“It’s nearly morning now,” she pointed out, unwilling to lie down with him again. She couldn’t lie beside him and not burn for him. “Besides, I want a shower.” Before he had a chance to protest, she slid off the bed, wrapped safely in the old-fashioned quilt.
Mikhail kept his smile to himself. Let her feel safe; it cost him nothing. No way was she leaving his house, not with the assassins residing at her inn. To keep his mind off the image of her naked beneath the spray of water, he concentrated on the details of her emotions before he had taken her by force from the inn’s dining room.
What had caused her frantic distress that night? She had been literally sick, her head pounding. She thought her reaction was caused by his rage, but he had been enraged at her distress. He had felt it before that oaf of a human had laid an unholy hand on her.
Mikhail touched her mind because he had to. He found what he expected, tears and confusion. Her body was changing, had changed with his blood running in her veins. Legend required a human and Carpathian to exchange blood three times for conversion. The blood he had given her from the cup would not count, because she had not taken it directly from his body. He had no intention of converting her, of taking a chance that she might become a deranged vampiress. As it was, he had gone dangerously over the line. He would once more. It would have to last an eternity.
Raven had heard his words, all of which held truth, but he knew she had no idea of the reality. She would hear the whispers from every room in the inn, know when a bee entered the downstairs dining room. The sun would bother her eyes and she would burn easily. Animals would reveal their secrets to her.
Most foods would make her sick. But most of all, she would need him close, need to touch his mind, feel his body, burn with him. She already felt it, and she was fighting it in the only way she knew how—fighting to free herself from him, fighting to understand what was happening to her.
Raven leaned her body against the glass shower stall. She knew she couldn’t hide in the bathroom like a runaway child, but he was so potent, so compelling. She wanted to ease those lines of strain around his mouth, wanted to tease him, argue with him, hear his laughter. She was curiously weak still, a bit dizzy.
“Come on, little one.” Mikhail’s voice wrapped her in a black-velvet caress. His arm reached into the glass shower, turned off the water. He shackled her wrist and pulled her from the safety of the large stall, enveloped her slender body in a towel.
Raven wrung out her long hair, a blush stealing over her entire body. Mikhail was so comfortable, uncaring of his nudity. There was something untamed and magnificent about his raw strength, the casual way he accepted it. He rubbed her body with a large bath towel, buffing her skin until she was warm and rosy. The towel brushed her sensitive nipples, lingered along her rounded bottom, delved in the crease of her hip.
Despite her resolve, her body came alive under his ministrations. Mikhail cupped her face, bent to brush his mouth against hers, feather light, enticing. “Come back to bed,” he whispered, leading her there.
“Mikhail,” she protested softly, breathlessly.
He tugged on her wrist, unbalanced her so that her body came up against him. Her body melted into his, soft breasts pushing against heavy muscle, the evidence of his desire pressing against her stomach. His thighs were two strong columns welded with hers. “I could love you all night, Raven,” he murmured enticingly against her throat. His hands moved over her body, leaving fire in their wake. “I want to love you all night.”
“Isn’t that the point? It’s dawn.” Her hands had a mind of their own, finding every defined muscle with her fingertips.
“Then I will spend the day making love to you.” He whispered the words against her mouth, bent closer to nibble at the corners of her lower lip. “I need you with me. You chase away the shadows and lighten the terrible load that threatens to drown me.”