Free Dark Melody by Christine Feehan

needed.
    "You are the only one I need."
    He was so certain, so intense. There was no hint of a smile in his black eyes, rather that strange look that reminded Corinne of a predatory animal. He looked dangerous. She changed the subject abruptly. Their relationship couldn't really go anywhere, so what was the use in speculation? "How did you find out the two men were in our house without their seeing you?"
    Dayan turned on his side, propping his elbow on the bed so he could rest his head in his palm and gaze down at her face. He could see her clearly in the darkness. He was a night creature and his eyes took in everything. Right now his gaze was focused on her face. She looked beautiful to him, lying there, unaware in her innocence of what he was, what he was capable of. "I needed the information," he replied gently, one fingertip tracing her lush mouth because he couldn't stop himself.
    "That isn't an answer," she told him firmly. "Don't avoid the question."
    "I do not want you to be afraid, Corinne. I am not always the gentlest of men. Those two were lying in wait to attack you and your friend. One of them had certainly participated in killing your husband. If it is the same organization that attempted to wipe out my entire family in one evening, they would have killed both you and Lisa. They are hunting Cullen, whose only sin was to warn us. I did not feel particularly kindly toward these individuals."
    "You confronted them," she guessed. What was he not telling her? Surely he couldn't have faced two armed men alone and bested them. "Do you carry a gun?" She hated guns, those cold metallic instruments of death.
    His broad shoulders shrugged casually. "I do not need a gun to kill," he said honestly. "I do not need a gun for any reason whatsoever."
    She let her breath out slowly. "I'm glad to hear that."
    He knew Corinne said it because she didn't have any idea what he was. A predator, dangerous and powerful. He had no need of a gun; he commanded the earth, the sky. He could shower the land with fire or buckle the ground beneath their feet. His voice alone could rob others of their will. He was a Carpathian male, a hunter of the vampire, his strength enormous, his ability to shape-shift only one of his many gifts. His was a dying species, a race of men doomed to wander the earth endlessly in search of the light that complemented their darkness, the one woman who was the other half of them. Without that woman they lost their ability to feel, lost the ability to see in color, so that they inhabited a dark, shadow world with only memories of honor to keep them from choosing the way of the vampire.
    The insidious whisper of power was always with them, eating at them, calling to them, crouching in them, a dark beast filled with blood lust and the need to kill just to feel that momentary rush. As the centuries passed, the dark stain grew and spread, filling the males, until there was no hope, only the dark, dangerous hunger.
    For the first few centuries, Dayan had suppressed the beast with his music and the poetry he had loved, but his struggle had increased in the last two hundred years. "Very recently there has been a change in our lives. You know all the band members, right?"
    "Desari, of course, your singer. Barack and Syndil and you." Corinne rubbed his arm, sensing his unhappiness.
    "And Darius, head of our family and bodyguard. The change was good for my brothers and sisters, not so good for me. First Julian arrived and claimed Desari as his lifemate. Then Darius found Tempest. Barack claimed Syndil, and I was left alone. I felt isolated, Corinne. I cannot explain how difficult it was. How alone I was." The sight of all of them so happy together had left him terribly alone. It had been a kind of hell without them all. They had been together during the centuries of their existence, yet he could no longer face them. The sight and sounds and smells of the mingling couples had made his loneliness even more intolerable.
    He was