And she wasn’t the kind of woman Marcus preferred: bold and full of fire like Bethany.

Ami had barely managed to admit she liked the brush of his lips, his body pressed to hers. She was innocent. Completely. She could never be like the women she saw on TV who thought sex a fun pastime to share with men they had just met or, if you believed those horrid Valentine’s Day commercials, that sex was merely a means of procuring shiny baubles.

Marcus had given Ami her first kiss, something she would always treasure. Marcus had been the first man to hold her in a nonbrotherly fashion. To make her heart race madly. As it did now.

“What did you say?” he asked, interrupting her harried thoughts as he stopped a breath away.

She swallowed hard. He stood so close Ami could feel the heat from his body. “I like kissing you.”

His eyes flared amber.

“And touching you.”

The amber grew brighter still, glowing like the moon. “I like kissing you, too,” he murmured with a look in those iridescent eyes that made everything within her go liquid. “I like kissing you and touching you so much that I want to do it again and again until I’ve memorized every inch of you.”

And she wished he would, though it went against everything she had been taught. “I’m not who you think I am,” she confessed with a touch of desperation.

He leaned in closer, his breath warming her cheek. “I think you’re my Second. The best I’ve ever had. I think you’re my friend. I think you’re intelligent and funny and so beautiful you rob me of rational thought.”

Her pulse raced as he rubbed his nose against hers.

“I think you’re the strongest, most courageous and intriguing woman I have ever known. Is that not who you are?”

She didn’t know whether to bury her fingers in his hair and drag his lips forward the inch that separated them or to burst into tears. “I’m a coward,” she whispered.

Fury blazed in his eyes. “Who told you that?” he demanded roughly.

“No one. I just … am. I’m not those things you said, Marcus, no matter how much I want to be. I’m not strong like you. I was once, but then …” She shook her head, unable to overcome her reluctance to tell him. “I’m not fearless.”

His lips quirked up at their corners as he cupped her face in one large hand. “What makes you think I’m fearless?”

“Don’t mock me,” she pleaded. “You know you are. Everyone knows you are.”

He shook his head. “When I saw you tonight with that knife sticking out of your back, I was terrified.”

Her pulse leapt. “You were?”

“It’s why I didn’t insist on staying to fight the new wave of vampires Roy claimed were on the way. In complete darkness, with all of the trees limiting our mobility, the odds were against us making it through another round without suffering more severe injuries.”

“You mean the odds were against my making it through another round,” she corrected him despondently.

Marcus never ran from a fight. No matter how unlikely it appeared that he would survive. He always met such challenges with a smile. It was one of the reasons so many thought him unstable.

“Yes,” he said simply, no condemnation in his tone. “I didn’t fear for myself, Ami. I’ve lived long enough and am powerful enough that I can take a lot of damage and live to talk about it. But you’re built differently than I am, are more vulnerable. And the idea of your falling beneath the sword of or being drained by some vampire leaves me petrified.” He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Does that make me a coward?”

She shook her head.

“Courage isn’t the absence of fear, Ami. Courage is acting despite the presence of it. I can’t count the number of times you’ve done that since we met.”

“Including just now.” She looked up at him through her lashes and offered him a shy smile. “I was nervous about telling you I like to kiss you, but I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I’ve been wanting to do it again ever since we left Roland and Sarah’s.”

He groaned. Settling his hands on her hips, he pressed his forehead to hers. “I have, too.”

She placed her hands on his chest, felt the warm muscle beneath his T-shirt twitch at her touch.

“Ami …”

“Yes?” His chest was so big and hard and strong.

“I know you said you don’t like to talk about your past… .”

Her fingers clenched, bunching up the cotton material.

“But there is something I need to know.”

He had guessed it. Her secret. Her weird behavior must have tipped him off despite her attempts to blend in. She had gone without sleep for six days straight and hadn’t gotten loopy or cranky or confused, then had passed out and slept like the dead for twenty-four hours. Who else did that?

And there were other things. Commonplace things she didn’t know or understand. She had hoped he wouldn’t notice, but he had. Now he was going to ask her to confirm it and would never look at her the same again.

Tension roiled within her as Marcus drew in a deep breath.

“What exactly is the nature of your relationship with Seth?”

Perplexed, Ami met his gaze. “What do you mean?”

“How do you feel about him?”

“I love him.” When his hands tightened almost painfully on her hips, she realized he had misunderstood. “Not like … Seth is to me what Robert was to you.” She forced her fingers to uncurl, to lay flat against his chest. “I lost my family.” That much she could tell him without revealing too much, though it hurt. Her throat thickened, and tears pricked her lashes. How long would it take her to come to grips with the knowledge that she would never again hear her brothers’ laughter? Or her mother’s? Or father’s? “Then Seth, David, and Darnell became my new family. I love them all like brothers.”

“I’m sorry.” Marcus slipped his arms around her and hugged her close. “I didn’t mean to resurrect painful memories. Roland thought you and Seth were lovers.”

“What?” she asked with surprise.

He drew back, smiling ruefully as he combed his fingers through her hair. “Not knowing if he was right is all that kept me from dragging you into the shower with me when we got home.”

Heat once more crept up her neck to fill her cheeks.

“And now,” he said, smiling as he drew one finger down the flushed skin, “I must confess another fear.”

Her heart thudded against her ribs as she tried and failed to speak.

His glowing eyes flickered with emotion as he lowered his head and touched his lips to hers, first gently, then with growing hunger. His arms tightened, pressed her against him as she rose onto her toes and slid her arms around his neck.

He drew back a fraction of an inch. “I fear taking this—what is growing between us—to the next level.”

She stared up at him in puzzlement. “Why would you fear that? You’re the one who’s done it before.” As soon as the words left her lips, she cursed herself for not thinking before she spoke.

He smiled. “Don’t look so horrified. I already guessed you’re a virgin.”

Something else that labeled her different.

He rocked her in his arms. “Relax, Ami. You look like that’s a bad thing.”

“Isn’t it? You don’t think I’m … weird? A virgin at my age?” Not that he knew her true age.

Marcus trailed his lips across her cheek and down her neck. “I’m eight hundred years old, Ami. In my youth—and for several centuries afterward—women were expected to remain chaste until marriage, whether they wed at fourteen or forty. The fact that you chose to do so seems completely natural to me. And, even if I were only the age I appear … I’m a grown man, not a teenager. I’m not going to mock you for exercising restraint and discernment in your previous relationships.”

Don’t say it. Don’t say it. “I’ve never been in a relationship before.” Damn, it! You said it!

He stilled. “Never?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never met anyone who made me want one. Until now.”

Groaning, he claimed her lips in a feverish kiss.

Ami moaned as his tongue tangled with hers in ways she’d never imagined could be so … stimulating.

Bending, he lifted her up against his chest.

A breeze cooled her face and ruffled her hair. When Ami opened her eyes, they were in his bedroom downstairs. Painted a deep burgundy, it was furnished with dark furniture and decorated with Impressionistic paintings and plants that required no natural light. No pictures of Bethany clung to his walls, Ami noticed with both surprise and relief as Marcus lowered her feet to the cork floor.

He cupped her face in his hands.

She loved his hands, so large compared to her own and always warm even though his body temperature ran a bit cooler than that of humans.

His iridescent gaze locked with hers. “Are you sure you want this?”

She curled her fingers around his wrists. “Yes.”

A brief kiss followed, light to the touch but heavy with emotion.

“Let me know if I do anything that makes you uncomfortable or if you want me to stop,” he murmured, covering her face with more light kisses.

Her knees shook. Her pulse quickened. Ami could only nod.

His mouth returned to hers, hungry, devouring.

Marcus tried to still the trembling in his fingers as he slowly drew the back of Ami’s shirt up. He couldn’t recall ever having wanted a woman so desperately … or wanting so badly to make it good for her.

He felt Ami bunch the back of his shirt up and raise it.

Marcus slipped his hands beneath her T-shirt and caressed the silky warmth of her back, so delicate and narrow compared to his own. When Ami did the same, slipping her small hands beneath his shirt to explore bare skin, he smiled. More innocent than he had thought, she was taking her cues from him.