The moment was broken by a rustle from the bushes. Heloise braced for another attack, but Sergeant Mullaney staggered into the clearing, almost bent double.
“Bastards jumped me from behind,” he groaned, sinking down on a rock and trying to staunch a wound at the back of his head. He pulled his hand away and scowled at the red smear.
A pitiful groan diverted their attention.
“Sergeant Canning!” Heloise rushed to the boy’s side and turned him gently onto his back. His right eye was a mess, swollen shut and turning black, but he was alive. Heloise breathed a silent prayer of thanks.
He struggled to speak. “I’m so sorry, my lady. I—”
Heloise stroked his forehead. “Shh, it’s all right. Don’t try to talk.”
He tried to sit up, the stubborn child. She rubbed his back as he linked his arms around his bent knees and dropped his head onto them in an attitude of pain and exhaustion.
Raven strode off into the scrub and returned leading Hades. He stopped in front of Canning.
“Let’s get you back to camp. You’ll ride with me.”
Canning cried out as Raven helped him to his feet, but made no complaint when Raven swung up behind him on the horse. His face was as pale as a ghost. Heloise winced in sympathy. From the odd angle of his left arm it was clear he’d broken a bone.
She helped Mullaney bind the gash on his head with his sash, untied Persephone, and followed behind without a word. Canning passed out before they even made it halfway down the hill, which was probably a mercy. Raven was ominously silent.
The setting sun pained the landscape with a glorious palette of colors, as if mocking her dark thoughts with its beauty. A wave of guilt washed over her. Canning’s injury was all her fault. He could have been killed. If she hadn’t insisted on ignoring Raven’s advice…
The silence began to wear on her nerves. Her teeth began to chatter and she wished Raven would just shout and rail at her for her stupidity. She deserved it. But no, this was worse, this silent, brooding disapproval.
Their arrival at the palace elicited cries of alarm, but Raven brushed them all aside. Directed by a visibly shaken Scovell he carried Canning to his barracks room, sent someone for a doctor, then strode off without a glance at Heloise. He remounted Hades and started toward the doorway.
“Where are you going?” she called out after him, hating the catch of panic in her voice.
“Wherever I damn well please,” he growled.
Raven headed out of the city. Bloody woman. She probably thought he was going back to finish off that last attacker. He wasn’t. Not that he wasn’t aching to kill the bastard, slowly and painfully. The whoreson had threatened her. He’d make it last a full week. The ones he’d killed straightaway had been let off too lightly. Swift deaths had been far too merciful. But no, he’d told her he wouldn’t, hadn’t he?
When he reached a stream he stripped off his clothes and waded in. He washed the blood from his swollen knuckles, then ducked under the water and washed his hair.
The frigid water was a relief. It cooled some of his anger and cleared his head. He closed his eyes as the appalling truth crystallized. He’d killed four men. Right in front of her.
He kept seeing her face, white with fear, eyes wide, lips bloodless, that murderous knife at her throat. She’d been bleeding—her lip from where she’d bitten it in her struggles, her neck from where the bastard had nicked her with his knife. His stomach rolled. That knife had been right over her artery. All that spirit, gone in the blink of an eye.
A black tide of despair engulfed him. He’d tried to warn her. He’d told her he was a killer. But she hadn’t comprehended the horrifying, visceral reality of it. Not until today. Despair gnawed away at his insides.
He groaned and sank under the water again. She’d seen him at his most violent. His most feral. And yet she’d cut through his black rage. The little idiot had begged for mercy for her attacker. And, miracle upon miracle, he’d listened.
He should have known she wouldn’t sit meekly and wait for him back at the palacio. If he hadn’t been so intent on finding Kit he’d have remembered she wasn’t the kind of girl to take no for an answer. She was disobedient, stubborn, headstrong, infuriating. He hated the turmoil she aroused in him. Hated himself for wanting her so fiercely.
Raven scrubbed a hand over his face and winced at a bruise forming on his jaw. He should have comforted her at the cave, should have gathered her into his arms and just stroked her back or something. But how could she welcome his touch when she’d seen him kill with those same hands? She was going to be terrified of him now, and rightly so. Part of him wanted it, but most of him rebelled at the idea. She had to know that he’d never hurt her. He’d rather kill himself than harm a single hair on her head.
He dropped his chin to his chest. At least now she’d keep her distance, exactly as she’d done after that god-awful night six years ago.
He’d made her hate him then, too.
Her brothers had always taken advantage of her inability to turn down a challenge, no matter how outlandish, and that day they’d told her to go and hide, knowing she was such a stubborn little devil she’d refuse to come out unless she was actually “found.” They’d enjoyed a good hour of uninterrupted fishing, and when the time came to go and find her, Raven had drawn the short straw.
He’d had a fairly good idea of where she was hiding: the grotto, a shell-encrusted monstrosity created by one of his ancestors, right on the border between their two adjoining properties. The folly had been built to resemble artless ruins, with a series of seashell-covered caves built into the natural tunnels that led through the cliffs to caves at the coast.
He’d ducked under the low doorframe and dodged the moss and ferns growing from the walls.
“Hellcat? Come out, I’ve found you.”
“I can’t.” A whimper, barely heard. Then a sniffle, barely concealed.
Immediate guilt flooded him. Oh, shit, they’d left her down here for well over an hour. Alone. Dread clenched his gut. “Are you hurt?”
“Of course I’m hurt, you idiot! Do you think I’m still down here because it’s fun?”
Oddly, he felt a measure of relief at her aggrieved wail. She couldn’t be too badly injured if she was still sniping at him. He made his way down to her. It was pitch black and he cursed the fact that he had no flame. “What did you do?”
“I slipped on this stupid moss and then the stupid step crumbled under me. I’ve twisted my ankle.”
He edged his way closer to her, using his ears more than his eyes. He could hear her breathing. He reached out with his hand and encountered something soft and squashy. He frowned and tested it with his fingers. It fitted perfectly in his palm. Shit! It was her breast. He reared back at the same time she did.
“That is not my ankle,” she said in a small, choked voice.
“Sorry.”
He didn’t feel sorry. In fact, he felt instantly aroused, the blood pooling in his groin making his cock stand to attention. He ground his molars and forcefully reminded himself of his mantra. Best friends’ sister. Out of bounds. Not. For. You.
He became intensely aware that it was just the two of them inside the small, dark building. The mossy ferns gave off a fecund scent, earthy and moist, like sex.
“Raven?”
“What?”
“I’m glad you found me.”
Heloise leaned forward, slid her arms around his neck, and unerringly found his lips in the dark.
Raven froze. God, her small breasts pressed against his chest and her sweet, soft lips molded themselves over his. The scent of her filled his nose and for one dark moment he’d been utterly unable to resist.
He opened his mouth and gave her his tongue, slanting his head and kissing her fully, slowly, deeply. She released a breathy little moan and accepted him into her mouth, mimicking his actions with an artless enthusiasm that made his blood boil. It was awkward, rough, unpolished. It was the hottest thing he’d ever experienced in his life.
And then he bashed his elbow against the wall and in a horrifying flash realized where it would lead—to a marriage proposal, not a pleasant screw in the dark. Heloise was a woman of worth. Innocents were a bad idea. He’d find himself shackled and betrothed before he’d even had time to live.
For one crazy moment he actually considered making an offer for her. Would that be so bad? God, yes. He was eighteen. The grandson of a Duke. Too young to be tied down. Not by her, not by any woman.
“Raven?” she whispered, trying to pull his face back down to hers.
He panicked. Faced with her shining, girlish adoration, when there was nothing childish about his lustful feelings for her, he’d done the only thing he could think of. He pushed her off and plastered a fierce scowl on his face even though he knew she couldn’t see him in the dark. “What are you doing?”
“I thought, well, we’re friends…aren’t we?”
“Friends?” He gave an incredulous laugh. “No. We’re not ‘friends.’ Your brothers are my friends. You’re their annoying little sister.”
She gasped at the cruelty of his words, as he’d predicted. He made his tone even more scathing. “You’re a child, Heloise. Now go home and leave me be.”
She pulled away. Sniffed.
To make it worse, he’d laughed.
She slapped him.
She’d tried to run then, but her ankle had denied her a dignified exit. She’d been forced to suffer the ignominy of him carrying her back to the house. She hadn’t looked at him once, but he’d felt the shaking of her body she hadn’t been able to hide, the wetness of her tears against the front of his shirt. He’d felt like someone had slipped a knife between his ribs.
She’d ignored him for months afterward. And then, while he’d been immersing himself in all the ruinous debauchery London had to offer, she’d been scarred. He’d rushed back to see her immediately, their stupid rift forgotten. It had broken his heart, to see her face like that, still red and obviously painful. Not because it made her ugly in his eyes, but because it reminded him that horrible things happened to good people. It reminded him that she’d already had enough bad things befall her without ever getting involved with him.
Sometimes he wished he’d never set eyes on her. Most of the time he wished he’d just pulled her down onto the cold stone floor of the grotto and simply taken her. It would have been so easy. She’d wanted him with a passion that was both desperate and astonishing. A passion that was completely underserved.
Of course, his restraint had backfired. He’d been haunted by her taste, the feel of her, that sound of choked amazement she’d made when he’d cupped her breast. He’d never forget it, even if he sailed a thousand leagues away from her. He’d become an expert at ignoring the inner voice that insisted she was the woman for him.
It had taken his own kidnapping and the better part of six years for them to get back onto any kind of normal footing. And now he’d ruined it again.
What was she doing now? Would she shrink from him? She was probably in her room sobbing. Wishing herself as far away as possible. Raven sank under the water again, wishing he never had to resurface.