In truth, she had never felt stronger.
“I’m a vampire. To me you are as light as a feather.”
“I want you to be ready to embrace your sister,” she insisted. “You cannot do that if I am in your arms.”
He was sweet, showing her a kindness she hadn’t known for much of her life, but also arrogant. She had saved him by coming after him, but she had overheard him talk with de Wynter and Lord Brookshire. He would not excuse them for allowing her to come into danger.
She hadn’t yet told him she had agreed to be a distraction so they could break into the house.
Suddenly she realized she was afraid to tell Raven. He had been an assassin. What did a man like that do in rage? She owed their lives to Brookshire, his brother, and Althea. She dare not say anything that would make him hurt them.
Showing his strength, Ravenhunt shifted her, so he had her perched on one arm, and he opened the oak door with his free right hand. In here, torches burned along the walls. Not much light but enough to blind her eyes.
“God,” he muttered. A thud sounded. It had to be his hand hitting the door.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Something slightly rough and warm touched her chin. His fingers, and they tipped up her chin. In a low voice, he said, “I cannot do this. When she saw I was not dead, she fainted. She doesn’t know yet that I am a demon—a predator and a monster. Or she does know, because your brother has told her.”
“He wouldn’t.” But he might have. He wouldn’t have thought he would have to hide it. “I will speak to her.”
“I can’t face it,” he growled. “Not her horror, her hatred. Her rejection.”
Footsteps sounded. Ophelia blinked as a dark shadow emerged from the light. Her eyes focused and she saw it was Harry.
“I have told her,” he said heavily. “I heard footsteps. Thought it would be you, so I wanted to tell you she knows you are a vampire. It was a—a bad shock.”
Raven kissed the top of her head. Ophelia looked up after he did. His eyes shone, but not because they were a vampire’s eyes. It was due to the watery film of tears. “I can’t go to her,” he muttered. “I told Jade I wanted Frederica released, but it cannot be by me. This is wrong, and it will only hurt her. I can never see her again.”
“No,” she gasped.
Her brother nodded. “As you wish, Ravenhunt.” Harry turned and ran back down the corridor to where Frederica must have been imprisoned.
“You
must
go. I will explain what you did for her.”
“No.”
“Don’t be stubborn and ridiculous. She will accept you, especially once she knows how you heroically risked your existence for her.”
“She should never accept me.”
He set her on her feet, and though she’d wanted to walk herself, the way he did it made her nervous.
“I am going now.”
“Going? Without seeing her?”
“It has to be this way. You do not have to come with me if you don’t want to. You are free now, Ophelia. Not my captive anymore.”
“I never was your captive. From the beginning, you were protecting me.”
His haunted gaze held her. “I was serving myself, Ophelia. I am still a monster, and that is what I will always be.” With a swift turn on his heel, he left her, stalking down the corridor with long strides.
She took a step after him, and called, “Stop this. Don’t go.”
I have to. I can smell my sister’s blood from here.
She ran after him. “You can control it. Heavens, you wouldn’t attack your sister.”
But he was gone. She shouted to him through her thoughts but he didn’t answer. Running wildly, she came to the end of the hall, and she could see a rectangle of light ahead, and the stone steps it illuminated. She raced toward the cellar steps.
“Ophelia, what’s wrong?”
She almost crashed into Althea, who was hurrying down the hallway in the darkness. She brushed by her new friend and reached the bottom of the stairs. Her chest heaved with shallow breaths. He wasn’t there. He’d already gone upstairs. Could she catch him before he left the house?
Althea was there, at her side. Althea’s arm slid around her shoulder. “Come home with me tonight. I want you to be my guest. Your brother is obviously very busy with his beloved, and with foolish Ravenhunt stalking off that way, I believe you need some female companionship.”
“He refused to see his sister. He ran away. Why would he do that?”
“He is afraid of his sister’s rejection. And I think he fears you do not really love him,” Althea said. “He fears that you feel in love with him because you were forced to.”
“But my love was proven to be real. It was how he survived.”
“Everyone says men are much more scientific. I have discovered that they are very emotional. There are things they refuse to believe, even with ample evidence to say it is so.”
“He’s afraid,” Ophelia said. “I know fear. I felt it my whole life. For me, fear kept me
from
running away. But for Ravenhunt, it makes him run away.”
“What do you think he fears?”
“He fears hurting his sister.” That she knew readily. “And perhaps he does fear I don’t really love him . . .”
Althea waited. Ophelia sensed there was something she had to understand. Then it dawned. “He fears love.”
“I believe that is so,” Althea said. “He is afraid of love, so he seeks to run away from it. Even when it is given to him, he is too afraid to take it. Now, come with me. I will also bring your brother and Ravenhunt’s sister. I want to have a physician examine her and ensure she has not been unduly wounded by her ordeal. The poor girl must be ravenous.”
Food. Something she had not thought of in forever. “Yes, we must help her right away.”
Althea smiled. “And then come home with me, my new friend.”
But Ophelia shook her head. “I have to try once more with Ravenhunt.”
“You will, I promise. That is what we shall do after dinner. We shall conspire to make Ravenhunt understand he deserves love, and he must stop running away from it.”
Ophelia squeezed her friend’s hand. “I can’t bear to wait. I have to try now.”
“Then we will use one of the carriages and I will take you to Ravenhunt.”
Ophelia alighted from the carriage and hurried up to the door in her shirt, trousers, and boots. This time she was determined to get
into
his house. Not one light glowed in a window.
The bleakness of his home tugged at Ophelia’s heart. She knew the logic of why it was dark. He did not need light. But she now knew there was another reason. Raven had fashioned his own prison. That was why most of the rooms were unused and swathed in covers. He had isolated himself. He chose to retreat from the world. As a vampire, he’d had his soul taken from him, and his loss was revealed in the desolate, isolated way he lived.
He had been a man with a broken heart, and he had run away from pain.
Now he was to be condemned to a prisoner’s existence—in a prison of his own making—for eternity. Unless he
changed
.
She had been cursed to be a prisoner, or to be alone forever. The magic of love had changed that. For him, the magic had to rebuild his heart and it had to give him hope. Love and hope were the two keys that would unlock his self-made cell.
Ophelia rapped firmly.
Time ticked with irritating slowness.
Why could he not give up on the past and look to a future?
She slammed her hands against the door, but that hurt. Arcing her foot back, she kicked it over and over.
Fortunately it was late at night and there were few people to see her attack on Ravenhunt’s door and likely have her arrested.
She glanced back at Althea. She was about to return to the carriage, think of another plan, when rattling sounded, the knob turned, and the door opened a few inches.
Ophelia almost sobbed with delight at Raven’s darkly handsome face. Then she looked down, taking in all of him, and her heart lurched with sorrow. On his lean, powerful frame, he still wore the torn and dirty clothing he had worn as Jade’s prisoner. As if he did not deserve to now be free.
“I want something from you,” she said throatily.
He jerked back. Her quiet, simple demand had surprised him. “What?” he asked. But he wasn’t cool. He gripped the door handle with such force his fingers dented the metal handle. His other hand rested on the door frame, and he gouged his fingers into the wood.
Whatever he was trying to do, he did care about her.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Love forever. But she could not say that yet. “If you are never going to see me again after this night, I want to make love to you one more time.”
“Indeed. Why, when you are free to find love?”
Her old doubts crept in for a moment. Perhaps there was no love here to find. She didn’t believe that, she believed in herself. Running her tongue in a sensuous circle, Ophelia licked her lips and cocked her head, hoping she was giving him a coy look of wanton promise. “I want you.”
“Love, it is probably better if we don’t make this harder. You can live a mortal’s life. You can fall in love with a good man.”
“But Raven, I cannot ask a good man to tie me up.”
Wood left the door frame with a splintering
crack
. The knob made a groaning sound as it crushed into a deformed mess.
He pulled open the door. “Come in.”
The moment he closed the door behind her and slid the bolts home to secure them, Ophelia grasped the waistband of his trousers and fiddled with the first button.
Raven grasped her delicate, swift-moving hands to stop her, but cool and composed, she said, “I assume you don’t want to waste precious time in conversation.”
“You will do what I say.”
“No. We are equals now. There is a balance of power between us.”
“We are not equals and can never be, because I am a vampire. I’m dangerous. You should go home to your brother. That is where you belong. At your home, not mine.”
Ophelia got two buttons of his trouser placket open and reached her hand inside.
Raven growled as desire streaked through him. Damn it, why did the woman refuse to listen to logic?
God, the feel of her warm, soft skin sliding over his stomach. The heaven of having her warm, soft palm wrapping around his cock . . .
Gripping his shaft firmly, she put her other hand on his chest and stood on tiptoe. Her hand tugged his cock upward. “Let me kiss you and taste you and suck you,” she whispered by his ear, her voice rich and husky.
Her breath was a soft, exotic breeze tickling his skin. Like the caressing heat of India and Ceylon. For moments, her touch pushed away memories of battle and of what he’d done as a vampire, as he imagined her in India, dressed in silk that was damp with her sweat.
“
Houri
,” he murmured. “You are an exotic temptress, and you should go home now.”
“I’ve barely begun.”
She stuck out her tongue and licked his neck. A long, slow swipe of heat and sensation. He was a vampire, strong, powerful, and he felt his knees almost buckle as his blood surged down, taking his strength with it. His cock swelled against her constricting hand.
Her eyes went innocently wide, sparkling blue. “It pulses. It’s grown so huge.”
She released his prick. It was what he wanted, but he felt himself groan and start to mutter, “No—” He stopped himself.
Ophelia lifted her palm to her face and took a deep breath. “I love the scent of you,” she whispered. “It smells like . . . like how naughty should smell.”
She crippled him with her sweet, erotic nature.
Her tongue wantonly licked her palm. “Mmm, rich, sour, and so . . . delicious. I love tasting you like this.”
Shivers ran down his back as he watched her. Knowing he was the man who had taken her from naïve innocent to this sultry siren.
“I want to taste you completely. I don’t know why. I’m just driven to do it.”
Her hands deftly pushed aside the falls of his trousers and his cock pushed heavily forward.
“You’re wet,” she observed. “I can kiss it, can’t I?”
Her words rocked the earth beneath his feet. But he could not indulge himself. It was a mad, delirious fantasy, but this one he could not have. “Ladies don’t—”
“What you mean to say is ‘of course, you can’,” she said firmly, puckering up. Her pink lips made a lush pillow. She brushed their satiny softness over the sensitive head of his cock.
It was one of the most erotic sights he’d ever seen. He rocked back on his heels. But she gripped his shaft again to keep him in place.
She wasn’t shy and demure anymore, but she was every inch an adorable woman. A sexual, beautiful woman. He had to let her go.
But he couldn’t resist experiencing this.
She pressed a soft kiss to the taut, swollen, aching head. It was like having his every nerve ending struck by lightning. So good. What man didn’t love the sensation of a woman’s sucking mouth on his cock? He didn’t think there was a man alive—or undead—who didn’t. But to have an angel like Ophelia offer it . . .
God.
She parted her lips, stopped kissing him, and let the head slide inside her mouth. His leg muscles went rock hard, his ass tightened, and his ballocks pulled up so abruptly at the jolt of pleasure they almost slapped him.
Her gold hair was pinned up, making her look so demure and ladylike as she slowly took more of his cock inside her mouth. Her tongue stroked against him, her lips slid along him. He wanted to cry out. If he grabbed anything, he would crush it.
She sucked, teasing his wildly aroused cock with a light tug. The flat of his hand slammed against the foyer wall. Slowly, she got on her knees in front of him, in that erotic pose where the woman looked to be submissive but was really in charge.
Her tongue ran sumptuously around his cock, wrapping the head in its lush embrace. She sucked lightly at the head, then hard. Her cheeks hollowed as she gave more pressure and took him deep.