"I hadn't pegged you as someone who went in for that sort of thing," he said slowly.

"What sort of thing?" I asked, confused. Why wasn't he diving in like earlier? I was sure he was going to feed then; what was holding him back now?

"I'm not going to bite you."

I blinked at the disapproval in his eyes. "You're not?"

"No."

"Not even a little nibble? Just a light snack? Dessert?"

He just looked at me for a moment, his breath ragged as he withdrew his hands from the fun zones of my body and let them hang alongside the chair.

"Joy, I don't know what you want—"

I squirmed against his crotch.

"All right, I do know what you want, but I don't know why you want it, nor why you're holding whatever you have found out about me over my head, but I do know this."

My heart did a little dive to my feet. He wasn't going to bite me and make me his Beloved? Not even after I went through all the angst to believe in what he was, to trust him with myself despite the disturbing vision?

"I know that it's not going to be physically possible for me to remove you from your current position," he continued, his voice suddenly hoarse. It just added a new element of sexy to a man already at the top of the tingle-meter. "I thought I might be able to, but that was before you sucked the brains right out of my head with kisses so hot they could melt steel. My grandfather was right."

"Huh?"

"When he told me that a St. John man knows from the very first meeting who the woman is that he will spend his life with. He was right. I know."

I sat perfectly still as my heart did a happy somersault. "I don't think that sentence is grammatically correct, but it is hands down the loveliest thing anyone has ever said to me."

He twitched in response to my words. We both looked down at the twitching part. Raphael's adorable lips twisted into a grimacing smile. "You see? Even my body knows. And if just thinking about you has this effect on me, how am I supposed to make you remove those long, glorious thighs from where they're burning every inch of my legs, and walk away? It's just not possible." He shook his head for emphasis.

I disentangled my fingers from his hair and sat back on his thighs. He shuddered, and his fingers spasmed, but he didn't grab me.

I didn't quite understand what was going on here, but I was determined to figure it out. "Let me see if I have the sequence of events straight here."

He nodded, his eyes momentarily devouring the exposed parts of my breasts before he gulped back a big breath of air, and nodded again.

"First you came into my room and did weird things to the air, and then you kissed me and were about to feed on my blood when I begged you to stop."

"What?" he asked, his eyes narrowing. "What are you talking about?"

"You came into my room," I answered, a bit annoyed with this pretense he obviously insisted on maintaining. It wasn't necessary; he certainly had no need to fear I'd expose what he really was.

"You invited me," he protested. "You gave me come hither looks, and you're wearing that flimsy little bit of nothing, and if that's not an invitation, then I'd certainly appreciate you telling me what it was."

"No, not just now; earlier. You nibbled my neck, and you were about to sink fang."

He stared at me, his jaw slack for a moment.

"Then, when I beat you back, you went away, only to return a couple of hours later and refuse to do what you wanted to earlier."

"Joy." Raphael put both hands on my thighs. He twitched again. "I want you to listen very carefully to what I say, because I'm not sure how much longer I can sit like this with you all warm and inviting and hotter than purgatory without actually going insane, but I did not come into your room earlier this evening."

I stopped staring at his crotch and blinked at him. "You didn't?"

His eyes held mine in a solemn gaze. "No, I didn't."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely."

"Maybe you forgot?" I really didn't want to think that my midnight visitor wasn't him.

"Joy—" I shifted on his lap and he groaned, his face tight with strain. "God help me, woman, stop tormenting me like that! I'll say this one more time, and then you're going to remove your luscious self from my lap and allow me to go back to my own bed. I did not come here earlier and touch you."

"You make it sound like touching me is something repugnant," I said indignantly, pulling back.

"Do I look like I'm repulsed by you?"

He didn't Especially the bulgy parts of him. "Well, no—"

His eyes smoldered into mine as his fingers clutched my hips. "I am a man, just a man, but a man who has limits to what sort of torture he can stand, and if you wiggle just one more time, I'm going to die and then you'll have to explain to the police why you have a dead Englishman in your room."

I resisted the urge to move again. He really did look like he was at the end of his rope. I decided to leave the subject of who had visited me earlier and tackle something else he'd said. "What exactly did you mean when you asked what I knew about you? Did you mean to imply that I was blackmailing you about something? Do you have some deep, dark secret that you're not telling me?"

He grunted in pain as I leaned forward, the better to see into his shuttered eyes. "Forget I mentioned it. I was simply being overly cautious. It's of no matter."

I touched the frown wrinkling between his brows. "Are you in some sort of trouble?"

He caught my hand and looked at it for a moment before kissing the tips of my fingers, his tongue flicking against my suddenly sensitized skin.

"Joy, I want to make love to you, but I don't think now is the right time. You're obviously distressed about something that happened earlier, and… well, much as I would like to take you up on your offer, I don't think tonight is the best time for either of us. I think it would be better if I left."

I touched my fingers to his lips for a moment, disappointment warring with the knowledge that he was being wise when I was not. "You don't want me?"

He put my hand on his groin. The evidence there was indisputable.

"You do want me?"

"So much that I'm willing to wait until a time when I can show you that with us, lovemaking will be more profound than just sex, yes."

"We'll be profound together?" Gee, I was just brimming with questions.

He twined a strand of my hair around his finger. "Oh, yes, baby. We'll be very profound together."

I nodded and thought about what he said for a moment, then got off his lap. "Are you sure it wasn't you earlier?"

"Quite sure," he said, standing up, grimacing as he adjusted his pants.

I tried to piece the puzzle together—to see how the early Raphael and the present Raphael fit together—but they didn't mesh. I blinked a couple of times in an attempt to clear my mind. "Well, if it wasn't you who came calling, then who was it?"

That, as it turned out, was indeed the question.