Gaslight (Crossbreed #4)(117)
Christian held Raven close, her breath skating across his chest. Neither of them bothered cleaning up after their night of passion. Feck Joe and his bearskin rug. Christian was used to the prejudice against Vampires, but he drew the line with men who served their guests insipid coffee.
Raven had fallen asleep within minutes, and he wondered how she’d managed to last this long. All the flashing, swimming in the ocean, trudging through snow, fighting a Vampire. Then to come face-to-face with three dunderheads who wanted revenge for their boss’s arrest. The two wolves must have tracked their scent. Christian had probably been breaking logs with his bare hands when the fight started. It wasn’t until he’d gone outside to fill a bucket with snow that a roar made him stop in his tracks. It had come from the direction of the outhouse and wasn’t Raven.
Had he gotten there sooner, he would have snapped all their vertebrae.
After Raven fell asleep, Christian put another log on the fire and threw his coat over her before heading out to Crazy Joe’s shed in search of a spade or shovel. Not far from the outhouse, he dug a deep hole and buried the bodies. After spreading the excess dirt around, he spent time meticulously moving snow to conceal his tracks. Once everything was to his satisfaction, he returned to the outhouse and dug another hole, where he filled it with all the bloody snow from the scene. Once he buried every visible drop, he packed fresh snow on top. There were still footprints all around the outhouse, so he decided to clear out all the snow and make it look like he’d done the man a favor. Vampires didn’t tire easily, so his impeccable vision and imperviousness to cold allowed him to work through the wee hours of the morning.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’d cleaned up a crime scene.
Now it was nearly dawn, and after stoking the fire, he glanced down at his dirty fingernails. As much as he wanted to be the romantic and hold her all night, he’d promised to protect her, and leaving the bodies out in the open would have put a target on her back. If any Shifters in the territory came looking, or if Crazy Joe had stumbled upon the massacre, Raven would be sitting in jail. Though it was self-defense, they were still in a foreign country. These weren’t their people, and their laws differed. And he knew Raven—she would have accepted full culpability to protect Keystone.
Her black hair invited him to touch it, but it wouldn’t be long before Viktor came knocking. He knelt beside her and savored these last moments together. It would be a shame to wake her. This was her first peaceful sleep in a long while. He’d noticed fewer nightmares since her return, but she also tended to avoid sleep.
Christian’s thoughts shifted to Houdini. Raven was nothing but a plaything to him—a curiosity. She was so convinced that he wasn’t intentionally doing anything to hurt her that it made Christian realize how crafty and insidious that man was. Some of the ancients were clinically insane, and it wouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that her maker was gone in the head.
Christian could no longer rely on Raven’s memory. Had this kidnapping been their first encounter since Houdini had lost her all those years ago? Not likely. Houdini had sent Keystone letters, so he knew damn well where to find his youngling. The more Christian thought about it, the more he wondered if Houdini had been the one to lock him in that crypt. He’d always suspected a Vampire was behind it, but it didn’t make sense how they’d snuck up on him. Christian had amassed a number of enemies in his lifetime, so there was no way to be sure.
The truth was it didn’t matter. Houdini crossed a line when he selectively erased memories of Raven and Christian’s private moments.
A distant song echoed from the past, filling the dark corners of the room. He hadn’t heard “Cheek to Cheek” in decades, but something about the power Houdini held over Raven released the song into his consciousness. When the hair on the back of his neck stood on end, he locked his mind and focused on the present.
Christian lifted his coat away and admired her magnificent body. Raven glowed all over, her lustrous skin revealing dim shadows of muscle.
She moaned and rolled onto her back, renewing Christian’s carnal desire to know her again.
He placed his fingertips on her smooth nipple, watching it harden to a peak before he latched his mouth onto it. His gaze roamed down the slight concave of her stomach. She’d worked so hard to repair her beaten body after the kidnapping. All those hours in the gym, toning her muscles and building her strength.
It showed.
He admired the sinewy outline of muscle in her arms and legs. Christian had never been attracted to a woman with such strength, one who would rather use her legs to choke a man than straddle him. Her scent intoxicated him, and the taste of her lingered on his tongue.
There wasn’t time for another go—not with it being dawn already. He’d never hated the idea of a quickie until this moment, because the need to be inside her for hours prevailed. Christian was a man who took what he wanted, but something changed after his night with Raven, and he had a compulsion to treat her more delicately than she’d been treated before. He didn’t want to use her body to satisfy his own needs. She deserved better than that. Raven reminded him that he’d once been an affable man with blue eyes—a lad full of ambition and big dreams.
Being with her made him feel his own humanity.
On the other hand, he couldn’t exactly drive home with a raging hard-on, so he needed to take care of this throbbing ache.