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beat.
    I closed my eyes, swayed slightly against the draw of him. Never , part of me raged. Now , another part begged. I ignored them both, and I spoke the simple truth.
    “ You know I’ll come. I’ve got no choice.”
    “ You will want to,” he said, a sharp correction.
    My eyes snapped open. “Because you make me?” I demanded. “I don’t see how that’s better.”
    He stood from his chair, looking down at me. I couldn’t move. “I don’t need to make you want me, Cora, any more than you can make me want you. You cannot live without me, nor I without you. Not now.”
    My mouth had gone dry, half with fear, half with wanting. “You can’t live without my blood, you mean.” The words came out almost as a croak.
    A strange kind of smile passed over his face then , haunted but with a glimmer of something like hope. He reached out to trace the line of my cheek and jaw with the back of one finger. “Blood is only the beginning. As long we both live, I will need you in a way that no other can satisfy. All of you.”
    “ Body and soul.” I hadn’t meant to speak, but the whisper was mine. “Until death do us part.”
    “ Yes. The bond is thrust upon me as it is upon you. I can escape it no more than you can.”
    “ You went after it,” I protested. “I didn’t. You wanted it as the end to your all your research.”
    “ An end to the death,” he agreed. “That makes me no less subject to it and its demands.”
    “ But you give the orders. And I’m the one who has to obey.”
    “ That is how it is, Cora. It is our natures, yours and mine.”
    I shook my head. “I can’t live with that. I have to go. I have to clear my head. You may have lived a thousand years, and maybe you have everything figured out and you’re okay with this, but I’m twenty-one, and I don’t even really know who I am yet. Especially not now.”
    I met his piercing eyes, and I knew that he held the power to make me stay. He could lock me up forever, and he wouldn’t even need bars or a key because he could make we want anything that he chose.
    As if he could read my mind, he said, “I’ll not keep you here against your will, Cora.”
    “ Then you’ll let me go right now?” I asked, only half believing it.
    In answer, he took a phone from his pocket, tapped it briefly, and said, “Have a car brought around for Cora. She wishes to return to College Park.” He returned it to his pocket.
    “ Thank you,” I said numbly. Was it going to be so easy?
    He passed me and opened the door, his face inscrutable. “Do you have all your things?”
    “ Not my jacket,” I said. I had run from the room without stopping to retrieve it, leaving it on the bench in the dressing room.
    “ Then let us fetch it,” he said.
    I nodded weakly. He was being so reasonable, but I could feel the roiling hunger radiating from his body, and I knew that he wanted nothing more than to change my mind by force, if necessary. I was half afraid that was what I really wanted—that I wanted to be with him but didn’t want to take the responsibility for the decision.
    He opened the breakfast room door and stood aside for me to go out first. He could have called for a servant to see be back to my room, or I could have asked that one take me. But I didn’t. As much as he frightened me, even the idea of being apart from him made my heart twist up into my throat in sudden panic.
    So I exited the room and followed the colonnade out to the stair landing with Dorian as a silent escort at my side. The inches of air between us seemed to hiss with energy as I climbed the stairs to the mezzanine, but I ignored it and started down the open-sided hall.
    I stopped in front of a door and put my hand on the knob —only to pause. Was that the right one? The doors all looked the same.
    “ One more farther down,” Dorian said.
    I risked a look at him. “Whose room is this?” I nodded to the door I had almost opened by mistake.
    “ Mine,” he said simply.
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