He shook his head. “I was so disgusted by what I’d witnessed that I couldn’t help but go to see him, to try to speak with him. He barely spoke, huddled in the corner wearing dirty rags for clothes. His masters arrived, decided that I was a lone aristocrat in the wrong place at the wrong time, with a wallet thick with money they decided to relieve me of. After I had finished with them, I allowed all of their prisoners to escape, including Barry.”
A chill went down my spine. “After you’dfinished with them ?”
He held my gaze. “Yes.”
I nodded, slowly, imagining low-life scum torturing other human beings for a profit, then thinking they’d found another victim only to find Thierry.
Touch me again and my boyfriend is going to rip your lungs out.
Maybe not such an empty threat after all.
Thierry continued after a moment. “Barry followed me that night. He pledged himself to help me out in whatever I needed, said that he owed me his life. I tried to brush him off, tell him to find his own life, but he’d never known that before. He’d been sold to the fair as a child. Given to a vampire as a snack for a fee when he reached manhood. Used mercilessly after that. He knew no life other than what he’d had.”
“So you helped him.”
“I had no choice.”
“Of course you did. You could have turned your back on him. Just like you could have turned your back on me on the bridge that night when we met. But you didn’t. You’re a good man, Thierry.”
He shook his head and looked away. “I’m not.”
“Veronique told me once about how the two of you met.”
“I know.” His expression shadowed. “I’m not sure how much she told you.”
“During the black plague? She was alone and in hiding. You were—” I stopped talking. Thierry’s life had contained a whole heap of pain. Is that what happened when you lived for so long? The bad times outweighed the good? Or was he just really, really unlucky? “You were stabbed, thrown on a pile of burning corpses.” I shivered, then met his uncertain gaze. I reached out and stroked his cheek, moving till my fingers tangled in his dark hair. “Is that true?”
“It was long ago.”
I frowned and touched his tense arm. “If she hadn’t turned you, you’d be dead. I can thank her for that.”
He laughed and finally pulled away from me. “Yes, thanks so much to Veronique. So selfless she is.
Saving my life in such a noble way.”
“Do I detect a small amount of sarcasm?”
“No, you detect a great deal of sarcasm.”
“She saved your life.”
“That she did. Only because it suited her needs at the time. Why did she save me? Because she was hungry.” His grin twisted into something darker. “Why did she turn me into an immortal vampire?
Because she was lonely.”
“You’ve stayed with her all these years.”
“The years we’ve spent exclusively in each other’s company are fewer than you would believe, Sarah.
Veronique has been a good friend to me, but . . . ”
“But what?”
He met my gaze directly. “But she’s never made me forget myself.”
I blinked. “What does that mean?”
He smiled, but it was cold. “You don’t know what kind of man I truly am, Sarah. Or perhaps you do now.” He looked at my neck again, his expression pained.
The look he was giving me was so frustrating. He looked so dejected and despondent, it was starting to piss me off.
“You just told me what kind of man you are, didn’t you? Don’t you even see it yourself? You’re wonderful . You’re generous. You’re selfless. You care about other people even if you won’t admit it.
You’ll extend yourself to ensure somebody else’s happiness even if it’s complicated. How can you not see that?”
He shook his head. “You don’t know me at all. You’ve known me for less than two months.”
The words cut. “That’s true. But Iwant to know everything about you.”
His gaze hardened. “You know who you can ask? Who, I believe, knows me better than anyone else?”
“Who?”
“Quinn.” He met my eyes, and his were steely gray, cold, but his lips twisted into a humorless smile.
“Your ex-hunter isn’t fooled by any of my outward pretense. He can see me for what I truly am. You’re trying to avoid speaking about this, but it doesn’t make any of it go away.” His chest rose with a deep breath. “I hurt you the other night.”
I frowned and touched my neck. “This? This little scratch?”
His jaw tensed. “I nearly drained you. One taste of your blood was enough to send me over the edge of sanity.”
“Thierry—”
He shook his head, his face tense. “Another minute and it would have been the end. And even then?
Even after your heart ceased to beat I might not have stopped. There is such darkness inside me, such thirst . . . Sarah—I fear it. I’ve tried to hide from it all these years. That is the true reason I wished to meet my own end when we first met, Sarah. Not out of some deep-seated boredom with a long, empty life, but so I wouldn’t hurt anyone. Never again.”
My throat closed up. Tears burned my eyes. Every word he said was filled with anguish. How could I tell him that it would be okay? That I loved him regardless? That whatever he was dealing with I wanted to help him?
But he didn’t let me find my voice to say anything before he continued, every word filled with self-hatred.
“The worst thing of it all, even after all I’d done to you, is that when I saw in your eyes that you were weakened, drained, I didn’t stay to help you. To give you back some of what I had taken. No. I ran.
Like a coward. Like a damned coward.” His jaw clenched closed, his Adam’s apple shifting in his throat,
his chest heaving with labored breathing.