Raven’s heart was racing as if he’d just mounted the steps to the guillotine.
He snapped one end of the cuffs around his wrist and pushed down the spurt of panic that assailed him. The snick as they snapped shut sounded like the slam of a prison door; he kept his eyes fixed on her for courage. If he looked away from her he’d be lost.
Without breaking eye contact he attached the other end to the bedpost and leaned back against the headboard, forcing his reluctant muscles to obey. His skin felt too tight, every sinew screamed with tension. He’d rather swim naked across an alligator-infested swamp than do this, but it had to be done. He had to prove the depths of his love.
Heloise found her voice. “What are you doing?”
He managed to summon a faint, self-mocking smile. “Proving you’re the only thing I’ve never wanted to escape from.”
Heloise couldn’t breathe.
What did he mean by that? Just because he didn’t want to escape from her didn’t mean he wanted her forever. But at least he was admitting he cared for her, which was more than he’d ever done before. Raven hated being trapped. And yet he’d voluntarily placed himself in the worst situation he could devise, simply for her.
A reluctant smile curved her lips. A normal man would have used soft words and flowers. Raven sent her strange fruit, locked them together in a darkened room, placed his weapons out of reach, and chained himself to a bed. Lunatic.
She swallowed the sudden tightness in her throat and aimed for a wry tone. “The fact that you need to attach yourself to a heavy piece of furniture to endure my presence is hardly flattering.”
“I thought you might appreciate the gesture.”
She adopted a pitying, superior expression. “I can’t believe you actually trust me to release you. After all you did to me?” She glanced at his pistol on the nightstand. “I should just shoot you right now and have done with it.”
“I trust you,” he said solemnly. “With my life.”
Oh, goodness.
Heloise took a step toward the bed. “This isn’t the same situation at all, you know.”
Raven’s lips quirked. “You’re right. I’m a willing prisoner.” A hint of his usual wickedness returned as he raised his cuffed wrist a fraction for emphasis.
“Where’s the key?”
He motioned across the room. “Over there, on the desk.”
She nodded, but made no move to retrieve it. She’d spent the past three weeks moping around, alternating between righteous fury and abject misery. She wasn’t letting him go until she’d made him suffer, just a little bit.
As if sensing her resolve, Raven eyed her warily as she approached the bed. When her knees hit the side she reached out and traced the veins on the inside of his exposed wrist with her fingertips. He hissed through his teeth and gave an involuntary jerk.
She traced up his arm to his shoulder, enjoying the way his muscles leaped and twitched under her gentle touch. She glanced at him from under her lashes. “I hate to say it, Ravenwood, but it sounds as if you can’t live without me.”
“I could live without you,” he said softly. “I just wouldn’t want to.”
The room wavered and dimmed. She’d waited six long years to hear him say something like that, but now, after everything that had happened, it wasn’t enough. She wanted more than a temporary carte blanche. Nothing less than complete surrender would do. He didn’t have to live without her. He had to want to live with her. Permanently.
Heloise’s pulse hammered in her throat. She’d spent the past few weeks trying to resign herself to a future that didn’t include Raven. Now, suddenly, an entirely different possibility was within her grasp. Like that card in Elvira’s tarot, she held the power to influence her own destiny. She just had to be brave enough to wield it.
She plucked the pomegranate from the side table and brandished it in front of his nose. “Why did you send me this?”
Raven glanced at it, then back up at her. “When Persephone’s in the underworld it’s winter up on the earth, right?”
She nodded. “It’s not spring until she returns.”
“That’s how it is with me. When you go, all the light goes, too.” He sounded both defiant and vulnerable.
A warm glow started deep within her body and expanded to fill her with a piercing joy. He loved her. With shaking hands she broke open the pomegranate and tipped some of the jewel-red seeds into the palm of her hand. She placed one between her lips. Raven’s gaze fastened on her mouth and the naked hunger in his expression made her skin tingle. He raised his eyes to hers and she caught the challenge in his look.
“You know the rest of it,” he said softly. “If you eat that you’ll be stuck with me forever.”
She took the seed from her lips and pressed it between his own. “You first.”
Heloise held her breath. And then Raven parted his lips and took both the seed and her finger into his mouth. She snatched her hand back with a gasp and he bit down with an audible crunch and swallowed. He raised his brows in unmistakable challenge. “Your turn.”
She swallowed her own seed with an air of defiance. Her eyes never left his. They were bound together now. This wordless communion sealed a covenant as solemn and sacred as vows spoken in church. God help him if he didn’t mean it. She’d shoot him with his own pistols if he abandoned her.
“Hey, come back,” Raven protested as she suddenly stepped away from the bed. He reached for her with his free hand but she skipped out of range.
“You’re in no position to be making demands,” she chided.
He shot her a mock-furious glare and she took a moment to study him in the dim light. He lay stretched out on the bed, long and lithe and powerful. Temptation in the flesh. A heady thrum of joy pulsed through her veins.
Raven’s eyes widened as she kicked off her dancing slippers and reached round to undo the row of buttons at the back of her dress. “What are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m taking advantage of you, of course.”
Her amber dress had only three buttons. She undid them, pushed the short puff sleeves down her arms, and let the dress fall to the ground in a graceful collapse. She undid the front lacing of her short stays, taking a relieved breath as the constriction on her ribs eased, then untied her petticoats and let them drop, too. She was left in just a scandalous rose silk chemise and her stockings.
Raven hadn’t said a word.
Heloise glanced down at herself, suddenly self-conscious. In the firelight the silk shimmered over the contours of her body like droplets of water on the petals of a rose.
Raven let out an unsteady breath, half laugh, half groan. “Christ, Hellcat. You’re killing me.” He eyed her approvingly. “Have I ever told you how much I appreciate your taste in undergarments?”
“Several times, I believe. You have my mother to thank.”
He raised his brows.
“She says one should always wear nice underwear because you never know when you might get run over by a carriage. I’d have thought if you’d been hit by a carriage you’d have more to worry about than whether your underwear was matching, but still.” Heloise ground to a halt, uncomfortably aware she was babbling.
“I love your mother.”
“She is French,” she said, as if that were sufficient explanation. Which, to a man like Raven, a connoisseur of the European female, it probably was.
His gaze roved over her, as intimate as a caress. “Come here,” he said.
The mattress dipped with her weight as she crawled up it toward him.
“Be gentle,” he teased.
She gave him an arch smile. “I promise not to torture you too much.”
And then he caught the back of her head and put his lips on hers.
It was a kiss like no other they’d shared. Heloise threw her arms around his neck and kissed him with all the ardor and enthusiasm in her heart. What started as a sweet exploration soon metamorphosed into an urgent mating of mouths. She couldn’t get enough of the taste of him, the wicked swirl of his tongue, the passionate press of his lips. She offered herself unashamedly, teasing him, thrusting deep then retreating in passionate surrender.
He pulled back, panting. “Vixen.”
Her hair had been arranged in an elaborate coil. Heloise sat back on her heels as he raised his free hand and gently pulled out a pin. A curl fell down against her neck. Another pin. Another. He worked slowly, methodically, until her hair fell down around her shoulders in a soft cloud. He threaded his fingers through it and combed it forward to cover her breasts. She shivered.
Heloise ran her palms over his shoulders, enjoying the reflexive leap of his muscles, luxuriating in the feel of him. She nibbled kisses on his collarbone, teethed the muscle on the side of his neck, and felt the racing pulse beneath his skin, heavy and erotic against her lips.
The metal cuff forced Raven’s right arm out at an awkward angle, but he used his left hand to stroke down her back and squeeze her bottom and she let out a groan of encouragement. She stroked his biceps, his pectorals, petting him like a giant house cat. Instinct told her that whatever had felt good to her surely felt good to him, too. He bared his teeth when she circled his flat male nipples with her fingers and when she flicked her tongue over them he hissed in a breath and curled up toward her.
The muscles of his stomach tensed one by one as she slid her hand downward and ran a finger from his navel to the top of his waistband.
She smiled against his skin.