Free Embrace of the Damned by Anya Bast Page A

either side of the quarter-mile drive whipped past as he accelerated.
    He needed to rid himself of the powerful lust he had for Jessa and this was one of the only ways he knew how to doit—speed. The other way was demon hunting; he might do some of that, too.
     
    He hit the main street and accelerated again, weaving in and out of traffic with practiced ease, headed for Maryland where he could drive unimpeded. Maybe the wind could blow some of this tension from his body.
     
    He wanted her so much he ached. Being denied that way—it had cut through the layers of numbness he’d cultivated—straight to the bone.
     
    There had been a precarious moment when he’d almost pushed her. Not so hard it would have been rape—he would never do that to any woman—but he’d considered seducing her into saying yes. He’d sensed the desire in her, had been able to scent it on her skin. He’d known that if he touched her just a little more—
just the right way
—she would have given in to him easily. She would have melted and let him do anything to her that he wanted—and he
wanted
so much.
     
    The temptation had ridden the edge of his control, but in the end he hadn’t been able to do it. When Jessa wanted him to take her, he wanted her to want it with everything she was—and not to regret anything afterward.
     
    It was going to be hard to wait for her to come to him and he couldn’t be sure he’d be able to resist her in the future. Her skin was too smooth, her lips too full, and her body too curvaceous and inviting.
     
    Tonight he’d won the battle with himself. Tomorrow all bets were off.
     
    Jessa turned out the light on the bedside table and snuggled under the blanket, closing her eyes. Too nervous to face the other odd men in the house, she’d stayed in Broder’s room all day. One of the hunky guys had brought dinner up to her, something her stomach had been incredibly grateful for, but Broder had never returned.
    She’d spent the day going through his books instead. She’d found an incredible library of them in a large cabinetin the walk-in closet. Tomes of all kinds, from all across the centuries.
     
    If Jessa hadn’t already been convinced that Broder had been telling her the truth about his age, the library would have done it. Either he was very, very old, or he was an incredibly wealthy book collector.
     
    Jessa had a degree in American literature. Even though her aunt had warned her to stay away from such a useless tract of study, she’d pursued the subject anyway because she loved it so much. Before her aunt’s death and her subsequent discoveries had sent her into a tailspin, she’d been attending graduate school at night to further her studies. Until recently she’d worked as an accounts receivable clerk for a manufacturing company—hardly exciting—but one day she hoped to teach American literature at a university. She needed her PhD to do that.
     
    She’d spent the entire day propped against the wall in the closet, carefully flipping through the aging pages of the books with a tissue to keep the oil from her fingers away from the precious paper. She was going to have to talk to him about preserving these tomes. Broder had first editions of Emerson and Hawthorne. She’d nearly wet herself when she’d found a copy of William Hill Brown’s
The Power of Sympathy.
For the first time since her ordeal had begun, she’d been at peace—totally calm and centered—as she’d immersed herself in
Walden
and
Moby-Dick
.
     
    It was ironic that Broder had given her that gift.
     
    When her aunt had died, the grief had been overwhelming. Then the other things had begun to occur, the strangeness … the photos. She’d been forced to put everything on the back burner—work, school, all of it.
     
    Luckily she’d received a handsome life insurance settlement that had allowed her to quit her job for the time being—she’d loathed it with a bone-deep hatred, anyway. Giving up school for a year had