Moon River by J. R. Rain Page B

sudden image of me pinning Russell down to the dirty concrete floor of my garage, burying my face in his neck, as I had seen Hanner do with the jogger.
    I shook my head and fought off the image.
    But it came again and again.
    It was her, of course.
    Tempting me.
    She wanted nothing more than for me to pounce upon Russell, to feed from him, perhaps destroy him. She wanted nothing more than my own humanity to be destroyed in the process, to be abolished and removed. My humanity, I knew, was her greatest obstacle to coming forward. As long as I remained who I was, she would stay in the shadows. Must stay in the shadows.
    But that didn’t solve my present problem.
    Russell, of course, being my present problem. A man who had become bonded with me, so much so that, even as I stalked him, he looked up at me with pure bliss. Pure love.
    How did one erase the effects of a potent love spell? Or, perhaps more aptly put, a love curse?
    I didn’t know, but whatever I was doing, it wasn’t working. I seemed to only be hurting him more. Confusing him more.
    My instinct was to break him. To physically remove the love from him, to beat it out of him. To hurt him so much that he would never love me again. I knew this wasn’t the monster in me. This wasn’t her .
    This was me.
    But it wasn’t right, and so I stopped before him, standing above him, my fists clenched as he looked up at me with hurt and confusion and, yes, more love than ever. Russell was a tough guy. He could withstand an onslaught, even from me. I would possibly permanently hurt him before I saw any change in him. He would take the punishment, and go on loving me afterward.
    I stared down at him as he stared up at me. His shirt was torn. His knees were dirty from his tumble over the concrete of my garage. His big, beautiful, brown eyes were full of tears held in a sort of holding pattern. One good blink would send them cascading down his face.
    That’s when I felt my own tears running down my face.
    All he knew was love, of course. He didn’t understand what was happening. I wasn’t getting through to him. Not on a conscious level. I needed to go deeper.
    Whatever that meant, I knew I had to go deeper, break through the spell, to the real Russell beneath.
    I dropped to the concrete next to him, sat cross-legged before him, and took both his hands...
     
     
     
    Chapter Twenty-one
     
     
    “I’m sorry,” I said, squeezing hands.
    “ It’s okay, baby. We all have our bad nights.”
    “ Did I hurt you?”
    “ You hurt me ?” He laughed.
    None of this was right. We shouldn’t be sitting in a filthy garage—which, by the way, I needed to rally the troops and get cleaned this weekend. The troops being, of course, Tammy and Anthony. Anyway, we shouldn’t be sitting here in the garage. We should have been in bed, making love. Holding each other, falling deeper in love. And Russell was so easy to love, too. Russell was easy to be with...but now I know why. Everything was too easy. He was too amenable. There was no fight in him. At least, none left. Our relationship, I realized, wasn’t real. It was built on the supernatural. The unnatural.
    “Did you forget the part where I told you that I’m a vampire? That I drink blood? That you should want no part of me?”
    He pulled me into him and tried to kiss me. I pulled back. He shrugged and kept on smiling. “Baby, I want every part of you.”
    “And don’t you see how cheesy that sounds?”
    “ Baby, when it’s love, there is no such thing as cheesy.”
    Okay, this had to stop, even if it was just to put a stop to the nauseating sweet nothings. I had to go deeper. I had to reach the real Russell.
    “Will you do something for me, Russell?” I asked, still holding his hands.
    “ Anything for you, baby. You know that.”
    “ I want you to close your eyes.”
    He did so instantly, without question, without hesitation. Had I been prone to, I could abuse his devotion to me, his bond to me. I could use him and abuse