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have started it. I know him. He’s a brute, but a cautious brute.”
    “Can he? Win, I mean. I know what you said in the conference room, but this is just between you and me. Can he beat Lucas?”
    “Anything is possible, but, no, I don’t believe he will defeat Lucas. Lucas only put off responding to Klemens’s provocations as long as he did, because I asked him to. I wanted Duncan in place and confirmed as a member of the Council first. It wasn’t easy for him, but he did it for Duncan and for me. But Klemens doesn’t know that, and he may very well have interpreted Lucas’s failure to respond as a sign of weakness. But Lucas has never been weak. He was a thief out of Dublin when I met him, a street brawler whose instincts for survival were finely honed. He goes for the throat every time. But Klemens doesn’t know that, just as he doesn’t know that Lucas is my child.
    “Only a very few are privy to the history between Lucas and me, and you are now among them. So, can I trust you, my Cyn?” He lifted his head to bite gently at her lower lip, before kissing her jaw and moving down to nip at her elegant neck.
    Cyn’s heartbeat quickened, and a pulse of heat stirred along his belly where her sex was pressed against him. “You can trust me,” she whispered, fisting her hands in his hair and bending over for a long, hard kiss.
    He licked her lip when she came up for air. “You will not leave the house without Robbie and one other. Let Robbie choose, but I want two guards with you at all times.”
    Cyn gave a long-suffering sigh, but said, “Fine. Two guards, I promise.”
    He slapped her ass. “Come take a shower with me. Juro’s briefing on the shooting is soon, and you don’t want to miss that.”
    She sat up with such alacrity, so eager to get to the damn briefing, that it was vaguely insulting. So he flexed his abdominals and stretched up to take one of her plump nipples into his mouth, sucking until he had enough delicate breast to scrape his fangs along the tender skin. He drew a tiny taste of her delectable blood, swirling his tongue around her nipple to lap it up. Cyn shivered and ground her pussy against his abdomen until he could feel the hard nub of her engorged clit. Raphael licked lazily at the last drops of blood from her breast, then lay back, watching through half-lidded eyes as Cyn pleasured herself, rocking against him, her full breasts swaying, her head thrown back, eyes closed. He shifted his grip from her ass to her breasts, weighing the heavy globes in his hands, thumbing her nipples as she rocked faster and faster. He felt the tension in her muscles a second before she exploded in climax, her back arching, her arms cradling her head as her cries filled the room.
    She collapsed on top of him, and Raphael smiled in private satisfaction as he stroked her trembling body. He caught the light, salty scent of her tears and tightened his arms around her.
    “Others have tried, my Cyn,” he murmured. “They are long gone, while I am still here.”
    “I know.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. “But I’m selfish. I don’t care about then, only now.”
    Raphael kissed the top of her head. “And I now have more reason than ever to stay alive, lubimaya . I’ve lived five hundred years; I want another five hundred with you. I will destroy these foes, just as I destroyed the others.”
    She pinched his side. “You’d better.”
    Raphael laughed. “Come, Juro will only wait so long.”
    “Oh, bullshit. He’ll wait until you’re ready, and you know it.”
    Raphael sat up, taking her with him. “Yes, Juro would wait. But you won’t, so let’s take that shower.”

 
    Chapter Three

    Cyn was pulling on her boots when she heard a helicopter overhead. Normally, the sound wouldn’t have rated a moment’s notice. Grand Junction was a major city, after all. But this helicopter wasn’t passing by, it was circling. She frowned. An attack from above seemed too blatant, even for a