Ves’s mind raced. “My God. He—”
“Yeah, he was working with him. Maurice sold me and my friends into experimentation and torture to persuade me into giving in to his demands to become his mate. There’s long stretches of time toward the end that I can’t remember a lot of. Whenever he had me taken to the private room, he’d give me enough blood that I’d be lucid for a time, so I could give thought to what he asked of me. The last few times were when my friends one by one were gone. I think if it happened again, Andre would have died, too. Maurice would never have allowed my death, but he had my friends killed. If I’d given in to him, they would still be alive. It’s my fault they’re dead.”
“No!” Ves rushed over to him, abandoning his pretence at paying any attention to the food anymore whatsoever. He pulled a chair out and sat next to Raff, cupping his chin with one hand and brushing Raff’s hair out of his face with the other. “Raff, look at me.” The pale, tearstained skin and reddened eyes nearly broke his heart. “You are absolutely not to blame for what that monster did. Either of them. There are some bastards out there, and you are not to blame for what any of them do, no matter what they tell you.”
“But I was so close. I was so close to giving in so many times.” Raff hiccoughed. He pulled his chin out of Ves’s grasp and looked down to hide his face again. “If I’d just done what he wanted, none of them would have died. They’d still be here.”
“You don’t know that.” He slid an arm around Raff’s shoulders and gently tugged him sideways until Raff rested half against his chest. “People like that, they don’t stick to their word. He might have kept one of your friends alive as leverage, but I have no doubt he would have killed the rest no matter what you had put yourself through to prevent it. And even if he was the one in a million bastards who actually kept his word, it still wouldn’t be your fault what he did to you or them.”
“I guess,” Raff said wetly. He choked out a half laugh and tucked his hair behind an ear, and then put the hand on Ves’s chest. He glanced up at Ves, and the pain in his eyes stole Ves’s breath.
They stared at each other for a long moment until Ves gave in to his beast’s clawing need to kiss his mate. He moved slow enough to give Raff the chance to push him away if he didn’t want it, but Raff didn’t flinch. Raff sank into the kiss like it was all he’d ever wanted.
Their first encounter had been fire and anger and passion. This, this was soul-rending gentleness and warmth. Raff’s mouth was sweet and soft when Ves brushed it with his own. Raff’s lips parted as he inhaled. The tip of his tongue flicked across Ves’s bottom lip. He found his hands were framing Raff’s face as he kissed him deeply. Ves shuddered and put Raff away from him. The rich sweetness of blood lingered on his taste buds.
“Wha…what’s wrong?”
“Just. Just give me a moment.”
Raff licked his lip, smearing a tiny bit of red. Ves must have caught Raff’s tongue with a fang, which had descended when they kissed. “Ves?”
“I said I wouldn’t push you.”
“You’re not pushing me. I want you to kiss me.”
“But you’re not ready for anything more, and I don’t know if I can hold back if we keep going. I don’t know if I could stop.”
“I don’t—”
“Neither of us is ready for more than this yet, Raff. We’ve only just started talking. We need to get to know each other.”
“You need to know you can trust me.”
“Shouldn’t that be the other way around?”
“Trust me not to change my mind. Trust me not to back away again. I get it. I’ve kept you at more than arm’s length for three years. You don’t want to get close and then have me back off again.”
“Not for me, Raff. I need to know you’re truly ready for us. I need to know you’re sure. Without question. I can’t be the one to scare you again or be the one to put you through even more. I can’t.”
“Okay.” Raff leaned back in his chair and ran both hands through his hair, scrubbing his scalp. He sniffed and then glanced at the hob. “For now, how about we call for a pizza?”
“Shit!” Ves jumped up and ran the couple of paces to the cooker. The vegetables were beyond saving, but they were all that had gone into the pan just yet, and there were plenty more in the fridges. “No, I’ve got this. You’ve been working at the big house. Why don’t you go wash up while I get things restarted here?”
“All right.”
A few minutes later, the second set of vegetables were sizzling away in the freshly scrubbed pan, and Raff was sitting at the table again. He’d taken an extra couple of minutes to wash his face and pull himself together, and while he’d been gone, Ves had managed to talk his libido down to a dull roar.
“So, what should we talk about?”
“How about what you’ve been doing for my coven?”
“Me?”
“Claudie’s shy, but she tells me you two have become friends.”
“She’s sweet.”
“Careful, or I might get jealous.” Ves tried a light joke. He breathed out again when he saw Raff’s gorgeous mouth curve up.
“She’s not exactly my type.”
“Not pretty enough?”
“Oh, she’s very pretty. I just like a little more…”
“A little more?”
“Muscle.” Raff’s eyes were wandering down Ves’s body when he glanced around. “Blue hair doesn’t hurt. And there’s one thing she definitely doesn’t have.”
“Oh? And what’s that?”
“She’s not you.”
“Christ, Raff. You’re gonna be the death of me. You know that?” He’d thought Raff was going to say cock or something equally teasing. Raff’s simple admission, that he would never want Claudie because she wasn’t Ves, hit him in the gut.
Raff laughed. It was the first time he’d heard his mate sound truly happy, and it lightened his own heart. “I hope not. I’ve got plans for you at some point.”
“At some point? Just the once?” Ves teased.
Raff gave him a truly evil, heat-filled once-over. “Oh, more than once, that I can assure you. Over and over and over again.”
Fuck. Raff really would be the death of him. Ves took a deep, shuddering breath and adjusted his cock. His control wasn’t helped by the flood of Raff’s arousal in the air. The smell of his own was just as thick. For the first time, though, he had hope that they would get past what had held Raff back and that they would one day get the chance to explore what they could have together.
Chapter Nine
Raff
“And there I thought you’d never come out from behind those camera-covered walls again,” the low voice mocked.
“What?” Raff mumbled.
The room swam around him, and he thought for a few moments he must be having another dream. But in those recurring dreams, he’d never smelled Maurice before. He shook his head and went to wipe a hand over his face, but his hand wouldn’t move and something clanked. He blinked a few times, twisting to look up the surface he lay on. A bed. He was on a bed that smelled of strangers, and his hands were fastened in manacles fixed to bolts in the wall. He yanked on them, and the metal cut into his flesh. “What?” He looked around wildly. This wasn’t a dream. Where the hell was he? The last thing he remembered was saying good-bye to Ves and heading back to the big house to go back to work. Then…pain, then nothing.
A light flicked on, sending daggers into his skull. The light was on a side table at the far end of the room and next to it, on a simple wooden stool sat Maurice.
“What? How?”
“Hello, Raphael. Properly awake now? I had to tell Louis off. He hit you rather harder than I told him to. You’ve been in and out a few times while the cracks in your skull healed.”
“What the hell do you want, Maurice?”
“What I’ve always wanted. I want you. And now I’ve got you,” the man gloated sickeningly.
“You really are a cartoon villain, aren’
t you?”
“You want me to monologue and give away all my secrets? I’ll give you one. Your friends who died? Not all of them did.”
Raff froze. He stared at Maurice, unblinking. “You’re telling me Bastien, Guillaume, and Kourey are alive.” It wasn’t a question.
“One, two, three. I guess you’ll never know how many made it if you don’t give in and come back with me.”
“You’ve got me handcuffed to a bed, you bastard. Exactly how much choice do you think I have in this?” Raff rattled the cuffs to make his point, glaring at Maurice. His head was pounding, but the pain he’d woken up with had begun to subside.
“Raphael,” Maurice said in a fake chiding tone, which did nothing but mock Raff. “You’ve got all the choice in the world. I can drag you back. And I will, make no mistake about that. But it’s going to be your choice to give it up to me.”
“I’m mated, Maurice,” Raff tried.
“Not yet, you’re not. Why do you think I took you the moment I got the chance? I’ve been watching. You and your pet lordling might be talking at last, but you haven’t done the deed yet. He hasn’t claimed you. And that means you’re still mine. He can’t have you.”
“My pet lordling as you call him has been head of his coven a lot longer than you,” Raff snarled. “You’re nothing next to him. He cares about his people. They like him. They respect him. They want him to lead them.”
“And yet you wouldn’t let him near you. Why is that, hmmm?”
“None of your fucking business.”
“Once we’re mated, I’m going to have to do something about that potty mouth of yours. Named after an angel and talking like that. Tut-tut, Raphael.”
“I’m not a toddler, Maurice. I have the ability and right to tell you to where to go. So fuck off.”
“Well, we’ll deal with that later. I’m not unreasonable.”
“No, you’re just obsessed and psychotic enough to think you’ll get your way in this.”
“Oh, but I will. You are going to agree to be my mate. You are going to agree to everything I want to do to you.”
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
“Because of who I have under my control. You already feel guilty enough for what Andre went through and for being responsible for the loss of your friends’ lives. Now you can have one or more of them back and stop what is happening to them this very moment.”
“Why should I believe you even have any of them? They died in that hellhole.”
“But you didn’t see it, did you? You didn’t see the life leave their bodies. They were just gone when you woke up, and you were told they died.”
“How do you know all this? Michaelson wouldn’t have been working with you that closely. He detested shifters and vampires and all the rest of us who aren’t human.”
“Can’t give all my secrets away on the first day. Let’s just say, Karl didn’t have a say in the matter. He had to work with me.”
“Whatever. I still don’t believe you have them. Any of them.”
“Oh, you want your proof, do you? All right, then. You asked for it.” Maurice opened a laptop Raff hadn’t noticed. He tapped on it for a minute and then flipped it around so the screen was pointing toward Raff.
Raff’s head still ached and his vision a little blurry, but he’d never admit any weakness to Maurice, so it took him a minute to focus enough to see the screen and figure out what he was looking at.
Kourey lay naked on a narrow, bench-like table on his front with his limbs bound to its legs. The only sign he was even alive was the faint rise and fall of his body as he breathed. The camera was off to the side of and a little higher than the head of the table, the angle pointing down along Kourey’s body. He was thin, but less so than the last time Raff remembered seeing him in person. The scars and fresh welts scattered across his back were new, however. Raff stared at them. It was even harder to scar a vampire than a shifter. They should have healed without a trace. Even Freddie’s scars—the ones from the accident that had put him in a wheelchair and the ones from the second accident that had given him back his ability to walk when Sol gave him blood—had all vanished. So how and why was Kourey covered in them?
“That doesn’t prove anything. That could have been taken years ago, when we were all still held by Michaelson.”
“Okay, true.” Maurice pulled a phone from his pocket and dialled a number. On the screen, somewhere out of sight, a phone began ringing. Then it stopped. “Go ahead.” There was a sick glee in his voice. Then he looked back at Raff. “This isn’t video. This is a live feed.”
Raff watched the screen warily. He heard a door open on the feed, and then a man appeared. He looked vaguely familiar, but Raff couldn’t…wait. Yes, he was one of the men who had joined the coven shortly before Maurice had challenged Raff’s father.
“Hello, darling. Have you missed me?” the man said, stroking a hand down the length of Kourey’s back and trailing fingertips over his buttocks. Kourey didn’t move, but an unpleasant shiver went through Raff. “You’ve got a friend watching this time. He can stop this anytime he wants. But I hope he doesn’t. I hope he lets me keep going for as long as I want.”
Kourey didn’t react. His face was turned to the camera. He hadn’t done more than breathe and blink every so often since the feed started.
Raff watched in mounting horror, his gut churning and nausea rising for a time that felt like days but must have only been seconds. “Stop this,” he choked out. “Stop him.”
Maurice didn’t do anything.
“For fuck’s sake, Maurice. Stop him,” Raff shouted. “I believe you, okay? You’ve got him. You can stop this now.” It took everything he had in him not to fling his agreement to whatever Maurice wanted at him to get him to stop what was happening to Kourey.
“Stop for now,” Maurice spoke into the phone. His words echoed from the computer’s speakers a heartbeat later, and the man on there stopped what he was doing.
Rage and nausea swirled in equal measure in Raff’s gut. “I’ve always known you were a sick bastard. You enjoy this, don’t you? What’s wrong with him?”
“Jules is only having a bit of fun. There’s nothing wrong with him or me.”
“That’s a matter of opinion. Not him, though. Kourey. What’s—” Raff’s friend hadn’t so much as flinched when…Raff twisted to the side as his nausea rose sharply. He managed to throw up over the side of the bed. He spat to clear his mouth. “What’s wrong with him?”
Maurice eyed him with momentary distaste. Then he smiled. There was nothing warm in his smile. “Oh, well, it seems your friend has, how do they put it? Checked out, for the moment. So, now you know I’m telling the truth, how about we get back to us?”
“How about we don’t,” Raff said. Seeing what his friend had been put through had sapped a lot of his defiance. His tone had weakened, and he hated that Maurice could hear it.
“Come on now, Raphael. That’s what we’re here for. Like I said, I’m not unreasonable. I don’t want to hurt you or your friend. Jules does, but I don’t. I will let him continue though, if you don’t agree to be mine.”
Raff didn’t believe him for a moment. The scars on Kourey showed Jules had been having his way for a long time. Maurice would never put a stop to it. “You want me to agree. You want me to agree so it will…”
“Right you are. Well done. You mate me willingly, and it voids your pet lordling’s claim. It’s a nice little loophole, isn’t it?”
“Loophole?”
“Hmmm. If you had not met him yet and you mated me, then he would still be in with a chance and he could still claim you after we mated. But as you already met and have had the chance to accept him, if you agree to be mine then once it happens, all bets are off. You’re mine. That’s it.”
“How could you know that?”
“Oh, when you disappeared on me. Or tried to. You don’t think you ever really got away, do you? When you left, I did rather a lot of research. I wanted to make
sure when I took you that you would be mine and stay mine. And now you will be.” Maurice was back to gloating. “You’ll be mine, and there won’t be a damn thing he can do about it. If he ever even finds you.”
“Why me? Why do you want me so badly?”
“Because you legitimise my claim to the coven. They all know you. They all love you. With you by my side, none of them will say a word against me.”
“Bullshit. I remember when you joined the coven. You weren’t going to at first. You were only going to stay a couple of nights on your way through our territory.” Raff thought back. “Then you changed your mind. I remember Dad saying he wished he hadn’t agreed to let you stay. He knew something was off. He could feel it. But he’d already said you could and couldn’t turn around and say no after that to you joining when there was nothing he could put his finger on. What changed? Why did you stay when you could have gone anywhere? Taken over any coven. Why ours?”
“Smart as well as beautiful. Why, my dear Raphael? I changed my mind because I saw you.”
“What?”
“You think it has to be more complicated than that? Well, it isn’t. Fate made a mistake. I knew it the moment I saw you that you weren’t my mate, but you should have been. You should have been my mate, and I was going to have you either way. The coven was just a means to an end. Daddy dearest would never have let me have you, so he had to go. And if he’d died in an accident, you would have been their new lord, so I had to do it publicly by challenging him.”
“And you told me it was to legitimise your claim because…”
“Because it was what you wanted to hear.”
A sharp couple of raps sounded on the door.
“Well, look at that. You got me spilling secrets I didn’t want to yet after all. Now, it’s time to go.”
Trusting His Vampire Lord Page 8