A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole Read Free Book Online Page A

had given a vampire to him, and he’d pushed her to this? Destroy what you’ve been given . He was devastated by what she was—but he didn’t want her dead. Or ruined.
    It enraged him even to contemplate the hell he’d just been through, much less to talk about it, but he had to try anything. Have to get rid of this feeling—this dread . “Understand that I’ve been…locked away for one hundred and fifty years. Without comfort, without a woman. I’d only just escaped a week before I found you and I have no’…acclimated well.”
    “Why do you act as if you know me?”
    “I’ve been disoriented. Confused. I know we’ve never met.”
    “Who are you?”
    Just minutes before, he’d been about to claim her—without even telling her his name. “I am Lachlain, head of the Lykae clan.”
    He could hear her heart speed up with fear. “Y-you’re a werewolf? You must let me go.”
    She looked otherworldly, with her hair streaming about and her skin so pale. She was not of his kind, and he had no idea how to be with her. “I will. After the next full moon. I vow it.”
    “I want to go now.”
    “I need you…to get to my home,” he said, adding lie to truth. “And I will no’ hurt you again.” Possibly another lie.
    She laughed bitterly. “You were going to force me just then, and I almost died this morning. Of sun .” She whispered the word. “Do you know what that’s like? The pain?”
    He had a bloody good idea.
    Her expression suddenly grew horrified, as if she was recalling a nightmare. “I haven’t felt the sun on my skin”—
    she swayed on the rail—“since I was three years old.”
    Inching closer, mouth gone dry, he said, “I doona ken how to care for you, but you will tell me. And this will no’
    happen again.”
    “I don’t want your attentions. You…you frighten me.”
    Of course he frightened her—his rages left even him shaken. “I understand. Now, come down. I know you doona want to die.”
    She glanced over her shoulder at the waxing moon rising, giving him her flawless profile. A gust pushed her hair across her neck. In all his years, he’d never seen such a preternatural scene as her pale skin against her blood-red gown with the moon glowing behind her.
    She didn’t answer, only exhaled wearily, swaying.
    “Look at me.” She didn’t—she glanced down. “Look at me!”
    She seemed to wake up, her brows drawing together, her eyes bleak. “I just want to go home,” she said in a small voice.
    “You will. I vow you’ll go home.” To your new home . “Just help me get to mine.”
    “If I help you, you swear you’ll release me?”
    Never . “Aye.”
    “You won’t hurt me?”
    “No, I will no’ hurt you.”
    “Can you make that promise? You can’t seem to…control yourself.”
    “Every hour I gain control.” Because of her? “And know that I doona want to hurt you.” That, at least, was now true. He thought.
    “You won’t do those…th-things to me again?”
    “I will no’ unless you want me to.” He held out his hand to her. “Do we have an agreement?”
    She didn’t take it, but after several agonizing moments, she did come down with a bizarre movement. She stepped down as if she were strolling and had stepped from a curb without breaking stride.
    He gave her shoulders a shake. “Doona ever do that again.” He had an odd urge to squeeze the vampire to his chest, and set her away.
    She looked down. “I won’t. Unless it’s a better alternative.”
    He glowered at that. “Do we have an agreement?”
    When she nodded, he wondered if it was only the position he’d forced upon her that had made her agree, or was it more? He’d thought he might have seen compassion in her eyes for just a brief moment when he’d admitted his imprisonment.
    “Then we leave tonight for Scotland.”
    Her lips parted. “I can’t go to Scotland! I was going to direct you. Or at least, MapQuest was,” she added in a mumble. “How would you plan to get there