Haunted by Your Touch (5 page)

Get focused, Mara, you’re blowing this!
I railed at myself. If only the carriage didn’t keep rocking me against him in the most damningly intimate way, making it even harder to concentrate than it had been when I’d kissed him.

“Wait,” I said again once his shirt hung open and he reached for the buttons on my blouse.

“What’s wrong?” His voice was rougher, but whether that was lust or anger at my objection, I wasn’t sure.

I took in a deep breath, trying not to stare at the muscled beauty that was his chest. Even in the low lighting, he was the most stunning thing I’d ever seen.

“Not here,” I said, giving my head a slight shake for lucidity. “Unless I’m not good enough to have sex with in a bed?” I added, managing to sound both hurt and offended, if a bit breathless.

Rafael let out a husky laugh before gathering me close. “Fear not, my sweet. I won’t be finished with foreplay before we arrive.”

His mouth covered mine again, taking my breath away with the raw hunger in his kiss. He didn’t pause to tease my lips this time but delved past them with commanding purpose. Those hot, skillful flicks of his tongue made that buzzing return in my head, as if his mouth had the ability to intoxicate me. I didn’t protest this time when he began to unbutton my blouse, telling myself I didn’t want to make him suspicious, but the truth was that I burned to feel his hands on my skin.
Every adolescent imagining I’d ever had was left in the dust at the reality of how incredible it felt to touch him, taste him. Feel the slide of his flesh as his mouth erotically ravished mine, hinting at what a few hundred years of experience could do.

That scorching mouth dipped to my neck at the same moment his palms cupped my breasts, brushing aside my bra. My head fell back as a harsh groan came out of me. He sucked my throat while his thumbs seared across my nipples in the same relentless rhythm as the friction of our lower bodies. I couldn’t think anymore, and I couldn’t keep my hands from traveling up his chest and over his shoulders. The feel of his skin was addictive, each flex and bunch of his muscles flaring even more heat through my core. Some stubborn bit of conscience nagged that I should stop, but I ignored it. So what if things went further than I’d originally intended? I’d still do what needed to be done when the time came.

“Mara,” he breathed, suddenly ceasing his unbelievable stroking of my breasts to catch my hands. “Stop.”

“Why?” I burst out before recalling that stopping would be a
good
thing.

“I can keep from taking you here, now, as long
as you don’t touch me like that,” he replied in a tight voice.

Like what? I’d only been caressing his shoulders, not usually the spot of no return for a man. But then Rafael kissed me, sitting up to press his body against mine, and my thoughts reeled at the contact of his hard flesh against my sensitive breasts.

He pulled my free leg around him, the other one trapped under the tangle of my skirt, to rock me against his hips while his chest flattened my breasts. That hard bulge raked against my most sensitive part, the pressure building with each strong, undulating stroke, until finally I cried out as rapture shattered within me.

It spread from my loins into what felt like every vein, filling my body with hot, silken throbs. I couldn’t stop the gasps that Rafael absorbed between deep, branding kisses as I shuddered, those throbs turning into waves of sweetness. I felt like I was melting, sinking into his skin with each ripple of ecstasy, and if he wouldn’t have held me, I’d have tumbled onto the carriage floor.

“This is what I’ve waited for,” he muttered thickly when I tore my mouth from his to take in gulps of air. He stroked my hair away from
my face, still holding me with his other arm, the flickering candlelight revealing a look of triumph and possessiveness on his face.

Confusion and embarrassment competed with euphoria from the spine-tingling orgasm. So much for “acting” with Rafael! Ten minutes into making out and he’d blown away anything my two former lovers had made me feel—all without taking off his pants or kissing me below the neck. If this was what he could do to me with foreplay, I might die from pleasure overload if I actually had sex with him.

But these circumstances weren’t real. Oh, if only they were, I’d be giddy instead of fighting off a stab of guilt. Yet despite how I wished to do anything except what lay ahead, chances were Rafael was using me for even more sinister purposes than what I had planned. I might
want
to believe his interest was genuine, his passion without ulterior motive, but then I’d be ignoring the pile of evidence that suggested he was involved with Purebloods. Rafael might have been the man of my dreams since I was fifteen, but that didn’t change the fact that he had a dark cloud hanging over his activities.

Otherwise, hell, I might have even been
tempted to move to Nocturna to be closer to him. Electricity was overrated, plus cell phones and gas fumes were bad for my health. But here, I could be with Rafael and neither of us would even age. I wouldn’t be saying good-bye to my family, either. They could still visit me and I could go back to see them.…

I gave my head another shake, harder this time. One orgasm and I was mentally picking out wallpaper to redecorate Rafael’s home with. So much for moonlighting as a tough undercover Partial operative. The word
pathetic
applied to me right now.

With relief, I felt the carriage shudder and sway as it went over a particularly bumpy stretch of road. We had to be on the drawbridge outside Rafael’s home.
That
was an obvious indicator that the person whose arms I was still curled inside had nefarious connections. Rafael lived in a castle surrounded by a
moat
, for Pete’s sake. Even for a demon ruler, that was piling on the creepiness.

“We’re here,” he said, giving me a kiss that still incited shivers even though I’d managed to patch up most of my tattered self-control.

“Good. I-I want to finish things,” I stammered when he lifted his head.

His smile was dark, wicked, and tempting. “Oh, we shall. As soon as we’re inside.”

I shifted to unseat myself from his lap, feeling suddenly clumsy and awkward as I buttoned my blouse without bothering to rehook my bra. The bumps from the carriage kept swaying me into him, hampering my progress. He lifted me, setting me back onto the bench with his usual smooth, controlled movements, not even a grunt to show for it. The strength and grace I’d so often admired in Rafael would prove to be my biggest obstacle soon. I’d have just one chance to take him down or the jig would be up.

It’s the only way
, I reminded myself, forcing a smile as he leaned down to brush his lips across my temple. I knew it was true.

Yet if I knew that, why did it still feel so wrong?

Rafael didn’t bother buttoning his shirt or his vest. Both hung open, revealing the hard lines of his chest, with its impossibly smooth flesh. I tried not to stare as he jumped out of the carriage and held out his hands to me, his clothes gaping open even further with the action. I accepted his help down, determining then and there to make my move
before
he took off all his clothes. Otherwise I might be too busy drooling to do anything else.

The warm pressure of his body taunted me as we walked up a narrow outdoor corridor. I glanced around discreetly, noting the torches set up in various places along the high walls and the deep shadows between them. If he had guards, they were concealed in the various darkened recesses of this medieval castle knockoff. I kept
taking mental notes as we walked further inside the stone behemoth.
Two lefts past the fancy sword display, a right at the ancient-looking tapestry, up two flights of stairs, then left at the flame-eyed gargoyle, up another flight of stairs, left at the blacked-out window, and then through the second wide door on the right
.

It opened up into a room that looked like a snapshot of a gothic fantasy. Candlelight made the dark gray walls appear welcoming, while the ceiling had to be twenty feet high, with designs carved into what looked like opaque glass. A large leather chair had a book perched on its arm, facedown and open to mark its place. Boots I’d seen Rafael wear before were carelessly tucked into an open alcove next to more pairs of masculine footwear. Another archway, a smaller one, opened to a dark space that I couldn’t see inside but assumed must be a closet or bathroom.

And of course, in the center of the room was a large bed with sumptuous pillows and thick blankets in varying shades of indigo. A nearby fireplace cast low lights onto the bed, revealing that it was unmade, an indentation from a large body still visible in its surface.

Rafael’s room
. By all accounts, the place he never brought anyone back to.

His arms encircled me from behind, pulling me against him. For a moment, I closed my eyes, absorbing the feel of his body and the heat sinking into my back from the bare skin of his chest. If circumstances had been different, I’d have turned around, pressed my mouth to his, and tumbled us both onto that inviting navy bed.

Instead, I stroked his arm with one hand while I surreptitiously dipped the other one into my gun belt. He brushed aside the hair on the back of my neck with his mouth, tracing his tongue into the sensitive dip there. Erotic tremors broke out across my skin, increasing when he breathed my name into the same spot with a voice gone scratchy from desire.

Damn, damn, damn him for making me feel this way, when he might be involved with Purebloods!

I unfastened my belt, letting it drop to the floor with both guns still in their holsters. Then I turned around, wrapping my arms quickly around his neck. His mouth came down onto mine, scorching me with passion, while his hands tightened on my waist to bring our bodies closer.

Those hands clenched convulsively in the next moment. I froze, my heart rate tripling, braced
for pain but unable to extricate myself from his embrace. He didn’t strike out, though for the space of several heartbeats, I could tell he was lucid enough to. Then, slowly, his hands relaxed and he pulled away, a look on his face that I didn’t want to name.

Finally, his legs buckled and he fell to the floor with more grace than someone unconscious had a right to. The end of an empty syringe still protruded from his neck, a little something I’d carried in my gun belt for months in the hopes that I’d get to use it on Ashton one day. I’d never thought I’d use it on Rafael, and certainly not like this.

It paid to have a Partial relative employed at an animal reserve. That needle had been filled with enough sedative to fell a small elephant—or the two-hundred-pound ruler of Nocturna, as it turned out. I stared down at Rafael, guilt once more swirling inside me, before pushing it back with all the ruthlessness of my supernatural heritage. I’d had to do it. Somewhere in this castle that few ever saw the inside of had to be a link to Rafael and Purebloods. He couldn’t have ruled Nocturna for over two centuries without knowing far more than he claimed to about the kidnappings.

And I doubted that any of his people here would dare to disturb their master for the next several hours, at least. Not with what everyone had to assume we were doing. If I was stealthy enough, I could soon find out more about Rafael than anyone else had in decades. That information might mean the difference between life and death for some unlucky young Partials who ventured into Nocturna even though they, like me, knew the dangers.

Besides, once Rafael woke up, I’d better be long gone from here, or guilt would be the least of my problems with him.

After what had to be two hours of furtive searching, I was both frustrated and confused. I’d found nothing interesting except a lot of neat, barbaric antiques, and for all that the castle was large, so far I’d only come across four guards. Two of them seemed most interested in protecting the food in what I surmised was the kitchen, from the sounds of laughter, burping, and pots clanging together. The other guards were outside the castle, patrolling the perimeter and making sure no one snuck in by swimming
the moat, I guessed. What I couldn’t understand was why.

For all its size and impressive adornments, the place seemed strangely barren of people. It didn’t make sense. Rafael was renowned for his fighting skills, true, but everyone had to sleep eventually, and he’d left himself virtually unprotected here.

The thought of Rafael and sleeping made another twinge of guilt flare in me. God, his
face
when he realized what I’d done! Even though I tried to push the image aside, it rose in my mind anyway. He’d looked shocked, which I’d expected, but there had been more to it than that.

He looked betrayed
, my human conscience whispered.

I had no choice
, the demon in me snarled back.

There are
always
choices
, my conscience countered ruthlessly.

Not this time. I’d asked Rafael repeatedly why he had been there the night Ashton had taken Gloria, and every time he answered, some part of me
knew
he was lying. Why would he lie if he hadn’t been in on it somehow? Add that to the whispers about Rafael that Gloria’s parents had uncovered during their previous searches here, plus the things I’d heard about how he was always
conveniently close by when Purebloods were sighted, and it all added up to one thing: guilty. My not wanting it to be true because of a long-held infatuation didn’t change that.

So, if I were the guilty ruler of a large dimension populated by Partials who would descend on me en masse if they found out about my involvement, where would I hide evidence of that guilt? What would I consider to be the least likely place where someone could stumble across some form of damning clue that would tie me to Purebloods? Somewhere in this house, obviously. For the average Partial, it was harder to get inside Rafael’s castle than it was for a typical American to get a private audience with the president. But this place was huge. Damn it, if only I had more time to search! There could be hidden catacombs beneath the foundations, tunnels, vaults, secret rooms—