Although Oliver’s story sounded plausible, I just wasn’t falling for it. Connor and I weren’t in a position to argue with him, however. If we challenged him, it was unlikely we’d make it out of Charles’ ranch alive.
“Where is Barbatos now?” Connor asked.
“That’s the problem,” Oliver replied. “Since he stole the book, he’s gone into hiding. We have no idea where he is.”
I frowned. “Then how are we going to find him?”
Oliver met my gaze and grinned. “There is a way to locate him. We just need to meet with the witch he stole the book from. I spoke to her right before you arrived and she confirmed that she can find Barbatos with a summoning spell.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Connor enquired. “Let’s find the demon and call Malaki to deal with him. Let him get his own damn book.”
“I will, of course, be going with you to meet with the witch,” Oliver drawled with a swish of his hand. “I’m sure you understand.”
I started to shake my head, but Oliver held out a hand to silence me. “Hear me out. I realise you don’t trust me, any more than I trust the two of you. I only have your word to corroborate the story you’ve given me, and you mine. It’s in both our interests to meet the witch together. And when the demon has been located, we’d be stronger if we apprehend him together. Plus I have my entire pack as back-up should we need them.”
I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one little bit, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. Oliver wouldn’t tell us how to find the witch unless we agreed that he could come with us when we met with her. My only hope was that when we found the demon, we’d be able to keep the book out of Oliver’s hands. It was obvious he wanted it.
I nodded my agreement. “Fine. Make the call.”
The conversation was brief. The witch—Cassandra—agreed to meet with us at nine the next morning. Oliver wanted to hold the meeting at Charles’ ranch, but Connor and I insisted on neutral territory and, after some discussion, he reluctantly acquiesced. I checked my watch as we walked back to the car. It was nearly four. That gave us four hours to find a motel and get a few hours’ sleep before we had to get back up. Connor waited until we were in the safety of the car and on the road again before speaking his mind.
“How much of that story did you believe?”
“About as much as you.”
“Ah, nothing then.”
“Oliver wants the book. I think that Charles discovered his plan and Oliver killed him for it.”
“I think you’re right. You still think it’s a good idea to meet with this witch?”
“What else can we do? If we’re correct in thinking that Malaki had Matt kidnapped so that he could get me to help him, then he’s not going to tell us where Matt is until he gets what he wanted all along.”
“This is dangerous, Raven. It might be a good idea to contact your superiors at the council. If Charles’ pack is now loyal to Oliver then we have no hope of getting anywhere near that book when we find it. We’re going to need all the help we can get. Think about it. Please.”
I did. I thought about nothing else while we searched for a motel near to the morning’s meeting place. Connor was right, of course. We did need help. But I knew the council all too well. If they knew that a demon had possession of such a powerful book, they would stop at nothing to get it back. Even though we might share a common objective, there would be certain things we wouldn’t agree on. Matt’s life being the most significant. All for the greater good. Matt himself was a champion of the hunters’ council motto, but however hard I tried to convince myself of it, I couldn’t see Matt as expendable. Maybe in the grand scheme of things he was. But none of that mattered because I had to save him, whatever the risk and whatever it cost me. It was my fault he’d been kidnapped. I had to get him back.
Chapter Eight
By the time we’d found a motel, checked in and finally got inside our room, Connor was in a foul mood. He was wearing a constant scowl and sighing loudly every five minutes like some petulant child that had had their favourite toy confiscated for bad behaviour. It was annoying, more so because I didn’t know what had brought on the abrupt change in him. When he sat down on one of the twin beds to take off his shoes, he wouldn’t even meet my eye when I spoke to him.
“You want to shower first?” I asked, poking my head around the bathroom door to check out the room. The motel was basic, the bathroom a uniform white that had greyed over time, but it didn’t matter. If everything went to plan the next morning, we wouldn’t have to stay for very long.
Connor shrugged. “Whatever you want.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll take that as a no, shall I?”
He shrugged again, staying silent, his gaze still averted from mine and I had to bite my tongue to stop from snapping at him. I got that he was frustrated, but the situation was no picnic for me either. Over the course of the night, vampires had kidnapped my best friend and I’d nearly succumbed to the wicked charms of an evil fairy. I’d been chased by a pack of wolves, knocked unconscious and held underground, and now I had to psyche myself up to face an incredibly powerful demon that could likely kill me as good as look at me. As nights went, I’d had better. Connor’s childish mood swings weren’t helping any.
I ducked into the bathroom, shut the door and stripped off before showering quickly. The hot water felt wonderful as it rained down on my aching limbs, helping to soothe away the stress. I could have spent longer under the spray, but the bed was calling me. I was so damn tired. After I’d towelled dry, I put on a pair of panties and a T-shirt and walked back into the bedroom to find Connor lying on his back, hands clasped behind his head. He was staring at the ceiling and didn’t move or look at me when I entered the room.
“Shower’s free,” I said as if that hadn’t been made obvious by my reappearance.
When he grunted a reply, still without meeting my gaze, I lost the last thread of my patience.
“What the hell is your problem?” I demanded, placing my hands on my hips and glaring at him.
Connor finally turned his head in my direction and looked at me, but it was more than a simple look, it was a deep, penetrating gaze that made me feel as though he could see into my very soul. I’d expected my outburst to fuel his ire, but there was no anger in his eyes, only sadness and something that could have been regret.
“Did you ever love me, Raven?” he asked so quietly that I wondered if I’d heard him correctly. “Even in the beginning?”
I’m not sure what I’d been expecting Connor to say, but it hadn’t been that. The words were like a punch to the gut. They stole my breath and I had to sit down on the bed before my legs gave out. The intensity in Connor’s eyes was fierce. For someone I’d thought knew me so well, it seemed he didn’t know me at all. How could he if he really believed that? But he wasn’t saying anything that I hadn’t made him believe, was he? I didn’t know if I could choke out a reply, but I tried out my voice anyway.
“Why would you ask me that, Connor?” I managed to say. “Is that what you really think?”
He shrugged and tore his gaze away. “I told you earlier that my wolf had claimed you as his mate, but that fact didn’t even register as a blip on your radar, did it? I could have just as easily been talking about the weather.”
“What? Hey, that’s not true!” I denied fervently. “I’ve thought about little else since, but what do you want me to do with it, huh? I don’t know what you want me to say.” Sure, his wolf might consider me to be his mate, but what about Connor? What did he think? How did he feel?
“I don’t want you to say anything. Look, don’t worry about it. Just forget I said anything, okay? I know you never returned my feelings. I made my peace with that when you left me, even though it killed me to do so and even though my wolf didn’t want to accept it. It’s fine, really. You don’t owe me anything.”
I’d never heard Connor sound so defeated before. He was strong, the type of man that could do anyth
ing, deal with anything. All of the breath whooshed out of my lungs when it hit home just how much I’d hurt him and how much I continued to hurt him despite what he might feel about me now. I had to make it right.
“Never returned your feelings?” I repeated numbly. “I couldn’t have loved you more if I’d tried. I’ve thought about you every day since I left. Every single day. I would have stayed if I’d thought there was a chance for us to be happy. I would never have walked away if I’d thought you could be safe with me in your life. Safe from Darius, from the council. That was the real reason I left, Connor, because I wanted you to be safe. It was the only reason I left. I never stopped loving you, not for a single second. I never will.”
He sat up abruptly and his frosty glare turned positively glacial. In a move that would have been undetectable to the human eye, he leapt up off the bed and was looming over me in two seconds flat. “Don’t you dare say that!” he shouted angrily, his finger pointing threateningly at my face. “Don’t you dare say it!”
I thrust my chin forward stubbornly and held his gaze. “It’s true. Every word is true.”
“No!” Connor strode across the room, curled his hand into a fist and punched the wall. I sucked in a sharp breath as a cloud of plaster dust filled the air. When he moved his hand away, there was a large dent in the wall and his knuckles were scraped and bleeding.
“You don’t love me. You never loved me!” His volume increased with every word and when he turned to meet my gaze, his eyes and teeth had shifted to their wolf form. If I hadn’t still been sitting, the power he was emitting would have knocked me on my ass.
“Admit it!” he growled dangerously, his wolf so close to the surface he must have been fighting to be set free.
“Always!” I said with passion. “I always loved you and I always will.” I got up from the bed and took two cautious steps towards him, but Connor shook his head and backed away until he was pressed up against the wall.
“Fuck you, Raven! Fuck you! Don’t lie to me! If you loved me, you never would have left!”
When a tear escaped from the corner of my eye and rolled down my cheek, I didn’t bother brushing it away. I swallowed down the lump that had risen in my throat before admitting, “I did lie to you. I lied when I told you I didn’t love you anymore. It nearly killed me to say it, but it was the only way you would have let me go.”
“No!”
I nodded as another tear followed the same path as the first. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I lied to you. I’ll never forgive myself for hurting you the way I did.”
Connor began to pace the room. I watched him quietly, afraid to say anything for fear of upsetting him further. Eventually he stopped pacing and stood in front of me.
“Is it true?” The words were barely more than a whisper and his eyes searched mine as though he would be able to see the truth in their depths.
I nodded and whispered a reply. “Yes.”
Connor frowned and ran a hand through his thick hair. “How could you do that? How could you walk away if you still loved me?”
I shrugged hopelessly. “It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do.”
“But why? I don’t understand why.”
“Darius would never have let us be together,” I reasoned. “He—”
“I killed Darius tonight!” Connor interrupted hotly. “And I would have killed him two years ago if it had come down to a fight. Didn’t you trust me to keep you safe, to protect you from him? Did you think I wasn’t strong enough to protect you?”
I realised I had to choose my words carefully because to call a wolf ‘weak’ was about the worse insult you could impart and I didn’t see Connor that way, far from it. He was actually one of the strongest men I’d met, dangerously so. There was a raw power inside him that oozed out of his every pore. No supernatural being would be able to ignore it. I’d been awed by Connor from the moment we met and my feelings had never changed, but I had to make him understand that, I had to make him believe.
“Darius was a powerful wolf, Connor, a powerful alpha wolf and he had the backing of the entire pack. You’d have been going up against all of them if you had defied him. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe you could beat him in a fight—I just didn’t want to put you in the position of having to fight him at all. I didn’t want you to have to go up against your alpha or any of your pack mates. I couldn’t do that to you. What if Darius had cast you out? I knew how important your pack was to you… Hell, how important it is to you. They’re your blood, your family.”
“They weren’t my only family,” he corrected. “I had you, Raven. I could have faced anything as long as you were standing by my side.”
I shook my head wearily. “The problem wasn’t only Darius, Connor, it was the hunters’ council too. They would never have—”
“We could have convinced them!” Connor cut in, fury dripping off every word. “You should have fought for us! That’s what people do when they love each other. Why didn’t you fight for us instead of walking away?”
I didn’t have a good enough answer to that question because Connor was absolutely right. I should have fought for us. I should have trusted in him and in our relationship, but I hadn’t. Anger was pouring out of Connor. He was so irate his entire body was shaking. “Connor,” I said cautiously, taking another step closer. “I really am sorry—more than I can put into words. Can you ever forgive me?”
Shaking his head, Connor edged away from me. “Forgive you? I can barely look at you.”
I drew in a great heaving lungful of air and nodded, trying desperately to hold back the flood of tears that were threatening to overwhelm me. What had I honestly expected? This was all my own doing.
“Maybe you should go back to Austin,” I suggested quietly. “You don’t need to stay here. I can meet with the witch alone tomorrow.”
“What?” Connor glared at me. “Don’t be ridiculous, Raven. I’m angry at you, yes, but do you really think I’d go home and let you deal with something like this on your own? You know, I don’t get you. How could you have hurt me like that if you loved me like you said you did?”
“I did love you, I do!”
“Christ, two years! For two years you made me believe that you didn’t care about me, that you didn’t love me and that you never had.”
“I know and I’m sorry, I—”
“I thought the whole time we’d spent together had been one-sided. You realise that, right? I thought it was all a damn lie!” Connor punched the wall next to my head and I gasped and flinched away from him even though I knew he’d never hurt me.
“It wasn’t a lie, it—”
Connor growled loudly at me. “How can I ever trust you again? How can I ever believe another word you say? And you asked if I can forgive you? Right now I’m so angry I can’t even think straight.”
“You have every right to be angry,” I reasoned.
“Damn straight I do!”
“I thought I was doing the right thing!” I retorted. Connor’s tone had tugged on something deep inside me, something that made me feel like I needed to defend myself. “I thought it would be best if I stayed away from you.”
“No, you didn’t think,” Connor bit out. “That’s the problem. You didn’t think at all!”
“Don’t you dare tell me what was going on in my head! I did think. I thought I was doing right thing for us both, can’t you understand that?”
“You didn’t even trust me enough to talk to me, Raven, about any of it. And about something as important as our relationship? You shouldn’t have made a decision like that for the both of us. You should have come to me!”
“I’m sorry! Jesus, what else do you want me to say? I’m sorry, all right?”
Connor grabbed hold of my upper arms and pushed me back against the wall with such brute force that all the breath left my lungs in a whoosh. He pressed his body firmly against mine, making me painfully aware of the hardness in the front of his pants. I gasped, surprised
and excited in equal measures.
“No, it’s not all right!” He captured my mouth and pushed his tongue inside to duel with mine. The kiss was brutal in its intensity—all teeth and tongue and a desperate aching need that one kiss would never sate. The electricity that surged between us rushed through my body, tiny currents that travelled straight to my core, making me wet for him, for what I hoped we were about to do.
“Connor?” I asked breathlessly when we separated for air. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to make you come, then I’m going to fuck you senseless,” Connor rasped into my ear before licking his way down my throat with hot, teasing caresses of his tongue that should have been made illegal they were so damn good.
I cried out when the sharp points of his canine teeth scraped along my skin, drawing a small amount of blood. Connor licked it away with a low moan.
“Damn. I’d forgotten how wonderful you taste. Your mouth, your skin, your blood. You’re like the sizzling heat of summer and the cool crispness of winter all rolled into one mouth-watering package. You’re addictive—so goddamn perfect.”
I shook my head. “I’m far from perfect.”
I let my head fall back as he explored my neck, painfully aware that we shouldn’t be doing this, that we should stop before it was too late, but I didn’t want it to end, especially when Connor skirted his hands down my body, skimming over my breasts and making my nipples harden under his touch. I’d missed his strong hands on me so much over the past two years. I felt starved for him.
“Oh God, Connor,” I moaned breathlessly as he moved his hands lower, inching them down to where I needed them most.
His deep growl made a powerful shiver travel down my spine and my pussy clenched tight in anticipation. I was so eager to feel him inside me, filling me. He gripped the neck of my T-shirt in both hands then, with one hard yank, he tore it in half. I hadn’t put a bra on after the shower so the action left me naked to the waist, completely exposed to him. His mouth instantly covered my left breast and his tongue teased my nipple into a peak as he sucked it into his mouth, nibbling it delicately with his teeth. The action made liquid seep from my core, drenching my panties with my desire.
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