"You really are...aren't you?" she murmured. "You're a vampire. Holy shit, I can't believe it's true. I mean, how can it be true, Rio?"
He sat down next to her on the bed, no less than two feet of space between them. "I already explained it to you."
"Blood-drinking extraterrestrials and human women with alien-friendly DNA," she said, recalling the outlandish story about a vampiric hybrid race she'd tried to dismiss as science fiction. "It's all fact?"
"The truth is a bit more complicated than your understanding of it, but yes. Everything I told you is fact."
Incredible.
Absolutely mind-blowingly incredible.
A mercenary part of her nearly shouted with excitement over the potential fame and fortune there would be in breaking such an enormous news story. But it was another part of her - the part that reminded her of the little birthmark on the back of her neck and its apparent connection to this strange new world - that made her feel instantly protective, as though Rio and the world he lived in was a delicious secret that belonged exclusively to her.
"I'm sorry I upset you," she told him quietly. "I shouldn't have been nosing around in your things when you weren't here."
His head came up sharply, dark brows crushed together. The curse he muttered was ripe and vivid. "You don't have to apologize to me, Dylan. I'm the one at fault. I should never have come in here the way I was. No one should be near me when I'm like that."
"You seem a little better now."
He nodded, head slumped down toward his chest. "The rage subsides...eventually. If I don't black out first, it does eventually pass."
It didn't take much to see him as he had been when he stumbled into his quarters a short while ago. He'd been almost mindless, his limbs hardly working as he struggled with each difficult step. He'd been barely coherent, a shuddering bulk of muscle and bone and unfocused fury.
"What brings it on, Rio?"
He shrugged. "Little things. Nothing at all. I can never know."
"Is that kind of rage just part of being what you are? Do all of the Breed have to go through that kind of torment?"
"No." He scoffed under his breath. "No, this problem is mine alone. My head's not screwed on right anymore. It hasn't been right since last summer."
"Was it an accident?" she asked gently. "Is that what happened to you?"
"It was a mistake," he said, a brittle edge to his voice. "I trusted someone I shouldn't have."
Dylan looked at the terrible damage his body had weathered. His face and neck bore serious scars, but his left shoulder and half of his muscled torso looked like it had been through hell and back. Her heart clenched tightly in her chest when she thought about the kind of pain he must have endured, both in the event that injured him and in what had to have been many long months of recovery.
He sat there so rigidly, so solitary and unreachable even though he was less than an arm's length away from her on the edge of the big bed. He seemed so alone to her. Alone and adrift.
"I'm sorry, Rio," she said, and before she could stop herself, she put her hand over the top of his where it rested on his thigh.
He flinched as though she'd put hot coals on his skin.
But he didn't move away.
He stared down at her fingers, which rested lightly across his, pale white over buttery olive. When he looked over at her, it was with a stark wildness in his eyes. She wondered how long it had been since he'd been touched with any kind of tenderness.
How long had it been since he'd allowed himself to be touched?
Dylan smoothed her fingers over the top of his hand, studying the incredible size and strength of him. His skin was so warm, so much coiled power in him even when he seemed determined to hold himself perfectly still.
"I'm sorry for everything you've been through, Rio. I mean that."
His jaw was clamped so hard it made a tendon twitch in his face. Dylan set the cold compress down on the bed next to her, hardly aware that she was moving because her senses were so fixed on Rio and the electricity that seemed to be pooling where their hands connected.
She heard a low rumble gathering from within him, something between a growl and a moan. His gaze drifted down to her mouth, and for a second - one fast, fleeting heartbeat - she wondered if he was going to kiss her.
She knew she should draw back. Move her hand away from his. Anything but sit there unable to breathe as she waited and wondered - wished so desperately - that he would lean in and brush his lips against hers.
She couldn't stop herself from reaching out to him now. She moved her free hand up toward his face, and felt a sudden blast of cold air coming at her, pushing at her like a physical wall.
"I don't want your pity," Rio snarled in a voice she didn't recognize as his own. The rolling Spanish accent was there as always, but the syllables were harsh, the timbre not quite human, reminding her of just how little she understood about him or his kind. He pulled his hand out from under hers and stood up from the bed. "That cut of yours is still bleeding. You need attention I can't give you."
"I'm sure it's fine," Dylan replied, feeling like an idiot for putting herself out there like that with him. She grabbed the damp washcloth and dabbed at her cheek. "It's no big deal. I'm fine."
There was no sense talking since it was obvious he wasn't listening to her anyway. She watched him walk past the broken glass of the shattered mirror, into the living room outside. He picked up the cordless telephone and dialed a short sequence of numbers.
"Dante? Hey. No, nothing wrong. But I, ah...is Tess there? I need to ask a favor of her."