Page 15 of The Raven

“Yeah. Someone broke into your flower shop, and you called the police. I took the report and came to your shop. You were…shocked,” I chuckled, recalling the way she threw herself into my arms. It was shortly after that she broke down in tears and told me she was engaged.

“We were hugging when Eric walked in and asked what was going on.”

“You met him?” she replied, astonished.

I smirked. “Yeah. We became good friends.”

Her brows shot to her hairline. “You were friends?”

“We all were. The three of us. I wanted to hate Eric because in my mind, he stole you from me. But I couldn’t hate him. He was too good a person to hate, and it was obvious how happy he made you.”

Shame filtered into her blue eyes, and she bit her bottom lip. “I betrayed Eric,” she whispered, not quite able to meet my gaze. “Last night when we…I betrayed him.”

Giving in to the need to touch her, I reached out and placed my hand on the curve of her hip and let it rest there. “From what I knew of Eric, he would have understood. He knew about our past, and he always used to say-”

“My heart was big enough to love the two of you,” she interrupted, finishing my sentence. A hint of disbelief coated her voice, almost as if she’d just remembered a snippet from her past.

For a few minutes, neither of us spoke as we stared at each other, a million memories from the past racing through my head and mixing with the questions I’d been desperate to ask her since she reappeared in my life.

“Can I ask you something now?” I said, breaking the silence. She nodded. “How are you here?”

Her eyes darted between mine as she gave herself a few seconds before replying. “I don’t know. I just…woke up in the in-between and met Oz.”

“Who’s Oz?”

“Osiris. He was waiting for me. He showed me what happened on the night the Vipers killed me,” she replied, her lips pulling into a sad smile.

Defeat swirled through me like a vortex. Osiris was the God of the deceased. She really was dead.

“He gave me a choice,” she continued, shifting closer to me so our faces were only an inch apart. “He showed me what happened, and he told me I had a choice to make if I wanted my soul to rest.”

It sounded like something right out of a film or a book. I tightened my grip on her hip, feeling the firmness of her body, and reassuring myself that this wasn’t all in my head.

“A soul can’t rest until it resolves its unfinished business,” I whispered, repeating the words she’d said to me in the alley.

She nodded, her gaze dropping to my lips as a look of uncertainty washed over her face. “I don’t have long,” she said, meeting my eyes again. “I have to finish what I’ve started or I’ll never find peace.”

“How long do you have?” I swallowed, pushing down the emotions clawing their way up my throat.

“Until Halloween. One year since they killed me.”

Fuck. Halloween was two days away.

An invisible sledgehammer cracked my heart in two as my mind spun. I couldn’t lose her. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. But the thought of her beautiful soul never finding peace was a thousand times worse than losing her again.

“Let me help you.”

“No,” she said, her voice firm, and her eyes blazing with determination. “They can’t hurt me, but they can hurt you.”

I squeezed her hip. “They can hurt you, Raven. They hurt you last night. I won’t stand back and watch them do that to you again.”

Her hand reached out to stroke my cheek, her fingertips brushing tenderly across my skin and leaving a path of fire. “And I won’t stand back and watch them kill you, Mase,” she said softly. “You…you mean too much to me to allow that to happen.”

Catching me off guard, she pressed her lips against mine, delicate at first as if she wasn’t sure how I would react.

I couldn’t stop the moan from leaving me at getting to taste her mouth again.

When my fingertips dug into her hip, she deepened the kiss before rolling me onto my back and hovering over me to continue claiming my mouth.

Because that was what she was doing. Claiming. She kissed me with raw passion, almost as if she were telling the mortal world and the underworld that I belonged to her, and that no one would take me away.

Blood rushed to my cock as my hand slid under the hem of her shirt and brushed along the smooth skin of her thigh. Before I had the chance, Raven yanked the top over her head, her eyes blazing with desire.

At some point, she’d removed her bra, something I was only just noticing, distracted by our intense chat. My gaze dropped to her beautifully pink nipples, my mouth watering with the need for a taste.

But when she reached under the cover and wrapped her hand around my cock, I squeezed my eyes shut, the incredible sensation hitting me straight in the balls and making my cock harder than steel.

“I need you inside me again, Mase,” she whispered, running her hand up and down my cock a few more times before climbing on top so she was straddling me.

I hissed when she lined up her pussy and lowered herself onto my shaft, her head tipping back as I filled her to the hilt.

“Fuck, Raven. I dreamed about this all the time we were apart,” I breathed, my hands landing on her hips when she slowly started rolling them.

“Tell me more, Mase. Tell me more about our past.”

Trying to concentrate on not blowing my load after only a few thrusts, I waded through the countless memories I held onto from our past. “The first day we met, you declared that I was your new best friend.”

Her eyes closed as a fond smile crept over her mouth, her hips continuing to roll at a devastatingly slow pace. “I remember. You said you didn’t have girls as friends.”

“Yeah, but you soon wormed your way in,” I replied, my heart racing as she finally increased her pace, a crease forming between her brows.

“What else?”

“You punched a boy at our school because he called me stupid,” I gritted out, holding back the need to flip her onto her back and pound the fuck out of her. “You stood over him and said that I was the cleverest person you ever knew.”

Her beautiful smile widened. “Sounds like something I would do. Tell me about the beach,” she panted. “I saw us as kids playing on the sand.”

Despite my climax nearing, confusion rolled through me. “We never went to the beach, Blackbird.”

“Oh.”

She fell silent aside from moans of pleasure leaving her lips as she chased her climax. Unable to hold back, I sat up, driving my cock in deeper. Her eyes shot open as I moved her legs to wrap around my waist, bringing her closer to me.

She laced her arms around my neck and brought her forehead to mine, and as we continued to meet each other thrust for thrust, she stared into my eyes.

My heart pounded. Not from the exertion, but from the rush of love I felt at the moment.

I didn’t think I would survive losing Raven a second time.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to.