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He laughs cruelly as he releases my hair and turns me in his arms, and it prickles my senses.
“You’d like to believe that.” He reaches down and drags his thumb across my lipstick, painting it across my skin. “Tell me, Raven, have you broken the rules?”
“What rules?” I grind out.
His eyes dip to my nipples scraping against the fabric of my robe, and flames lick along my skin even as he responds in a grating tone.
“Have you ever been touched by a man?”
I open my mouth to respond, to bite out a sarcastic reply, but the words dry up in my throat, and I don’t know why. I can’t find it in me to lie in this moment, and it’s the worst way my body could betray me. Because I hate him. And if Willow knew what was happening between us right now, she would hate me too.
It doesn’t matter that I don’t answer his question because he can see it in my eyes. And it seems to satisfy the demon in him as he drags a knuckle down along the seam of my robe, just grazing the swell of my breast. The same as his brother did, only this time, my heart is beating faster. Wilder. So out of control, it feels like I can hardly breathe.
“Keep it that way,” he decrees.
I blink, and in the span of that second, he’s stalking away. I watch him go, my mind still reeling from what just happened. And as I reach up to clutch my opal pendant, I realize he didn’t just steal my voice.
He stole my necklace too.
Chapter 4
Emmanuel
I walk away before I do more than what I’ve already done. Because I’ve already broken the rules.
The Wildbloods are safe from us. The decree only entitles us to one sacrifice, and it’s been made. Raven is right about that. The rules protect them. They know if they don’t submit to the Tithing, hell will be brought to their doorstep.
But there are consequences for both sides, even the victors. We all have to abide by the rules. And I can’t touch Raven Wildblood.
To hell with consequences.
My brother’s words echo as I step over the salt I watched her pour. Neither Azrael nor I had bothered to take care with it when we first came. We stomped right through it. Now, though, I am careful to leave it intact. Her witch’s spells have no power over me but I’m not the only monster in the world. I wonder if they’d protect her against another predator. I’m not so sure. Although I have a feeling she’d give anyone a run for their money. The thought makes me grin, but I make a mental note as, my hands in my pockets, I make my way through the quiet streets of the Garden District to the French Quarter. As quiet as the Garden District is, so is the French Quarter throbbing with life. It’s where, in the small hours, the uglier side of humanity shows its face. It’s where I feel most at home.
Once Azrael settled his Wildblood witch in the Rolls Royce, I told him I’d walk home. That I needed the air. Truth was, I wanted to see Raven. To watch her for a little while. I expected to remain in the shadows. To see but be unseen. But when she stripped off her clothes and slipped into the pool to swim naked in the moonlight, that pull I’d felt inside the house, that strange sense of wanting, of possession, it became more powerful somehow. An urge I could neither ignore nor control.
The act of covering her nakedness, of not touching, not tasting, not having it took all my self-restraint.
I push my hand through my hair and draw in a tight breath meaning to banish the image of her naked body in the moonlight from my mind.
Azrael and I used to come to the French Quarter together often. We’d walk the streets, take in the depravity around us. I think he felt at home here, too.
As I walk into Bloody Mary, the obscure little bar with its secret entrance in an alley just off Bourbon Street, I wonder if my brother and I will become even more strangers to one another than we already have. He’ll be occupied with his Wildblood witch. With what comes next. I know he’ll do everything in his power to keep the rest of us out of it. He’ll try, at least. I won’t make it easy for him. I’m not ready to lose my brother.
Mary, the old bartender and proprietor, nods in greeting as I make my way to my table. I take my usual seat and she sets two tumblers and my bottle of whiskey before me.
“Just the one tonight,” I tell her.
“Been a while,” she comments on the absence of Azrael but takes the second glass and walks away.
I glance to the empty chair. It has been a while.
Reaching into my pocket, I take out Raven Wildblood’s opal pendant. I couldn’t walk away empty handed. I hold it for a moment, still feeling the heat of her on it before setting it on the table and swallowing down my first drink, grateful for the distraction.
I’m not sure why I took it. Why I wanted something of hers. I shouldn’t see her again, I know that.
I study the opal. Aren’t these bad luck? It’s pretty, if an unusual choice. And I sense that same humming energy radiating subtly off it as I’d felt in that room. Almost as though it were looking for its mistress. And when I touch the tip of my finger to it, it gives off a spark of weak electricity. I smile, pour myself a second whiskey and this time, when my mind conjures up the image of her naked, I don’t attempt to banish it. She bore no witch’s mark, this one. No imperfection. Not that I have seen. But I haven’t had a close enough look yet. And I want to. I want to study every inch of the defiant witch.
I am bound by the treaty, though, as much as the Wildbloods are. If I break the rules, if I take her, then Azrael’s sacrifice will be for nothing. Another generation of Delacroixes will suffer if I go near Raven Wildblood. But as the opal glows beneath the dim light of the candlelit bar, I feel it like I did her gaze. Her grin. Her dare.
