A poignant sense of satisfaction wriggled inside him and he simply couldn’t tell if it was Helen’s or his or a combination of both. But he liked it. He wasn’t typically a sentimental man, especially not after mind-blowing sex, but he made an exception now. What they’d shared hadn’t been just sex. It hadn’t even been making love. It was beyond anything he’d ever known. For a few seconds, they’d shared space and feelings and emotions. They’d been so deeply a part of each other that he couldn’t tell where he stopped and she began.
Some of that had been disconcerting, but even with that, the experience had been incredible. Life changing.
Drake finally knew what Angus meant when he’d said that he and Gilda were truly one. They weren’t physically the same person, but if what they experienced was anything like what he and Helen had just felt, it was like sharing a soul.
He’d loved it. Wanted to do it again, but he could already feel Helen’s pleasure fading and her brain kicking in. She’d felt what he had and although she’d loved it at the time, she wasn’t loving it now.
She shut herself off from him, blocking him out.
He tightened his hold on her. “What we just shared changes things between us. I won’t let you keep me out.”
“I’m not giving you any choice,” she said. “I need some time alone to think. My head’s already crowded enough without you poking around in there, too.”
“It didn’t take you long to figure out how to shut me out.”
“I’m a fast learner,” she replied.
Drake sighed. Nothing was ever easy when it came to women.
Chapter 15
Helen was too tired to be freaking out. She didn’t have the energy for it. Especially not after sex like that. It had been cataclysmic for her—rocking her world and cracking her foundation until she no longer felt as though she was on solid ground.
She’d felt things through Drake. Seen through his perceptions. She finally saw what he did when he looked at her—smooth, soft skin, gentle curves, long, shapely legs. It had been bizarre seeing herself, but not feeling the way she was supposed to about her body. It had turned her on and that was truly disturbing. At least it was now. At the time, she’d loved it—reveled in the way she could make Drake sweat with the need to push inside her. She’d never been so turned on in her life. So satisfied.
Until she sensed Drake’s plans to keep her. Permanently. What a frightening thought that was. Not because she didn’t think she could grow to love him, because she knew she could. In fact, part of her had already fallen for him. How could she not love him just a little when she could see what a noble, caring man he was? What he’d sacrificed to protect humanity? That he never once thought about what he should get in return for his efforts?
No, what frightened her was the fact that if she let him get too close, when she died, that closeness would only make him suffer, and he’d already suffered so much. She didn’t want that for him. She didn’t want him to love her and have to watch her die the way he had Thomas—the way he had with the countless other faces she’d seen in his mind. It wasn’t fair for her to do that to him no matter how much the idea of being loved by a man like Drake thrilled her. She wouldn’t let herself be that selfish no matter how tempting it was.
She had a responsibility to Drake to keep her distance. She wouldn’t call what they’d shared a mistake—it was too beautiful for that—but she couldn’t let it happen again. That kind of intimacy was too dangerous to her resolve to protect him.
“Stop it.” His voice rumbled in her ear, which was pressed firmly against his chest.
Helen pushed herself up, feeling the heated skin cool on contact with the air. “Stop what?”
One big hand cupped her head and pulled her back down while the other stroked down her back in a soothing caress. “You’re keeping me out. I don’t like it.”
She didn’t have the strength to fight his hold, so she let herself enjoy the feeling of being in his arms, of lying against his muscular chest. It might be the last time she ever got to have this feeling of being safe and sated. “I’m feeling a little vulnerable right now.”
“Join the club. That was . . . incredible.”
Oh, baby. It had been a lot more than that, but she wasn’t going to puff up his ego by telling him. It was already going to be hard enough resisting him now that she knew what it was like. She wasn’t going to give him any more ammunition. “And messy.” Which reminded her. “We didn’t use protection. I can’t believe I didn’t even think about it.”
A little spurt of fear made her stiffen at the realization. She couldn’t let herself get pregnant. She couldn’t take another life with her when she died.
“It’s okay,” he told her, holding her in place so she couldn’t pull away from him. “I can’t make you sick, nor can I give you a child.”
“How can you know that?”
“We’re sterile. None of the Theronai have had children for over two hundred years.” His voice was tight, almost angry, but his hands were gentle over her back.
She let herself relax against him again, trying to sort through the meaning in those few words. “That makes you more than two hundred years old?”
“Yeah. It does.”
Okay, that was a little freaky, but then that was par for the course when it came to Drake. Everything that she’d witnessed since last night had veered over into freaky territory. “Tell me about what it’s like.”
“To be this old?”