by Dannika Dark
Christian’s hand circled my breasts and then traveled down to my thigh.
He gazed down at me, the rich timbre of his voice giving me chills. “Raven Black, you have the most bewitching eyes.”
And just like that, without him even realizing it, Christian was making love to me.
I touched his face, wondering how it was possible to feel this way about Christian Poe. Sex didn’t explain the ache in my heart at the thought of him with anyone else. It didn’t explain the butterflies in my stomach or the need to learn about his past and find out why there was so much pain and loneliness.
He placed a tender kiss in the palm of my hand, and I closed it into a fist, wishing I could keep that kiss forever.
The fire warmed our bodies as the blustering wind whistled through the cracks in the door. I turned away so Christian was flush against my back. He slid his hand down and pleasured me.
I nearly detonated.
When his mouth found the curve of my neck, a compelling urge came over me to bite him again.
“Do it,” I whispered.
“I can’t.”
“Drink me.”
Teetering on the edge, I grabbed his hand and turned his wrist toward my mouth. I only wanted a taste. Just one small drop of what he was feeling in this moment. Right now… with me.
The second I pierced his skin, Christian bit my neck and pumped hard. Our orgasms united, and I cried out his name.
“Mine,” he growled, his arms holding me in their iron grip.
I knocked him onto his back and straddled him, pinning his wrists to the rug. His erection pulsed inside me as he writhed, trying to free his arms.
But he couldn’t.
For the first time, I felt wholly connected to my Vampire heart. The one that beat inside my chest and demanded I listen. Mage light still pulsed through my hands, but another side took over—something wild and dominant. I pulled another moan from him when I rocked my hips again and again.
The northern lights had nothing on the flashes of light I saw in that moment. It was sensory overload. His heat, his skin, his taste, his smell, his thoughts—everything Christian wrapped itself around and inside me.
Another wave of pulses struck me so suddenly that my fangs punched out.
He clenched his fists, the cords of muscle in his neck taut as he turned his head away. “Take everything you want. I’m yours.”
Instead of taking his blood, I rode out my orgasm. His body was enough.
When the pleasure subsided, I sat astride him, suddenly overcome with guilt. Tears slipped down my cheeks.
Christian sat up and wiped them away with his thumbs. “What troubles you? The blood sharing was too much.”
I shook my head, unable to speak.
“Feck me, I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s not you.” I swallowed hard and tried to take a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to be forceful—so violent. Pinning you down and all that blood...”
A smile played on his lips. “Jaysus wept, lass. You could strap me to a missile and ride me over the Atlantic if you want.”
He rolled me onto the rug and lay beside me.
Christian tucked a tress of hair behind my ear, his obsidian eyes carrying a warmth I’d never seen. “There’s nothing wrong with what we did. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I like it rough. I like it dangerous. That’s something I never get to have.” He pinched an eyelash off my cheek and looked at it before flicking it away. “I know you’ve never been with a Vampire, but have you ever been with Breed?”
I shook my head.
“It’s not the same as with humans. We have primal needs that are… unique. I can’t do that light-sharing business, and I don’t know if that made it less…”
He sought the word, but I wouldn’t let him have it.
I touched my fingers to his lips. “Don’t.”
He kissed them.
I’d always had an unexplainable attraction to Christian, but if he was just something I needed to forget about the past two months, then the sex should have been enough.
But it wasn’t.
Once again, I was wrestling with emotions that had no logical explanation. Why did I feel compelled to lie beside him and watch the firelight in his eyes? Why did I trust him so completely? What could have happened between us that would have changed my feelings of loathing to love?
He pinched my chin. “After we cuddle, I’ll go empty the bucket of blood.”
I belted out a laugh, and moments later, I completely lost it.
“Do you mind sharing? It doesn’t boost a man’s ego to have a woman laughing at him in bed.”
Which made me laugh even harder. Lying on the pelt of a dead animal could hardly be called a bed. This whole scenario suddenly struck me as so outrageous that I couldn’t help myself. It was sexual, beautiful, intimate, dark—and yet only Christian could top it off with cuddles and buckets of blood.
It was just so us.
That word lingered in my thoughts for too long, and the laughter died in my throat.
“I should have learned my lesson the first time about sweet talk,” he muttered.
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head, humor dancing in his eyes. “Nothing.”
I stroked his chin, tugging at the whiskers on his beard.
“Would you rather I shave it?” he asked.
“Why?”
His eyes slanted away tellingly.
I tugged his beard so he’d look at me. “Nothing about you reminds me of him. And if you don’t mind, I don’t want to talk about him while I’m basking in the afterglow.”
“Duly noted.” His finger trailed down until it slipped between my legs. “You have an attractive fanny. I’d like to have a close-up introduction sometime. Your vein down there is delicious, but there are other things I’d like to taste.”
The thought of it gave me goose bumps. I glanced down at his groin and noticed a mark beneath his coarse hairs. “What is that?”
“My tattoo.”
I flicked my eyes up. “You put your Keystone tattoo in your pubic hair?”
“Did I not say you had to go deep to find it? I’ve been with a lot of women. I can’t exactly have an identifying mark on my body.”
“I’m just surprised you didn’t put it on your dick so you could show how big the bird gets.”
He shivered. “If it’s one place liquid fire doesn’t go, it’s there.”
“So you’d have no problem with a needle on your manly bits?”
“The needle would have hurt, to be sure. But I draw the line at liquid fire.”
Distracted by earlier events, I switched topics. “Do you think they’ll arrest me for killing those men?”
Christian raked his hair back. “Forget about all that. Has anyone ever told you how fetching you are?”
“Don’t do that, Christian. I’m in serious trouble. Maybe not with Viktor, but when the locals find out, they’ll probably bury me alive. What if those two men were in a pack? What if they were friends with a high member of the Council?”
He propped his head in his hand and looked down at me. “I won’t let that happen. You have my word I’ll protect you. Now, can we talk about something besides your death? I’m trying to bask in the afterglow.”
I pinched his dark nipple. “What are other Vampire women like?”
“Are you asking how you compare?”
I shrugged. “You once told me you like classy women, but I’m not sure if you were talking about in bed or just in general. Maybe I came along and piqued your curiosity. I cuss, my clothes have holes, I talk about murder postcoital, and I don’t take shit from you.” I made sure to say that with a smile. “I’ve heard about Vampire women and how sophisticated they are. I’m just curious how I stack up.”
His fingers brushed my cheek. “You’re nothing I ever wanted, and yet… you’re everything.”
“Christian, you never answered me before. Did I love you?”
His
lips pressed into a thin line, and he looked away. Anger darkened his features. When he turned his gaze back, he looked more composed. “Do you trust me?”
“For reasons I can’t explain.”
“I can’t undo what your maker did to you. I can’t make it right, and he’s the only one who can restore those memories and whatever feelings you had for me. I’m not the one who can give you that answer. What do you feel in your heart to be true?”
My eyes dragged down to his Adam’s apple. “Do you think it’s gone?”
“Your heart?”
“No. My conscience.”
He stroked my hair, his expression grim. “I don’t know. You’re asking a man who might not have one himself.”
I touched the onyx ring on his finger. “Where do we go from here?”
He cupped his hand around my nape and kissed my forehead. “At first what your maker did angered me. Then I thought… maybe it’s for the better. But I want you, and there’s no denying it. Things that happened between us can’t be repeated in the exact sequence. Those conversations have to happen in the right place and time. Being with Keystone complicates matters, and I don’t want you beholden to me over a forgotten promise. We have to either start over or not at all.”
“It’s hard for me to trust a feeling that has no memory.” I nuzzled closer to him. “Does that throw a monkey wrench in your plan to possess me?”
“I don’t want to possess you, Raven. I want to know you. Your enemies are my enemies. Your pain is my pain.”
What was Christian’s version of love? Would it save or destroy me? He didn’t have to say those three words; I heard them in his promises.
I traced my index finger around the hard knot in his throat. “I wish I could say I was a hopeless romantic, but maybe I’m just hopeless. Would it be cruel to ask for time to see where this goes? I can’t love someone if I don’t know why.”
His embrace warmed me like a security blanket. “Aye, Precious. If there’s one thing I have, it’s time.”
“My memories have too many holes, so I need to make new ones.”
“Worry not, lass. I’ll fill your holes.”
Too tired to laugh, I yawned, drifting to a quiet space in my head. “Do you think I would have drowned in the ocean or frozen to death first?”
“Killer whales. That’s where I’d put my money.”
“Not sea lions?”
“Jaysus no. All they’d do is take a nip and swim off. But you don’t want to feck around with a pod of hungry orcas.”
“They don’t eat people.”
“Don’t they now? Orcas are the wolves of the sea. I once saw a whale eat a moose.”
“There would have been nothing left of me.”
He kissed my head. “They can’t digest bones.”
“I’m not sure what bothers me more—this conversation or how much you know about whales.”
“I get bored easily. I used to spend a lot of time at zoos and aquariums.”
I chuckled softly, the pull of sleep getting stronger. “Christian?”
“Hmmm?”
“Don’t take off the ring.”
Chapter 33
Christian held Raven close, her breath skating across his chest. Neither of them bothered cleaning up after their night of passion. Feck Joe and his bearskin rug. Christian was used to the prejudice against Vampires, but he drew the line with men who served their guests insipid coffee.
Raven had fallen asleep within minutes, and he wondered how she’d managed to last this long. All the flashing, swimming in the ocean, trudging through snow, fighting a Vampire. Then to come face-to-face with three dunderheads who wanted revenge for their boss’s arrest. The two wolves must have tracked their scent. Christian had probably been breaking logs with his bare hands when the fight started. It wasn’t until he’d gone outside to fill a bucket with snow that a roar made him stop in his tracks. It had come from the direction of the outhouse and wasn’t Raven.
Had he gotten there sooner, he would have snapped all their vertebrae.
After Raven fell asleep, Christian put another log on the fire and threw his coat over her before heading out to Crazy Joe’s shed in search of a spade or shovel. Not far from the outhouse, he dug a deep hole and buried the bodies. After spreading the excess dirt around, he spent time meticulously moving snow to conceal his tracks. Once everything was to his satisfaction, he returned to the outhouse and dug another hole, where he filled it with all the bloody snow from the scene. Once he buried every visible drop, he packed fresh snow on top. There were still footprints all around the outhouse, so he decided to clear out all the snow and make it look like he’d done the man a favor. Vampires didn’t tire easily, so his impeccable vision and imperviousness to cold allowed him to work through the wee hours of the morning.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’d cleaned up a crime scene.
Now it was nearly dawn, and after stoking the fire, he glanced down at his dirty fingernails. As much as he wanted to be the romantic and hold her all night, he’d promised to protect her, and leaving the bodies out in the open would have put a target on her back. If any Shifters in the territory came looking, or if Crazy Joe had stumbled upon the massacre, Raven would be sitting in jail. Though it was self-defense, they were still in a foreign country. These weren’t their people, and their laws differed. And he knew Raven—she would have accepted full culpability to protect Keystone.
Her black hair invited him to touch it, but it wouldn’t be long before Viktor came knocking. He knelt beside her and savored these last moments together. It would be a shame to wake her. This was her first peaceful sleep in a long while. He’d noticed fewer nightmares since her return, but she also tended to avoid sleep.
Christian’s thoughts shifted to Houdini. Raven was nothing but a plaything to him—a curiosity. She was so convinced that he wasn’t intentionally doing anything to hurt her that it made Christian realize how crafty and insidious that man was. Some of the ancients were clinically insane, and it wouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that her maker was gone in the head.
Christian could no longer rely on Raven’s memory. Had this kidnapping been their first encounter since Houdini had lost her all those years ago? Not likely. Houdini had sent Keystone letters, so he knew damn well where to find his youngling. The more Christian thought about it, the more he wondered if Houdini had been the one to lock him in that crypt. He’d always suspected a Vampire was behind it, but it didn’t make sense how they’d snuck up on him. Christian had amassed a number of enemies in his lifetime, so there was no way to be sure.
The truth was it didn’t matter. Houdini crossed a line when he selectively erased memories of Raven and Christian’s private moments.
A distant song echoed from the past, filling the dark corners of the room. He hadn’t heard “Cheek to Cheek” in decades, but something about the power Houdini held over Raven released the song into his consciousness. When the hair on the back of his neck stood on end, he locked his mind and focused on the present.
Christian lifted his coat away and admired her magnificent body. Raven glowed all over, her lustrous skin revealing dim shadows of muscle.
She moaned and rolled onto her back, renewing Christian’s carnal desire to know her again.
He placed his fingertips on her smooth nipple, watching it harden to a peak before he latched his mouth onto it. His gaze roamed down the slight concave of her stomach. She’d worked so hard to repair her beaten body after the kidnapping. All those hours in the gym, toning her muscles and building her strength.
It showed.
He admired the sinewy outline of muscle in her arms and legs. Christian had never been attracted to a woman with such strength, one who would rather use her legs to choke a man than straddle him. Her scent intoxicated him, and the taste of her lingered on his tongue.
There wasn’t time for another go—not with it being dawn already. He’d never hated the idea of a quickie until this moment, because the need to
be inside her for hours prevailed. Christian was a man who took what he wanted, but something changed after his night with Raven, and he had a compulsion to treat her more delicately than she’d been treated before. He didn’t want to use her body to satisfy his own needs. She deserved better than that. Raven reminded him that he’d once been an affable man with blue eyes—a lad full of ambition and big dreams.
Being with her made him feel his own humanity.
On the other hand, he couldn’t exactly drive home with a raging hard-on, so he needed to take care of this throbbing ache.
He reached down and freed himself, stroking the length of his shaft as she moaned and rolled over, showing him her back. His eyes skimmed down the curve of her spine to her backside.
He wanted her.
Needed her.
Memories of her coming on top of him filled Christian with such impatient desire that he pumped his hand even faster. He fantasized about sliding deep inside her, feeling her walls tighten against his cock. He wanted to touch her—to slide his hand between her legs and make her wet.
Almost there.
When she suddenly lifted her head and peered over her shoulder at him, he stopped cold. Only then did he realize he was doing exactly what her Creator had done to her.
He cursed his deviant ways. She would never forgive him.
A sound awoke me. Skin on skin, grunting—a distant memory of Christian’s lips on my breast. Time had no dominion in a windowless room, and the fire roared as if I’d never gone to sleep. I opened my eyes, staring at brown fur beneath my fingertips.
Then I heard a noise from behind me—the unmistakable sound of a man pleasuring himself. His soft grunts, shallow breaths, the smooth whisper of his palm sliding up and down his erection.
The first thing that entered my mind: why wasn’t Christian touching me? When I peered over my shoulder, his unleashed passion evaporated into a look of regret. That hollow look was the only time I was reminded of my Creator.
Fuck Fletcher if he thought he could ruin men for me. I’d learned years ago how to block him from my daily thoughts. That was why we only crossed paths in nightmares. Training my body and mind over the past couple of weeks had helped me find my center again, but this was all new to Christian. Only time would tell if he could ever look at me without remembering what was done to me.