The darkest time of night. No moon. No stars. No warm glow of a lantern from a nearby cottage. Not even the wind offered companionship. Grass blades whistled against her bare ankles with every step, the stake in her hand growing heavier by the minute. The vampire Kenneth had predicted would rise tonight refused to cooperate. Calculations had timed his rising at approximately seven minutes past eleven.
It now approached one in the morning, and the grave had yet to stir.
Kenneth’s predictions were typically off the mark. He constantly pieced together mathematic formulae, determined to find a way to pinpoint a vampire’s rising to the second. It never worked, of course. Not many of his ideas ever did.
Thus Ravenna had wasted most of her evening.
Not that she had much waiting for her at home.
She fought a yawn, stuffing the stake between the small of her back and the waistband of her trousers. Trousers. She liked them much more than she would have imagined. While her clothing wasn’t an appropriate fashion statement, she’d taken to wearing them as much as possible, even though she was on strict instruction to remain discreet. The change in wardrobe had come last week after the wind had caught her skirt and allowed her prey an easy escape. After a long, embarrassing discussion, Kenneth had decided men’s clothing served her better than skirts on her nightly outings. She never questioned her Guardian.
Ravenna propped herself up against the nearest tree, her eyes taking in the still graveyard with nothing more than bored acknowledgment. The part of her that had once regarded cemeteries as sacred ground had died the night of her first slaying. She used to think them hauntingly beautiful, a place resonating with spirits beyond the imaginings of the physical. The romantic in her had died long ago.
It was a graveyard. One of many. A demonic playground—the birthplace of those she hunted. No more. No less.
Ravenna sighed and glanced up to the starless sky.
It really was the darkest time of night.
It also served as her favorite time of night. She loved it when the sky grew dark, even more so when it became so still that she could hear things like grass blades caressing her skin. Silence and darkness might rightly terrify any other human within proximity, especially in a village as superstitious as hers, but Ravenna didn’t feel afraid. Not anymore.
Ravenna loved this time of night because it made her job easy. She had yet to encounter a demon whose eyes didn’t glow in some fashion. When it was absolutely dark—when the air in front of her face colored with blackness—she felt at her best. She felt at her safest. If something came after her, she’d know exactly where to look.
Silence contributed in the same way. If all hung quiet, noise would betray anything lurking in the night. Noise would give her the advantage, no matter how indiscernible it sounded to human ears.
Oh yes. Ravenna loved this time of night.
She didn’t, however, love being bored.
“I see the moon,” she recited under her breath, her eyes fixed on the black space where the moon would be were it not shrouded in clouds. “The moon sees me.”
“Moon can’t see anything. This is what we call a starless night.”
Ravenna fought an eye-roll and crossed her arms, turning fully to face the owner of the voice. The chill she once felt at its sound remained absent, as it had been for weeks now. There was only so much a person could shudder before boredom set in. After all they’d been through—the numerous times they’d tried to kill each other, the numerous times they’d come close—she felt she knew him well. As it happened, she was fortunate if he didn’t linger around every corner she turned. He stalked the night as he stalked her, at times beating her within an inch of her life and leaving her to heal before returning to do it over again. It was a mutual arrangement. They hadn’t the healthiest relationship but it seemed she’d come to depend upon it.
Her weekly nocturnal visits from Nicolai.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Can you not see I’m otherwise engaged?”
“Oh right,” he retorted. “Watching the grass grow and waiting for one of my newest relatives to show its ugly head. Your life looks entertaining.”
“Go away.”
“Sorry, no.” He grinned, hooking his thumbs through the waistband of his trousers, his brows flickering upward devilishly. “I came here for a reason.”
“To annoy me?” she ventured.
“To kill you.”
Ravenna couldn’t resist it this time. She rolled her eyes. “How many times have we had this conversation?” she asked.
“Ah, ah, ah,” he replied, shaking his head with a condescending tsk. “No need to get testy.”
“We’ve done this before. You know how it goes.”
“Yes, and I think you took our relationship for granted.” Nicolai’s grin widened as his fangs descended, his eyes burning like a deep ember. Always told you I wanted to know how it feels to kill One of the Few.”
“Nicolai —”
“And while I feel our…arrangement has been mutually beneficial, this dance has run its course, darling.” He took a step forward. “You’re brilliant and beautiful. And after tonight, you’ll make a lovely footnote in one of your Guardian’s dusty old books.”
Ravenna swallowed hard, her bravado vanishing. Her tough exterior betrayed her and the child inside, the part of her that would remain forever young, felt terrified. There were nights when she bested Nicolai, yes, but he was an old demon. An ancient, as Kenneth would say. A vampire whose reputation left no room for error.
A vampire who had, for whatever reason, made her his number one priority.
A vampire whose company had been oddly appreciated, despite the violent terms of their relationship.
“You taught me a lot,” Nicolai said, nodding to her respectfully. “Never saw a girl with moves like yours or a body like yours. You’re enough to make a fella want what he can never have.”
The words lent her pause. Ravenna blinked and glanced up. “What he can nev—”
Her voice severed at the biting smack of Nicolai’s fist smashing into her jaw. The ground swept up from under her, and the next thing she knew, she’d crashed on her back, her eyes blinking numbly at the starless sky. She barely had time to gasp, to blink, to do anything but register the dull pain spreading across her skin before he pounced, tossing her back to her feet if only to knock her down again. This time she managed to fall onto all fours. She perched awkwardly with her open palms supporting her, her cut-off trousers sliding up her legs and introducing her knees to the cold forest floor. Nicolai came at her again, his foot slamming up into her gut, knocking what little wind she had in her out again and sending her body spiraling through the air before she collapsed once more.
“Uh…”
“Oh come on, Ravenna!” Nicolai snarled, the toe of his heavy boot sinking into her ribs with wrath that knew no bounds. “Don’t tell me you’re not even gonna fight!”
Ravenna sucked in a breath so deep her insides ached, rolling over quickly to avoid another angry kick. She fought to her feet just in time to catch his swinging leg with her hands, clamping down her grip and bringing her own leg around in a roundhouse kick which had him soaring through the air in a flash of thunder.
The move made every part of her hurt. He’d taken her by surprise.
“Why now?” she screamed, lashing with furious fists at his advancing form, each of her punches wasted on the dead night air around them. She collapsed inwardly, too blinded with pain and outrage to take note of her surroundings, or even calculate how close he truly was to her. “Why now, Nicolai?”
“I’ve told you—”
His calm voice only strengthened the fire in her blood. “We were—”
“What? Getting along?” He managed to evade her swings and smash another punch into her cheek, forcing her to the ground again. “We’re not meant to get along. That’s how this thing works.”
Ravenna recovered quickly this time, tossing her hair out of her
face as her swollen eyes met the demonic glow of his gaze. Her face felt drenched. She had the horrible notion that it came from tears rather than blood. Blood she could understand and could defend. Blood she expected. Blood was justified.
Tears were deadlier than blood. Tears meant something else altogether.
“I thought—” she began weakly, but her voice died without argument.
“You thought what? That I was enjoying this? That I looked forward to seeing your annoying little face every night? That fighting with you makes me….” Nicolai trailed off, his eyes softening as he took her in, running his gaze down the length of her body. Something unprecedented flashed across his face, something she didn’t know and had never seen before. It made her feel, of all things, self-aware and feminine.
Standing under a starless sky, bleeding and likely sporting more than one broken bone, she looked at her attacker as though only then realizing he was a man.
“Nearly two hundred years,” he breathed, shaking his head. “I’ve never felt this way.”
Ravenna shivered, a confused frown wrinkling her brow. “What way?”
A few seconds of endless silence settled between them. She didn’t even know if he’d heard her.
“Not right,” Nicolai continued, shaking his head, his balance stumbling as he advanced upon her. She found herself walking backward, but it didn’t register until her back collided with a tree. Nicolai lingered still, his eyes glued to the dip in her shirt where her small breasts made themselves known. Her nipples were hard and poking intently through the fabric, and seeing as Ravenna had yet to come across undergarments with enough freedom to allow for the sort of acrobatics that were demanded of her nightly, she wore nothing beneath her clothing for protection.
“Ravenna.” Her name sounded like a prayer on his lips. He had her stunned into immobility, her body rigid with anticipation, tight with the need to lash out or shove him away and do anything to get away from him. She should drive a stake through his chest, even if her heart started racing in a manner that seemed most curious at the thought.
“This isn’t right,” Nicolai murmured, his chest now rubbing her breasts, his eyes fixated on her lower lip. There was something hard pressed against her stomach, something she’d never felt before. Perhaps she’d never been close enough to him to feel it. At least, not close like this. Not close in the capacity of a sudden lack of swinging fists and veiled threats.
She couldn’t name it. It seemed unnatural.
In the meantime, he kept talking. “Should just kill you,” he said. “Be done with it. No more dreams. No more wanking off to the scent of… Christ….”
“Nicolai?”
A sliver of moonlight peeled through the curtain of clouds, hitting the length of his ivory fangs with such intensity that she felt smacked at once with the notion of kismet. Perhaps it was meant to be this way. Perhaps fate had decided to intervene once and for all. Perhaps fighting it would only make it worse.
“Ravenna…”
Then, sweet Lord, he pressed himself close. She felt a cool draft against her throat, his hands sliding up her body until he held her by the arms. Something soft, wet and wonderful laved at the pulse-point of her neck, and it seemed for a moment that he felt content just to hold her there. His body came into intimate contact with hers, the foreign hardness pressed against her, rotating and sending a blaze so intense throughout her body she felt at once certain that he meant her to die this way.
“Nicolai—”
Pleasure-laced pain ripped through her insides as his fangs sliced into her skin, and Ravenna cried out in a confused mixture of horror and euphoria. Her nerves burst and her blood burned, her body roaring toward a screaming inferno. Before she knew what had happened, Nicolai whimpered against her bloodied skin and his fangs receded. The movements of his mouth softened inexplicably, and suddenly there seemed nothing but the gentle caress of his lips across her flesh, the rhythmic thrusts of his hips against her increasingly-pliant body, and the way his grip on her loosened into something resembling tenderness.
“Oh God,” he murmured, his hands sliding up her arms and over the sides of her neck until he cupped her cheeks, his eyes leveled with hers. “Ravenna….”
As One of the Few, she’d been raised with limited purpose—to hunt. To kill, to protect, to die. Nothing in her upbringing had been reserved for romance or the want of human contact. Kenneth had flatly refused to discuss the closeness men and women enjoyed with each other behind closed doors, and while her imagination seemed rather inventive, most areas of human relations remained a mystery to her.
She’d witnessed those around her find happiness. She’d attended weddings, occasionally stumbled across lovers stealing kisses, and pined for a connection of her own.
At the very least, she wanted to experience a kiss. If only a kiss—one kiss before she died.
How strange that a vampire would be the one to fulfill her desire.
His lips were cool but not cold, and they brushed against hers with such tenderness that she could have sworn he feared doing anything lest he break her. His thumbs caressed her cheeks, the lower half of his body moving against hers in a way which seemed sinful. The skin between her thighs felt hot and wet. He seemed to be grinding against her with fixed intent, the movements of his mouth melting her resistance and driving her into insanity.
“Open up for me,” he whispered, his tongue tracing the crack of her lips. “I need to taste you.”
Ravenna gasped, and the next thing she knew, his tongue had slipped inside her mouth, licking every corner. His hands slid down her throat again until he had a breast captured in each palm, his thumbs brushing the hard pebbles of her nipples. Every touch singed her insides, burning with pleasure she hadn’t known existed. She couldn’t take much more but she needed it all the same. She needed something she didn’t know, and she didn’t even know its name.
“Oh my God…” she gasped, throwing her head back and hitting the tree hard enough to hurt. She barely felt it. “What…what are you…?”
“No one’s ever touched you like this, have they?” Nicolai replied, his eyes growing wide as his left hand dropped to the hem of her shirt and slipped beneath the fabric. He looked for all the world starved for her. She’d never seen anyone look at her like that, like she was something precious, something desirable—like she was a woman. “God, of course they haven’t.”
“Like what?”
Nicolai’s eyes darkened and he growled softly, dropping another kiss across her lips. “I want you.”
“You…you what?”
“I want you. I shouldn’t. God knows I shouldn’t.” He glanced away quickly as though he feared betraying himself, his jaw clenching. “I’ve wanted you for so long. Since the first time I saw you, I think.”
Ravenna blinked, her heart thundering. “I don’t understand,” she said hoarsely. “What does it mean to…to want me?”
A long pause. Nicolai’s attention remained glued to a spot on the tree, or something behind her where her eyes could not follow. At last he glanced up again, and the storm in his gaze stole the breath from her lungs.
“Give me your hand,” he said quietly.
The request surprised her. He didn’t seize her wrist, rather waited until she placed it in his care. Then, slowly, he guided her hand southward until she cupped the hardness she’d felt against her a few minutes before. At first contact a short, passionate breath broke through his lips and he stole another kiss from hers before he could help himself.
Ravenna didn’t mind. She found his taste addictive.
“This is what it means to want you,” he murmured, eyes shining. “I want you. I want to be your first. No…no, I wanna be your…” He shook his head. “I want things from you that I shouldn’t. I’ve been alive so long, Ravenna, so long. And everything’s been the same till you showed up and all went to…”
“You want—”
“Inside you. I want inside you.” The hand still curled around her breast
gave her tender globe a tender squeeze. “I want inside that tight little quim of yours. I want you squeezing me until I can’t remember I don’t need breath to live. I want to mark you.” Nicolai held her eyes a minute longer, then dropped a kiss across the healing wound on her throat. The hand clamped around her wrist released her abruptly, his attention suddenly focused on stripping her trousers down her legs.
His body dipped out of sight, falling to his knees before her, his eyes on the skin he’d revealed, particularly the forbidden part she’d never considered overly remarkable.
She had no use for undergarments when on the hunt. Not for binding her breasts and not for her bottom. Thus she was completely naked to him from the waist down, and with her blushing flesh exposed to his overly hungry gaze, the wetness between her thighs intensified and the ache within her belly exploding into all out need.
“I…I don’t…”
Nicolai raised a trembling finger to her skin. “You really don’t know about any of this, do you?”
“Any of…oh Lord.”
His finger brushed the soft wetness at the opening of her vagina, rubbing her with such tenderness that she swore she would melt. And then he pushed upward until that small part of him had slipped inside her, exploring flesh no one before him had ever before touched. Ravenna feared her legs would buckle, but she somehow managed to maintain balance, even when he leaned inward, parting her private lips and favoring her skin with a long, sultry lick.
“Oh…oh…”
“This part of you is gorgeous. You know that, right?”
She barely heard him.
His other hand, warmed from the heat of her breast, gently grazed her dark curls. “More than gorgeous, even, you’re…delicious.” Nicolai’s eyes traveled up the length of her torso until their gazes locked. Somehow the buttons of her dress-shirt had become undone, so she was completely open to him. No trousers, no undergarments, just her breasts peeking out through the lapels of her hunting-attire, her legs spread and a hungry vampire perched between them.
“You know what this is, darling?”
A long, hoarse cry ripped through her throat as his fingers slipped over something in her body she’d never known existed, euphoria exploding through her veins. “Oh my God.”
Ripples Through Time Page 5
