As it was, she was still trying to take it all in, trying desperately to understand. But her mind felt fuzzy and her body tingled, as if she had a buzz even though she’d finished her only drink of the evening hours ago.
The dappled darkness gave way as the limo slid into the bright moonlight where an enormous white plantation-style home glowed in stark relief against the dark trees around it. Eva’s breath stuck in her throat. She had only driven past the gates before, but never seen the house herself, only heard about it and the somewhat reclusive family that owned it.
It was beautiful. Far grander than anything she’d anticipated. She’d suspected Raphael came from wealth by the cut of his clothing and the expensive limo. But clothes and cars could be rented. Eva doubted that a house like this had been rented. Did this place really belong to him? It was clearly a well-loved house with its beautifully maintained gardens, evident even in the glistening light of the moon. This was a home. A home that looked as if it had been in the family for generations.
“Welcome to my home.” Raphael’s voice curled around her senses like smoke. Ignoring the shiver his heated look caused, she stared up at the house narrow-eyed. “If the party is at your home, why aren’t you hosting?” What had he been doing at someone else’s party when he had an event at his own house?
His mouth quirked up in a grin. “My family likes to pretend this is a surprise party, even though I always know when they are going to be here. So I indulge them.” He held out his hand and Eva placed her fingers in his. His hand was cool. Hard. Safe.
Raphael opened his door and Eva slid across the seat.
The glide of his hand against her palm as he helped her out of the limo sent a shock up her arm, straight to her heart, making it thump harder in her chest.
Cool damp air brushed her bare skin, as hand-in-hand he led her up the shallow stone steps and across a covered porch. The front door was closed, but the sound of music and low laughter drifted outside on the crisp, bayou-scented night.
Heart pounding an uneven rhythm, Eva hesitated as Raphael opened the door. “Maybe another time…”
“Don’t be afraid, sweetheart. These are just my family and friends. I promise, they’ll all love you.”
As much as I do hung in the air, unspoken. Ridiculous, Eva thought, as she reluctantly let him steer her inside. He hadn’t said the words out loud, and she wasn’t telepathic. Wishful thinking of course. And yet—
The longer she was with him, the stronger the pull. Like the tide rushing to shore, she was almost certain she knew this stranger as well as she knew herself. Impossible. Improbable. Crazy.
This attraction she felt for him went far beyond anything she would feel for a casually met stranger. It didn’t make any sense. It was scary. It was, Eva thought as they crossed a vast entry hall, intriguing. Inside, the palatial home was even grander than on the outside. Crystal chandeliers and marble floors, silk-covered walls, antiques and priceless works of art were everywhere. Eva wondered for a moment if perhaps Raphael were part of some minor European royal family she’d never heard of.
The hum of a hundred or more voices talking in low conversation wafted into the hall, sending a skittering sensation running down her nape. There were lots of people here, but she’d yet to see a single soul.
“Would you like me to introduce you?”
As Eva looked around at her surroundings, she bit her lip and nodded, suddenly feeling too insignificant to summon a response. Raphael slid his hand along her arm, twining his fingers in hers, sending another spasm of heat shimmering through to her core.
She began to doubt herself and Raphael’s stories about being a vampire, and all of the vampires being dependent on her for their cure to a plague. It seemed just too fantastical that she would matter that much to anyone, let alone an entire race. No matter how her heart back-flipped when he touched her, clearly there was more going on here than he’d told her.
Men, wealthy men like Raphael, didn’t pick up nobody accountants and bring them home to meet the family. That only happened in fairy tales, and romantic movies. Eva gave herself a mental slap upside the head. Call it what it was. She met a handsome stranger who she was powerfully attracted to and could tell felt the same about her. She’d willingly allowed him to take her home with him. For sex. Wild, hot, fabulous sex. That was the sum total of his reason for bringing her here. Sex. Good, old-fashioned lust. Not love. Never love. Love spelled disaster for Eva. At least that’s what she’d been told by the palm reader. And with Kevin it had proven all too accurate.
Vampires indeed. He could have paid any cosmetic dentist to trick out his incisors like that for effect. How could she have been so blind? Likely, this was some silly party bet with his wealthy buddies, like college fraternities played on each other, seeing who could bring the most pathetic date. Maybe it was some twisted Mardi Gras family tradition.
But all her hesitations came too late. Raphael’s hold on her hand was strong, and she seriously doubted she could pull away, even if she’d wanted to.
The moment they entered the room, the hum of voices in conversation hit an unnatural lull. The sea of faces swam before her. So many. All of them staring at her. But not like the best geek brought to the party. No, and this was somehow worse, they stared at her as if she was the most beautiful sight they had ever seen.
She’d never felt so much attention fixed on her in her life. Somehow, this must be what it felt like when those nightmares of showing up naked at work really came true.
Thousands of candles lit the room, their flickering light reflected in the mirrored walls of the ballroom, but when she glanced at her reflection, there was only her, alone, in the candlelit room, staring at the macabre centerpiece. Rising up in the center of the ballroom, on a golden dais, was a polished mahogany coffin draped with red velvet. Holy crap! What exactly was going on? She could still hear the faint rustle of their movements behind her, even though none of them reflected in the mirrors.
She couldn’t seem to stop herself from moving in for a closer look. And this time, Raphael let her go. Her eyes adjusted to the flickering light of the candles as she crept forward to peek at what lay inside.
A human skeleton of ivory, almost glossy, bones, lay within, but that wasn’t what made her heart stop, then pick up double time. It was the one difference she noticed, the thing that took her by surprise. Beneath the glimmer of candlelight on the polished bone, the skeleton’s teeth were perfect, especially the elongated, pointed fangs.
“You are surprised.” His voice came like a whisper against her skin. Eva pressed back against him, needing the solidness of him touching her, then she tilted her head up, looking into his golden eyes.
“I shouldn’t be. You told me what you were. I just wasn’t sure I believed it.”
His eyes shifted from golden to dark amber. “I was honest about that, but there is something that is left unsaid between us.” The glide of his tender touch against her shoulder made her shudder with need. “If you do this, Eva, there is no guarantee that I can control how the process will work with you.”
She glanced back at the skeleton. “Who is, was, this?”
“Siphidius.”
“The first vampire? The one you told me about?”
“Yes. And the first to die from the plague.”
She turned her back on the skeleton, her fingers digging into Raphael’s shirt, clinging to him like a lifeline in a sea of confusion and doubt. “How am I going to make any difference?”
He locked his gaze with hers. “There is a special cleansing ceremony that counteracts the virus.”
“And somehow I’m the inoculation?”
How could he possibly tell her it was more like a sacrifice? “In a manner of speaking.”
We must have her. Janus’s voice pounded inside Raphael’s head. He blocked it out, refusing to be distracted. “Darling Eva, time is running short. If you do not help us, we will all perish by this time two days from now.”
Her pulsed pou
nded so thick and loud that it echoed in his head, and her eyes went wide, before she swallowed and blinked.
“What do you need me to do?”
He almost chuckled at the absurdity of it. His explanation would sound very simple, yet complicated his existence on every level. “You climb in the coffin once the ceremony starts and the Siphidius skeleton disappears. Then the transformation for all of us will begin. We reemerge when we are healed and the skeleton reappears when the ceremony is complete.”
“That’s all? Then what’s the big deal?”
Ah. Here came the part that sliced him to the core and ground the stony remains of his heart to dust.
“You die.”
“I—what?” You mean I become a vampire, right?”
It would be so much easier to let her believe that. He’d done so with Isabeau, watched her fragile human form disappear knowing full well he would never touch her, feel her, smell her scent, again. Yet this time was infinitely worse. Because he knew exactly how torturous every minute of every day would feel without her. He could let Eva go, but not without her consent. Not without her knowing.
“No mortal has ever become a vampire in this way. They have all simply…perished.”
Her shoulders stiffened, and then she looked at him. “I thought you were going to turn me into one of you.”
Raphael’s chest hardened with pain that radiated outward from the region of his heart. “But that is a kind of death. You do not fear death?” Considering the lengths his kind had endured in order to achieve an escape from death, her reaction seemed alien to him.
“I don’t fear the unknown. Honestly, I’ve been dead once already, and it wasn’t that bad. It’s not like I’m in a hurry to go back, but perhaps I’m meant to. All of you will die if I don’t do this, right?”
“We will.” He stared at her, the gold in his eyes dazzling. “How have you died before, Eva?”
Inside her heart swelled with gratitude because he accepted her statement so completely, unlike Kevin had. She glanced again at the bones, then held up her palm and gazed at it, tracing one of the fine lines that spidered across it. “For my twenty-first birthday, my friends took me out to a palm reader who told me that my life would change the world and love was destructive for me. We had a good laugh, went out for drinks, had a good time. On the way home, there was an accident. My friend Kelly was driving and died. When I woke up in the hospital, they said I’d died on the table, then somehow come back.” She closed her hand tightly and gazed at him. A flicker of fear clouded her clear blue eyes.
“That time I was gone, I went somewhere. I’m not sure where. It was all white and a voice told me it wasn’t my time. They were sending me back because I had something important to do. My life was going to change the world. I’ve been waiting to find out how and why ever since. I guess now I know. I’ve known I was meant to do something more important, bigger with my life than being an accountant.” She let out a rattling sigh. “Saving an entire race from extinction is certainly up there with big. Really big.”
He could see her resolve encasing her like a cocoon and was awed by her strength and selflessness. She was the most amazing creature he’d ever met, and inside he was dying all over again at the thought of losing her. “Evaline St. Croix, you are a most unusual woman.”
“There is one thing I’d like in return, though, before I do this, and it’s not a last meal.”
“Anything.”
He could think of a thousand things he desired. A night by a roaring fire with her naked in his arms. An afternoon spent in the heated sand with the lulling roar of the ocean mixing with the soft moans and slick skin. An eternity to kiss her.
“What is it you desire?”
“You.”
Chapter Four
Raphael let out a long breath simply to steady his inner turmoil. A strong desire to rebel and steal her away from them rose up within him. But as much as he longed to keep her for himself, he, too, would die without her sacrifice.
“Before I am transformed, or die, or whatever is going to happen to me, I want to know what it’s like to be with you.”
Such a simple request. Something he’d willingly give under any other circumstance. But there was no time. Especially no time to do properly what she’d asked of him. That could take…lifetimes.
“All I can offer you is a shallow imitation of what could have been between us. It is hardly enough.”
Eva wanted to laugh. He looked so solemn and serious. “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit. It’s what I want.”
He nodded and held out his hand to her.
Eva took it eagerly, lacing her fingers with his and gazing up at his elegant profile. Her heartbeat picked up a faster rhythm, and for an instant, she caught the quick tilt of Raphael’s head as though he’d heard the change.
They walked together hand-in-hand out of the ballroom, without anyone stopping them. She leaned into Raphael, suddenly feeling colder, as if she’d passed an open window. Glancing back over her shoulder, she stared at the others who disappeared from sight as they turned the corner and started up the grand staircase.
“They’re all vampires too, aren’t they?”
Raphael’s golden gaze slid to meet hers, and his lips remained in a firm line. “Yes.”
“And they’ve come for the same thing you have?”
“We are all connected, Eva. This time the virus has mutated, gaining more power. In the past, some of us have managed to survive it. Now…nothing is certain. All of us are seeking salvation from the plague.”
“It could wipe you all out?”
He shrugged. “I doubt it would be any great loss to humanity.”
Eva shook her head. “I’m not sure about that. There’s balance in everything. Look what happens when a predator is taken out of any natural cycle—things get really bad for those that are left. I think the same might apply.”
He slowed their steps, his mouth curving into a half smile as he reached up to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand. “Truly you are one of a kind.”
Their footsteps barely made a sound on the thick carpet that ran down the hall, which was lined with gilt-framed portraits in stark relief against walls decorated in crimson silk. Eva glanced up to see a picture of a man in knee breeches, with a brocade vest and long-tailed jacket, and recognized him.
“That’s you, isn’t it?”
This time he grinned, exposing the sharp white point of his fangs. “Not my first portrait, but one of the more recent.”
“Exactly how old are you, anyway?”
His eyes glittered. “Old enough to know exactly how to pleasure you, and young enough to find you absolutely intoxicating.”
His head bend closer, his lips barely brushing the skin along her jaw, skimming a warm trail down her neck. “Ah, Eva. The things I would do to you had I the time.”
They had reached the end of the hall and paused before a set of double doors. Raphael pushed them open and bowed slightly, gesturing that she should enter ahead of him.
A giant four-poster bed took up most of the room.
“Do you ever actually sleep in that thing? I mean it looks like there might be room for six, maybe eight.”
“Let me show you precisely what I do here.”
In the space between one breath and the next, Eva found that her long black gown had vanished with nothing more than the sensation of a gentle warm breeze brushing against her skin. Her breasts tightened instantly at the arc of electricity that raced between her and Raphael, even though he still stood nearly across the room.
She blinked, and he was right against her, lifting her against the cool hardness of him, as if she weighed no more than a feather pillow. Eva wanted to melt into him, but he placed her gently in the center of the very big bed and pulled back.
Instantly, the need to have him near her, touching her, grew overwhelming, as if their encounter in the limo had never stopped. The velvet of the coverlet was plush and warm against her ski
n, and the look on Raphael’s face made her feel hot and tight all over.
“You are even more beautiful than I imagined.”
She blushed, and his eyes flashed with primal hunger that was powerful, scary and exciting all at once. “You aren’t planning to feed on me are you?”
He smiled, his fangs elongated, his body tense, the edge of his erection against his taunt abdomen plain for her to see. “Make no mistake, Eva. You make me hungry in a thousand different ways. But no, I will not drink tonight.”
Her stomach contracted, and small shivers danced across her skin. She could smell his cologne as if he were on the bed with her instead of staring at her with those dark, intense eyes from several feet away. Eva suddenly had the sensation of his hands, cool and firm, cupping her breasts, his thumbs brushing against the sensitive curve. Her fingers itched to touch him, even though she could feel him.
“You know this works better if I can actually touch you,” she said between short quick breaths.
He gave her a sly, knowing smile, and suddenly it felt as if he was kissing her, his lips warm and insistent on hers, the slick heat of his tongue running along the seam of her mouth. How in the hell did he do that?
“Close your eyes and relax,” he said, the words stroking her skin like fingers.
She wanted to, but the tension inside was building, pulsing and driving her wild. Relax. The word echoed in her head. That was damn hard to do as her panties and bra disappeared into thin air as well, leaving her bare to the cool night and the sensations that were flooding over her.
How could he be touching her everywhere at once? That was definitely what it felt like. The warm wet heat of his soft mouth swirled over her nipples, making them ache. At the same time, the smooth glide of his hand skimmed down her spine and over her stomach, causing a riot of butterflies to erupt inside. Eva pressed her aching thighs together and sensed the firm grasp of his hand resting against her bare bottom, his fingers slipping against the damp cleft of her core, making her shudder with need.
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