Salvation of the Damned Read Free Page A

little more time, he would have given her the most incredible experience of her life, and drank enough to sample the elixir she so carelessly flaunted before him every time her skin became pink and flushed.
    He pinned his gaze on her, willing her to believe him. “We’ve met before. You just don’t remember me. But I could never forget you.”
    Eva leaned forward, her breath shallow, the shadowed valley between her breasts alive with her heat, her scent. Raphael gripped the edge of his seat so hard he punctured the leather with his fingertips.
    “Why don’t you come sit by me?” She rubbed her fingers across the surface of the seat by her, and the amplified rasping sound it made in his ultra-sensitive ears raked over him as though she brushed his skin.
    Damn them for making me choose. Wait—a mirthless chuckle rose in his chest and was instantly crushed—they were already damned, all of them. He most of all. He was the hunter, the finder, the seeker. The one to bring in the sacrifice to the slaughter.
    He shook the morose thought from his head. For just this moment, there could be just him and her. For whatever reason, the universe had returned Isabeau to him. He dared not question why.
    Raphael waited until he had himself under control before he shifted seats in the moving vehicle. The lights of the city, the jostle and noise of the drunken masses outside become nothing more than streaks of color. The heat radiating from her was like sitting out in the blazing sun, warming him like nothing else had in six thousand years.
    Looking into the pale blue of her eyes, he found his desire mirrored back to him. It wiped everything from his mind but her scent, her heat and the sparkling champagne-like essence that was uniquely Isabeau Montfort, now Evaline St. Croix.
    How could he have not known until now that she had been reborn? Only her scent had called to him once they approached the time of transformation. Had he known it was her he hunted, he might have refused. Refused and let all his kind die. Not likely. In his place Janus would have hunted her down.
    When he’d met Isabeau, she’d been a charming mortal plaything. At first their relationship had entertained him, but it quickly grew, consuming him as nothing had since his changing. All of it had come crashing down the night her scent began to change to that of the sacrifice. He’d known, just days before she died, that she was the one.
    It had made every minute all the more precious to know how quickly he would lose her. He’d tried to give her a lifetime of bliss in that few days. And he’d paid dearly for the next thousand years, hating his endless life and nearly losing his sanity.
    Next to him, Eva swallowed, and he watched the movement in her throat. Just. One. Taste. Need clawed, tore, leaving him to gather his shredded self-control together.
    “I’ve never met anyone like you.” The raw needy timbre of her voice echoed his own insatiable desire to have her.
    He smiled with difficulty. “And you likely never will.”
    Her pupils dilated, becoming wider, darker, sucking him in. “Would you think less of me if I told you how much I want you to kiss me?”
    Damn , it was a good thing he didn’t need to breathe. He wouldn’t have been able to. All the reserve inside him crumbled. Raphael stroked her face with the back of his fingers, exultant that for the moment, she was his and his alone.
    “Eva, my darling, you are the one I’ve waited for.”
    She blushed prettily, but all it did was inflame him further, making the desire to have her as his own, without sacrificing her, akin to physical pain, leagues beyond his deepest thirst.
    “How can you say that, when you don’t even know me?”
    “Because here—” he pointed to his chest, with its granite heart “—I know.”
    Her breathing changed, becoming fast little puffs, and her eyes half shuttered by the fringe of long dark lashes. He moved slowly, afraid to frighten her. Afraid to hurt her.