Fire and Ash (Immortal Touch) (20 page)

“
I don’t care…I want the pain…” she breathed, craving the sweet burning agony, and she felt his body respond instantly to her confession.

“
That’s exactly what I wanted to hear, sweetheart,” he whispered. “I knew you could cultivate a taste for this.” He bit her earlobe hard, and she cried out in rapture. “Now…I’m about to relinquish some of my control to you. I just injected myself with nightshade. It’s a fast-acting elixir that’s already weakening me significantly. What I want you to do is take those handcuffs and secure my hands behind my back.”

She obeyed without question,
closing the nickel plated cuffs tightly around his wrists.

“Nice. Do you know what to do next?”

Within two seconds she had him inside her, hot and hard. She couldn’t be sure if that was what he had in mind, but it was what
she
desperately wanted so…

“Slow down,
baby,” he groaned. “I don’t want to come just yet…slow down. Be still…look at me. Look at me. Focus.”

She found it increasingly difficult
to concentrate on his words with the need building within her and those bright tracers in the mirrors. They were hypnotizing. She could understand their language, they were part of her, everything around her was part of her and she’d never realized it until now…

“Sami? Are you with me?”

“Let’s cross over there…the fairies in the mirror land…they…
oh
…they want us to play…”

Someone laughed in the distance, and the fairies joined in. “Look at me,
mermaid.”
Look at me, mermaid,
the fairies echoed, giggling in high-pitched squeals.

“Is he friend or foe?” she asked the fairies. They tittered, their voices fading away. They didn’t know.
She turned her gaze slowly to the multifaceted blue gems in front of her.

“You
must be Poseidon,” she revealed in awe. The mirrors filled with water, deep and cloudy. There were vague, indiscernible shapes swimming in the murky depths.

“
That’s right. Put your hands on my neck, sweetheart. Hold me as if you wanted to strangle me.”

Her fingers wrapped obediently around the sea king’s neck.

“Kiss me.”

Welcoming
the deep warmth of his mouth, Sami moaned hungrily. She wanted to dive down, down into the blackest, coldest depths of the ocean with him. He would take her with him, wouldn’t he? Back to his kingdom under the sea…

His voice was more
soothing than the waves. “Now push me underneath the water, baby. Hold me there and don’t let go. Only when you no longer feel a pulse should you release me. Don’t be afraid…I am Poseidon, remember?”

“Will you take me with you?”

“Yes, baby. I’ll take you with me.”

The
beautiful aquatic god submerged into the sea, and she watched the creatures in the mirrors gliding gracefully through the water, long fins flowing like tattered wings. They were unable to fly, so of course they swam instead. Glittering lights trailed behind them in their wake. Between her thighs she felt the sea king spasm, and she sighed in glorious contentment as he filled her even as he began to thrash. It took all her strength to hold him down. Her muscles grew tired. The water in the mirrors became darker, the murky clouds enveloping the ocean dwellers.

He stopped moving, went limp.
She looked down.

The blue eyes stared back at her,
empty, unseeing. Submerged jewels.

This
…this wasn’t right.

The fairy voices returned to express their despair.
What have you done, foolish girl?
Releasing her hold on him, she managed to pull his head above the surface. But the sea king was lifeless.

She crawled out of the water and onto the shore and the sand felt like
silk on her skin. From all around her, a disembodied version of
Nights in White Satin
assailed her ears. Paranoia swept through her like a disease. The candle flames stretched again to become leering skulls that mocked her for her failure. They saw what she had done. They knew. She had killed Poseidon.

She heard muffled sobs, and it
was some time before she realized that they originated from her own throat. A scowling tiki mask on the wall stared at her with empty sockets and it seemed to float closer to her, hovering in the air menacingly. Terrified, she wrapped herself tightly in the comforter and covered her head.

Time passed.
She had no sense of how much. More time passed. Gradually she began to come back down from her trip. The voices in her head became nothing more than faint music playing from a stereo system. From within the safe shelter of the blanket, a faint light began to filter through.

The pain returned.

CHAPTER TEN

The
wounds on her abdomen burned and ached.

There was movement on the bed beside her, and warily she emerged from the protection of her down cocoon to see Ash stretched out on his side, draped in a black Chinese silk robe.
Behind him, the morning sunrise sent a reddish-orange glow through the glass door, warm and safe and comforting. The world had become sane again. Her nightmarish hallucinations were gone with the night.

“Hey there, Sam-I-Am. You look like someone who just had one hell
uva wild ride.” Cocking his eyebrows, he flashed her that infuriating devil-may-care grin. “Bad trip?”

She glared at him, irritated that he could act so
unbelievably nonchalant after everything he’d put her through. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Right where you left me.
You don’t remember?”

“I…” Well now, t
hat was a little hard to answer. She remembered some things, yes, but they weren’t events that could have possibly occurred. Fish swimming around in the mirrors? Not likely. “Were we outside? On the beach?”

“We never left this room.
See? Door’s still deadbolted.”

He was right. And the key…he’d tossed it away.
Better be a spare in here someplace or they were going to have a problem. “Why’d you lock us in anyway? That was a dumb thing to do!”

“Didn’t want you wandering off while I was incapacitated.”

Incapacitated?
Her eyes fell on something shiny and silver lying on the white carpet. Oh, yes…the handcuffs. They appeared to be broken. Now how had he managed that? “How’d you get out of the cuffs?”

“Wasn’t hard, once the shade wore off.
It only lasts a few hours.”

She pulled one
arm out from under the comforter and tried to smooth her tousled hair. “God, I was seeing the craziest things. I thought…at one point…I thought I actually
drowned
you. In the ocean.”

He gave her a purely guileless look. “And did you enjoy it?”

Oh, she wanted to drown him, all right. Every movement she made resulted in a stinging pain across her stomach and she had him to thank for that. Her fingers itched to touch the flesh there, to feel just how bad it really was. But she restrained herself. Somehow she was afraid to find out. “Yes. I did,” she reluctantly confessed.

“So did I.” His blue eyes smoldered like dry ice at the memory.

A memory that wasn’t at all clear to her. “What…really happened last night?”

“You took your first steps down the
dark path, baby. You should be proud. You never stumbled once.”

So they were back to talking in circles. Or maybe there
was
some twisted logic hiding in there somewhere - she just had to figure out how to interpret it. There were so many things she wanted to know, yet the questions were lost somewhere in translation. “Ash…”

“Don’t overthink it, Sami.
Just accept it.”

Accept it. She couldn’t even accept her own appalling behavior. What profound secrets did he hold that
enticed her enough to willingly put her life in his hands? What
was
it about this man and his shrouded domain?

“How much of it was real?” she asked softly.

“How much do you think was real?” He slipped a hand underneath the covers and touched her belly lightly with his fingertips, causing her to wince. “Why don’t you go into the bathroom and get yourself cleaned up a bit, then I’ll put something on your cuts. We don’t want them to get infected.”

Suddenly she felt like crying. Everything they’d done, everything she’d
let
him do, came back to overwhelm her with degradation. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she’d permitted him to use her in the worst possible way. And how could she lay full blame on him when she’d asked for this…practically begged for it?

But she
had to try anyway. “Why did you do this to me?”

He lifted her chin with his fingers, and though the words he spoke were harsh they were delivered gently. “Samara
, sweetheart…don’t ever ask me why. I don’t have to justify my behavior. You said you wanted to go there with me and I merely pointed the way. Your journey has begun. And seeing how there is no return route, it’s pointless to question your decision now, isn’t it? You have no choice but to continue forward. There can be no regrets. None.”

In some bizarre
and complex way, his words almost made sense. Maybe she was finally learning to understand his language. Although whatever linguistics book it came from might be better off left unread.

“Now go do as I said.” He gave her
an indulgent smile.

Sloughing off the blanket, she slid off the huge bed, trying not to dwell on the fact that she was naked as the day she was born. When she stood and straightened, the pain grew more intense and she wondered if it could possibly be as bad as it felt. Surely it was just a few nicks, some minor cuts, right? Afraid to look, afraid to know, she averted her eyes and postponed the inevitable.

She avoided her reflection in the bathroom mirror for as long as possible. Her muscles ached and every movement caused the skin to sting. It couldn’t be that bad…it just couldn’t. She was sore, that was all. Hypersensitive. A comedown effect from the LSD.

When she finally gathered enough courage to face her image, horror and shame washed over her like acid rain. Across her abdomen, the straight red lines formed four neatly carved letters.

M-I-N-E.

~*~*~*~

Emerging from the elevator, Rosita Moreno hummed softly to herself while maneuvering the cleaning supply cart through the doors and down the hallway to room 1608. It wasn’t on her morning schedule - the private suites on this floor were cleaned on a by-request basis, but Señor Reid had called for housekeeping and his needs were considered top priority. It would put her behind schedule, but that was fine. A little overtime would be welcome. She had a son to put through college. Scholarship or no, books and tuition didn’t come cheap.

“Housekeeping.” She rapped on the door, still humming her favorite song,
Rabiosa.
Waited, rapped once more, then inserted her preprogrammed keycard into the slot and unlocked the door.

The man
was standing over a teakettle in the kitchen, stretching his arms and yawning lazily. “Mm…morning, Rosita.”

“Good morning.”

“Would you just take care of the bedroom for me, please?”

“
Si.
Only the one bedroom?”

“Yeah, that’s all
I need today. Thanks.”

Well, maybe she wouldn’t
fall as far behind as she thought. Approaching the bedroom door, she noticed a young woman reclining on the sofa in the living room. Clad only in a men’s t-shirt that was way too big for her, she had one arm resting across her forehead while she gazed blankly up at the ceiling. Her face looked vaguely familiar.

The
next thing she saw was the broken door frame, wood splintered and twisted as if someone had kicked the door open from the other side. “But the door, Señor Reid, it has been broken! You were not robbed, I hope?”

“No, the lock jammed and I had to break it. No big deal. I’ve got someone coming from maintenance to fix it.” He smiled
unconcernedly.

Entering the bedroom, Rosita
put her hands on her hips and sighed. The bedclothes were scattered across the wet carpet, and there was something that looked like dried blood smeared across the white satin. “
Ay dios mio,
” she muttered crossly. These rich men, they had no modesty. No respect for a woman’s dignity. And what would they do if they had no one to come behind and clean up after them? They’d all be living in filth like helpless animals. She was glad she’d taught her own son better than that.

When she was done changing the bedding and
cleaning up, she paused in the bedroom doorway to cast another worried look at the girl. She was sitting up now, arms folded across her stomach, looking pale and a little dazed. Poor mite, she didn’t seem to be feeling well at all.