“Don’t be afraid.” She smiled up at him. He cared enough now to make sure that she understood before this last, irrevocable choice was made. If she survived this – if he could help her – he had earned whatever he asked of her. “But could you make that five seconds, please?”

Rafael waited all of three before his mouth came down over hers, and he gave her a kiss so deep and perfect Dani never wanted it to end. But then his head lifted, and his hands began mapping her, shaping the curves of her flesh to his gentle demands. He only stopped when she stroked his back, and only then to wrap her wrists with a soft length of cord, which he then tied to the headboard.

Dani glanced up, frustrated and amused. “You do like binding me.”

“Restraining you,” he murmured, kissing the hard peak of one breast and then the other. He frowned at her tied hands as if seeing them for the first time, and then his face cleared. “If you touch me again, I will not be responsible for what happens.”

Rafael's sharp teeth flashed as he spoke, and she sensed they hurt as much as the hard shaft nestled between her thighs. She put her mouth on his, not giving him a chance to refuse as she edged the tips with the soft inside of her lower lip. With a groan he bit down, shuddering as he drank from her mouth, pressing the head of his penis against her and then into her, until Dani arched up, needed her aching emptiness to be filled. It became a wild, reckless thing inside her, making her test her bonds and meet the hard thrust of his body with her own.

From there it quickened, the dance and glide of flesh with the dark and needy fusion of their mouths. Rafael took a little of her blood and then soothed the two small wounds with his tongue, even as his hands fastened to the sides of her thighs and held her open for the deep, steady stroke of his cock. When he nuzzled her throat, Dani expected to feel him bite again, but his mouth glanced across the sweep of her shoulder and then found her ear, where he whispered something in a language she didn’t understand and yet felt as surely as the pleasure streaming through her.

Dani wanted to touch him, to sink her fingernails into his back and urge him to stop holding back and to take her as she wanted him to, as he wished to. The words poured out of her in her own language, one he must have understood because he stiffened over her, his muscles locking for a long moment as he lay buried inside her body. Dani jerked under him, and that and her words were all it took to destroy his control.

“You want more?” he rasped, driving into her with the full force of the passion she had released. “Take all of it. All of me, Daniela.”

Dani drew him down until his cheek pressed to her temple, and sank her own blunt teeth into the side of his strong neck. She kissed the marks she left, panting against them as her spine bowed and her orgasm flooded through her, wrenching a low cry from her that went on and on until Rafael covered her mouth with his own and gathered her up into his arms, holding her as he followed.

A thousand years later, Rafael lifted his head and stared down at her as if he didn’t recognize her. “What have we done?”

“It was a dream. We were dreaming.” Her hands shook as she held onto him, all of the old doubts chased away by new ones. “Weren’t we?”

Six

The sun crossed from morning to afternoon skies before Rafael woke. Daniela lay in his arms, so deeply asleep that she did not stir when he extracted himself from the warm softness of their embrace. A wedge of sunshine from a gap in the curtains played over her, displaying everything he remembered from the night: the pale golden skin, high firm breasts, and silky hair that poured from her scalp over the pillows in dark streams, fringed the faint shadows of her eyelids, and cupped her mound in a tangle of delicate curls.

Rafael knew it hadn’t been a dream. He could still feel her moving under him. He could still taste her on his lips.

After he secured her, he pulled on his trousers and went to wash and think of how and why he had done this to her. He had been drawn to her from the moment he first saw her, stepping out into the moonlight. He had also recognized her youth, and heard the tremors of fear in her voice. He did not seduce innocent, frightened human females; when he wanted sex he sought out a mature, experienced woman who understood mutual pleasure and spent one night with her. Anything more than that was not possible.

He had not been Daniela’s first, that much was a comfort. She had enough knowledge of a man’s needs not to be frightened of them, as a virgin would be. That and her body had welcomed his completely, with no discomfort or awkwardness. Still, there had been moments when he had felt her react to his love-making as if she had never experienced the like. Perhaps her other lovers had been inept.

There will be no other lovers. Rafael swept his hair back from his face with an impatient hand. She will have me.

Was he seriously thinking about taking a human as his lover? As Lucan had once planned to do with Samantha? Or was it because Donatien pursued her, Donatien wanted her?

I’m not what you think I am.

It had taken years for Rafael to accept what he had done in Richard’s name. He should have known that something was wrong from the moment the high lord had given him that case of rare, exquisite cognac mixed with blood as a gift to the Marquis. To help ease his pain in his last days, Richard had said. Never mentioning that it had been aged in old copper vats.

Donatien must have known. Rafael had brought a bottle to the asylum each time he called on the Marquis in his private suite. He could still see him sipping the lethal blood brandy, smiling with pleasure. The fine particles of copper would have burned his insides as he swallowed, would have made his gut feel as if it were on fire. Yet the Marquis had said nothing, drinking one bottle after another each night. The same nights he had tried to seduce Rafael.

He could still feel the touch of Donatien’s hands, as gentle and curious as a young girl’s. Give yourself to me, my night angel, and I will take you to places that you have never been.

Rafael had never desired men, but nothing on this earth had been as beautiful or seductive as Donatien.

“I hate to ask a stupid question,” his partner said from where she stood in the doorway, “but why is there a naked nun handcuffed to your bed?”

“She is not a nun. Please be quiet, Samantha. She is sleeping.” Rafael shrugged into a shirt as he walked out of the bathroom, went to close the bedroom door, and moved on to his weapons cabinet. “The handcuffs are merely a precaution. I don’t want her to run away again.”

“Kidnapping victims have a way of doing that. We call it escaping their captor.” Samantha propped her arm across the cabinet, prevented him from opening it. “Uncuff her, Rafael. Lie to her. Tell her you had too much to drink, and that it was all a terrible mistake. Then give her cab fare and send her back to the convent. And pray she’s into forgiveness in a big way.”

“I cannot send her back.” He glanced at the bedroom, wondering if their voices would disturb her. After what they had shared in and out of the dream, when she woke she might feel disoriented, even frightened. His own guilt had been gnawing steadily at him. What had she done to him? “Daniela is different. She is like us.”

Her expression turned skeptical. “You’re telling me that she’s a vampire nun?”

“No, she’s human, but she was… it is complicated.” He was not even sure what Daniela was, only that she could heal with a touch, and that Donatien would stop at nothing to have her. Of that much he was certain. “She is in grave danger.”

“Like you aren’t?” She opened her jacket and tapped the butt of her pistol. “Guess who replaced all my ammunition with copper rounds last night? Want to play target and let me find out how well they work?”

Rafael knew she wouldn’t shoot him, but thought it prudent to dispel some of her anger all the same. “Samantha, I have to protect her. The man who is hunting her is the same one who killed the man at the convent. He is–”

“Not a man, and not particularly sane. He was Kyn, but got himself tossed in the nuthouse after he slaughtered a few too many humans, where he went genuinely nuts and poisoned himself by eating copper, and then rose a second time. No one knows what he’s capable of, but he scares the shit out of everyone, even Lucan.” She nodded at his startled look. “Yep. I know all about the Marquis now, Rafael.”

Despite Lucan’s orders, someone had told Samantha about Donatien. There wouldn’t be a window left intact in the city. “I regret that you were not told about him,” he said, playing diplomat, “but it changes nothing. Daniela must stay with me.”

Samantha breathed in as if to shout, and then wrinkled her nose. “What is that smell? God, it’s getting on my nerves more than you are.” She paced around the room. “Have you started smoking?”

“No.” Rafael’s head was still filled with Dani, whose scent still painted his skin. “I am rarely here. Likely it is exhaust fumes from the street outside the building.”

“Close the windows, then, because it’s really—” Samantha came to an abrupt stop and squatted, touching a spot on the burgundy carpet. “There’s blood here.” She flushed as a vision came over her. “Oh, don’t tell me you fed on her, too?”

“I was not thinking clearly.” Obviously. “I promise you, I did not harm her.”

“Great. It’ll all be in her blood, and really, the last thing I want to watch in my head is pornography starring you and the nun. Jesus, I’m going to hell just for saying that.” She stood and strode into the kitchen, but stopped short of the sink. “Rafael.”

“I told you before, she is not a nun.” He holstered his gun and took out the spare he carried along with a box of copper rounds. “I never intended for it to happen. It simply did.”

“Rafael, this isn’t hers.”

“It must have been the dream. I think she took me back to where she lived, in Argentina.” He was almost sure of it. “We went to an underground compound – some sort of medical research facility–”