Brimstone Seduction (14 page)

Kat bit back another cry of her sister's name. The woman had run from her when she'd called out. It was doubtful she'd get a different result now. She could only hurry after the woman in the crimson cloak and hope that her instincts were right.

Victoria was still in the opera house. And she'd come out of hiding to find Katherine tonight.

Chapter 17

H
er footsteps were muted by the party noise at first, but as she chased Victoria farther and farther from the crowd, the music and roar dimmed and her steps grew louder. She could hear a hint of movement ahead of her, down each corridor, around each bend—a scuff of a tread, a sharper sound as a boot heel connected with the ground—but those noises, too, began to fade.

She found herself alone in an unfamiliar part of the sprawling building with only her own footsteps and her own quickened breathing making any sound.

Kat slowed at the intersection of the hallway she hurried down and a larger corridor that had no sconces glowing. The whole length of it, this way and that, was devoid of light. She stood, undecided, straining her ears to pick up any hint of sound. Both directions were black as pitch with darkness so thick it seemed impenetrable.

How had Victoria found her way, and why had she run from a sister desperate to find her?

There.

Was that a sound?

Kat stepped toward the left, but stopped when the sound of a footstep approached instead of retreated. Closer and closer someone came. Instinct urged her to back away. But her desire to see Victoria and make sure she was okay warred with self-preservation.

And won.

She stood her ground. The steps came closer still.

“A strange place to hunt for daemons, I must confess. Yet there are so many at this fete that my problem is choosing where to strike first.” The voice was unfamiliar to her, but not so the robes that revealed themselves around the ruddy shine of a monk's face that at first seemed to float toward her from the shadows.

One of Reynard's men had found her, or else his stalking of l'Opéra Severne was a chance hunting foray that had proved crazily fortuitous to his master.

“Leave me and my sister alone,” Kat said.

He came toward her with his pale hands stretched to the sides as if in supplication. His gesture said he had no weapons and meant her no harm. She knew better. Even if he hadn't been tall and broad and obviously scarred from his warrior training, his intent to harm was inherent in his quest to use her to harm others. She would never know peace or freedom as long as the Order hounded her footsteps.

And what of Victoria?

Her disappearance. The charred bracelet. Her almost haunting appearance near Katherine tonight, and now this sudden showing of their worst nightmare. Stalking, stalking, never stopping. Had Victoria been harmed, or had she finally decided to hide deeper than they ever had before?

“I'm no longer the Order's bloodhound. Tell Reynard that. Tell him I'm finished. I won't be his servant anymore. I want no part of his obsession,” Kat said.

The monk's face hardened. His hands, still held out at his sides, fisted. His hands were a truer indication of his intentions than his words.

“His obsession. His? We all have a divine mission entrusted to us by Samuel himself. Your family was blessed by his kiss. Specially selected by him to lead us to our prey,” the monk said. He spat out each word as if it was a curse.

“Well, I refuse. You can tell Reynard. No more,” Kat said.

She couldn't stop the tremor in her voice. The crowd from the party was so far away, there was no longer even a murmur from them. She and the monk stood completely alone. Isolated. Even the low hum she usually heard from the walls was silent.

“Where's your hellhound when I need him, Severne?” Kat muttered, but only the walls could hear her.

She was alone with a trained killer. A man used to dispatching daemons easily. He was not so proficient as his master, perhaps, but still formidable. And deadly.

“You can tell him yourself. I'm sure he'll be eager to see you again,” the monk said. “It is your duty to come with me. It will be my duty to father the next generation of daemon Seekers. I've beaten Simon to the prize.”

His anger had turned snaky and triumphant. His grimace turned up into a thin smile. He'd seen her glance around for help or a weapon. He'd seen her eyes go hollow when there was no help to be found. No witness for whatever he was about to do.

The monk stepped forward. Kat's heart jumped, and she stutter-stepped back. In the heavy skirts of the ball gown, she could never outrun him. All the Order's monks were as physically fit as soldiers, but this man was the largest she'd ever seen.

She wasn't expecting the harsh laughter that erupted from the monk's mouth or the wide grin that split his face. He was a serious hunter who rarely had the luxury of toying with his daemon prey. She, on the other hand, amused him. He thought she presented him with an opportunity to play.

Katherine stilled. Ball gown or not, she would make him regret that laugh. She could at least spoil his game.

She was a cellist.

Not a hunter.

Not a daemon.

But she was a fighter. She'd been fighting this battle her whole life.

When he saw her serious stance, his grin faded. “Come with me quietly and no one needs to get hurt,” he said.

His cajoling tone upped her anger exponentially.

“I won't go quietly. You need to hurt,” Kat said. “You need to bleed.”

This time when he moved, he closed the gap between them without laughter. As he reached her, she dropped back in a defensive stance. She braced her body. She lifted her fists.

But a growl erupted from the shadows.

Unlike when the monk had stepped forward out of the shadows like a pale apparition, Grim brought the inky black of the corridor with him. Shadows clung to his fur so even when he leaped between them, it was hard to see where darkness ended and hellhound began.

“Samuel's kiss,” the monk cursed. He fell backward in retreat, clumsily shuffling several paces away from the huge hound.

Grim bared his teeth. The white of his gaping maw startled, his giant teeth easily distinguished from the less distinct animal that bared them.

Had those teeth lengthened and thickened since the last time she'd seen them?

It was only then that Kat realized Grim had never truly threatened her. His ferocity had always been in check, muted for her benefit. He gave no such quarter to the Order of Samuel.

“Call him off. Tell him we'll be married. We will work together to fulfill Samuel's gift,” the monk ordered.

This time it was Katherine's turn to smile. She did it sweetly. It turned out a cellist had no need for teeth and claws when such lovely ones were hers to borrow.

“I told you. I quit,” Kat said. “Grim.”

She didn't have to say more. The monk had already turned to run. Grim disappeared after the panicked sprint of the man who would have gladly dragged Katherine back to his master...once he'd finished with her himself.

A waft of cold, crisp, forest-scented air washed back over her face. The atmosphere contracted as if the pressure had changed. Her ears popped. Then the dusty, close corridor returned to the way it had been.

Grim was now chasing the monk over pathways she couldn't follow.

Instead, Kat turned and hurried in the other direction. She would try to find her sister all night long if she had to while Grim kept her stalker occupied elsewhere. A greater urgency now drove her search. If Reynard's men were here, he wouldn't be far behind. He'd sent his minions into the opera world to find her. Her time at l'Opéra Severne was running out.

Chapter 18

W
hen she finally slowed to a stop, she was all alone and far from the distant crowded salons. There wasn't a hint of the crowd's murmur. Or of Grim's growls. There was only her, the carvings on the walls around her and her sister's dressing room. The key was tied beneath the folds of her dress, but she didn't retrieve it.

Severne's Brimstone heat had been the only thing to save her the night the shadow's touch had almost frozen her to death.

The dance had been a goodbye between them. She was sure of it.

Some pairs are destined to remain apart. But she couldn't confront the shadow without Severne's fire.

Kat clenched fingers gone suddenly icy. From fear. That was all. There was no preternatural chill in the air.

But there was a murmur.

He'd said not to focus on the murals. Not to look too closely. But it was impossible to ignore them completely. From the corner of her eye she could see a woman embraced by a man brought to his knees with disappointment or pain. Even closer to her than that was the tragically rendered figure of an angelic form whose wings were being shorn from his body with a merciless sword.

Once seen, she had to turn. She couldn't look away. The angel's head was bowed. Chains bound him. She could see the profile of his beautiful face. As she focused, she noticed his downcast gaze and his sculpted lips.

Kat backed away.

The carving had moved.

She saw it then. On the angelic carving, she saw a brooch with the stylized
L
like the one she'd found in her sister's room. It was carved at the figure's neck as if pinned to stiff folds of a snood around its regal throat. Veins stood out in the wooden figure's neck as the angel resisted whatever unseen forces held it in place.

Wait.

There. There. And there. The walls were filled with figures that wore similar brooches. They'd been hidden to her conscious perceptions only by their number and by the chaos of the murals' frenzied composition.

But when she'd found the brooch, it had been familiar because she'd seen it hundreds of times.

The dimly lit hall made the revelation of the brooches a startling horror, but as her eyes focused, the flickering lights revealed a worse observation...

The figure still moved. And it moved to look with staring, wooden eyes directly at her.

She didn't recognize the danger soon enough.

Though the carving's wings were shorn, the shadow that rose from the wall fully outstretched its wings as it had before. Those wings reached for her. She was already too cold to move. She could feel the icy feathers as their tips approached her damp cheeks.

“Katherine,” Severne said. He came up behind her. He placed Brimstone-heated hands on her shoulders and pulled her away from the wall. The shadow suddenly retreated as if sucked back into the carving that couldn't possibly have caused it.

“I thought I saw my sister. There was a monk from the Order of Samuel. I called Grim and he chased him away,” Kat said. “And the shadow was here again. Right here.”

“You're cold. I told you to be wary of the murals,” Severne said. “And Kat, Grim only answers to me.”

She didn't protest when he picked her up. She didn't argue. Her previous words had been expelled in puffs of white. Her jaw felt too cold to move.

It wasn't only his warmth she desired. It was the negation of his former proclamation. He thought they couldn't be together. He'd said she was alone.

She wanted to prove him wrong.

* * *

There was little to no light in the passages they took to her room. When she looked around, she couldn't see Grim. The hellhound was nowhere to be found. Had the poor monstrous beast been hurt by the priest he chased? The Order of Samuel was deadly. They trained from birth to defeat their enemies.

Poor, poor Grim. She'd feared him, but he had helped her when she needed him most. She could only hope he wasn't harmed.

Severne had been the master of l'Opéra Severne for a very long time. He must know it. Every passage. Every room. Every closet. Every face on its walls? He took her unerringly to her rooms. What must it be like for him to endure the stares of creatures like him, doomed to dwell in the opera house forever, but trapped in a never-ending purgatory of its walls?

She'd been distracted by her preparations for the ball and had left her room unlocked. He turned the antique knob and pushed the door open to carry her inside. Only then did she extricate herself from his protective embrace. She pressed against his hard chest and dropped to the floor when he released her. She moved several steps away. Then, when that didn't seem far enough removed from temptation, she moved several more.

The large suite was suddenly small.

The rumpled bed was an embarrassment. Not because it wasn't perfectly made, but because she could too easily picture herself on it, spread with him in passionate disarray.

She had edged toward the cello's corner without realizing it, but Severne noticed.

“Your music doesn't hide you from me. It doesn't protect you. It calls me. The siren song of your soul echoes the Brimstone in my blood. They sing together. They burn together.” He watched her for her reaction. She felt her color rise and hoped he thought it was a blush. She knew better. It was desire. She wanted to burn with him. No matter the consequences.

Playing had never banished him from her thoughts. Not like it banished Reynard. It had never been a screen or a shield with Severne. It had been a display. A revelation.

Then why had her hand wrapped around the neck of her beloved instrument now? Why did she find herself reaching for it when it wouldn't protect her against him?

“Do you want to call me to you? You play with fire,” Severne warned.

His voice had dropped, sweet and low. Threatening, but with the most delicious punishment she could imagine. His heat. His touch. Him drawn to her side. He had allowed himself a stride in her direction. She could see only a glimmer of his green eyes beneath the mask, a suggestion of sooty lashes. But he had stopped. He was holding himself back.

Katherine decided for him. They were a pair. Destiny be damned.

She rubbed a thoughtful thumb across the cello's strings. Her fingers detected the nonaudible vibration. Yet John Severne heard it somehow. He closed his eyes. He clenched his chiseled jaw. His flush deepened. He swallowed.

And held himself perfectly still rather than respond to the instrument.

Katherine sat. She embraced the well-loved maple between her knees. She brought the bow across its strings. This time the sound was loud enough for human ears. This time Severne's eyes flew open, and she was impaled by his vivid glare.

“You would torture me?” he said.

She paused. The last note swelled out, then faded, falling from the air like invisible rain. Only they could feel the pulsations of atmosphere disturbed and then settling on their skin. Severne turned his face to the sound as if his hard visage could feel the kiss of its diminishment.

Then silence.

The hollow potential for seductive music held in her hands.

“Not to torture. No,” Katherine said. She allowed her yearning to glow on her face. She showed him the ache in her eyes. Then she played again and watched him draw in a gasp of reaction as if the notes she played touched him physically, intimately. As if she wrapped her hand around him when she wrapped her hand around the cello to play.

She paused again. The sound faded around them.

He opened his eyes.

“But it is torturous,” Severne said. “Bliss and pain...there seems to be no in-between for us.”

“I don't want to hurt you. I only want to touch you. To reach you. To call you from whatever cold prison it is that holds you away from me,” Kat said.

The words weren't enough. She could play for hours and it wouldn't express the longing she had for Severne. This immortal creature she should have feared. And did. But still desired.

“Cold?” Severne laughed. He brought both hands up and burrowed them into his hair. Then he withdrew them into fists and paced away from her until he was on the opposite side of the room. “You feel my Brimstone burn. More than most. You've tasted my kiss. Damnation like ash on my tongue and you so very sweet. Cold?” he asked.

“You say some pairs are destined to be apart, like a warning before we've even been together. Yet you hold me like you'll never let me go. You're drawn to my music. Yet you push me away,” Kat said. “You kiss me to quiet my questions, yet your kiss answers so many, all by itself.” She stood and placed her cello to the side. She had refused to hide behind it. Now that she knew the truth, she wouldn't use it to seduce him. He would come to her or not without its call. “Aren't you cold and hard and impossible to touch?”

He didn't rush to answer, to contradict or confirm. He only crossed the room toward her, one step by agonizing step at a time. So slow. Until his approach seemed a confession he wanted to linger over.

See what I do for you.

Watch me.

Wait for me.

Welcome me.

Kat was weak in the knees by the time they stood toe to toe. Once again, the black of his tuxedo was pressed into the white of her voluminous skirts. She tilted her chin to look up at him. She didn't need the cello. It was a song in her veins. She didn't need music at all. Her affinity sang. The cello only allowed her to express it audibly for the world to hear. She heard it every day, every night, in every dream and waking moment.

“Not cold, Katherine. Never that. There's fire in me for you. Enough to immolate. I've sought to tamp it down. To bury it. To control it,” he said.

“Don't,” she replied.

Immolation.

Self-sacrifice by fire. She went there. Into the flames.

But it wasn't a hurried conflagration.

He reached for her face with one hand. She took one quivering breath when his warm fingers shook on her skin. How could his touch be so soft when he was all hard muscle and stone? How could the daemon master of l'Opéra Severne be hesitant and sweet?

But the exploratory thumb he brushed across her lips wasn't sweet. Like the thumb she'd brushed across her cello's strings, his thumb played her, using her soft gasps as a guide for which note should come next. From one corner of her mouth to the full swell of her lower lip, he caressed, and then he paused. He looked from the vulnerable gasp of her reaction to her eyes, then back again.

Her tongue darted out of its own volition. To taste his salty skin. To moisten the lips he teased.

He watched her lick. His eyes grew deeper and more serious. He moved his hand to hold her chin, and he closed the distance between his face and hers. He captured her lower lip in his mouth. He sought her bold tongue with his.

She would have melted to the floor. Her legs gave out beneath her. But he quickly pressed her to the wall, holding her up, sandwiched between its cool surface and his hard heat.

Did he taste her tangy cocktail as he hadn't tasted his own? Did he taste lemon on her tongue?

She tasted wood smoke. Not ash. The flavors on his tongue were rich and sweet and evocative of the moment when a log first becomes the flame. She tasted the sweet salt from his skin. He buried his hand in her hair, fiercely, until pins flew and chestnut curls tumbled down, and still he showed her he was far from cold. Because of his reaction to everything she did. His gasps. His widened eyes. The rise and fall of his muscled chest as his breathing caught, as it released.

She reached for his mask, and he paused. He stilled as if caught in a bargain he couldn't escape. She loosened the silken ties behind his head, and the black domino fell from his face. When she was able to see him fully again, it was almost as if she was seeing him for the first time. Behind the mask, he'd allowed his expression to soften. He didn't firm it again when the mask dropped away.

She reached for the buttons on his vest. Then on his shirt. He gave her time. No rush. He didn't pull away. She still feared retreat. Feared the withdrawal that always came.

But his face remained a soft revelation. Even though he was lean and chiseled and perfect, his expression had softened as he gasped just for her.

She was the one who rushed to find his heated skin. She splayed her hands on his chest. He was touchable. He was affected. Not cold. Never that.

He fumbled less. Though his hand had shaken on her cheek, he had no trouble with her formal clothes. Hooks and eyes, strings and lacings, buttons and ties...they all parted easily for his long-lived skill.

He was damned. Different. Doomed to be hunted and dispatched by men who used her like a divining rod to find their prey. Their deserving prey? Maybe. Possibly. She might be risking hell itself to hold him. But if so, why did he taste like paradise on her tongue and feel like salvation on her skin?

He pulled back from their kiss as the delicate bodice fell away from her breasts. Against the white crystals, her hardened nipples were dusky, dark and pink. The fairy Gothic dress had puddled into a tulle pool at her ankles. She stood before him in nothing but a sheer blush of stockings, a wisp of panties and her shoes.

And her mask.

Unlike his, hers was gossamer. It was nothing for him to reach up and brush it aside. It drifted to the ground like a glittering snowflake.

She hadn't been as practiced or quick with his clothes. His shirt was parted, his trousers loosened and low on his hips. He pulled her to him before she could loosen them more. He brought her down on top of him as he fell back on the bed.

She straddled him.

His hard beauty, unrelieved by any softness, was cupped between her thighs.

She could feel his need, and it was a natural extension of the steel she'd felt everywhere on him whenever they'd touched. She reached for his erection, the hardness she'd wrought rather than the hours of work in his torture chamber of a gym that had hardened him everywhere else. But he rolled her to the side. He pressed her to her back. Suddenly fast and completely in control.