“Fuck, I’m not. That was amazing,” Raff said, his voice slow and pleasure-filled. He moved sinuously against Ves and an aftershock shot through Ves, jerking his hips. Raff moaned. “Not sure I can move, though. Think you’re gonna have to lift me off you.”
Ves bent his head and kissed Raff’s mating scar. Raff reached back and ran his fingers through Ves’s hair, pressing Ves’s head against his own, before turning his head and twisting enough to kiss him. The kiss was soft and sweet, and Ves could feel the bond solidifying between them as their lips moved, brushing against each other slowly, the remains of arousal and the scent of sex filling the air.
“You smell happy.”
“Yeah. I am,” Raff replied, smiling against Ves’s mouth. “Seriously, though, Jaws. You’re gonna have to help me move. I think you broke me.”
“Jaws?” Ves asked, thrown. His softening cock slipped from Raff’s hole and he mourned their connection. Raff made a sound of complaint.
“Yup, it’s your name now, deal with it. You know, the dude with the metal teeth…”
Ves had no clue what his mate was talking about, but he laughed and pressed a last peck against Raff’s mouth before gripping his waist and easing him up. He’d investigate the dude with the metal teeth thing later. Raff fell forward and groaned into the pillows. He rolled his head to the side.
“That’s it. I’m done. Just leave me here.”
“No can do. We’ve got too much to do today.” Ves climbed off the bed and wobbled for a moment. His own legs weren’t all that steady. “Come on, we need another shower, and this time I want us in there together.”
Raff made a complaining noise that turned to another squeal when Ves smacked his far-too-tempting backside. Raff twisted to glare at him. Ves held his hand out and wiggled his fingers for Raff to take.
“Ugh, fine.”
When Raff’s father had the showers switched to electric, it must have been done with a serious refurbishment because the shower was beautifully done out in neutral stone and had about thirty different functions. Ves had been too tired to figure them out when he’d been in there the last time. Raff pressed a few buttons. Already warmed water began raining from the ceiling a moment later.
“Oh, hell yes. We’re taking advantage of that before we leave.”
Raff smirked up at him. “Like that, do you?”
Ves eyed his mate’s sleek body and the water now running in rivulets down it. “Uh-huh.”
Raff’s smirk widened. “You gonna do something about that?”
“Damn, I wish I could. But maybe…” Ves moved closer. He kissed Raff’s shoulder and ran his tongue up his neck to nibble on his earlobe. Their bodies were a scant inch apart, and Raff’s cock was stirring as rapidly as his own. He could feel it poking his hip. Raff shivered.
“Mmmm, don’t stop.”
Ves raked hands through his hair, slicking it back from his face. He cupped Raff’s face and kissed him until they were both panting. Being a vampire had a few advantages, and quick recovery time was one of them. While he held and kissed his mate, Raff’s strong fingers slipped between their bodies and wrapped around their cocks, bringing them together.
Raff jacked them. Lazily to start, then with increased pressure and speed. It didn’t take long to bring them both to a shuddering release. They stood for a moment, foreheads pressed together, panting into each other’s mouths, with Raff eking out their pleasure as long as possible until things became too sensitive.
Raff collapsed down onto the stone bench. “Okay, now can I go back to bed?”
“That wasn’t among the things we had to do today,” Ves said, laughing.
“It wasn’t? Damn. Should’ve been. Can we pencil in another session later?” Raff twinkled up at him.
God, but Raff was beautiful. The water highlighted every muscle on his toned and perfect body. All Ves wanted in that moment was to drag the man back to bed so they could lose themselves in each other.
“Definitely. But as enjoyable as it might have been,” Ves added, “we really should go down and check in. There’s a lot to get done.”
“Okay. Guess we better clean up properly then.” Raff stood back up, and they took turns washing each other, luxuriating in the new ease between them. Their shower was filled with soft kisses and gentle touches.
They finished up in the bathroom and got dressed to face the world again. When Ves opened the bedroom door, a piece of paper fluttered, drawing his attention. He frowned at it, then plucked it off, and raised an eyebrow at his mate.
Sleep and then Claiming in progress. Disturb us and I’ll pull your fangs out!
Suddenly scarlet from his hairline to where his skin disappeared beneath his clothes, Raff grinned, raised his chin, and shrugged. “What? You think I was going to let anything, or anyone, get in the way?”
“I guess not.” Ves walked the couple of paces back into the room it took to Raff’s side. He leaned in and kissed him again. “I’m glad you did it. Who knows how many times we’d have been interrupted by now if you hadn’t.” He straightened. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. It takes a lot to move an entire coven, let alone to another country.”
“Should be easier this time around. Technology is better than when you moved the Desmarais coven over to the UK.”
Raff was right. Hopefully.
“I need to call Perry. He was okay with a coven of fifty moving close to the pack. I hope he’ll be all right now it’s going to be several times that number.”
“On the bright side? It’s a good thing the new place is so goddamned enormous.”
Ves groaned. “Maybe if it was finished. There’s still a hell of a lot of work to do there, too. And now I need to call Allan and Pat, as well. And Annette. She still has no clue about any of this.”
Ves wasn’t looking forward to calling his sister, and he couldn’t decide if it would be better to have that conversation in person or tell her over the phone. If he waited until he saw her, he risked her finding out from someone else. The shifters would have already let people in the pack know, and some of them currently worked at the coven house.
Chapter Fifteen
Raff
Body loose-limbed and easy from both the rest he’d had and finally being claimed by his mate, Raff led the way down the tower and into the chaos the coven had turned into without them. The constant need in his gut for the man behind him that had been eating at him for three years had faded to a gentle hum. There was also an awareness in the back of his mind, not his own. The connection between them would grow in time, but feeling its beginning settled something inside him.
He left Ves to deal with Eddie and Thomas, who were arguing over something, which was unlike either man, and went to find Bastien and Kourey.
Andre and Bastien were outside the bedroom whispering at each other in barely there, angry voices, accompanied by wild gestures and a lot of glaring.
“What’s going on?”
“Kourey…isn’t doing so well,” Andre said. He shot an indecipherable glance at Bastien when Bastien growled and clenched his fists. “Well, he’s not.”
“You wouldn’t either if you’d been through—”
“Stop it, both of you. Bastien, you were out of Michaelson’s clutches before the worst days with him. Andre, you didn’t see what Mathieu put them through. He made me watch via live-feed. We’ve all been through hell. We should be focussing on helping each other, not who had it worse.” While they looked at each other sheepishly, he glanced at the door. “Now, what’s wrong with Kourey?”
“He’s not talking. He just hides in the corner and stares at nothing. If you try to get close to him, his heartbeat goes off the charts and he stinks of panic but doesn’t move. He doesn’t…resist if you try to move him. We got him onto a bed a couple of times, but the moment he’s left alone, he goes back to the corner,” Andre said.
“He doesn’t like being touched,” Bastien added.
He wouldn’t let go of me in the cellar. “
Okay. Andre. I’m going to need you to go tell Ves I’m gonna be here awhile. Could be all day. Bastien, go find Thomas and tell him we need some food and blood brought to us. Then both of you get back here and come in the moment you return. Go.”
As soon as he was done speaking, Raff shooed both men away and, praying his plan would work, opened the door.
Raff took a moment to look around the room. He pulled the mattresses off both beds and put them on the floor. They wedged nicely between one of the bed frames and a wall, which would prevent them sliding apart. Then he approached Kourey in the corner he had returned to once more. At some point, Andre and Bastien had managed to get him showered and into clean pyjamas, but Kourey had pulled them off again and huddled naked on the floorboards.
“Oh, Kourey, I’m sorry. I should have stayed with you last night.” Pushing aside the regret that wasn’t going to help anyone and not wanting to feel any regret over the time he’d spent with Ves, Raff picked the pyjamas up and dressed Kourey as gently as he could. The choking, acrid scent of panic and fear thickened the air around Kourey until it was hard to breathe, but Raff persisted. He made no sudden movements but kept going until Kourey was dressed and Raff had settled them both on the mattresses.
Andre and Bastien returned within a minute of each other, and Raff motioned at them both to lie down with him and Kourey. The three of them spent the whole day with Kourey like that. Only one of them ever left at a time for a brief break to eat something, or a bathroom visit, or stretch their legs. Around four in the morning, Freddie came in and joined them. Kourey whimpered and pressed closer to Raff, away from Freddie.
Freddie flinched and started to get up.
“No. He thinks it’s all a trick. We all thought for years you must be dead. Somewhere in there he at least knows the rest of us are alive. If you go, he’ll convince himself it’s not really you and you weren’t here, that he was right and it’s a trick. He needs you to stay, Freddie. He needs us all to stay.” Raff hoped with all his heart he was doing the right thing for their friend.
It took longer than it had in the cellar. Kourey listened to their heartbeats and soaked in their scent for three days before he showed any sign of independent movement. People came and went. Food was brought and eaten. Blood was drunk. Ves came in several times but had plenty to get on with himself. Raff missed him when he wasn’t there, but just then his friend needed him more.
At dawn on the fourth day, Kourey turned savage, clawing at them and shoving until he was pressed up against the wall free of contact with any of them. He panted like a cornered animal. A high noise turned to nonononono when Raff listened more closely.
“Hold him,” Raff ordered the others. He grabbed at Kourey’s face and made Kourey look at him. Kourey’s eyes were wild. “It’s us, Kourey. We’re real. We’re here. The men who hurt you are gone. We’re here. You’re not alone anymore. We’re real.”
Kourey stared at him, pupils blown wide in tear-filled eyes. “Ju…Ju…Ju.” He couldn’t get out the name of the man who terrified him.
“He’s dead, Kourey. Jules is dead. He can’t hurt you anymore. He’s dead. We’re real and he’s dead. Jules is dead.” Raff continued to repeat it until Kourey sagged and the tears overflowed. Andre and the others let go as Raff pulled Kourey into his arms. They wrapped themselves around Raff and Kourey and held them both as Kourey sobbed silently. He cried until he fell into an exhausted sleep. Raff didn’t know if he’d ever be able to tell Kourey Raff had been the one to kill the man who’d tortured him. When Ves and his brother had been throwing each other around, Jules had gone for Kourey. Kourey lay on the floor between the bodies of the two men Butch had taken down with his knives. Raff had leapt for Jules before he could lay another finger on his friend and snapped his neck. Kourey didn’t need to know Jules had almost gotten his hands on him again or that Raff had almost ripped Jules’s head off, just that he was dead and would never touch him again.
Kourey didn’t stir again for nearly twenty-four hours. During that time, none of them left him for more than a few minutes at a time.
“Hey, how is he?”
Raff glanced around fuzzily until he spotted Ves just inside the door. Moving as carefully as he could, he shifted Kourey onto Andre’s chest and nudged Freddie over to lie against his other side. Raff stretched and staggered, drunk with sleep, stopping himself from falling over with one hand on the wall. Then he stumbled over to Ves and collapsed against his chest. He burrowed into Ves’s neck and slung his arms around his waist. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. How’s your friend?”
“Hmmm. I don’t really know. Long term, I think he’ll be okay. I hope. I wish Jules was still around, so I could flay that bastard alive. I’d do it slowly, and I’d let him heal and do it all over again.”
“Been taking lessons from Butch?”
“From Jules.”
It took Ves a moment. “That…that’s what he did to him?”
“Among other things.” Raff shivered, the images dancing in his head. “For now, though, I don’t know. I think it’s going to be a while before he can be alone. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Whatever he needs. Whatever you need to help him. Just let me know.”
Raff tightened his hold on Ves, who hugged him back. “I think a new start will be good for everyone here, but especially him and Bastien. Bastien is managing better, but I think he had it as bad as Kourey. But…Kourey’s scarred. A lot. He shouldn’t have scarred. No matter what Jules did to him.”
“Unless…”
“What?” Raff drew away enough to look at Ves. Ves was frowning.
“Freddie and Sol mated, and then they were separated. In that time, Freddie was injured badly, and he scarred. He scarred because his mate was a shifter and he needed his nonvampire mate’s blood to heal fully once he’d had it that first time, right?”
“Yeah…”
“So, what if Kourey mated?”
“When would he have had the chance? Fuck, when would he have wanted to?”
“Shhh, love.”
Raff glanced back at the pile of sleeping bodies on the mattresses. No one stirred, but he lowered his voice again anyway. “That can’t be it, though. Seriously. We were on the run, then Michaelson’s prisoners, and then he was brought back here and given to Jules to…play with. When would he have had the chance to find his mate and bond with them?”
“I don’t know.” Ves’s frown turned pensive. “But it’s the only explanation I can think of.” They held each other for a few minutes. “Do you need anything?”
Raff made a noise of complaint. “Only you.”
“We’ll get there.”
“Speaking of getting there, when do we need to leave?”
“Jake’s getting itchy to go home, and you’ve kinda got our only pilot.”
“Fuck, I didn’t even think about that.”
“Hey, it’s okay. You’ve had other things on your mind.”
“How is everyone else? The rest of the coven?”
“Don’t worry about them. Daniel is doing his thing, working on getting everyone legal to move to the UK on a permanent basis. There’s a lot of people here. Eddie’s going to stay with Thomas and help get everything they want to bring packed up. You’ll need to go through the place and pick out what you want to bring from your stuff and any of your parents’ things.”
Raff snorted. “If Mathieu left me any of their things.”
“Oh, he did. I think he wanted to rub them in your face when he got you back, that he was here and they weren’t. Raff…I…”
“No.” Raff stopped Ves with a finger over his lips. “He was your brother, but you aren’t responsible for anything he did. I don’t know what twisted him up inside and pushed him to do it all, but none of it is your fault.”
“How can you know that? You weren’t around when we were young.”
“Because I know you, Ves. I know your people. They wouldn’t love you like they do if you weren’t a go
od man. And I…I’m falling in love with you, too.”
Ves’s eyes were fierce. “I love you, too, Raff. Thank you for trusting me with your heart. I’ll do everything I can to make up for what he did.”
“There’s no need. Just love me.”
Ves kissed him softly in a gentle promise. Then he cleared his throat. “So, you say the best thing for them”—he nodded at the pile on the mattresses—“would be a fresh start. Do you think they’ll be up to flying tomorrow night? There’s too many people here to take all in one go, plus packing everything up is going to take a while. But it might be best to get them out of here as soon as possible. We’ve been here nearly a week, and things at home need my attention in person. Annette is doing her best, and her best is pretty damn good when she tries, but I need to get home. You and your friends need to stay together, and I don’t want to go without you.”
“You won’t have to,” a raspy voice said from the direction of Raff’s friends.
Raff whipped his head around. Kourey was awake and looking at them. “Hey.”
“Hey, Raff.” Kourey smiled faintly. It was weak and wobbly, but it was there. “So, you’re the mate I could smell on him,” he said, looking at Ves. Everyone else slumbered on and Kourey didn’t move. His eyes held a wealth of sadness, even as his mouth smiled. “I’m glad he found you.”
“So am I,” Ves said.
“But now you have to get home. You won’t have to go on your own. I’ll be okay. At least I trust the pilot.” A flash of Kourey’s old humour showed when he poked Freddie in the ribs.
Freddie floundered, jerked out of sleep. “Hmmm? What?” He sat up, long hair in his face. He brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Kourey? Kourey!” He flung himself at his friend.
“Whoa, hey. Ease up. No, don’t go anywhere, just ease up a bit. Gods, but it’s good to see you, Freddie.”
Kourey disappeared amidst a pile of limbs as the others woke up and hugged him joyfully. Raff knew it wouldn’t always be that easy. There was a lot of work ahead for Kourey and Bastien. But for now, he would enjoy being together with his friends again. And his mate, he added mentally as Ves’s arms tightened around him. Ves kissed the side of Raff’s head and then released him, pushing him farther into the room. “I’ll see you later.”
Trusting His Vampire Lord Page 13