Ritual Sins by Anne Stuart Page B

and he had no interest in her throat, her life’s blood. He smiled down at her, oh, so gently, and he felt her shiver. “Maybe I was bored,” he said. “Maybe I wanted to see if I could get you off my back. Maybe I wanted to see if I could get you on yours.”
    He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to put his mouth against hers and see what she’d do. She’d panic, of course. Especially when he used his tongue. It would be worth it, just to taste her shock, just to risk being seen by some of his blind-eyed followers. He leaned toward her, hungry. Like a wolf.
    “Luke?” Bobby Ray Shatney’s voice was soft and respectful and faintly slurred from the Thorazine, and for a moment Luke didn’t turn his head, still concentrating on his victim. She was looking up at him with a lovely combination of surprise and anger, and if Bobby Ray hadn’t chosen to interfere she would have learned just what she had to be afraid of. He let the moment linger, then released her, turning to the newcomer. Rachelscuttled through the doorway like a startled crab, barreling into Bobby Ray.
    “Blessings,” Luke said softly. “What is it?”
    “Catherine sent me to find you. It’s time for the commitment.”
    He’d forgotten. Angel McGuiness’s smashed body needed to be buried with all the new age pomp and circumstance befitting a lost member of the flock. He wondered for a moment whether Rachel felt any remorse, whether he should force her to come with him and see what her curiosity and thirst for vengeance had wrought. If she hadn’t been so determined to bring him down, Angel would still be safely locked away. She wouldn’t have had to take a swan dive off the fourth-story roof of the healing center onto a cement walkway.
    But Rachel wasn’t a woman who spent much time considering her own shortcomings, her own guilt. She was too caught up in blaming others. Which was just fine by him—it only made her more vulnerable. And in the end, her guilt would overtake her, destroying her.
    But not before he had her.
    “Of course,” he murmured. “Why don’t you escort Rachel to my rooms while I take care of this? She wanted some moments of peace and quiet.”
    He could see that she wanted to protest, butBobby Ray had already put a courteous hand under her elbow and was leading her away. Luke watched them go with a faint note of foreboding. Alfred made sure that Bobby Ray was drugged into docility, and he believed firmly in Luke’s divinity. There was no way he could prove a danger to anyone in the compound, even if he wanted to. Rachel was entirely safe with him.
    Nevertheless, Luke decided that Angel didn’t need much more than a cursory service, committing her crushed body to the sun-baked earth of Santa Dolores. Our Lady of Sorrows.
    Suddenly she could breathe again. Rachel glanced at the young man who led her down the corridor, doubtful, but he seemed the soul of sweetness. He was probably the youngest person she’d seen there, maybe in his late teens. Another lost innocent led astray by the master con man, she thought grimly, shaking off the oppressive feeling he always left her with.
    She felt mauled, and yet he hadn’t touched her. Her entire body felt bruised, sensitized, aching, as if he’d put his hands on her.
    But he hadn’t touched her. And he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t dare.
    “Where did Luke go?” she asked the boy. On closer inspection he wasn’t that much younger than she was—maybe in his early twenties, butthere was something curiously unformed, childish about him. With his angelic face and tousled shock of dark hair he seemed like an overgrown Tom Sawyer, all ingenuous charm and awkwardness.
    “To bury Angel,” he replied in his sweet, quiet voice.
    She shouldn’t have asked. It wasn’t her fault that Angel had died. They should have known better than to leave a newcomer with that kind of responsibility. Besides, Calvin had been behind it all. If anyone was responsible for Angel’s death it was the jealous