He took a step toward me. I took a step back. He might not pose the threat to me he posed in the vision, but that didn't mean I was going to give in to my inner strumpet and throw myself on him the way my body was demanding.
"What's the matter with you?" He frowned as I continued backing up, suddenly lunging forward at me.
I squealed and jumped backwards, out of his reach, but he got to me first. He grasped my arms and pulled me forward slightly. "You were about to crash into the bureau," he explained, his fingers splayed wide on my arms. "Why are you backing away from me? I know it can't be because you don't feel the attraction between us—"
His hand brushed my cheek. I quivered in response. Attraction? Is that all he thought was going on? And here I was thinking it was a consuming inferno of need and want and desire, topped off by a healthy dollop of love. Hmm. Maybe giving in to my inner strumpet wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.
"—because it's apparent you feel the same thing I feel."
He tugged me toward him until I was flush against him, all my soft curves pressing against his hard planes. It was the moment of truth. Squished up against him, I couldn't help but remember the horrible feeling of danger he had triggered in the vision, but that feeling dissolved into a sense of Tightness as I basked in the glorious desire that heated his eyes, breathing in the wonderful scent of him that set my blood to boiling.
"What is it you want from me?" he repeated, his lips almost touching mine. I leaned harder into him, noticed something, and looked down.
"Wow," I said, wishing I could touch but knowing I probably shouldn't. At least not until I was invited to. "At least Miranda got that part of the order correct."
"What?"
"Nothing; it doesn't matter. I've changed my mind, and since I don't feel like I'm in any danger, it appears we're on the same track together, so if you want to move ahead to the third step and kiss me, I won't object." I offered my lips up and slid my hands under his opened leather jacket to the black sweater he wore beneath. Even through it I could feel his marvelous heat.
"Ah," he answered, and sidestepped me to sit down in the armless chair next to the bureau. He crossed his legs, grimaced, and uncrossed them. "Perhaps before we get to the kissing stage, you might just tell me what it is you want from me in exchange for keeping your information to yourself."
What? He wanted to know what I wanted in exchange for keeping the fact that he was a vampire secret? Didn't he have any more faith in me than to know I'd never reveal who he was? Well, true, Roxy had blabbed the news to Christian, but I was sure he was trustworthy, and I'd warn Rox against telling anyone else. Beloveds did not turn their Dark Ones in. Surely he must be acquainted with how things work?
I decided the time for inner strumpeting was now. Raphael was clearly under the impression that what we had was just a minor little attraction. Being a woman—the one who was more in touch with emotions—it was obviously my duty to clear that point up for him, and since actions were louder than words, I threw myself into his lap to set a few things straight. He grunted as my thigh connected with his groin.
"Sorry," I apologized, sliding down his body just a bit. "Didn't mean to squash anything important. Big Jim and the twins OK? Good. Now, where were we?"
Before he could answer, I slid my hands through his curls and grabbed his head, using him as an anchor as I let my tongue set sail in the wondrous sea of his mouth. He stiffened in surprise, and I thought for a moment he was going to protest my brazen action, but he relaxed back into the chair, groaning into my mouth as he grabbed my hips and pulled me forward.
I twisted my lower body away from him, my mouth still pressed to his, the taste and smell and feel of him making me feel light-headed as I resettled myself so I had his hips between my knees.
"Much better," I moaned, sucking his lower lip into my mouth so I could gnaw on it a bit.
"You're driving me mad," he answered, his hands digging into my hips as he pulled me up against his erection, then reclaimed possession of my mouth. I hoisted the surrender flag and welcomed the boarding party.
"You know that, don't you?" His hands released my hips and started pushing the filmy silk of my nightgown up my thighs, leaving trails of fire where his fingers danced on my flesh. "You're driving me barking mad. Everything about you pushes me to the edge. I've never met a woman like you, one who affects me this—"
I cut him off with a particularly effective tongue move. He rallied to my en garde, his tongue a lick of flame on mine as he parried, thrusted, and lunged in a manner that made my whole body want to stand up and shout, "Ahoy, matey!"
"Too much talking," I told him when I retrieved my tongue and paused to breathe for a second or two.
"Mmm," he agreed, one hand leaving my thigh to slide up my hip, toward my waist and the two breasts that were screaming for his touch.
I tugged on his hair until he tipped his head back, exposing a strong column of throat that desperately needed to be kissed. I nipped at that delicious spot just behind his ear, and started kissing my way down his neck. It was hard to keep my concentration on him, what with the inferno his fingers were starting as they weaved a path up my thigh, but I made an effort.
"If a thing is worth doing," I murmured as the pulse in his neck raced under my lips.
"—it's worth doing right," he answered, his hand sliding up to the center of my universe.
"Oh, God," I moaned, sucking on the tender flesh beneath his ear as his fingers stroked the silk of my underwear.
"Not God, heaven," he corrected, his other hand tightening around my breast.
"Sorry, my mistake," I said as I arched back under the flames his hands were creating. His fingers slid under my underwear, curling into me at the same time he pulled me up until he could capture a breast in his mouth, suckling through the silk until I was sure the sensations were going to make me pass out.
He kissed a path over to the valley between my breasts, his fingers below stroking and teasing, mimicking the motion of his hands on my breasts. His mouth was hot and wet and everything erotic, and the feel of it on my neck as he paused over my pulse made me frantic. He licked the wild beat of my pulse with a long, slow movement of his tongue. I tried to rally an objection to what he was going to do, but this time it was different, it was right. I was meant for him.
"Go ahead," I breathed, tilting my head back to give him better access to my neck. "Bite me. Feed from my blood. I want you to. Let me give you my life."
His fingers stilled as I waited breathlessly for the feel of his teeth piercing my flesh, erotic descriptions of the act from Dante's books melting in my mind and making me wild with desire.
He pulled back from me with deliberate slowness. I looked down on him in surprise. His eyes, moments ago brilliant with desire, were now shuttered.
"I hadn't pegged you as someone who went in for that sort of thing," he said slowly.
"What sort of thing?" I asked, confused. Why wasn't he diving in like earlier? I was sure he was going to feed then; what was holding him back now?
"I'm not going to bite you."
I blinked at the disapproval in his eyes. "You're not?"
"No."
"Not even a little nibble? Just a light snack? Dessert?"
He just looked at me for a moment, his breath ragged as he withdrew his hands from the fun zones of my body and let them hang alongside the chair.
"Joy, I don't know what you want—"
I squirmed against his crotch.
"All right, I do know what you want, but I don't know why you want it, nor why you're holding whatever you have found out about me over my head, but I do know this."
My heart did a little dive to my feet. He wasn't going to bite me and make me his Beloved? Not even after I went through all the angst to believe in what he was, to trust him with myself despite the disturbing vision?
"I know that it's not going to be physically possible for me to remove you from your current position," he continued, his voice sud
denly hoarse. It just added a new element of sexy to a man already at the top of the tingle-meter. "I thought I might be able to, but that was before you sucked the brains right out of my head with kisses so hot they could melt steel. My grandfather was right."
"Huh?"
"When he told me that a St. John man knows from the very first meeting who the woman is that he will spend his life with. He was right. I know."
I sat perfectly still as my heart did a happy somersault. "I don't think that sentence is grammatically correct, but it is hands down the loveliest thing anyone has ever said to me."
He twitched in response to my words. We both looked down at the twitching part. Raphael's adorable lips twisted into a grimacing smile. "You see? Even my body knows. And if just thinking about you has this effect on me, how am I supposed to make you remove those long, glorious thighs from where they're burning every inch of my legs, and walk away? It's just not possible." He shook his head for emphasis.
I disentangled my fingers from his hair and sat back on his thighs. He shuddered, and his fingers spasmed, but he didn't grab me.
I didn't quite understand what was going on here, but I was determined to figure it out. "Let me see if I have the sequence of events straight here."
He nodded, his eyes momentarily devouring the exposed parts of my breasts before he gulped back a big breath of air, and nodded again.
"First you came into my room and did weird things to the air, and then you kissed me and were about to feed on my blood when I begged you to stop."
"What?" he asked, his eyes narrowing. "What are you talking about?"
"You came into my room," I answered, a bit annoyed with this pretense he obviously insisted on maintaining. It wasn't necessary; he certainly had no need to fear I'd expose what he really was.
"You invited me," he protested. "You gave me come hither looks, and you're wearing that flimsy little bit of nothing, and if that's not an invitation, then I'd certainly appreciate you telling me what it was."
"No, not just now; earlier. You nibbled my neck, and you were about to sink fang."
He stared at me, his jaw slack for a moment.
"Then, when I beat you back, you went away, only to return a couple of hours later and refuse to do what you wanted to earlier."
"Joy." Raphael put both hands on my thighs. He twitched again. "I want you to listen very carefully to what I say, because I'm not sure how much longer I can sit like this with you all warm and inviting and hotter than purgatory without actually going insane, but I did not come into your room earlier this evening."
I stopped staring at his crotch and blinked at him. "You didn't?"
His eyes held mine in a solemn gaze. "No, I didn't."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely."
"Maybe you forgot?" I really didn't want to think that my midnight visitor wasn't him.
"Joy—" I shifted on his lap and he groaned, his face tight with strain. "God help me, woman, stop tormenting me like that! I'll say this one more time, and then you're going to remove your luscious self from my lap and allow me to go back to my own bed. I did not come here earlier and touch you."
"You make it sound like touching me is something repugnant," I said indignantly, pulling back.
"Do I look like I'm repulsed by you?"
He didn't Especially the bulgy parts of him. "Well, no—"
His eyes smoldered into mine as his fingers clutched my hips. "I am a man, just a man, but a man who has limits to what sort of torture he can stand, and if you wiggle just one more time, I'm going to die and then you'll have to explain to the police why you have a dead Englishman in your room."
I resisted the urge to move again. He really did look like he was at the end of his rope. I decided to leave the subject of who had visited me earlier and tackle something else he'd said. "What exactly did you mean when you asked what I knew about you? Did you mean to imply that I was blackmailing you about something? Do you have some deep, dark secret that you're not telling me?"
He grunted in pain as I leaned forward, the better to see into his shuttered eyes. "Forget I mentioned it. I was simply being overly cautious. It's of no matter."
I touched the frown wrinkling between his brows. "Are you in some sort of trouble?"
He caught my hand and looked at it for a moment before kissing the tips of my fingers, his tongue flicking against my suddenly sensitized skin.
"Joy, I want to make love to you, but I don't think now is the right time. You're obviously distressed about something that happened earlier, and… well, much as I would like to take you up on your offer, I don't think tonight is the best time for either of us. I think it would be better if I left."
I touched my fingers to his lips for a moment, disappointment warring with the knowledge that he was being wise when I was not. "You don't want me?"
He put my hand on his groin. The evidence there was indisputable.
"You do want me?"
"So much that I'm willing to wait until a time when I can show you that with us, lovemaking will be more profound than just sex, yes."
"We'll be profound together?" Gee, I was just brimming with questions.
He twined a strand of my hair around his finger. "Oh, yes, baby. We'll be very profound together."
I nodded and thought about what he said for a moment, then got off his lap. "Are you sure it wasn't you earlier?"
"Quite sure," he said, standing up, grimacing as he adjusted his pants.
I tried to piece the puzzle together—to see how the early Raphael and the present Raphael fit together—but they didn't mesh. I blinked a couple of times in an attempt to clear my mind. "Well, if it wasn't you who came calling, then who was it?"
That, as it turned out, was indeed the question.
Chapter Nine
"So who did go into your room earlier in the evening if it wasn't Raphael?" Roxy asked several hours later as we sat together in the pale sunlight of a late October morning.
"I don't know for sure."
"But you have an idea?"
"Possibly." I wanted to avoid my idea, actually. It was fairly unsavory.
"Well, we'll come back to that in a minute," Roxy said as she waved a roll slathered with butter and jam at me. I damned her metabolism for a moment before turning to my naked toast and fruit. "First I want to hear what happened to you."
I frowned. "What do you mean, what happened to me?"
"You know!" She scooped up another large spoon of preserves and coated her roll with it.
"You'll get diabetes doing that," I predicted sourly, nodding to the roll. She just grinned and licked her fingers. "Assume I don't know what it is you're talking about and fill me in with words of one syllable or less."
"I'm talking about what happened last night after Raphael told you he couldn't peel you off his lap. Did you… you know … or did you talk, or did you get up and cordially wish him a good night and spend the rest of the night touching yourself pretending it was him doing the touching?"
"Roxanne!" I choked, coughing and sputtering on my toast until I had tears in my eyes. I wheezed and snorted as I sipped a little coffee, trying to end the paroxysms.
"I didn't say you got your jollies off, I just asked if you did!"
I hadn't, but the thought had crossed my mind. "No, I did not—not, I might add, that it's any of your business. Nor is it any of your business what I might or might not have done with Raphael. You may rest assured I will tell you anything of importance."
"I can tell you didn't get any last night," she said sanctimoniously, licking the jam from the butter knife. "You're always surly in the morning when you're in a frustrated way."
I gave that statement all the attention it deserved—none.
"So if it wasn't Raphael about to do the blood thing with you earlier in the evening, who are your prime suspects?"
I poured myself another cup of coffee and leaned back in my chair, enjoying the warmth of the sunlight. This late in the morning, we were
the only people in the tiny dining room.
"I don't know, Rox, that's the problem. It seems to me the field is narrowed down to just a couple of guys."
"Well, I still think it's Raphael," she sniffed, sipping noisily on her hot chocolate. She licked the whipped cream from her upper lip and added, "For some reason, he just doesn't want you to know it's him. We just have to figure out that reason, and then you can tell him to knock it off and get on with step four."
"That doesn't make sense," I said, poking at the remains of my breakfast. "Have you ever read about a Dark One lying to his Beloved?"
She frowned as she thought. "Mmm. You may have a point."
"No, I think…" I chewed on my lower lip as I pulled out the memories of the past evening. "I think Raphael's telling the truth. It didn't feel like him the first time."
"But you said you saw his eyes, saw him standing beyond the door before he melted through it—which I have to say is a totally awesome thing to see."
I was shaking my head before she finished. "No, I told you I couldn't move, couldn't even open up my eyelids. The stuff I saw—well, it could have just been my imagination. I could have imagined I saw Raphael there, that it was him touching me rather than whoever it really was."
"But then who was it really?" she asked for a third time. I just stared helplessly at her in return.
"OK, let's go about this systematically." She pulled out a tablet of paper and started writing. "One: you say the Dark One is not Raphael."
I nodded. "At least, the Dark One who came to my room last night wasn't Raphael. I thought it was until he kissed me; then I knew something was wrong, that it wasn't him."
"Check. Since it's impossible for more than one Dark One to claim a Beloved, that means the first batch of visions you were having were also from our mystery man, to wit, not Raphael."
I nodded, then shook my head, then nodded again.
"What?" she asked, sucking on the cap of the pen.
"I don't know—it seems to me that it was Raphael that first night. I felt him approaching, felt him feeding, and then, whammo! There he was with Dominic."
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