Venice Vampyr - The Beginning

Isabella placed her earrings in the jewelry box on her dresser. Before she could close the lid, Raphael gripped her wrist from behind.

“Whose is this?”

She followed his look and saw him pointing at the black onyx ring that nestled in one corner. “Mine, of course.”

Raphael pulled in a sharp breath. “Yours?” He sounded accusatory. And like a stranger, the same stranger who’d told his brother he was merely using her.

The cold blast suddenly blowing against her neck did nothing to assuage her sudden fear of him. Trying to stamp out the uncomfortable silence between them, she added hastily, “It was my late husband’s. I inherited it.”

He appeared to relax at her words. “May I look at it?”

She nodded and watched him take the ring out of the box and examine it. “It’s unusual. Is this the family seal?”

“No. I don’t think it was his favorite ring either. He rarely wore it. And then he stopped wearing it completely.” She’d always wondered what Giovanni had liked about the odd piece of jewelry. She’d certainly never liked the ugly thing. But what intrigued her more was why Raphael seemed so interested in it. Did it have anything to do with his interest in Massimo and her husband’s family? “Why are you asking?”

“Just curious since it seems to be such a gaudy piece. So you said he stopped wearing it. When was that?”

“The month before his death. He was different then.” Isabella remembered how her husband had suddenly seemed changed. He’d been distant and unapproachable. And he’d started avoiding her. She’d wondered at the time whether he’d taken a mistress. He’d stayed away most nights.

“... Isabella?”

Raphael’s voice pulled her out of the depressing thoughts. “I’m sorry, what were you asking?” She met his gaze in the mirror and noticed how intense it was. It reminded her again of how he wanted to use her. His questions about her late husband only cemented the suspicion that not everything was like it seemed with her new husband.

How she could have allowed him to take her so fiercely in the study only a short hour earlier and to explore her in the most debauched way, was unfathomable to her. But her body had reacted to him in the only way it seemed to know: with unquenchable lust. She felt her face flush with embarrassment as she relived the memory of his possession. Her nipples beaded, and she felt her skin turn into gooseflesh.

When Raphael’s fingers suddenly grazed her nape, she flinched. He pulled away and met her with a surprised look in the mirror. Then he cleared his throat. “I was wondering if you could tell me more about him, about your late husband.”

“Why?” Her spine tingled with the unpleasant feeling of being interrogated.

He smiled at her now. “Because I don’t want to make the same mistakes in our marriage as he did.”

Isabella turned her head to him. She hadn’t expected his answer. “Mistakes? What makes you think he made mistakes? We had a perfectly agreeable marriage.”

“Agreeable,” he snorted. “I don’t want an agreeable marriage. I want a happy one.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No, my angel. Now tell me, what was he like?” He took the hairbrush out of her hand and started brushing her hair with it. She was startled by the intimate action.

“Well, if you must.” Then she sighed. “He never brushed my hair.”

Raphael’s smile was warm, and it extended to his eyes. The almost predatory, tense way with which he’d questioned her about Giovanni’s ring was gone. Maybe she had just imagined it.

“He was a good man. He provided for me, taught me how to help him run the business. I learned much from him. He was kind.” She paused, not knowing what else to say about him.

“Yet he never licked your *,” Raphael whispered close to her ear.

She dropped her lids. “He wasn’t that type of man.”

“What type, Isabella?” His breath ghosted over her shoulder.

“That … that,” she stammered, unable to concentrate when he was deliberately trying to make her body react to him.

“Passionate?” he helped.

“He was a measured man. Everything had its time and place. That’s why it was so strange …” So strange when he changed.

“What was strange?” Raphael continued brushing her hair with long and gentle strokes.

“Before his death. He was not the same man anymore.”

“In what way?”