Haunted by Your Touch

walls appear welcoming, while the ceiling had to be twenty feet high, with designs carved into what looked like opaque glass. A large leather chair had a book perched on its arm, facedown and open to mark its place. Boots I’d seen Rafael wear before were carelessly tucked into an open alcove next to more pairs of masculine footwear. Another archway, a smaller one, opened to a dark space that I couldn’t see inside but assumed must be a closet or bathroom.

And of course, in the center of the room was a large bed with sumptuous pillows and thick blankets in varying shades of indigo. A nearby fireplace cast low lights onto the bed, revealing that it was unmade, an indentation from a large body still visible in its surface.

Rafael’s room. By all accounts, the place he never brought anyone back to.

His arms encircled me from behind, pulling me against him. For a moment, I closed my eyes, absorbing the feel of his body and the heat sinking into my back from the bare skin of his chest. If circumstances had been different, I’d have turned around, pressed my mouth to his, and tumbled us both onto that inviting navy bed.

Instead, I stroked his arm with one hand while I surreptitiously dipped the other one into my gun belt. He brushed aside the hair on the back of my neck with his mouth, tracing his tongue into the sensitive dip there. Erotic tremors broke out across my skin, increasing when he breathed my name into the same spot with a voice gone scratchy from desire.

Damn, damn, damn him for making me feel this way, when he might be involved with Purebloods!

I unfastened my belt, letting it drop to the floor with both guns still in their holsters. Then I turned around, wrapping my arms quickly around his neck. His mouth came down onto mine, scorching me with passion, while his hands tightened on my waist to bring our bodies closer.

Those hands clenched convulsively in the next moment. I froze, my heart rate tripling, braced for pain but unable to extricate myself from his embrace. He didn’t strike out, though for the space of several heartbeats, I could tell he was lucid enough to. Then, slowly, his hands relaxed and he pulled away, a look on his face that I didn’t want to name.

Finally, his legs buckled and he fell to the floor with more grace than someone unconscious had a right to. The end of an empty syringe still protruded from his neck, a little something I’d carried in my gun belt for months in the hopes that I’d get to use it on Ashton one day. I’d never thought I’d use it on Rafael, and certainly not like this.

It paid to have a Partial relative employed at an animal reserve. That needle had been filled with enough sedative to fell a small elephant—or the two-hundred-pound ruler of Nocturna, as it turned out. I stared down at Rafael, guilt once more swirling inside me, before pushing it back with all the ruthlessness of my supernatural heritage. I’d had to do it. Somewhere in this castle that few ever saw the inside of had to be a link to Rafael and Purebloods. He couldn’t have ruled Nocturna for over two centuries without knowing far more than he claimed to about the kidnappings.

And I doubted that any of his people here would dare to disturb their master for the next several hours, at least. Not with what everyone had to assume we were doing. If I was stealthy enough, I could soon find out more about Rafael than anyone else had in decades. That information might mean the difference between life and death for some unlucky young Partials who ventured into Nocturna even though they, like me, knew the dangers.

Besides, once Rafael woke up, I’d better be long gone from here, or guilt would be the least of my problems with him.

After what had to be two hours of furtive searching, I was both frustrated and confused. I’d found nothing interesting except a lot of neat, barbaric antiques, and for all that the castle was large, so far I’d only come across four guards. Two of them seemed most interested in protecting the food in what I surmised was the kitchen, from the sounds of laughter, burping, and pots clanging together. The other guards were outside the castle, patrolling the perimeter and making sure no one snuck in by swimming the moat, I guessed. What I couldn’t understand was why.

For all its size and impressive adornments, the place seemed strangely barren of people. It didn’t make sense. Rafael was renowned for his fighting skills, true, but everyone had to sleep eventually, and he’d left himself virtually unprotected here.

The thought of Rafael and sleeping made another twinge of guilt flare in me. God, his face when he realized what I’d done! Even though I tried to push the image aside, it rose in my mind anyway. He’d looked shocked, which I’d expected, but there had been more to it than that.

He looked betrayed, my human conscience whispered.

I had no choice, the demon in me snarled back.

There are always choices, my conscience countered ruthlessly.

Not this time. I’d asked Rafael repeatedly why he had been there the night Ashton had taken Gloria, and every time he answered, some part of me knew he was lying. Why would he lie if he hadn’t been in on it somehow? Add that to the whispers about Rafael that Gloria’s parents had uncovered during their previous searches here, plus the things I’d heard about how he was always conveniently close by when Purebloods were sighted, and it all added up to one thing: guilty. My not wanting it to be true because of a long- held infatuation didn’t change that.

So, if I were the guilty ruler of a large dimension populated by Partials who would descend on me en masse if they found out about my involvement, where would I hide evidence of that guilt? What would I consider to be the least likely place where someone could stumble across some form of damning clue that would tie me to Purebloods? Somewhere in this house, obviously. For the average Partial, it was harder to get inside Rafael’s castle than it was for a typical American to get a private audience with the president. But this place was huge. Damn it, if only I had more time to search! There could be hidden catacombs beneath the foundations, tunnels, vaults, secret rooms—

Rooms. An image of Rafael’s bedroom flashed in my mind. It was his private sanctuary, the place he never brought anyone back into.…

Holy shit, I was so stupid! I’d spent all this time looking around the castle when I should’ve been concentrating on turning his bedroom upside down. I spun around, hugging the wall as I made my way back toward the main part of the castle. It took several agonizingly stretched-out minutes during which I was sure I’d be discovered, but eventually, I made it close enough to recognize where Rafael and I had first come in.

Now, where had we gone from there again?

Two lefts past the fancy sword display, I began to chant to myself, easing past the corner before ducking out into the open hallway. Then right at the ancient-looking tapestry…

By the time I passed the blacked-out window on the third floor, I was sweating even though the castle corridors were chilly and drafty. Then, once I reached Rafael’s wide bedroom door, that sweat turned cold on my skin. Logic said he should still be out like a light, but what if I was wrong? I’d never tranqued a three-quarter demon—or possible Pureblood—before; how did I know how long the sedative would keep him out?

Only one way to find out. I took a deep breath, then gingerly opened the door, muscles bunched to run if I heard the slightest sound of movement within. When nothing but deep, rhythmic breathing met my ears, I dared to go all the way inside before closing the door quietly behind me.

Rafael lay right where I’d left him, his big body still in that elegant sprawl. Guilt flared in me once again, but I squashed it. If I was wrong, I’d wait for him to wake up and then offer the most sincere apology of my life, but until then, I had a job to do. I stepped around him, one hand on my gun just in case he’d been faking sleep to lunge at me. When he still didn’t move, I began my search.

I owed my animal reserve relative huge for this one.

Nothing was under the bed or in the three closets that artistically blended into the room. Of course. That would have been too obvious. I tapped along all the walls, feeling for any inconsistency in the stone that might mean a barrier. Then I piled pieces of furniture on top of each other to make a precarious ladder that I fell from twice before ascertaining that the opaque glass with the odd designs was not a gateway to another dimension.

Finally, prodded by a pinch from my bladder, I went into the bathroom. The tub was sunken, made of highly