“I’ll have you fired,” she spat, her breasts rising and brushing against his chest.

Zane suppressed the urge to groan at the contact. “I’d say join the club, but I’m afraid the membership roster is overly full.”

“I hate you!”

He narrowed the gap between them, then slowly turned his mouth to her ear, their cheeks almost touching. He took in a long, deep breath, unable to get enough of her scent. But it wasn’t all he enjoyed: her breasts now connected fully with his chest, her nipples pressing against him. “It seems you keep choosing the wrong clubs to join. Alas this one has a long waiting list as well. You see, I really don’t care who hates me.”

“Don’t you?” she challenged.

Zane raised his head to look at her. Her long, curved lashes fluttered for a brief moment before sweeping upwards as her eyes opened fully, her gaze suddenly pinning him with more intensity than before.

Did Portia suspect that he didn’t want her to hate him, that the emotion he most wished from her was as far away from hate as humanly possible, yet at the same time was only separated from it by a sliver as thin as the thread of control he had left? “Hate is the only reliable emotion left.” Love couldn’t survive the challenges in this world.

“Hate is the most destructive and useless of all feelings.”

Zane cocked an eyebrow. “That’s because you’ve never experienced true hate. You have no idea of its power.” It was a power that drove him, that contributed to his survival. Without it, he wouldn’t have survived the first few weeks as a vampire. Only hate had kept him alive then. It had become a trusted companion, one he could rely upon not to desert him.

“There’s a greater power than hate.”

“If you’re getting religious on me, you might as well—”

“I’m talking about love,” Portia interrupted him.

Instinctively, he pulled back and noticed the responding satisfactory glint in her eyes.

Her lips quirked. “So that’s what you’re afraid of. Love.”

Her words catapulted him upright in a millisecond. Zane rose as fast as if she was pointing a stake at his chest. In one fluid movement he turned his back to her. “I think you should go to your room now. It’s past your bedtime.” And safer for you, he wanted to add.

He heard the sound of the couch cushions as she shifted and stood. “Well, I guess I hit that one out of the park.” Portia marched past him, and from what he could tell, she deliberately brushed her body against his side, the brief touch searing him like a branding iron marred the flesh of a calf.

“You think your Psych 101 makes you an expert in analyzing people?”

“I’m a Psych major, so, yes, I do.”

Pride dictated that he not let her win this argument. “You know nothing about me, and you never will.”

She didn’t turn as she set her foot on the first stair. Her words were low as she murmured as if talking to herself, but he heard them all the same. “Watch your back, tough guy.”

Watch yours, or you’ll find yourself on it soon, he wanted to respond but didn’t.

Chapter Eight

The door snapped in behind Zane as he entered his foyer, the rising sun on his heels. He’d preyed on an unsuspecting pedestrian on his way home, feeling so agitated by his argument with Portia that he had taken longer than normal to feed. And even after the two full pints of blood he’d taken, his body felt unsatisfied. He knew only too well what he needed to gain the satisfaction his body demanded, but that knowledge didn’t bring him any closer to obtaining what he so desperately sought: a taste of Portia, not simply a kiss or a quick fuck, but more, a taste of her blood, her arousal, her heart.

Her words and the look on her face when she’d spoken them had whirled his insides up like a tornado ripping through a Midwestern town, leaving only destruction and devastation behind. Suddenly, he hadn’t been the one in charge. She’d taken over the reins and whipped him by exposing his greatest fear.

To love again.

He’d loved his parents and his sister. He’d loved the words he’d used to craft beautiful masterpieces. He’d loved the sound of birds singing in the back yard.

He’d loved life.

Then they had robbed him of everything: his parents, his sister, and his passion. And finally, his life.

They’d taken everything away from him because of who he was and replaced it with nothing but a heart full of hatred and a drive for revenge. To love again would only serve as a painful reminder of his loss. The fraction of his soul that was still intact would shatter from the impact of another loss, one that surely would occur if he allowed his heart to soften.