Xhex hadn't been, and it hadn't just cost Murhder his mind. And Rehv was still paying for her mistakes. She thought of John Matthew and wished like hell she hadn't fucked him. Murhder had been a casual thing for her. John Matthew? Going by the ache in the center of her chest every time she thought of him, she suspected he was a lot more than that--which was why she was trying to lock out of her mind what had happened between them back at her basement place. The problem was how John Matthew had been with her. The tenderness he had shown threatened to crack her in half, his emotions everything that was soft and gentle and respectful...loving--even though he knew what she was. She'd had to shut him down hard because unless he'd cut that shit, she'd been in danger of pressing her lips to his and losing herself completely. John Matthew was her well of soul, as the symphaths called it, or her pyrocant, to the vampires. Her essential weakness. And she was very weak when it came to him.