One of them... Of course he’d had eons of lovers. A guy like him, living for as long as he had. She clenched her hand hard enough her fingernails dug into her palm. “That’s fine. You have your past, it doesn’t impact me. I don’t have to know the details, as long as I remember it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“It doesn’t.” All emotion had vanished from his face and voice.
Chapter Seven
Luci lay in the unfamiliar bed, staring at the ceiling. Once she’d derailed the conversation with Blake, it was over. He’d backed off, shown her where a guest room was, and handed her a T-shirt to sleep in, if she wanted.
That had to have been at least an hour ago. Sleep eluded her, though. Everything around her smelled like Blake, seeping into her senses and taunting her with whispers of almost-kisses. She hated herself for derailing the conversation the way she had, but at the same time, it was for the best. As long as she kept repeating that, it would sink in, and she’d believe it. He and his brother would figure out why someone wanted to kill her, and they’d send her home, and life would go on.
She rolled onto her side, so she could see out the window. They were too close to the city for there to be anything besides black and the faintest smattering of dots. Light pollution bled into the bottom of the sky. She pulled her knees to her chest and tried to block out her onslaught of swirling thoughts. Life would definitely go on, and she’d be better for the experience once she came out the other side.
****
The sound of a knock on Elizabeth’s bedroom door sent her steadily beating heart pattering at a gallop. She lit the candle on the stand beside her, climbed from her bed—not that she had been able to sleep in this unfamiliar house—and crept to answer.
Henry nudged his way into the room as soon as she cracked the door, and toed it shut behind him. Her tall, blond, strapping Henry. “My beautiful Beth.” He placed his hands on her hips and drew her close. He trailed his fingers under her nightgown and over her birthmark. The one shaped like a crow, that he loved to kiss. “Finally, I have you all to myself.”
She rested her hands on his chest, intensely aware she wore nothing but the thin shift she slept in. The heat from his palms seared through the fabric and left traces of longing on her skin. “Dinner did seem to wear on for a bit, didn’t it?”
He kissed her forehead, then her nose, and finally brushed his lips over hers. “It does not matter. It’s over now”—he guided her backward—“and you look stunning.” He spun before they reached the bed, dropped onto the feather mattress, and pulled her between his legs.
“What if someone hears us?” Even though they weren’t married yet, they’d been together several times, but he had so many guests staying at his home now. All in anticipation of their wedding in a few days.
“Then they will be jealous I’ve got the privilege of making the most gorgeous woman in the house scream in ecstasy.” He kissed her stomach through her nightgown, and her breasts tightened with need.
“My parents won’t be impressed.”
“Your father has already granted me your hand. No one but you may revoke that honor now.”
“I won’t scream with so many people here.”
In a single fluid gesture, he stripped her clothing off. The cool air brushed her flaming skin and caressed the dampness between her legs. “That sounds like a challenge.”
“It isn’t,” she squeaked out.
He cupped her bottom and drew her close. Her stomach fluttered in anticipation, as he tilted his head in and drew a nipple into his mouth. When he flicked his tongue back and forth over the sensitive nub she groaned and dug her fingers into his shoulders. He worked his hands forward, until he brushed her wet desire.
She gasped at the sensation. Damn being overheard. She leaned in enough to reach the laces on his breeches and fumbled until they were loose. When she worked him free, her fingers wrapped around his hard length, he let out a low groan that penetrated every inch of her.
He grabbed her wrists. “I want to watch you on top of me.” He lay back and tugged her with him.
He was so vocal. The words and desire throbbed inside her. She knelt on the bed and positioned herself above his erection. In a single thrust, he pushed inside her, and a cry tore from her throat.
“That’s my beautiful Beth.” His gaze traveled over her, as they built to a frantic rhythm. He slid his hands up her stomach, to her breasts. Each caress was a feather-light buzz through her body.
She groaned as the soft touches melted into hungry pinches and tugs. He rolled her swollen nipples between his fingers. Pleasure built inside her, dancing along the different sensations of Henry’s attentions. Each time with him was more spectacular than the last. Would it be like this forever?
When he dropped one hand between her legs and pressed against a sensitive button, another cry tore from her throat. That was new. And incredible. Her breathing turned into short pants for air, as he rubbed the new spot and thrust himself inside her. Her thoughts fluttered away, lost in a haze of bliss. Each push from Henry stole more of her reason. Waves of revelry splashed over her, and she ground against him, riding the intensity.
His grip on her breast tightened, and his grunts became staccato. She recognized the sound of him drawing close to finish. He drove up, filling her.
Luci’s eyes flew open, and she gasped. She’d had dreams like that before, where she was someone in the past, but they’d never been so vivid. Her lover had never had a name, now he had two. Henry from her dreams was Blake. The man whose guest bedroom she lay in.
The intensity of the vision still flooded her senses, mingling with faint scent of Blake on everything surrounding her. Need throbbed between her legs, and her nipples ached for attention. She didn’t know where the sleeping vision had come from, or why her subconscious had given her the name Elizabeth and placed her in Victorian England. At least, despite all the random unknown variables, her mind had been sadistic enough to still give her that damned birthmark on her hip she hated so much.
Right now, she didn’t care. The memory of Blake-as-Henry flowed over every inch of her, obliterating her sense and filling her with an insatiable desire. Still half-lost in the fantasy, she moved her hands to her chest and whimpered at the first brush against her sensitive skin. She squeezed, drawing back the images of his hands on her skin. The pinch of pain and pleasure.
She glided one palm down her stomach, to the pleading need between her thighs. How could a dream be so intense and feel so real, as if she’d lived it? She pushed her panties aside and dipped her fingers between her wet folds. Her clit blossomed in delight when she sought it out.
She rubbed frantic circles, hips pumping against her hand. Climax tore through her, and she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out. In her head, she still felt the visions mingling with the present, as if Blake had been buried inside her, stroking her until she came.
Her orgasm ebbed, and she eased off and slumped back against the mattress. Reality slunk its way back in, as the buzz faded, reminding her where she was—what had happened. Pointing out there were voices drifting up from somewhere in the house.
Wait. Voices?
*
After Luci went to bed, Blake tried to work. He didn’t need sleep unless he’d exhausted his power on something, and tonight he wasn’t interested in indulging the habit. Instead, he spent a few hours staring at the wall, trying to figure out how the conversation that evening had gone so completely off track.
He hated to see Luci’s insecurities rear their head, and that was what he was dealing with. On the other hand, he refused to indulge them. He could only tell her he was being honest so many times, before it wasn’t worth the effort anymore.
Except he couldn’t make himself believe he’d been right to stop trying when he’d done so. At least sending her upstairs and putting some distance between them had helped him banish the flashes of his past that had haunted him all day.
The past. Somet
hing was there… The notion floated just out of his conscious reach. What was it? He closed his eyes, to block out as much external distraction as possible, and honed in on his thoughts. Something about Beth. Grace. This morning.
Morrigan. Of course. Seeing her had never been a good sign. Millennia ago, he and she had dated. When she’d killed Sayuri, he’d assumed it was jealousy. When she obliterated Elizabeth, he suspected it ran deeper than resentment and insanity. And when she went after Grace as well, he knew there was more there.
The words of the legend floated to mind. Words he’d memorized after Grace, hoping he could make sense of them.
The woman who bears her mark will undertake a battle of overthrowing.
He’d never figured it out. It seemed obvious on the surface, given they’d all had the same birthmark, except he had no idea why his past loves would be play a part in overthrowing Morrigan. There certainly hadn’t been any battles involved. It had always ended in an instant. He cringed at the vivid memories.
But the women Morrigan had gone after before had been Blake’s lovers. Wives. Luci certainly made his pulse race, and he enjoyed her company, but the relationship wasn’t the same. Luci wasn’t the same as the rest. Then again, there was that sense of déjà vu every time they touched. That flash of memory. That feeling he knew Luci on a deeper level than was possible after such a short amount of time.
And he was reading too much into the situation. Never a good idea.
A soft knock interrupted his painful journey into the past, and he padded to the front door. Surprise and concern filled him when he saw Marley. He stepped aside. “The phone was too difficult to pick up?” What was meant to sound teasing came out as a bark. He gave her a weak smile. “Sorry. Long day.”
She didn’t seem to take offence. “Tell me about it.” She stepped inside and handed him a manila folder. “How’s your guest?”
“As well as can be expected, I suppose.”
Marley rested a hand on his arm. “You don’t know this, but it’s not easy being where she is. You just turned her entire world upside down. At least you filled her in quickly and didn’t drag it out for several months. But she has to cope.”
He didn’t miss the hint of irritation that crept into Marley’s voice. Even though she said she understood Eli’s reasons for keeping his identity secret for so long, Blake knew it still bothered her on some level. She’d gotten immortality out of the entire affair. Was that what waited for Luci?
For some reason the thought left a foul taste in his mouth. Marley seemed to enjoy the newfound power that came with godhood, but Blake wouldn’t wish immortality on anyone. Not unless they got to walk into it eyes wide open.
He shook the thought away and held up the folder. “What’s this?”
“Can we talk in your office?”
He held out an arm in that direction. “After you.”
Seconds later, she closed the door, shutting them off from the rest of the house. “Look inside.”
“Just tell me what it is.” He opened the folder anyway. His stomach lurched at the contents. Photocopies of documents he’d buried long ago.
“You recognize them, then.” Marley’s tone was soft.
He should. They were marriage certificates—or at least their historical equivalent. One from feudal Japan, one from Victorian England, and the last from here in the U.S. almost a century ago.
Chapter Eight
“And?” It took effort for Blake to form the single word.
“Look at the birth dates on them.” Marley prompted.
Nothing stood out, except that they’d all been born during harvest season. A whisper of memory tickled his thoughts. A notion from decades ago tensed through his muscles and throbbed in his head. There was a reason he’d shoved that bit of his past aside, though he couldn’t recall what that reason was. He didn’t have the patience for this. If his past insisted on haunting him so completely, he’d like to know why sooner rather than later. “Just tell me what I’m supposed to be seeing.”
She twisted her mouth and raised her brows. “Fine. They were all born on their calendar’s fall solstice. They’ve got other similarities. They were born in foreign countries—to their parents anyway—but raised back home. They were all still single, disgracefully so I’d assume, when they turned thirty. And they all had birthmarks on their hips. Apparently at one point you or someone you knew thought that was relevant, because since Grace, you’ve been keeping a list of everyone who met those specific criteria.”
“It sounds vaguely familiar.” It sounded intensely familiar. A ghost he’d chased almost a century ago. An obsession he’d forced himself to abandon, when he realized he could spend the rest of eternity chasing the phantom, and it still wouldn’t change the past. A grief-induced dream he’d walked away from, in order to carry on. “But we gave that up.”
“You may have, but someone kept searching.” Marley’s voice dropped in volume. “Look at the last document in there.”
He flipped to the photocopy of a more recent birth certificate. From Canada.
Lucinda Beth Tansey.
Born September 23, 1985.
Distinguishing marks: oddly shaped birthmark on the left hip.
He looked back at Marley.
“That’s why her name is on a list,” Marley said. “And she’s the only person in almost seventy years.”
Fuck. Damn it. “Fuck it all to Hel”. He didn’t know how to process the information, but that didn’t stop dread and undirected fury from spilling through him.
“There’s more.” Marley pulled her phone from her back pocket and swiped the screen to unlock it. A paused video waited, and she clicked it to start it playing.
Blake watched, rage growing, as images of Luci’s apartment burning played behind a reporter’s head. The man droned on about how an explosion had rocked the building early that evening, and while the police weren’t releasing any information at this time, there were rumors of a terrorist attack. He said their sources inside the Salt Lake Sheriff’s department were certain nothing but a bomb could have caused that level of destruction.
A bomb or a pissed off god. The thought bounced in Blake’s head.
The office door creaked open, and Marley’s spun on her toe at the same time Blake’s head shot up. Luci stood in the doorway, his shirt hanging halfway down her thighs, over her ripped jeans. She looked gorgeous and concerned and so very fragile. How was he going to explain this?
*
Luci hovered outside the door. From the tour Blake gave her earlier, she knew it led to his office. Two voices floated out—she assumed the two she’d heard through the vents upstairs. Blake, and if she was hearing right, Marley. There was also a muffled noise she couldn’t make out, like conversation coming through a tiny speaker.
“That’s why her name is on a list. And she’s the only person in almost seventy years.”
“Fuck it all to hell.” That would be Blake. Even muffled, his voice was distinct.
Should she knock? Walk away? She definitely shouldn’t eavesdrop.
“There’s more,” Marley said.
And then silence. Awkward curiosity trickled through Luci, until she couldn’t sit still anymore. She knocked, but there was no answer. She turned the knob and pushed gently.
Blake and Marley both twisted toward her, tearing their attention from a phone in Marley’s hand. Marley turned her gaze to the carpet, and a scowl marred Blake’s expression.
“Did I miss something?” Luci asked. What was meant to be a light-hearted question, came out as a soft, cautious squeak.
Marley looked at her, brow furrowed and eyes turned down at the corners. “I’m sorry.”
“We should do this somewhere else.” Blake stepped around her and rested a hand at Luci’s elbow.
Luci stepped away from his touch, hating her body for betraying her by reacting to the gentle warmth. “Where?”
“The den.”
She followed him down the hall to a room at the b
ack of the house. Unlike the sitting room, which felt sterile and ancient, this entire place radiated Blake’s presence. A single recliner sat near the doorway, remotes on the table next to it, and a large screen TV covered most of the far wall. “Have a seat,” he said.
She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. “I’m fine here.” If she didn’t feel the cold, she was afraid the heat from her dream might consume her. That, and despite her brain’s attempts to sabotage her, she wasn’t forgetting why she needed to keep her distance from Blake. Secrets. She wouldn’t live with secrets.
“Suit yourself.” The strain in his voice defied the casual words. He grabbed a remote, and seconds later the TV flickered on. Channels surfed past, until he landed on a news station. The video to the side of the anchorman showed her apartment building, burning bright and spewing smoke into the night sky.
Acid surged in her throat, as the man on TV rambled on about what little they knew. She hugged herself tighter, and her legs wobbled before she gave up trying to support herself and sank to the ground.
“Luci?” Blake’s concern barely nudged the edges of her clouded nausea.
“Why is this happening?” She heard her own voice, though she didn’t remember saying the words.
Blake crouched in front of her, his face distinct despite the disorientation jumbling her thoughts. His expression conveyed concern, and his tone was sympathetic. “I think a better question is, who are you?”
Chapter Nine
“I’m nobody.” Luci’s voice barely reached her own ears. She didn’t mean it in a self-effacing way. She honestly didn’t understand why any of these people—creatures?—were interested in her at all. “I’m just a computer programmer, who needs work.” In the background, the newscaster droned on about how the blast had been localized but the fire spread quickly. Some tenants were successfully evacuated, but they didn’t have a death count yet.
Death count. People had lost their lives because of her? She was going to be sick. She swallowed back the bile and tried to breathe deeply. It didn’t work. Her pulse hammered in her chest. What if she’d been there still? At least she wouldn’t have to deal with this guilt. What if they—whoever they were—came after her here or wherever she went next? Was this the rest of her life? She gasped, unable to get enough oxygen. She didn’t know what to do.
Seducing Destiny (Brothers of Fate Book 2) Page 4
