ones they bring into the world.”
“Cain . . .”
“She didn’t move fast enough,” he said and shrugged.
Shrugged?
“My father’s fire killed her.”
There were chill bumps on Eve’s arm. The fire had never hurt her, but she felt cold all too well. She was freezing, but the cold seemed to be coming from inside her. “What happened to him?”
“Another phoenix ended him about a century later.”
“A century?” she repeated, stunned.
Cain had turned away from her. “The vampire is out there, either selling us out to Wyatt right now or planning to attack and separate us.”
She grabbed his arm. “Hold on!” Eve forced him to look at her.
“We need to leave. If we don’t, Wyatt’s men will surround the cabin. They’ll try to take you. I’ll kill them all.” One dark brow rose. “I have no problem killing them, but you seem to get upset when others die.”
He was playing the unfeeling bastard, but he wasn’t like that.
Softly, Eve said, “I know you.”
That brow stayed up. “Do you.” Not a question.
He’d revealed a bit of his past to her, and now the guy was shutting down. She shook her head again. It wasn’t going to work like that. “You won’t scare me away from you.”
He laughed at that. Actually laughed. A deep, husky laugh that made her feel strange. He’d never laughed before, had he? His lips were still curved in a smile. “Oh, Eve, I already know the truth about you. . . .”
No, he didn’t. She had a few secrets of her own.
“You’re f**king terrified of me.” His hand pressed against her chest. Over the swell of her breast and over the heart that raced too fast. His head lowered to her. His lips brushed over her ear. “But part of you likes that fear, don’t you?”
“No,” she gritted out. He didn’t understand her at all.
“Then why do you want me to f**k you, even now, even with all I’ve said . . .”
Two drives . . .
To mate.
To kill.
His breath blew lightly on her ear.
She wasn’t going to deny that she wanted him. It was like her body was tuned to his. One touch, and she needed. But the guy was seriously mistaken about her motives. “I don’t like the fear.” She felt it. Wouldn’t lie. “But I want you”—Eve’s lashes lifted, and she stared into his eyes—“in spite of that, not because of it.”