His enigmatic smile lit up his chiselled features as a soft chuckle made his eyes glitter. He was glad that she wasn't prone to hypnotic suggestion; he would have hated her to forget him. To forget what they had shared. He hadn't forgotten her either or what he'd nearly done to her and the sparkle in his eyes faded with an emotion that had almost become entirely alien to him in his two thousand years of life.

Regret.

Looking at her now, in those sky blue eyes he'd lost himself in when he'd had the pleasure of sharing her company on their first meeting, he could see a tinge of fear. Its origin puzzled him. She couldn't have known what he'd intended to do to her the last night he'd seen her. She'd been unconscious as he'd held her firmly in his arms, his fangs aching to tear into her slender neck and drink the sweet nectar that flowed in her veins. There was no way she could have known so why were his eyes telling him that she was afraid of him?

Her eyes followed his face as he seated himself on the edge of her bed and his nostrils flared as her sweet scent assaulted his senses and he felt himself become aroused. He closed his eyes as his arousal awoke the Vampire within him and they turned amber behind their lids. A hand touching his cheek opened his now amber eyes and he felt the hand being quickly drawn away.

With his preternatural speed he grasped her hand before it had disappeared from his reach entirely and raised it to his lips.

A shiver of desire swept over Robyn as LaCroix's lips brushed her hand. He'd detected it and she could tell that he felt the same as she. She allowed him to bring one of his strong arms around her shoulder and draw her nearer to him. She felt his weight on the mattress shift as he pushed himself back further towards the middle of the bed and pulled her so she was almost sitting on his lap. She could feel his eyes caressing her as he reacquainted himself with every visible inch of her porcelain skin. Everything was as he remembered it until his eyes found the two inch scar on her neck just shy of her jugular vein.

LaCroix's eyes turned from amber to red as his top lip curled into a snarl and his fangs descended. With his free hand he tilted Robyn's head so he could get a better look at the mark that defiled her once flawless flesh. Someone had violated her and he wanted to know who.

"What's this?" He growled, running his ice cold fingers over the scar as if to confirm that what his eyes had tried to fool him with was real.

"It happened when I came back here. Elias, the man that took me from the club the night we last saw each other, he threatened my life. He was in league with my mother. He set someone up for a murder that he'd committed and I found out. I revealed his guilt and to thank he me held a gun to my head...this scar is the result of someone saving my life and ending his."

"Who did this?" LaCroix snarled as his anger continued to grow but on hearing Robyn's words it deserted him entirely and his cold blood seemed to freeze within him.

"My brother,"

Cain was dead. He knew that because it was he that had slain the hideous creature that had raped the innocent girl who had reawakened the love he'd felt for Fleur. The only mortal he had loved since Fleur and couldn't force himself to admit that he loved more than the precious soul that had touched him so deeply, eight hundred years before. It was Cain's blood that had filled him with the irresistible hunger to bring Robyn over to become his eternal lover, a hunger that had never left him and forced him to seek her out. It was Cain's neck that he had snapped like a twig with his hands, his need for retribution satisfied but yet it was Robyn's brother that had inflicted this almost mortal wound upon her.

"It wasn't Cain," Robyn breathed, calming the storm raging in LaCroix's mind. "I have a twin. It was him that killed Elias and in doing so nearly killed me but that was an accident. He didn't mean to harm me."

LaCroix's hand turned Robyn's head back to face him, his eyes their mortal colour met hers as they confirmed what she had told him. Accident or not she had nearly been taken from him and he could not allow that. He knew not what had led to her being in the hospital room he was now sitting with her in but it didn't matter to him. Her existence on this planet seemed so tenuous and he vowed never to be parted from her again as he pulled her so she was sitting fully on his lap with her back against his chest and he once again tilted her head to expose her neck.

His lips placed a kiss upon it before running his tongue along its length. Drawing his head back he allowed his fangs to grow before burying them in her throat.