This time Mikhail threw back his head and laughed loudly, heartily. “You think the pale ceremony of humans is a deeper binding than that of a true Carpathian ritual? You do have much to learn of our ways.”
Her small white teeth scraped at her lower lip. “Has it occurred to you that I might not feel bound by Carpathian laws and rituals? You have so little regard for things I consider sacred.”
“Raven!” He was shocked, and it showed. “Is that what you think? I have no regard for your beliefs? That is not so.”
She ducked her head so that her silky hair fell around her face, hiding her expression. “We know so little about one another. I know nothing about who I’ve become. How can I fulfill your needs, or you mine, if I don’t even know what or who I am?”
He was silent, his dark, fathomless eyes studying her sad face, the sorrow in her eyes. “Perhaps there is some truth in your words, little one.” His hands followed the contours of her body, shaped her narrow rib cage, her small waist, moved up to frame her face. “I look at you and know what a miracle you are. The feel of your skin, soft and inviting, the way you move, like water flowing, the brush of your hair like silk, the feel of your body surrounding mine, completing me, giving me the strength I need to continue a task that seems so hopeless, but so necessary. I look at the way you are made, so beautiful, your body so perfect, made for mine.”
Raven stirred restlessly, but his hands held her captive, tilting her chin so that she had no choice but to meet his black eyes. “But it is not your body that holds me, Raven, not your flawless skin or the perfection of the combination of our bodies when we come together. It is when I merge with you and see who you really are that I realize what a miracle really is. I can tell you who you are. You are compassion. You are gentleness. You are a woman who is so courageous, you are willing to risk your life for complete strangers. You are a woman willing to use a gift that causes you great pain for the benefit of others. There is no hesitation in your giving; it is who you are. There is such a light in you, it shines through your eyes and radiates through your skin, so that anyone seeing you can easily see your goodness.”
Raven could only stare at him helplessly, lost in his mesmerizing eyes. Mikhail took her hand, pressed a kiss in the exact center of her palm, slipped her hand beneath his shirt, and held it over his steadily beating heart. “Look beyond my skin, Raven. Look into my heart and soul. Merge your mind with mine; see me for what I am. Know me for who I am.”
Mikhail waited silently. A heartbeat. Two. He saw her sudden determination to know what she had bound herself to, to know just whom it was she had formed an alliance with. Her mind merge was tentative at first, her touch so light and delicate it felt like the brush of butterfly wings. She was cautious, moving through his memories as if she might discover something that would hurt him. He felt the breath leave her body as she saw the gathering darkness. The monster that lived within. The stain on his soul. The deaths and battles he was responsible for. The stark ugliness of his existence before she had come into his life. The loneliness that ate away at him, at all the males of their species, the barren emptiness they endured century after century. She saw his determination never to lose her. His possessiveness, his animal instincts. Everything he was, it was all there laid out for her to see. He hid nothing from her—not the kills he had made, not the ones he had ordered, not his absolute conviction that no one would ever take her from him and live.
Raven pulled out of his mind, her blue eyes steady on his. Mikhail felt the sudden pounding of his heart. There was no condemnation there, only serene calm. “So you see the beast you are tied to for all eternity. We are predators, after all, little one, and the darkness in us is only balanced by the light in our women.”