Free pdf - Saving Jenna.PDF by Linda Eberharter

happened to her since her escape. She hated the fact she’d been so helpless, and was torn between arousal and embarrassment by the way she’d forgotten everything in the fire of Nic’s touch. He forced her to look at him.
    “Tell me what you are thinking,” he commanded gently.
    Jenna tried to gather her thoughts. “I don’t like that I’ve done nothing since I woke up to find my sister.” Nic nodded encouragingly, so she added, “And I’m not crazy about being so helpless.”
    He stroked his long fingers through her tangled hair. “We don’t yet know there’s a reason to worry. And even if we did, you know there was nothing you could have done for her, not without being recaptured yourself. If she is in trouble, she will need you to be strong for her, and only now are you beginning to regain your strength.” He cupped her cheek again.
    “I don’t see you as helpless, Beloved. Any other woman would have died in that alley. You fought for your life, and survived when even our most gifted healer doubted that you would.” Nic closed his eyes, seemingly overcome by the memory of her injuries.
    “Don’t feel ashamed, Jenna, not for anything that has happened.” Jenna’s hand covered his. “Did you know I was real and not a figment of your imagination?”
    “I did,” he said, leaning back on the headboard and pulling her into his arms. “I’d been restless, unhappy for a long time. I’d been searching for something, for a reason to continue this existence that had become so sad and stale.” Jenna sent him an alarmed look. The idea that he’d been unhappy, so alone, broke her heart, but his implication that at one point he no longer wanted to live petrified her soul.
    He kissed the top of her head comfortingly and continued.
    “I’d returned to Italy, searching for some sort of fulfillment, and that’s when I had the first dream.” He shook his head with a wry smile. “You were so familiar to me. I used all my resources to search for you, but you eluded me at every turn.” He tapped her nose chidingly. “I’d come home and was about to ask my friend Sebastian to help me in my search. He’s a security expert, and has some talent in finding people who don’t want to be found.”
    “I don’t understand why you would search for someone you dreamed about.” Especially someone as insignificant as herself. She had so little to offer. She’d never been away from home, never been out of the watchful influence of her father and his minions.
    Hell, even her education had been tailored to his fanatical beliefs.
    “Jenna, I am Vampire. You know this. In four hundred and fifty years, no woman has called to my soul as you did in our dreams.” Nic shifted so that they were both sitting up, facing each other on the wide bed. “What you may not know is that we are told that our One is nothing more than a myth. Those who believe the universe has deemed one person to belong to us are considered fools. I believed a true mate was nothing but a legend designed to give us the hope to continue on. But then I saw you. You are that One, Jenna.”
    He tapped her mouth closed with a finger under her chin.
    “I fell in love with you in our dreams, Jenna. But when I found you in reality,” he paused, his eyes burning into hers with an intensity that sucked the breath from her lungs.
    “Beloved, you don’t just own my soul, you are my soul.”
    “But I…” Nic cut her off when he crushed his lips to hers in a short, rough kiss.
    “There are no buts in this, Jenna. We are meant to be together, and that is that.”
    “It’s that simple for you?”
    He dazzled her with another smile. “Where you are concerned, it is that simple.” Placing a chaste kiss to her forehead, Nic pointed to her full glass. “Finish up. When you’re done, the shower is through the door there.” He waved his hand in the direction of the bathroom. “I have some phone calls to make.”
    Jenna sat for several minutes after he left