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a
primal man-beast? So many things were beyond the comprehension of
her innocent life. However, she did understand — or perhaps she
wanted it so badly to be true — that the man called Trinity,
imprisoning her, was trying to fight the urge to strike her. He
couldn't be the one that had chased her through the night forest
because that presence held a livid and evil malevolence toward
her.
    "I will rise upward and give you my jacket,"
the creature called Trinity said. His voice held strange
inflections through the large fangs extending from his mouth. It
also seemed he promised the action as though to convince
himself.
    Beth tensed more, trying to slow her panting
breath, halfway certain he wouldn't win the battle as he began to
rise upward. Then, with his arms locked on either side of her, he
stopped moving, but his other worldly eyes didn't stop traveling.
He looked over her face, and then he looked downward toward her
bare chest. She gasped a squeal of embarrassment chasing her fear,
as caution be damned, she jerked her arms between them to cover her
breasts.
    "You are very beautiful," his tense voice
emitted lowly. His hand rose and she would have flinched away, but
his gaze held her immobile. His fingers touched her cheek and they
felt cold as he curled them and he stroked over the curve of her
cheek with the back of his knuckles.
    "Please," she begged for her life, and the
red glints in his eyes seemed to dull within the yellow. His hand
lifted to her temple and he did the most extraordinary thing. He
wrote a cross upon her temple with his fingers.
    "For my mother," he growled lowly.
    Beth could feel the incredible tautness in
his body above her. He nearly quivered with tenseness, and then he
continued to rise off her lower body, until the cold night air
flashed across her nakedness.
    It was the most unheard of position she'd
ever been in. She'd never so much as shown her ankle to a
gentleman. To be nude was horrifying as she laid there shaking with
mortification. Then a warm jacket fell on top of her and she
snatched it against her body … overwhelmed.
    "Put it on," the man's hoarse voice ordered
from the darkness above her.
    "I-I," she mewled, her body quaking.
    " Don't make me touch your skin
again," his voice demanded.
    Then it seemed to Beth as if her body was
held by strings he pulled. She sat upright even though she thought
she couldn't. Next, her arms jerkily lifted to turn the coat behind
her and put her hands through the sleeves.
    Her hair was a rampant mess around her and
half was caught beneath the jacket, but she didn't care. She
hurriedly buttoned it, to cover herself, buttoning from the bottom
to the top, but the last two buttons wouldn't close over her bosom.
It seemed extremely important to her that they should close and
tears burned her eyes again that she couldn't get them shut.
    Trinity held himself rigid against striking
and taking the virgin's blood, even as it pounded in his veins with
the demand to do so. Never had the demand for a human's blood been
so strong. He'd never experienced a test as severe and he knew it
was about to get worse as he sensed the rapidly beating heart in
the tender, nude virgin at his feet.
    He wanted to howl as he lifted his face,
flipping back heavy wedges of his long hair. He breathed in the
cold night air as his mind went through a mantra he used when he
trained his body to fight. A minute later, some of the tenseness
left him as he silently intoned the mantra. He was stronger
than his urges. He willed his fangs back and his fingernails to
recede. He knew the yellow predator in his eyes cooled.
    "I will not be a foul beast that
hunts without morality," he rumbled from deep inside.
    He had to get the woman out of the woods to
safety. There were many problems with all that had happened within
the hollow hours of morning and the consequences of it all touched
his thoughts. Nevertheless, he focused on the immediate need, and
he wondered once he picked the woman up into