Kinlye jerked trying to force her way out of Rafe's arms. "No, let me go!" There was horror in her voice and on her face as she clawed at Rafe to get free.
"Nikky, take her," Rafe shouted, pushing her toward his mate. He barely saw Nikky catch her before turning toward the door. His brother was in there, facing the wolf of a man who wasn't sane. He opened the door, ducking back as the huge body of the beast hit the wall next to him. Christian stood, his legs a shoulder's width apart, his eyes on the beast.
"Christian," Rafe yelled. "Are you alright?"
Matthew didn't give Christian time to answer; he came up at him from the floor with huge claw-like hands reaching for his throat. He drove him backward and against the wall, huge puffs of plaster and chunks of the wall falling to the floor at their feet. Christian broke Matthew's hold with a loud grunt and then grabbed his arm, using the monster's weight to pull him over his hip to land, once more, on the floor.
Christian was ready when the beast rose again and he easily moved aside, ducking under Matthew's arm. He turned and let Matthew run himself into the wall. The beast sank down, his hand going to a bleeding wound upon his forehead. "Are you ready to listen?"
"What's there to listen too? You giving your men orders to have me taken out and tied to a tree so that you can beat me?
"Matthew, I have no intentions to hurt you. I do not believe in whipping a man as punishment for some imagined crime. You've done all of this to protect Kinlye, to protect the woman that I love beyond my own life. I won't punish you for doing something I myself would do as well."
"But...but you're...you're a vampire?"
"Yes, as are my brother and his mate, Matthew. But we don't kill, we don't indiscriminatingly recreate our kind. As you feel about your own mate, I feel for Kinlye. I want her to feel a part of me; I want her in my life forever. I also want you to understand this. We will only have this conversation once, Matthew. Come after her again and I won't be quite so understanding. Do you understand me?"
Christian's eyes didn't move from the big beast that sat on the floor in front of him. He didn't move, not until he heard the beast's answer.
"You won't hurt her, or kill her? You don't know the horrors I've seen in the home of a master vampire." Christian took two steps closer to the beast, laying his hand over the eyes of the shrinking Matthew.
"Relax," he murmured. "Let me in, let me see." For a moment there was nothing behind Matthew's eyes but a kaleidoscope of colors, flowing and changing with no sense of reason behind them. But slowly, they changed and Christian could see into Matthew's thought, see the things that had horrified him so much about vampires.
The girl wasn't much older than eighteen, her mother one of the castle's maids. She was playing in the wide maze of the garden while she waited for her mother to finish her day. With a soft sigh, she bent over the open bud of a rose, breathing in its beautiful scent.
"What are you doing here?"
The girl jumped away from the flowers, falling into a quick curtsey as she saw the man waiting for an answer from her. "I...I was waiting for...my mother..."
"Speak up, girl!"
The girl, her name was Annalisa stuttered her answer again, this time managing to make it a bit louder.
"Do you know who I am, girl?"
"Lord Dansmith, sir. You are in charge of the castle guard." She glanced up at his face, trying to gauge his reaction. His face was like a mask of stone, unmoving, uncaring. It terrified her even more and she felt the unnerving need to run
"And you are Annalisa. We've heard of you, girl. You're old enough, why haven't you applied for a position in the castle?"
"Uh, sir, I am innocent of men. My mother fears that I will become debauched if I apply for a position here." She glanced up and for the first time saw a smile form on Dansmith's face. It made him even scarier looking and Annalisa wanted to run from the gardens. She wanted to find her mother and bury her face in the softness of her mother's bosom and forget meeting this strange and evil man. Her eyes grew ever larger as he walked toward her, taking a stray strand of brilliant red hair in his hand, wrapping the length around his wrist, forcing her to move closer to him.
"Debauched? Hmm, probably so. You are a pretty one, Annalisa, a rare treat for myself and my men to share. Come with me, I will show you things you'd only guessed about or dreamed could be true." He didn't let go of the girl's hair, feeling her urge to run, to be away from him and the dangers that he represented. The emotions running from her body were delicious and he looked forward to more. He forced her to walk in front of him, his hands moving from her breasts to her thighs, ignoring her cries. He opened a door she'd never noticed in the wall that surrounded the gardens, pushing her through first before following behind her.
Annalisa struggled to get away from him, even tearing hunks out of her hair that he'd wrapped around his hand. But he was too strong and he turned and locked the door behind them after pushing her through. His hand squeezed her breast and she screamed. He slapped her face. "No screaming, girl. You'll find that our kind hears screams and find them to be something of an aphrodisiac to our demonic natures." He yanked her back against him, shoving his hand down the front of her loose fitting blouse. Her bare breasts were there for his enjoyment and he did, squeezing and kneading, pulling on her nipples, twisting and plucking on them until she struggled to be away, more screams falling from her lips.
He pushed her through another doorway, grabbing hold of her blouse and ripping it in half. He pushed it from her shoulders, baring her beautiful breasts to the enjoyment of the men in the room they'd entered.
"Oh look, Dansmith brought us a treat." Another man stood, standing in front of Annalisa, his hands coming up to touch her face. "You look scared, little girl. Are you afraid of us?"
"Please don't let him do this to me. Help me! Please!"
The man laughed, his hands going from her shoulders to the softness of her breasts. His head dipped and Annalisa felt the touch of a man's lip on her nipple. Before, when she'd think about having this kind of relationship with a man, he'd been her husband and a first lieutenant of the realm. He'd wooed her, chased and won her and was her hero. He was a gentleman, nothing like these men here. They stood around her, pushing her from one to the other. She was grabbed and kissed with hard mouths and probing prying tongues. Her skirt was ripped and she felt it slipping, catching on her wide hips only to be forced even further down until she lost even that bit of a barrier from those drooling, jeering men.
She was tossed back to the first man and when she looked up and into his face, she screamed even harder. It had changed, gone from handsome to hard and evil. He opened his mouth, his fangs gleaming in the light of the candles and he flicked his tongue over them. "Now you know what we are, Annalisa. This is what your mother feared to happen if you were ever allowed to work here. This is what she knew we would do to you." He grinned widely and ran his tongue over his teeth once more.
Annalisa cringed back, wanting nothing to do with this man/monster that held her so tightly, so intimately. "Please," she whimpered, terrified beyond the capacity to speak with any volume. "Let me go."
"Oh, I just love it when they beg." He tipped his head back, in nostrils flaring as he inhaled greedily. "You smell of fear, so delicious, so delicate. I can hardly believe how luscious you smell." He dipped his head, burying his nose against the skin of her neck. "So delectable." He sighed and she screeched, tears streaming down her cheeks as she tried so hard to move away from him.
"No-o-o!" She tried desperately to pull away until he shook her, his finger skimming down between her eyes and off the tip of her nose to tap against her lips.
"Now, Annalisa, slow down a bit. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. What can I do for you?"
"Let me go, please?" Her tone was bordering on desperate and she stared up at the twisted face of the man who'd captured her earlier. She was a step away from hysterical and she took a couple of deep breaths, waiting for her captor to answer.
A slow smile grew upon his lips and he reached out, grasping her breast in one hand. She grabbed his wrist, doing everything in her power to get him to let go. Just as the woman opened her mouth to scream, Christian removed his hand. "I know what happens next. Matthew, a lot of our kind act with little concern to humans and worry little about their welfare. My brother and I are not like that. We feed, but we never kill and we never, ever force someone to do what they do not wish to do. I know you don't believe that, but I want you to see for yourself.
Matthew curled his upper lip in a sneer. "Your kind is all the same."
"If that is what you think, looking won't hurt you any at all." Christian tried to keep his expression calm, but it wasn't easy, especially with the sneer that was on the face of the werewolf.
"Fine," Matthew growled, rising quickly to his feet. Rafe growled and readied himself to attack before Christian's hand landed on his shoulder, holding him back.
"Slow down, Rafe. This is necessary." He stood as Matthew moved closer to him, meeting his eyes.
"How does this work?" Matthew asked, his hands hovering around Christian's face.
Christian lifted his hands, grabbing Matthew's huge palm and pulling it over his eyes. "This might make you a bit dizzy, Matthew. Vampires think a bit quicker than humans do. I'll try to slow down my thoughts."
