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 audiblecrunchand 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.”
“SheisFrench,” 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 youtoomuch.”
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.