Beloved, do not fight me. He was touching me, stroking my body even though I knew he wasn't physically present. How could I fight a man whose very thoughts felt like the lightest of touches on my skin? I moaned deep in my throat as I struggled to escape the whispered strokes of his fingers. It was wrong, my mind shrieked at me. Every touch of his mind to mine was wrong! I had to make him understand that what he wanted was not mine to give.
I could never hurt you. You are my Beloved. You must not deny your fate any longer.
No, I screamed inside my head. He was coming closer to me, I could feel him moving through the night, graceful, powerful, a timeless hunter filled with the fury of eternal torment, calling through the night to the one person he believed could save him. Me.
I am not she, I pleaded with him. I do not belong to you. It is wrong. We will both suffer if you do not stop now.
I could never hurt you, Beloved.
I sobbed Raphael's name, struggling to break free of the Dark One's power, desperate to escape and regain control of my own body. My skin crawled with the thought of what would happen once he arrived. I would be damned as he was—I knew that as surely as I knew the sun rose each morning to banish the terrors of the night.
"You are more beautiful than any woman I have seen." Heat covered me, filled me, kindling desire within me, within him.
Beloved.
Raphael! I answered, fighting with every ounce of strength I had left.
A warmth, a presence I hadn't felt in the vision of the other night surrounded me. "You smell like flowers, but you taste of heaven." Flames licked up my back, burning my neck, lighting me on fire. I struggled to escape the flames, but the Dark One's hold on me was too great.
"I've thought about you all evening, thought about this. You were never once from my mind. You were meant for me. Every inch of you is perfect, perfectly made for me. You are mine."
He was coming closer. He was almost upon me.
We will be together forever, Beloved.
Nooooo!
"Say it. Say the words. I want to hear them." The fire consumed the front of me, burning down past flesh and muscle and bone, boiling my blood away until there was nothing left of the essence of me. What was left was love.
"Raphael!"
"Mmm. I thought you'd never wake up."
I opened my eyes. Raphael's amber gaze burned into me seconds before his mouth claimed mine. I gave myself to him, gave him everything there was of me and accepted him in return.
A soulless howl of agony rent the fabric of the night, bringing tears to my eyes even as I understood that there was nothing I could do for the Dark One.
"Joy?"
I opened my eyes again and smiled at the concern in Raphael's beautiful eyes. "Hello, Bob."
"You went stiff for a moment."
I allowed my smile to go naughty and rubbed up against him. "I'm not the only thing that's stiff."
"Cheeky," he grinned, dipping his head down for another taste of my lips. The feel of his warm skin touching mine, the taste of him, of his body pressing mine down into the mattress, reaffirmed the knowledge that this was right, that this was meant to be. His presence banished the nightmare that almost was. A tiny spark of guilt flared to life with the thought that I should not be celebrating life with Raphael while another was suffering, but the honest part of my mind stomped out the guilt with the acceptance that some things were beyond my control.
I sucked on Raphael's tongue as he checked my teeth, sliding my hands down the muscles of his shoulders to his back.
"You're naked," I said, pausing in our kiss to breathe.
He leaned back and looked down at me, trailing a finger across my collarbone, down the middle of my breastbone, still farther down to my belly, ending with a tickle at the gates of my own personal paradise. "Ah, baby, so are you."
I melted into one big puddle of goo. Baby. It wasn't the word, it was the way he said it.
"I was waiting for you. Somehow I thought you would prefer me dressed this way."
He leaned forward to nuzzle his cheek across my breast. The barest hint of stubble added a dimension of tingle that I hadn't felt before. I sucked in a delighted gulp of air.
"You are positively psychic."
"And you're only just discovering this?" I laughed, my laughter turning to a gasp as his mouth closed over my nipple. "OK, I like that," I admitted, wondering why my voice was an octave higher than normal.
Raphael laved my breast with long strokes of his tongue before he released it. "So do I," he growled, his voice deepening as he bent over my other breast. "Fancy that, a spare."
"Yes," I gasped, trying to get some air into my lungs. It was impossible to breathe while his mouth was on my flesh, so I gave up the notion and just concentrated on what he was doing. "I keep it there for emergencies. You never know when you'll need a spare breast, my mother always said. And she was right. I'm extremely happy at this moment that I had the foresight to bring my spare along with me on this trip."