“I know.” Dexter sighed heavily and wiped his eyes. “I just wanted to put it out there.”
Nicholas offered a numb nod but didn’t say anything. His mind was consumed with his own words.
It’ll kill her.
It was true. It would kill her, and even though Raven’s death lurked around every corner as it was, it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. Just because Paimon had gone to such lengths to keep them apart, this couldn’t be the answer to saving her. The gamble wasn’t worth it—not worth her life. Not unless there were no other options.
While he knew he should banish the thought entirely, a lingering voice remained.
It’ll kill her.
Death remained behind every door. No matter what venue to take, it was still coming for them.
For her.
For Raven.
It was coming and nothing was going to alter its course.
* * * *
She’d been awake a long while when he finally returned. While she hadn’t heard everything, she knew Nicholas and Dexter had been heatedly discussing her.
It amazed her that Nicholas could tell her he loved her when all she did was cause him misery. The first time with Kenneth and now this. She’d helped him find his memories when she should have let him live without the pain of knowing what they had. Instead, she’d given him a glimpse of the happiness they had once shared. She’d let him think it was for keeps.
It was a lie she’d believed as well, a lie grief had led her to believe.
It was a long time ago, she told herself.
Knowledge provided little solace. Yes, it was a long time ago. Nearly three centuries ago.
It might as well have been yesterday.
Raven didn’t move when she felt him approach the threshold. She didn’t move when he lingered in the doorway. She didn’t move even as she felt his eyes soak her in. She didn’t move.
She feared that if she moved, all she would do was sob. Nicholas didn’t need that.
Not when she was the one who had wounded him.
It seemed forever passed before he exhaled and moved forward. She felt the dip in the bed, then his arms were around her. He pressed his lips against her shoulder, his chest at her back. She felt his breath tickle her hair as he entertained oxygen he didn’t need.
For long seconds, she thought he would speak. He did not.
He just held her in his arms.
Though for the way he trembled, she knew it was she who was holding him.
Chapter 26
The woman at the door was one Dexter had never seen before, but by the way her eyes landed on his neck the second he greeted her, he had no trouble finding a name. It didn’t even bother him considering how Octavia had found them. The only thing he could muster at the moment was hope that he wasn’t about to face the wrath of a woman scorned—not when they had other things to worry about.
“You must be the sire,” Dexter said, trying to keep his voice steady. He wasn’t one to face demons on a regular basis if he could avoid it. Lacking the strength of his charge made him one for bookkeeping. He much preferred balancing his checkbook to wielding swords.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Octavia said blandly, her eyes narrowing. Of course, she would sense his nervousness. One couldn’t keep secrets from vampires.
“Sorry if I find that hard to believe.” Dexter licked his lips, angling his feet toward Raven’s room. If he screamed, she’d come running, and while it might not serve to make him any less dead should Octavia decide to use her fangs, it would at least give her a running start. “You’re looking for Nicholas, I take it.”
“If I were, I would’ve gone to the girl’s bedroom window.” Octavia made a face. “The underworld’s been buzzing recently. Talk of the end of the Few, and all that rubbish. I thought I’d come here to make it easy.”
Dexter swallowed hard. “For whom?”
“For Nicholas.” She sighed, her shoulder’s sagging, her gaze drifting to the hallway. “He was never mine, you know. I sensed it from the beginning. He always belonged to someone else. Maybe he can forgive me now.”
“Forgive you?”
“For not being what he wanted.” Her deathly pale eyes made the slow trip back to Dexter’s, and then they were staring at each other. “She has to die to live.”
“What?”
“Your little warrior, Raven, or whatever her name is. She has to die in order to live. Nicholas will have to kill her.” Octavia licked her lips. “I don’t know if he has the stones to do it, but that’s the only option.”
Dexter inhaled sharply. “How do you know?”
“I just do.” She turned slowly, keeping her eyes on the quiet hallway as long as she could before turning to leave, the night at her face. “He’ll know what I mean. Tell him to kill her, then give her life.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“How you know any of this. How you can be so certain…how you even know what…” Dexter’s eyes narrowed. “It’s more than the underground talking, isn’t it? There has to be something more.”
She found Dexter’s gaze over her shoulder and offered a half-shrug. “Could’ve sworn Nicholas already covered this,” she muttered. “We lurk.”
Then she disappeared.
* * * *
Nicholas came to consciousness slowly, aware but detached of his surroundings. He felt the curve of Raven’s scrumptious ass pressed intimately against his hard cock, felt the steady rise and fall of her chest, the small whispers of her breath, and the hum of her heartbeat beneath his fingers. He thought it strange that he couldn’t hear birds chirping, or any of the other telltale signs of morning. He wondered why his inner demon didn’t squirm with discomfort at the hint of sunlight, but quickly realized there was no sunlight. No sunlight to splash against the mural she’d painted on their bedroom wall. A shame, that was. He loved watching light play against the color. His girl had a natural eye, even if her modesty refused to acknowledge it.
There was no sunlight because there was no window.
This wasn’t a cottage in colonial America. This was Dexter’s home. They were in Ravenna’s bed, and the year wasn’t 1701.
Nicholas’s eyes edged open, his head spinning with confusion.
That was strange.
Of all the side-effects he’d anticipated since the restoration of his memories, awaking in the mindset of a different century wasn’t one of them. Though perhaps, given how nutty his life had become, it should have been. He had a lot more life behind him now—more experience under his belt, more seniority, more knowledge.
All in all, he’d lived more years as a man of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. He supposed it was only natural that he regressed.
Or perhaps it was his mind’s way of protecting him from what the night couldn’t banish. He didn’t want to think about what would happen in a few days, or the knowledge that the goddess in his arms was slowly dying because of him.
Losing her would kill him all over again.
He remembered thinking that before he died. Hell was worth facing as long as he knew Raven was all right.
Perhaps it was his mistake confusing all right with alive. Perhaps he hadn’t understood, truly, how much she loved him. It had never made a lick of sense to him. Having her love struck him more as blind luck rather than anything he deserved. She’d been with him and they had been happy, but the fact that her love was something he truly had had never fully pushed beyond the boundaries of knowledge and into understanding. He’d always known it, from the first second the words crossed her lips, and there was never any reason to doubt her. He’d always known it, but he’d never understood.
God, she’d given up so much for him.
He couldn’t watch her die. He couldn’t.
Nicholas sighed and brushed his lips across her cotton-clad shoulder. She still wore his tee. He’d never seen the woman he loved in his clothing, and while he’d heard other men found
it to be one of the most potent aphrodisiacs on the planet, arousal was his secondary reaction.
She’d wrapped the tee around herself like a shield.
Nicholas’s lips wandered upward from her shoulder until they brushed the bite mark he’d left on her throat.
“Mmm,” Raven murmured, stretching languorously against him. “That tickles.”
Nicholas swallowed hard. He wanted to bury himself in her arms and will the world away. He wanted to coerce her into promises she couldn’t keep. He wanted to dissolve and have all dissolve with him.
“Sleep well?” he replied gently, his hand skimming down the length of her stomach. The question seemed ridiculous, but he didn’t care. Right now they needed as much ridiculous as the world could afford. If these were the last days with her, he was going to make them count.
The first time he hadn’t known death was coming. This time he did.
This time he was going to make the heavens weep for them. Perhaps then they would be kind and grant them more time.
“Like a baby,” she retorted, and her tone told him full well that she knew he could hear the lie in her words. She was pretending too, for his sake.
Nicholas smiled indulgently, his fingers slipping between her thighs as they parted to accommodate him. “Least you slept. Wish I could say the same. Woke up a second ago and forgot what century it was.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “Pesky side effect of remembering everything, I guess. Did that happen to you?”
There was a short pause as she thought, her nose wrinkling in a manner too adorable for words. “I honestly don’t remember. So much has happened.”
He wouldn’t argue.
“You didn’t sleep well?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Maybe because you skipped out and went downstairs to get all chummy with the Guardian?”
A bittersweet chord struck his insides. God, were it only that. “Sorry sweetness,” he murmured, his blunt teeth whispering across the claim mark as his fingers explored the wet flesh of her pussy, running slow, exploratory laps between her labia. “Should’ve known better than to have left you all by your lonesome.”
“Yeah…”
He loved the breathy little sounds she made. The way her pulse quickened and her heartbeat steadily increased in tempo had never failed to enchant him in their former life. He remembered what that felt like. Nicholas released a muffled moan into the tender skin at her throat, his middle and index fingers pushing into her wet softness, his thumb finding her clit. “You’re so warm,” he murmured. “So hot.”
A purely feminine whimper tickled the air. “Mmm. I try.”
Nicholas trembled. “I love the way you feel around me,” he whispered, adapting a steady rhythm. He wanted to go slowly to savor every second of this. He wanted to commit her every sound to memory while drenching himself in her scent and bathing his tongue in her taste.
He wanted to fill the next five days with all the memories the past three centuries had denied them.
“Are you sore, kitten?” he asked softly, his thumb manipulating her clit so softly, her erratic gasps nearly took him by surprise. More than his fingers pushing inside her body, the gentle flicks the pad of his thumb administered to her juicy little pearl had her trembling so hard he wished the claim would let him feel what she felt beyond the simple pleasure of feeling her.
“Not sore,” she replied breathlessly, her hips thrusting back to capture him every time his hand made to withdraw from her pussy.
“We were…I was rough with you last night.”
“I liked it.”
He grinned. “I should hope so. But…you were…”
“Virgin-but-not.” Raven hissed as his thumb pressed down, and she wiggled her hips to create friction. “I know. God…feels so good.”
“Yeah?”
“Nicholas…please.”
“Please what?”
She batted her eyes shyly. “Umm…your fingers feel wonderful.” Pink deepened every inch of her skin, and his heart about exploded with love. “I want…I want you.”
Nicholas blinked hard, willing himself not to cry. Christ, if the girl could be brave about this, so could he. He could pretend they were enjoying the morning after they’d never had before. Not the first time they made love so long ago, and not this time. He could pretend he wasn’t breaking at the thought of how his life would look in a week.
And how he would make the world suffer before he joined her.
“You have me,” he replied, his fingers driving deeper inside her. “You always have.”
“I want your…thing inside me.”
Her innocence, it seemed, stood in absolutely no danger at all. She was still his ray of purity. His sex goddess who sucked his cock while blushing at his crudity. Nicholas chuckled so hard the vibrations had her squirming and thrusting eagerly against his hand. “My thing?”
“Don’t make me say it.”
“What happened to Forward Raven?”
He felt rather than saw her pout. “You love all incarnations, remember?”
“I remember.”
“Nicholas, please…” She twisted slightly in his arms so that he could see her eyes. Then her hand cupped his cheek, and her soft lips caressed his. “Need you. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean, or I’ll get cranky.”
A shiver raced down his spine. He loved the way she murmured his name. “You sure you’re not sore?” he whispered, his wet fingers abandoning her pussy to free his cock.
“I swear to—”
“Swear to no one.”
Somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, Nicholas knew they should talk. He knew he should tell her how much he loved her again and again, if only to negate all the time he wasted. He should have told her the first time he saw her. He should have known then.
There were other things too. The weight of the bargain loomed above them, shadowing every caress, every kiss, every stolen glance. But as he sank inside her wet haven, there was a piece of Heaven the Hell King couldn’t sully. For now, Nicholas didn’t want to face the reality waiting for them downstairs. He didn’t want to meet the Guardian’s eyes and see nothing but despair. He didn’t want to think about anything but the wonderful feel of her warmth. The way her flesh molded around his cock, the way her body hummed, and the way she mewled and thrust back against him every time he withdrew.
“I love you,” he whispered into her hair, his hand slipping between her legs again, capturing her clit between his thumb and forefinger. “I love you, Raven.”
“I love you,” she replied breathlessly, thrusting back against him with need she couldn’t hide.
“It’ll be all right. We’ll make it all right.”
She whimpered and wrapped a hand around his wrist. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, squeezing him. “So—”
“Don’t—”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry.”
Nicholas nipped at the claim mark, a ragged breath hissing through his lips as his cock pushed deeper inside her. “Don’t be sorry,” he murmured. “Just don’t leave me.”
Raven gasped and squeezed his wrist again, but didn’t reply.
It was a promise she couldn’t make. And despite everything, she wouldn’t lie to him.
Even when he needed it.
Chapter 27
Nicholas slept all day, and she was glad. He needed sleep. He’d spent the night pacing the floor and debating their blatantly fictional options, shaving centuries off his eternal lifeline over worry for her. They’d made love that morning, and sometime in the sweet aftermath, he’d finally found rest. He’d curled against her, murmuring incoherent words with every other breath, the arm around her tightening when his dreams took an ugly turn. It wasn’t a peaceful sleep, but it was sleep. And it was what he needed.
Raven had lain with him a long time, convinced Dexter would knock if her presence was required. It eventually occurred to her that she’d had sex with a demon wh
ile her surrogate brother lingered just down the hall and had been rather unapologetically loud about it. Flushing with shame—which provided a nice distraction from fear—she grabbed Nicholas’s t-shirt, double-checked her hair for adequate fluffiness and headed downstairs.
Raven inhaled sharply. She didn’t know if she could face Dexter just yet, but she similarly knew she couldn’t keep doing nothing.
Her aversion to doing nothing had always been a problem.
“Just a warning,” she called as she turned to make her way down the hall. “I haven’t showered, my hair’s a mess, and I’m overall cranky.”
“What else is new?” came the strained reply. Dexter became visible the next second, nursing a cup of coffee and looking over another endless anthology of demon factoids. “I was wondering when you’d awaken.”
“What time is it?”
“Just past sunset.”
Raven blinked in surprise. Past sunset? That didn’t sound right. Only a few hours had passed since Nicholas had awakened. He hadn’t been asleep all that long. It couldn’t be past sunset. Had she really wasted an entire day in bed?
As though reading her mind, Dexter placed his coffee aside and rose to his feet. “Don’t worry,” he said, his voice kind and reassuring. “It was likely better that you rest.”
Either Dexter was overly confident or he was throwing in the towel. Judging by the way he wasn’t screaming and breaking things, she cast her bet in the former category and hoped her intuition paid off.
“I had a visitor last night,” he said, motioning to the sofa with a quick nod of his head. “She had some information. I spent the day reading.”
Raven frowned, walking in a haze to the indicated sofa and sitting her down. Just as well. Even after being off her feet all day, she felt this might be sit-worthy news. “Info?” she repeated, confused. “What’s the what?”
Dexter paused. “Where’s Nicholas?”
“Sleeping. And I’m not bothering him unless it’s something important.”
It seemed natural that the next thing she heard was the vampire-in-question’s voice. Her life was a walking joke like that.
“Consider him bothered,” Nicholas said, emerging from the bedroom. He stopped in the mouth of the hallway, stifling a yawn. “It’s not nice to call a meeting and leave houseguests off the invite list.”
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