Blood Curse

8 All Tied Up

Tonight was about sex, just as if he were still a mortal man.

Raven strode down his hallway, dressed in a robe he never wore anymore. He wasn’t aware of cold, and with his house mostly unused, it was usually as cold as a tomb. He’d lit fires and made it warmer only for Ophelia.

Years ago, he used to enjoy playing bondage games, when he had been an ordinary British marquis, and not a blood-drinking demon. He did what any peer did—indulged in all the sexual games on offer in London’s brothels. That had been before his engagement to Lady Margaret, when he was a randy youth eager for experience. He’d been eager to learn sexual technique so he wouldn’t be callow and unskilled in his marriage bed.

He’d learned what every young gentleman did: there were things you did with a courtesan you would never do with a gently bred wife.

So he walked toward Ophelia’s bedchamber, preparing to tie her up, but he didn’t know exactly how to go about it. Doing this with a woman of Ophelia’s breeding was foreign to him. A wanton who saw ropes would know what the game would be.

Ophelia was going to have to be guided step by step.

An arousing thought.

And it would distract him from thinking about her sweet blood.

Raven reached her bedroom door. Shock fixed his feet to the threshold. His jaw all but dropped to the floor and slammed into the wooden boards.

Ophelia awaited him.

Naked.

She sat on the edge of her bed by the bedpost. Her loose hair tumbled in pale curls over her shoulders and down to the curve of her bottom. Her arms were pressed to her sides, which pushed her full, round breasts together and pointed dainty pink nipples straight at him.

He almost staggered back.

How sweet she looked. Framed by long pale lashes, her huge indigo eyes sparkled with anticipation, until her gaze riveted on the ropes. Her hand went delicately to her chest, but her nipples tightened and lengthened, a sure sign she was intrigued and aroused.

Beneath his heavy robe, his cock swelled with a rush of blood and bucked up to smartly smack his stomach.

He was in a damned strange situation. To save Lady Ophelia, he had to condemn himself to destruction. The only way to save her was to coax her to fall in love with him, which meant she could never know the truth about him.

He’d read through Guidon’s book—a book that managed to make sex sound pedantic and dull. But the gist was: he took her power through sex and he saved her by winning her heart and by giving her his.

Nothing could save him.

Hell, it was fair enough. He didn’t deserve to be saved.

The sex he was to enjoy with her was to fill his last days on earth.

Slowly, Ophelia stood, naked, all that golden hair gleaming in the firelight, making a halo of gold around her. Definitely she was growing to trust him.

Hades, she was beautiful. Raven felt a deep tug of sympathy. She should have been able to use her beauty to flirt and tease and enjoy love. She should have been able to marry and be happy. But it wasn’t just her power that was hurting her. He was betraying her. He was coaxing her to open her heart, and in the end he was going to hurt her when she gave her power to him and he died.

He knew how devastating that was. How crippling and agonizing that pain and grief was.

“Will it hurt to be tied up?” she asked.

“No, I promise it won’t.” He kept his voice soft and coaxing. “Does the idea entice you?”

A pink flush raced over her cheeks while she considered. Blushing fiercely, she nodded. “I have to admit it does. Doesn’t that make me very naughty? Or bad?”

“It makes you delightful,” he said. It was true. The wicked one in this was him.

Her gold-amber brows lifted. Apparently she was surprised by his answer. “Delightful?”

Half-turned from her, Raven let a wicked grin play on his lips. “Many women find it freeing to be bound. You can’t be improper if you have no choice, after all.”

“So how do we begin?” She put her wrists together and held them out daringly. “Like this?”

Raven could immediately picture the black velvet ropes around her slim wrists. In that moment, he didn’t care she was a lady at her core and he had no right to be playing bondage games with her. He wanted it. In his trousers, his cock hardened at once, heavy and pushing hard against the fabric.

Gruffly, he said, “I tie you to the bed. Lie down.”

“You are terse and commanding, aren’t you? You could ask nicely.”

Her voice wobbled a bit, betraying her nerves, but also her displeasure at his curt order. She fascinated him—she was demure and ladylike, but inside she was strong. She’d had to be strong, he supposed, to survive. But to win her heart, he had to be stronger. Ophelia had to learn to let herself trust him, to give herself to him body and soul.

“I never ask nicely,” he growled. “Not in games like this.” Holding the ropes, he scooped her up, put her over his shoulder for a second, and tossed her lightly on the bed.

She bounced and scrambled to sit up, but he wrapped the rope around her wrist. Fast, but not with a vampire’s speed. Black velvet slid smoothly around her slender pale wrist. Raven knotted it firmly, making a loop that she could not slip her hand through.

His cock bucked again at the thought of what would come next.

“That’s tight,” she gasped.

His throat was damned tight. “Too loose and you won’t have the fun of feeling bound and beyond your control. It’s tight enough to make you my sexual prisoner, but not enough to hurt.”

“Maybe you made a mistake.”

“I never do.”

He knew she was wrestling between her upbringing to be a good and proper young lady and her natural erotic, sensual nature. The way to encourage her to play, to free her to enjoy this, was to take control.

He drew the rope to the bedpost and the sudden tug made her fall on her back. Her breasts jiggled, her flushed nipples bobbing temptingly. It took him only moments to wrap the rope around the post and tie a secure knot. While she pulled hesitatingly at the rope, testing its strength, he caught her other wrist, and attached her to the post with smooth ease.

He did it without touching her skin and without hurting her.

Raven stepped back. The sight of Ophelia like that, with her arms raised behind her head, black rope in a band at her wrists, struck him like a blow. Her breasts wobbled softly with her every quick breath. Her pink nipples were distended, as plump as thimbles, revealing she was enjoying it.

He’d never been so aroused. But damn, he couldn’t touch her.

Panting, she met his gaze. She blushed again sweetly.

“You are beautiful, Ophelia,” he said. “Even though you’re the one in ropes, I feel bound right now. Bound by you.”

She blew at a strand of hair that dangled over her face. “I don’t understand.”

He whisked the hair away. “Watching you is so enthralling. Every time you tug at the rope, the way you turn your head to peek at how it’s tied to the bed, the way your breasts sway as you move. I feel like your captive, Ophelia.”

Ophelia would not quite believe Ravenhunt, except that he spoke slowly as if he were trying to understand himself what he felt. He sounded sincere.

She remembered waking here as his prisoner. Now, being his prisoner in fun, for carnal games, didn’t feel frightening.

True, she felt unsure and awkward, just as she always felt. But she was caught up in erotic excitement, too. It made her cunny throb.

Even with nothing touching her but the ropes at her wrists, she was becoming aroused. Ophelia could smell the lush scent of her juices. She felt wet and slick between her legs.

What was he going to do to her? He couldn’t touch her. He couldn’t go inside her, as much as she ached for it.

She didn’t know what he planned. For once, not knowing was driving her mad in a delicious way. The anticipation allowed her thoughts to run riot. What could he do without touching her to make her “come”?

“You look very thoughtful. Have you ever fantasized about this?” Ravenhunt sat on the edge of the bed. The blue velvet robe he wore highlighted the paleness of his skin. His cheekbones and strong jaw looked to be carved of marble. But his eyes were dark, so black they were unfathomable.

“I—” She couldn’t reveal the truth.

After reading the gothic novels, sometimes she had thought about being taken captive and ravished. When she had been a prisoner at Mrs. Darkwell’s and she’d had nothing to do but sculpt and read. Locked away in a room, she had not only sculpted, she had also spun wild, erotic fantasies. She’d dreamed of a dark, mysterious man taking her prisoner, seducing her, and falling madly in love with her . . .

She’d ended up in that very situation.

But she could never admit it.

“Of course I haven’t,” she said firmly. “What are you—” She broke off. Ravenhunt held another rope. The length of it dangled from his strong hand.

“I know you have thought of this.” His voice was a deep, husky growl. It slid over her as decadent as hot, dark chocolate.

But she could never reveal those fantasies to anyone. They were her most shocking secret, and she would keep them buried forever. “No.”

Smooth velvet teased her bare ankle and, startled by it, she jerked her leg away. But Ravenhunt captured her foot, and had her ankle tied and bound to the column at the foot of the bed in moments.

He crossed his arms over his chest. His robe gave a glimpse of white skin and sculpted muscle. More ropes lay over his hand. She was his prisoner again, and he was watching her with a shiver-worthy heat in his gaze.

He watched her with such intensity, her heart hammered. She had to say something. “You are very quick at tying knots.”

“Practice.”

When her other foot was equally bound to the bedpost, he paced slowly at the end of the bed.

“W-what do you do to me now?”

“Whatever I desire.”

The rough way he said it made her heart thunder, made her wetter, hotter, and made her cunny clench in a slow, intense way.

“Imagine what I can do to you now,” he said.

He moved away from the bed, and she strained against the ropes to see what he was doing. But her bindings were too tight, and she couldn’t lift up enough to watch. She was tied spread-eagle to the bed, her legs parted and ready for him—well, ready if he could make love to her. She was served up for him, unable to refuse to do anything he wanted.

She should be afraid. But she wasn’t. She trusted him. Perhaps more than she had done with anyone but her family. She’d never had anyone else she could trust.

She was ready to do anything he wanted—

He turned, the leather-bound handle of a whip in his hand, the long tail trailing to the floor.

“No,” she gasped. “That I won’t do! I cannot take that.”

“I will be the judge.” He approached the bed. His robe was open, giving glimpses of his muscles as he moved, prowling with confidence. The light played on the ridges of his abdomen, the strong lines of his chest.

Tension raced over her—her muscles tightening.

“I won’t hurt you.” He lifted the whip and let the leather tip trail up her right leg, skimming over her naked thigh.

She hadn’t expected that—a tickling tease over her bare skin instead of a swift, sharp flick of the leather. “Are you going to whip me?”

“This is about teasing you. I want you to delight in what you can feel. I would never hurt you. Trust me.”

The lash of the whip danced up her naked inner thigh. Oh heavens, she shut her eyes and savored.

The whip moved closer to her sex, to her curls already damp with her juices and her plump nether lips. She wriggled on the bed. To feel so much, yet not be able to move—it was thrilling.

He flicked the whip lightly and the leather tail lightly slapped her. There was no force behind it and it didn’t hurt. It made her cunny wetter.

With his lashes low over his eyes, his mouth tense, Raven stroked the end of the whip’s handle over her nether curls. The leather barely grazed them, and tickled her so she giggled and gasped at the same time.

“You see you can trust me,” he said, his voice rich as sin. “All I want is for you to know pleasure—the pleasure you’ve never been able to have.”

He slid the whip’s firm handle between her curls and across her aching clit.

She screamed in surprise. Hot sensation streaked through her.

Heavens, it felt good.

She arched her hips up, seeking to press her clit against the handle again. He let her pump against it, pleasuring herself for a mere moment, then he moved it away. She moaned and he smiled. The smile of a man who knew he was in control.

Teasing her, he traced the damp tip over her tummy. She trembled, wriggling on the bed. His robe was partly open, unbelted. Giving teasing, thrilling glimpses of his gorgeous naked form—his taut stomach, his broad chest, his thick, enormous erection.

Amusement glittered in his eyes. Slowly, the end traced her navel. The whip coasted so lightly over her belly, it was as if a flame teased her skin. Focused on her beneath thick lashes, he reached her breasts with the whip. He traced them in a slow, light spiral.

A flick of his wrist and he brought the handle of the whip against the underside of her right breast in a quick, abbreviated tap. Her breast bounced. Goodness, the rise and fall, the bounce of their weight was as hot, as pleasurable as being caressed.

He tapped her breasts, playing with them, making them jiggle heavily. Ophelia closed her eyes, whimpering with delight. It felt so good.

She wished he could do this with his hands—

He couldn’t. She must stop wishing for what she could not have.

Her lids lifted, her eyes opened to his smile. Roguish. A tease of dimples, beautiful curved lips. “Nipples now,” he said.

She gasped before he even touched them.

Flicking the whip’s handle, he strummed it over her nipples.

“Oh goodness!” She arched off the bed. Goodness was meaningless. It was glorious. Pleasure shot to her cunny, almost exploding there.

He tapped harder, right atop her nipples.

Too much!

She’d been on the brink, but the shock of the taps pulled her back. She let him do more, then begged him to stop, for after a few gentle strikes with the whip, her nipples were large, engorged, so sensitive she was sobbing. “I think I want to stop,” she began.

“But I’ve only just started,” he said. But he did stop.

He leaned to whisper in her ear, “What would you fantasize about, Ophelia? Close your eyes. Would you like to be in a harem, where the handsome Turkish prince uses you for his decadent pleasure? While he ties you up with silks on plump cushions, blindfolds you, then drives his cock deeply into you?”

“I don’t have such dreams—”

“I know you do,” he said, and she squirmed. How could he know? Was it so obvious on her face?

“Perhaps you fantasize about a castle, where you are chained in a dungeon by a handsome duke who is determined to ravish you.” The very tip of the whip brushed her nipples again, barely a touch, but so wonderful. “How would you want to be ravished, Ophelia? By more than one man? Your duke and your Turkish prince could take you together.”

She had to keep her eyes shut. Wild images played in her head. She couldn’t look at him while she was thinking these things.

Something smooth and thick pressed to her nether lips. She opened her eyes. He held the ivory wand he’d used on her. Slowly he plied it between her wet nether lips.

The thick ivory slid in. “I wish it was you,” she whispered. “I want your cock—” She couldn’t believe she was saying such things, but she couldn’t bear wanting him and not having him. “It’s so long and so beautiful and I want it inside me so much.”

“Shh. Let me make you come.”

With long, slow strokes, he slid the wand deeply inside her. Filling her. He tapped her clit with the whip handle as he did.

“Three men making love to you,” he murmured. “One thick cock deep in your cunny, thrust inside by a man eager to make you come. Another man suckling your beautiful breasts. A third man to slide his prick inside your sweet, voluptuous bottom—”

“Oh goodness!” she cried.

Everything came together at once—his wicked stories, his naughty games with her clit, the thrusts of the wand. Ophelia pulled hard at the velvet ropes as the orgasm swelled inside her. She tore at them as she exploded.

Pleasure commanded her now, and she surrendered to it. Her rump bucked up, the bindings at her wrists and ankles strained, and she cried out to the heavens.

His lips touched hers, and it seemed so right that their mouths sizzled together.

The restraint of her arms vanished—he’d cut the ropes—and her arms flew free. She wrapped them around him. She shouldn’t, but she wanted one precious second to hold him tight.

While she came and came and came.

She let him go.

Breathing hard, Ravenhunt moved to her feet. He held a small dagger and he sliced the velvet ropes. Her legs relaxed bonelessly into the soft bed. With swift, spare motions, he untied her ankles, tossing the cut ropes away. Then he undid the bonds at her wrists.

She looked at him shyly, shut her eyes, looked around the room, and awkwardly met his steady gaze once more.

It had been thrilling. He’d fed her the wickedest fantasies. Just imagining what he’d said had been thrilling. Though in truth, she wasn’t really picturing three men. She was thinking of Ravenhunt doing all those things to her.

“What are you thinking, my dear?” he asked. Crinkles touched the corners of his eyes, lines bracketed his lips as he smiled.

That he was the only man she ever wanted to dream about. But she couldn’t say that. This was about sex, not about love. She was perilously close to saying she loved him—but how could she yet, when she barely knew him? How could she when she knew all of this was only to take her power?

He helped her sit up, then released her hand, of course. “I guess I do like being tied up,” she whispered.

Her words almost crippled him with arousal.

Raven yearned to touch her. He’d never wanted to caress, stroke, and fondle a woman more. She gazed up at him with sweet innocence, and wild carnal thoughts ripped through him.

He wanted to take her now, while she was slick with her pleasure. Give her climax after climax, until she almost fainted in ecstasy.

Not yet.

She rubbed her wrist. The ropes had been soft velvet but had left pinkish rings around her wrists. He lifted her right wrist to his lips, ready to kiss the place where her skin was marred—

Pain shot through him—he expected it—but she gasped in shock. Her face contorted in pain. At once, he released her. If it would only hurt him, he would have kissed those marks tenderly, as if to make them better.

But his touch hurt her.

Guidon’s book had talked about that. As Raven began to attack her power—as he began to prepare her body to surrender it through sex—she would experience the pain of her power.

Damn, he couldn’t hurt her. The book had said the pain would eventually stop. If they took their sexual games far enough, they would both escape the pain.

But for now, she looked so stunned he let her go.

“Sorry, my dear. According to Guidon’s book this is what must happen for me to take your power—you will start to feel the same pain when we touch.” He related what that chapter had said. “But it will stop.”

“Why shouldn’t I know what it feels like? It is my curse, after all. Why should I be immune?”

“It isn’t your fault, and you should not have to suffer.”

Damn, Raven hated the thought of being destroyed now. Before meeting Ophelia, he would have welcomed it. But now . . .

He would love to spend eternity playing bondage games with Ophelia.

“I am pleased to know you like to be tied up.” He kept his voice soft to disguise the rawness of it. He had to fall in love with her, then die brokenhearted.

She shivered, and her breasts swayed. Tempting him.

After he took her power, she could be touched. But he wasn’t going to be the man to do it—he would be dead. A stab of jealousy hit his heart at the thought of the lucky man who would eventually have her.

It was irrational to be jealous.

Ophelia studied him, her head cocked to the side. “You are so gentle with me. It makes me forget what you said about yourself. That you said you were an assassin. My goodness, I can even trust you around me with a whip in your hand . . . trust you to give me pleasure and not hurt me.” She nervously licked her lips. “I’ve never had anyone I could trust—I’ve never been able to feel close to anyone, since I was so afraid of hurting people. I can’t imagine you as an assassin now, even though I’ve seen how dangerous you can be. I want to understand you. Why did you become an assassin? Why would you kill—you are a gentleman, aren’t you? I know gentlemen fight duels, but they don’t . . . do whatever assassins do.” She lifted her hands, as if to touch his shoulders, but she froze.

She looked so hurt that she couldn’t touch him.

To build her trust, he had to explain something. Give her something. “I was a soldier. For a long time. Killing was what I learned to do well.”

“You fought against Napoleon?”

“I fought against everyone. I fought Napoleon, I fought in India, I fought in the uprising in Ceylon. When there were no battles, I went in search of them.”

“Why?” Her eyes revealed how perplexed she was. “I should think battles are awful. I would be relieved when one was over. To be safe and—and normal again.”

He jerked his head up. She had spent her life wanted to be normal; he had spent his life looking for death and conflict. Two more opposite people he could not imagine. How could he capture her heart? She was looking at him like he was a dangerous beast or a strange creature she’d never encountered before. She couldn’t understand him.

“Did you find it exciting?” she whispered.

“No, it wasn’t that.” Or was it? “There was excitement, I suppose,” he said, considering. “Being in battle meant you spent a lot of time doing things like fighting, marching, setting up camps, cleaning your rifle. The basic job of survival took much of your time. It meant I didn’t have to think.”

Her indigo eyes widened. “That sounds terrible. How could you have wanted to be in the midst of battle simply so you didn’t have to think? What did you not want to think about?”

“Lady Ophelia, you’ve had graver troubles than I.”

“But I’ve hurt people, too, and it haunts me. I suspect it haunts you, too.”

He stared at her. “It does.” That made it a greater wrong that he had continued to do it as a soldier. Then he’d done it as a vampire, using mortals as his prey. There couldn’t be any man less deserving of a woman’s love.

“After you were a soldier, did you become an assassin of vampires to do good?”

Raven laughed at that. “No, it wasn’t that.” Damn, why had he said that? It was a statement that demanded an explanation. “I did it to pursue and destroy vicious vampires.”

“Are all vampires vicious? I knew some female vampires, and they seemed like ordinary girls to me.”

“Vampires claim they are not vicious.”

“I suppose I could be called vicious,” she said, her brow furrowed. “They are no different from me—forced to do something against their will.”

“You are not vicious, and you are nothing like the vampires I hunt,” he said. “That’s enough questions.” He had a long way to go—many more bouts of pleasure before they would be ready for him to try to take her power.

Ophelia watched Ravenhunt stand and stretch. His bare back was beautiful—a play of candlelight and shadow on a broad vee of muscle. She ached to reach out and stroke his magnificent back, let her hands follow the broad shoulders and run all the way down to his lean hips and muscled bottom.

Of course she couldn’t.

She also wished he would not shut her out when she asked him questions. But it seemed as impossible a wish as the one to caress him.

His expression was one of dark, brooding gloom. He lived alone, in the darkness, and it was obvious the violence in his past troubled him greatly.

“Who are you, really?” she asked softly. “You put yourself in exile the way I was told I must. What are you that you had to do this?”

“Just a soldier.”

“I know that’s not true. When soldiers return from battle, they are happy to be away from war. They want peace and they—”

“No, love. On that you are wrong,” he said. “Many soldiers find they can’t live with peace. As I said, surviving keeps a man busy. Soldiers are used to the excitement and fear of fighting for their lives and for other men. They are used to making instant decisions and throwing courage or madness at a hopeless situation. Peace does not sit well after that.”

“How could you prefer that? I don’t understand.”

“Men have their reasons.”

“Yes, the things you don’t want to think about and that you will not tell me about.”

Of course he said nothing in answer. He lifted his hand, almost touched her bare shoulder. His hand stayed there, not quite making contact, but it felt as if little bolts of sizzling power jumped between her skin and his.

“Did you become an assassin to live as you did in war?”

“I—Hades, it’s complicated.”

Ophelia folded her arms at her chest. “I am going to find out what you are—”

“Love, I hunt and destroy vampires. The undead would want me dead. For my own protection, I have to live like this.” Raven stopped talking. Some of that was actually the truth, but the last thing he could let her do was learn his whole truth.

“Can you stop hunting vampires?”

“No.” He had to bring a halt to this conversation. He braced his arm against the bedpost. In this position he towered over her, and she gazed up at him. Their lips were close, and he took the whip and used its tip to caress her nipples. He drew them to full, erect points.

“You—oh.” Her sentence dropped to a moan as he lightly strummed her right nipple. “But you look so unhappy—oooh!”

He slid the whip down, rubbing it between her thighs, rubbing her clit.

“Goodness—the only time—”

She was still fighting to talk. The way to silence her would be to dive between her legs and lick her senseless. Or thrust his aching cock in her to the hilt. He’d been sporting an erection for hours, and his ballocks were in pain.

“The only time I’ve seen you smile is when we do . . . lovemaking things,” she gasped.

So demure and sweet. He owed her something, but not enough that he frightened her away. Stroking her clit, he murmured, “I cannot stop hunting vampires, love. It’s too late for me. But yes, carnal games with you make me very happy.”

He’d found her erotic triggers when he’d painted images for her of sex slaves and multiple partners. Raven withdrew the whip handle from the soft, damp cleft between her legs. “Get on your knees on the bed.”

Ophelia did so obediently.

“Bend forward and rest your cheek on the bed. Keep your bottom up in the air.”

“Oh yes. Tie me up again,” she said boldly. “I want more.”