Brimstone Seduction (17 page)

Chapter 24

S
he chose to be here. Always before, she'd obeyed her affinity for daemons, reluctantly, giving into the pull when she couldn't resist any longer. She stood across from Severne, and the pull of his Brimstone blood was so strong it vibrated every cell in her body.

Kat was more alive than she'd ever been. But not because of her affinity for daemons. She chose to be here.

Severne wasn't exerting any daemon influence. She wasn't a helpless bloodhound.

“I've never allowed myself to imagine you here,” Severne confessed. His accented tones were liquid pleasure to her ears. His voice spilled over her body, already sensitized by her affinity, in waves. She trembled as the sound of it lapped her skin. “You. Here. In my rooms. It's a dream,” he continued.

But when he moved to stand closer to her, the heat from his body was real. His tall, hard physique wasn't insubstantial at all.

“You're very real to me. As if everything that came before was the dream and I'm waking to you,” Kat whispered.

He raised his hand to brush tendrils of hair back from her face. So soft. So light. As if he tested their theories of dream versus reality to see which of them was right. When he discovered solid hair and skin, he cupped the side of her face. Still hesitant. Still testing.

“I'm here,” Kat assured him. Though his touch made her feel so light she might be less substantial than she should have been. It seemed she might be able to float away.

“I'm glad,” Severne said.

His hand slid around to the nape of her neck and he gently urged her nearer to him. She obeyed, but only by a step because she wanted to look up into his shadowed face. He searched her expression, too, as if he still confirmed she was solid and not a figment of his imagination. Then he followed his gaze with his fingers. He trailed warm, calloused digits over her cheeks, jaw and neck until she drew in breath at the sensual tickle of his explorations.

This wasn't loss of control like the night of the masquerade. This was conscious capitulation to desire. For him as well as for her. His willingness to reach out made her knees weak. Suddenly she was terrified, and her heartbeat quickened. She tried to prevent her respiration from giving away her fears, but breathing normally while he touched her didn't seem to be an option.

His fingers soothed down to trace the edges of her collarbone exposed by the delicate silk bodice of her dress. His gaze moved from his fingers to her skin and to her face. He watched her reaction as her breath became shallow and quick, as her flush deepened, as her pulse raced in the concavity below her throat.

She swallowed.

And he noted the movement. He followed it by pressing one gentle finger on her pulse where it leaped beneath his gaze.

“You're right. You're here with me. This isn't a dream,” he teased.

Then he dipped his head to press his lips to the pulse that betrayed her fear and desire.

His mouth overwhelmed the tingling of her affinity with a rush of hotter, more urgent reasons to get closer to this being who called her to him. This was age-old magic having nothing to do with Samuel's gift. It was Severne's kiss that was a much stronger draw than the affinity had ever been.

Kat cried out, and he responded by wrapping the steel of his arms around her sagging body. Her knees had finally succumbed to the sensations stealing their strength. It wasn't daemon influence. He used only wicked masculine seduction.

The move to hold her took his mouth from her skin, but he rectified the separation immediately by tasting the line of her jaw to the tender spot beneath her ear. His teeth nipped there as if a mere taste wasn't enough.

“Very real,” he said in a low murmur against her neck.

Kat had reached for his shoulders when her knees gave out. Now she smoothed her hands to his neck, feeling his hardness and his strength, until she threaded her fingers into his dark hair. It was silky against her palms, a discovery of softness like the full lower lip that even now brushed her skin.

This wasn't rushed and reluctant. This wasn't a stolen moment like before. This was a slower exploration, a savoring of the attraction they'd resisted since the first night they met.

The difference frightened her because it was an intensification she wasn't sure she could face tomorrow.

But it also seduced.

Her body throbbed. Her heart pounded. Her head was light with possibilities because they were both here and neither of them planned to run away.

“With your simple gown and your hair tumbled down, I've never seen you more beautiful,” he said. He had buried both hands into her chignon and he held handfuls of her hair in his fists. He tightened his fingers, and she gasped as he held her in place. Her head was tilted back by the pressure to give him the best access to her mouth.

But he didn't swoop. He didn't rush. He looked his fill first. From her eyes to her lips to see how she gasped for him, to see how she held her breath when the moment was prolonged.

Her nipples hardened.

Her hands tightened.

She did hold her breath until the tightness and expectation seemed prepared to burst.

And then he leaned slowly to press his mouth to hers.

Their lips clung. Their mouths opened. Tongues slid hungrily together. And pleasure arched from that rough, velvet contact to the tender core of her body that still hummed from the physicality of her performance and the affinity between them that danced to the music she'd made.

Kissing Severne was a full-body experience just as playing her cello was.

Tension stretched in her stomach and lower as if strings of her soul had been tightened until taut.

As his smoky tongue teased and tasted deeply of her gasps, he plucked those taut strings again and again. He might as well have touched her in the same intimate ways as he'd touched her before.

She used his body for support. She couldn't stand. But when his hands moved from her hair, down her silk-covered back to her hips, she melted even more.

He lifted her into his strength, curving his back so she was pressed against his iron body. He cupped and held her bottom, and she moaned because her long dress hindered her legs. She whimpered her need and he responded with masculine murmurs.

“Of all the things that have been in our way, this is nothing,” he said.

He slid the gray silk up and up. He bunched the fabric as they kissed. Slowly, until after what seemed an age, she was able to wrap her legs around his waist. The affinity had become such a part of her physical reaction to Severne, she could no longer separate the two. She thrummed with need.

And only he could play her.

She reached for his shirt. She released his buttons—one, two, three—until the shirt and his tuxedo jacket were pressed off his shoulders. The clothing caught at his bent elbows when he didn't straighten his arms.

Kat hissed as her hand came into contact with his scorched tattoo. His marks were almost painfully hot.

“Careful. You might burn,” he warned.

She'd already ignored that warning to be here tonight.

The heat was not quite pain. She explored each mark with her fingers. Then she risked leaning down to kiss each one in turn as if she could heal them and erase them by not being afraid. She didn't know what they meant, but he covered them whenever he was in public. They weren't marks he was proud to carry.

“Katherine, no,” he said.

But she ignored him.

He let her slide to her feet and he tried to back away, but their bodies still clung together. His moved. Hers followed. It only took a few steps for them to make it to the bed. He stopped with its edge against the backs of his legs.

She pressed his jacket and his shirt the rest of the way from his arms so he stood bared from the waist up. He'd chosen to be with her. He'd decided to explore the desire they couldn't deny. But he hadn't realized the exploration would go both ways.

“Severne,
yes
,” Kat said.

She wouldn't be denied.

Her hands moved of their own volition, drawn by desire, but also by tenderness and sensual curiosity. She traced the marble-hard perfection of his chest, over the swell of his pectoral muscles, down to his abdomen. She could feel his Brimstone heat, his heartbeat and his held breath when his chest swelled beneath her fingers.

He released that breath in a long, quavering exhalation as her hands found his belt.

But he didn't say no again.

She unbuckled his belt. She unbuttoned and unzipped his pants. He watched her movements with glittering, dark eyes. She was only so bold. She couldn't look closely into his eyes to see if there was any green.

Unlike the rest of him, his erection was hard because of hunger, not because of denial. She had caused the heated iron that filled her hand. She gripped. She stroked. Reveling in what she had wrought. His head fell back, and the moment was the opposite of all the hours he'd spent in the gym honing away his heart and his desires.

His body was starved of all but muscled necessity.

His erection was hunger that couldn't be denied.

Katherine didn't hesitate. She dropped to her knees to worship the evidence of his vulnerability and his need for her. He was powerful and weak when her mouth closed over his heated skin. He cried out. But he didn't shout denials or rejection. He called her name.

His hands threaded back into her hair as she took him deeply, as she pleasured him decadently, when he was more used to stoic sacrifice and pain.

His hips jerked.

He grew harder in her mouth.

She gave him the beauty and ease he'd professed to have no time to enjoy. And he lay back to accept, to enjoy. He continued to repeat the mantra of her name, again and again.

But he stopped her before he allowed his release. He pulled her to her feet. Her breath caught. The warmth in her belly threatened to go cold. Until he stepped from his loosened pants and kicked them aside. Nude, he watched her reaction as he slowly lifted the silk dress from her body. The slide of it was like torture against her sensitized skin.

She wanted to wrap her legs around him again, to impale herself on him, a willing sacrifice, but he held her away.

Instead he fell to his knees in front of her and pressed his mouth to her skin.

The moist heat on her stomach made her moan. But it was nothing compared to what came after. He stripped her underwear away, tearing the scrap of lace. She didn't care. Not when it gave his tongue access to her throbbing heat.

He urged her back with a nudge, and she found the bed behind her. The room had fallen away in her mind. She didn't know up or down. She couldn't remember left or right. Nothing mattered but the hot connection he forged between them with his mouth.

He'd pleasured her before with his hands, but he hadn't allowed his own pleasure, and he had stopped before their bodies could come together. This was slower, deeper and the bravest thing she'd ever allowed. She couldn't hide beneath his mouth. He explored every secret sigh and soft cry. She was most definitely here with him, and there was no place else she could be.

Her hands found his arms. She placed one palm over his marks, taking their heat along with her pleasure. It was an augmentation, not a hardship. Knowing him while he knew her. Finding each other together, maybe for the first time.

The heat flushed over her body until her bare breasts grew wet with perspiration. Her orgasm caused the droplets to run down her skin in quivering streams.

“So much better than any dream,” Severne confessed.

He rose over her, but again he paused and looked into her eyes. She easily found the green in his irises. She didn't think it would ever be hidden from her again. Then and only then did he bury himself in her still convulsing flesh. Her body gripped him in spite of the extreme heat. She wrapped her arms around him as her perspiration evaporated away from her body in a barely perceptible cloud of translucent steam.

“Promise you'll always play for me, Kat,” Severne demanded.

“I've always played for you. From the first day I drew the bow across the strings,” Kat confessed.

She hadn't met him on that long-ago day when she'd discovered the cello at l'Opéra Severne, but the opera house and its master were too closely blended to separate one from the other.

He tensed in her arms so hard, she cried out for fear he would shatter like metal that hadn't been tempered, but then the heat of his orgasm brought her to completion again. They both survived the ultimate rejection of their damned legacies together.

For the first time since the shadow had touched her, she was warm all the way to her soul.

Chapter 25

J
ohn Severne slept.

He was gentled somehow. He'd shared his intensity, his fire and his fully hardened flesh. Her touch had softened him in every way. His brow was relaxed. His jaw unclenched. His arms relaxed on the bed. His powerful legs were coiled in the sheets.

But as he slept and the call of his Brimstone blood quieted in her head, Katherine heard another call. This one was louder and hotter than any she'd ever experienced. Her head throbbed with pressure and pain. She crept from the bed as if pulled by a powerful magnet. She bit her lip until it bled against the whimper that tried to erupt from her lips.

She walked step by reluctant step into the next room.

A trance of purpose had claimed her, and she couldn't resist.

Beneath the glow of flickering gaslight sconces, an old, scarred trunk sat, worn from use and abuse. Made of some unknown wood blackened with age, the trunk seemed as if it had petrified to stone. There was no key. It opened to her touch. But held in its dark cavity was an iron cask that was obviously too hot for her hands. She drew back and squinted against its heat.

The magnet that drew her wouldn't be denied. There was Brimstone fire in that iron cask, and it wanted her to find it. She went in search of something to help her without thinking about what her prying might mean or what opening the cask might reveal. The call she'd always felt from daemons seared her brain, more demanding than ever before.

In Severne's spartan bedroom, there were only a few drawers and cabinets to search. She found clothes. Mundane toiletries. And a drawer full of rusty iron brooches that caused her to gasp.

Like the one she'd found in Vic's room. Like the one she'd seen on the carved angel's neck before the winged shadow had touched her. The iron brooches were heavy and marked with an ornate
L
.

There were hundreds in the drawer.

Her heart slowed to a sluggish stall. Her ears rang. Her mouth, still tasting of Severne's wood smoke, went dry.

Hundreds.

How many souls were trapped forever in l'Opéra Severne's walls?

She'd thought it a strange purgatory in a place plagued by curses. But now her heart whispered uglier revelations. About Severne. About what he had done.

She reached to pick up one of the brooches. All feeling left her fingers from its chill, like an echo of the winged shadow's touch. All feeling returned with a scorched sting when she used the brooch to flip back the iron cask's lid.

A scroll rested inside, and smoke rose as it unfurled beneath her gaze. With a snaky hiss, the paper sizzled as the air hit the words emblazoned upon it.

The name Michael glowed in red.

Above it, she saw other names slashed through with burned black lines...just like the tally marks on Severne's beautiful arm. The marks she'd kissed to impart imagined healing.

The name most recently marked through was Lavinia. Eric's mother's name.

“You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be anywhere near that,” Severne said. “You'll burn yourself to the bone.”

He came into the room and moved quickly to roll the scroll and shut the iron casket. He placed it back inside the trunk. Practiced moves. Ones he'd completed hundreds of times?

Smoke curled from his fingers, but he didn't cry out, protected by his Brimstone blood.

She'd felt those callouses intimately. The ones caused by being burned again and again.

“You weren't there to help. You were there for the same reason as Reynard. You were there to kill Eric's mother,” Kat said. “You are a daemon hunter.”

“Reynard completed the task set for me. But I wound up with much more to worry about. You. Eric. This,” Severne said. He was naked, with nothing but the sheet wound around his waist. But he no longer looked relaxed. He looked as ready to fight as ever.

“Michael. I've asked you about that name. He was the patron dating my sister. He's the next name on your list. Did they run away to prevent his being a future tally mark on your arm? All those marks, all those iron brooches in your drawer,” Kat said. She backed away from Severne. As she did, her bracelet made an unusual sound unlike its normal chime. She brought her wrist up and saw the silver had blackened as if it had been scorched.

She hadn't touched the iron cask. The
L
brooch had been ice in her hand. The only time she'd touched Brimstone's heat... Her eyes darted to the bed where she'd experienced the full burn of Severne's orgasm.

The blackened bracelet she'd found in her sister's room hadn't meant that Michael was a threat to Victoria. The threat to her sister was in this room because Vic had taken a daemon lover. She must have removed the bracelet as a rejection of the Order of Samuel. Something they'd always longed to do.

Kat reached for her own bracelet's clasp. It was still warm to her touch. It took longer than it should have because she'd never removed it and because the metal was stuck together, damaged by Severne's heat. Finally it loosened, and she was able to allow it to drop to the floor. Not just a rejection of Reynard, but of all she'd felt for John Severne.

Another mad daemon hunter who'd only wanted to use her to get to her sister's lover.

“Why would you murder your own kind?” she asked to buy time. She needed to get to the door. Would Grim let her pass? Could she find her way back to her room and out of the opera house without the hellhound's help?

“Katherine, I'm not a daemon. I never corrected your assumption because I'm no better than the daemons I hunt or the daemons I'm forced to serve. My grandfather made a deal with devils for financial gain. He sold our Severne souls. The only way anyone with a drop of Severne blood will ever be free is if I deliver Michael to the Council that rules hell since Lucifer was overthrown,” Severne said.

“You've filled the walls of l'Opéra Severne for the Council,” Kat said. She saw the wooden faces in her memory. So many doomed by Severne's hand.

“A purgatory. A prison. A place where immortal daemons who still rebel for their lost king are trapped and kept from fighting the Council,” Severne said.

“They haunt you. You're buried under the weight of all the daemons you've been ordered to kill,” Kat said.

“They are the Fallen. Older than the Council. Old enough to remember leaving Heaven to rule their own realm. Lucifer and his fellows ruled a hell dimension. But other daemons resented being Lesser because they'd never flown in paradise. They intend to reclaim a paradise they never knew. They want to claim the hell dimension fully and then turn their attention to an invasion of Heaven. They hold my contract. Lucifer's Army is my enemy by the Council's order. My father doesn't even remember that he's damned. I fight for him. I go on day after day. Night after night. For him,” Severne said. “He deserves to die in peace. Michael is the last name on the list. Once he's banished to the walls, we'll be free.”

“Free to suffer for what you've done,” Kat whispered, horrified. “Eric is innocent. You were going to kill his mother. You didn't stop Reynard from killing her.”

“I can't save them. They are part of Lucifer's Army, and they doom themselves by rebelling against the Council,” Severne said.

“Not Eric. He's a boy. He's not an army,” Kat said.

“He's a daemon. Damned no matter what I do,” Severne said.

“The daemons trapped in the wall can't fight the Council. They are forever paused. You've taken away their hope. And you risk being a part of the daemon faction that would try to invade Heaven. More war. More destruction,” Kat said. “I thought we couldn't be together because you were a daemon, but now I discover it's because you're an obsessed man, a soulless hunter no better than Reynard.”

She had no tears left. They'd all been burned away.

“Do not interfere. Do not get in the way,” Severne warned.

“You were going to use me to get to Michael, weren't you? You thought I could find my sister and in turn, you could find her lover. You were using me as Reynard has used my family for decades. Know this, John Severne. Your family is damned, but my family is love—my mother, my sister and even me, Heaven help me. We've loved and lost. I will do everything in my power to help Victoria. To prevent her pain. Even if it means damning you to hell.”

“Grim,” Severne said.

Kat didn't know if the hellhound would leap from the shadows to find her throat or if he would keep her from entering the passageway. She braced herself for teeth or threatening growls.

“Take her to her room and keep her there,” Severne ordered.

The giant dog came forward and waited for her to move.

Kat turned away from the man she couldn't allow herself to love. He didn't stop her. He let her walk away.

* * *

She needed to warn her sister about Michael's name on Severne's list. She needed to find Eric and get him away from l'Opéra Severne. But there was a hellhound at her heels shepherding her through space and time, and she didn't have so much as a single bone in her pocket.

“I need to see Sybil,” Kat said. She whispered the entreaty over and over again as they walked down the halls. They'd come back into the part of the opera house where the walls had ears. Hundred of them. And lips to whisper and cry.

Was it her imagination or wishful thinking that Sybil's name was taken up in a sibilant chant across stiff wooden faces, hundreds of them, calling her name softly? Sybil. Sybil. Sybil.

She wasn't sure if she could trust the daemon that had cared for Severne like a mother for centuries, but she had no one else to turn to. She already owed Sybil a favor, but perhaps she could bargain another for her help. Sybil would know how to handle Grim. She would know where Eric could be found. She might even be able to get a message to Victoria.

Again and again, Kat spoke the daemon's name.

She wasn't paying attention to the walls or shadows. She blindly allowed Grim to herd her along like the German shepherd he vaguely resembled. She stopped in surprise when she rounded a corner to almost bump into Eric where he crouched at the side of the hall.

“I found my mom. It took me a long time because they move. That scared me at first. But I'm glad now. It would be bad to be stuck on the same wall forever. I couldn't memorize the halls. I just had to keep looking,” he said. He finished chewing on a hard roll from his pocket and dusted the crumbs from his fingers.

Grim had stopped, too. He watched them. She didn't have long, but she couldn't simply pass Eric by. She gave the hellhound a stern look and quickly turned her attention back to the daemon boy.

“That's why you fill your pockets with food,” Kat said. “So you don't have to stop looking to eat.”

“Yeah. I got pretty hungry a few times. Sybil told me to rest. She'd find me and carry me to bed at first, but I learned to hide after that.” He looked up at the carving with tired eyes.

“I'm so sorry,” Kat said.

She came to his side. Grim didn't protest, but she could tell he tracked her movements vigilantly with his burning coal eyes. Eric's mother was indeed carved onto the wall. She stood with one hand stretched toward her son as if she would hold his hand. Her curved fingers extended from the wall, and Kat had to look away. Her stomach ached as if she'd been punched.

“It's not your fault. They've told me that. You were trapped like them. But you're going to get away. We all are,” Eric said.

He reached up to touch Kat's face as she leaned down, and he hugged her more fiercely than he had before. Grim stepped closer. Katherine tried to ignore the giant dog. In this moment, her safety didn't matter, and neither did Severne's agenda. Only Eric and his mother mattered, and the fact that she hadn't been able to save him yet.

“I'll save him. I'll get him out of here,” she told the carved representation of his mother's soul. Lavinia didn't move, but Kat reached out and touched her wooden hand. The wooden fingers weren't as cold as the shadow's touch, but they did feel like ice. She began to lose feeling in her hand, but she didn't pull it away. She endured the pain and tried to look into the daemon woman's wooden eyes. They were blank. There were no pupils or irises. Only an empty stare. But she met them and tried to reach the soul they contained. “I won't give up. I won't run away.”

The cold crept from her hand halfway up her arm.

Grim growled deep and low in his barrel chest as if concerned that the cold might penetrate to her heart.

“I've been hiding for a long time, but I know it's time to take a stand,” Kat promised.

The cold seeped through skin and muscle and bone. She began to shiver. Her teeth clicked together. And still she tried to communicate to whatever was left of Lavinia in the cherrywood. Had the fingers tightened on hers, or was that only ice and imagination?

She was no longer sure she could pull her hand away.

Eric tugged at her other hand as if to get her attention.

Grim was now at her side. He pressed against her legs, urging her to release the daemon's wooden hand. His heat startled her to action, and she pulled. It took more effort than she expected to break her hand free. The fingers of the wooden hand curled back on the palm as her fingers came away. The eerie reflexive action made her gasp and stumble away from the wall.

She cradled her cold hand against her chest, but the woman in the carving didn't leap from the wall to extract revenge. Whatever energy she had expended to hold Katherine's hand was gone...or saved for another time.

Eric saw her heavy breathing in response to being trapped by his mother's wooden hand.

“It's okay. She doesn't want to hurt you. She wants to help you just like you helped me,” he said.

Unlike the ice of the shadow's touch, the cold from Lavinia's hand had already begun to fade away. As the cold faded, so did her fear.