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He chased away the chill she’d felt
for longer than she could remember and his heat almost eclipsed her and Jude’s
pain. Enough that she could breathe a little easier and feel something other
than sheer agony.
    She asked, “How did you know I was the one?” It was, as he’d
said earlier, an inevitability that could not be reversed. Acceptance was
really her only course of action.
    “We caught your scent when we were up around Niagara Falls,”
he told her.
    She blinked. “You could smell me all the way up
there?”
    He grinned. It was an easy, comfortable, yet breathtaking
smile. She melted against him, her breasts pressing below the hard ledge of his
pectoral muscles. Her four-inch stilettos put her at a perfect height, allowing
their bodies to conform to each other.
    “It’s a very enticing bouquet,” he mused in a low,
erotically stirring tone. “You’re not the first vampire we’ve encountered, but
you’re definitely the first one who smells like lilacs in the spring.”
    Jane laughed, Cray’s lighthearted nature overriding some of
her inner turmoil. “My favorite fragrance. I always wear it.”
    “It drew us here,” he told her as his head dipped and he
sniffed the skin at her neck.
    “You knew I was watching you when I was upstairs in Drake’s
office. How?”
    “I sensed it.”
    “You imprinted on me through a security camera. Without even
ever seeing me.”
    “Jane,” he said on a sigh. “Stop analyzing and dissecting
it. Stop trying to make sense of this. The universe’s rules and general common
sense don’t apply to imprinting. It’s innate. It’s primal. It’s mystical.
That’s what makes it so pure and so special.”
    “But you both imprinted on me.” As difficult as it was to
break the intimate contact with Cray, she turned in his arms again to face
Jude. “You’re the alpha, right?”
    He nodded. “Cray’s my second.”
    “An alpha who shares?”
    His jaw tightened for a brief moment. Then he said, “What
choice do I have in the matter? Neither of us can help what happened. It’s
innate. It’s primal. It’s mystical. Just as Cray said.”
    She stepped out of Cray’s loose embrace and crossed back to
where Jude sat. He reached for her hand and pulled her to him, into the V
created by his long legs—she was a magnet and he was steel. She sank to her
knees and rested her forearms on his powerful thighs as she gazed up at him.
    “I’m sorry I’m hurting you with my past,” he told her in an
edgy tone.
    “There’s nothing you can do about it. But maybe…” She
glanced back at Cray before returning her attention to Jude. “Maybe the reason
you both imprinted on me is because the balance is necessary. Cray reminds me
of someone I once loved. That memory is painful unto itself, but your agony
adds to it. Cray’s good nature softens the blow a bit. But regardless of the
pleasure or the pain, there’s no denying we’re all bound together now. I can
feel it deep in my soul.”
    He nodded as though he understood. But he said, “This won’t
be easy. In fact, it’s very…complicated.”
    She could feel the tension running rampant through him. It
was a raw intensity that was visible in the hard set of his jaw, his squared
shoulders, his bunched muscles. But mostly, she saw it in those eyes that
looked like melted dark chocolate.
    “My entire existence has been complicated since I became a vampire,”
she told him. “Par for the course and all that.”
    For the first time since she’d met him, he smiled. The flash
of pearly white teeth and the slight lessening of some of his internal
consternation made the gesture not only a relief but the final welcomed
acceptance of their unusual connection.
    She had the compelling need to release him from his
torment—as much as possible at any rate. She wondered if she could transfer
some of Cray’s carefree disposition to Jude. It wasn’t something she’d ever
tried or considered before, but perhaps she had the power to