Brimstone Seduction

by Barbara J. Hancock

“Have you ever known him to...date...performers?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t talk with us, Kat. Much less date. He’s like the moon. Who dates a planet?” Tess asked.

  “The moon isn’t a—” Kat began.

  “You know what I mean. He’s above us all. Untouchable. Not that he hasn’t been wanted. Most wanted,” Tess said. Her soft words resulted in a chorus of shushes from women across the room who were also half-heartedly prepping for tomorrow night.

  Quiet. Withdrawn. Guarded. Her cello was her only friend.

  Alone.

  She had a lot in common with a daemon opera master.

  Kat smiled at Tess though the other woman had lain back to close her eyes again.

  “I guess I have nothing to fear, then,” Kat said. “If he’s untouchable, I can want him without being in any danger.”

  She knew better. She was in terrible danger. But she could seem to heed the older woman’s advice without sharing her secrets.

  Chapter 23

  Opening night actually began long before dawn. Props were finalized and wheeled into place. Technicians spent hours troubleshooting last-minute problems with ancient wiring and lights. By the time the first of the audience arrived, the air was electric with tension and expectation. Traffic was blocked on Severne Row, and a long stream of limousines and town cars and giant SUVs with tinted glass began to dispense glittering passengers in designer dresses and tuxedos on the red-carpeted curb in front of the Théâtre de l’Opéra Severne.

  Severne greeted the most important of the night’s guests in person. He hosted preshow champagne in salons only slightly less crowded than they’d been the night of the masquerade.

  And all the while, only one woman and her cello were on his mind.

  When the tones sounded to alert the guests to find their seats half an hour before the overture, the heat in his blood was already high in expectation of what was to come. He stepped outside. Spotlights shone their beams high into the sky above the opera house, arching high above his head in shafts that crisscrossed each other as technicians manned the mechanical housing for the giant bulbs. The spotlights were also antiques. They’d been wheeled out once a year for decades only for the opening of the summer’s Faust.

  The Baton Rouge night didn’t cool his skin. Nor did his temporary reprieve fool him. He was going to attend the show. He was going to listen to Katherine play. And even though she played for an audience, her true performance, that of the affinity in her blood and the music in her soul, would be only for him.

  * * *

  The house was full. The lights dimmed low. Voices swelled to fill the great performance hall. But it wasn’t voices Severne heard. It wasn’t voices that caused his eyes to burn and his chest to squeeze so tight he could hardly breathe.

  It was Katherine.

  The echo of her heart reverberated from the cello in her arms.

  Every resolution he’d made in the past twenty-four hours burned away.

  He found his place in the private box that was kept empty for the family. Once it had been occupied often. For decades it had been empty and still. He disturbed it now. He pushed aside the draperies and sat in the shadows. He watched her, secretly, while tears ran down her cheeks.

  Did she cry for Marguerite, for Faust, or were her tears for other beings more real and tragic?

  If even one salty droplet was for him, her pain pierced his damned soul.

  The whole orchestra was dressed in gray, a soft dove gray that blended with dusky shadows. But to his eyes, Katherine’s silk gown was iridescent. It hugged her subtle curves and shimmered with her every movement. In its simplicity, it allowed her to shine. Her fervor for the music was accented because there was nothing to distract, only the seductive compliment of unadorned fabric. So different from the masquerade. That night had been about masks and secrecy.

  This night was about raw emotion laid bare.

  He clenched his fists on the tops of his thighs. Grim whined from behind him, not quite materialized in this time and place. The hellhound was recovered. Sybil had healed him with Brimstone from her own blood. The dog was eager to stretch his legs.

  Perhaps he should run. Run away until nothing was left but the burn in his blood, until his ache for Katherine D’Arcy had mercilessly cooled to ash.

  He didn’t.

  He stayed.

  There was nowhere far enough he could go. No amount of time or distance between them would change his need for her. Staying was a mistake, but a sweet one. Her heartfelt playing mingled with memories. She had cried out his name during her release. He had touched her intimate heat, and he could still feel her on his fingers. He recalled perfectly the look in her eyes when she’d said “seduction.” So brave. So bold.

  He was damned.

  Even now, he and his father were lost. His grandfather had made the Severne blood in their veins a curse. Katherine’s music didn’t care that he was damned. Her playing didn’t save him, but it seemed to understand and desire him anyway.

  Her music came to him, mingling with his head, his heart and his blood. Meeting and matching the Brimstone burn. Each poignant note wasn’t a reprieve, but it was a brief pardon. If not a salvation, a respite from what he’d done.

  And what was still left to do.

  He didn’t make a conscious decision to go to her after the performance. It was inevitable.

  He was already damned; he might as well enjoy the burn.

  * * *

  The first performance was a success. Her whole body—arms, back, core and thighs—ached to prove what the company had accomplished. Music extracted a price that was physical as well as emotional, but this night it hadn’t been Faust that drained her.

  She’d wept for her mother, her sister, her frustration with Severne as the music claimed all her inhibitions. She hadn’t been able to focus on control when the cello required her concentration. And she hadn’t wanted to. For the first time in her life, she’d let go.

  Amid the blood, sweat and tears backstage, her damp cheeks went unnoticed. Or so she thought while she placed her cello in its case. She should have known nothing escaped Severne’s attention, least of all her distress or pain. He’d seen straight to the hidden heart of her from the first time he’d approached her and Eric in the alley as they cowered from Reynard. John Severne was tuned to her need even as she sought to deny it.

  The remaining stragglers were departing the joint dressing room of the orchestra and chorus when the opera’s master filled the doorway. She was overwhelmed to see him, but not surprised. She didn’t turn away. She wouldn’t be ashamed of her human emotions. Whether he allowed himself to share them or not.

  “You are so lovely. Even surrounded by stage opulence and all the beauty calculated to dazzle an audience, you glow. I thought it was your music. I thought the Brimstone burn in my heart was seduced by its accompaniment in the air. But it’s you. You draw me. Your cello is closed away in its case, but I stand here, unable to stay away,” Severne said.

  She should tell him to go. She tried to recall the chill of his withdrawal the night of the masquerade, but her strength was gone, spent over the long hours of performance. She was vulnerable. Unable to muster resistance when capitulation was her heart’s desire.

  He was a daemon.

  She was a tool for daemon hunters.

  But for a little while, for tonight, maybe they could accept that her soul and whatever was left of his were in tune.

  He crossed to her when she didn’t protest. He reached to touch her tear-stained cheek. His heat immediately soaked into her body, finding and warming those places she hadn’t known were still chilled from the shadow’s touch.

  “I didn’t play for you. I played for me. For the first time, I played for me. Not to hide. Not to seduce. Not to impress or endure. Just to f
eel,” Kat said.

  “And you can’t stop feeling yet. You tremble beneath my hand. Tears gather again in your eyes,” he said.

  “I’m tired of resisting Reynard, the Order of Samuel, the winged shadow, the fear I might never see Victoria again,” Kat said. “You.”

  He leaned over her and pressed his forehead against hers. She could feel his tension. She could feel how hard he worked to hold himself in check.

  “Don’t resist me. Not anymore,” he said. “I have to face untold tomorrows alone. Be with me tonight.”

  Her gaze flew up to meet his when she heard the shaking need in his voice. She’d been averting her eyes to hide what she could of what she felt, but as their gazes met, she could see his need was fiercer and hotter than the damnation in his veins. He went against universal strictures to touch her, to allow her to touch him. And she risked everything to respond—her sister, her life and her soul.

  His lips, when he swooped to claim her mouth, bespoke age-old secrets against her skin—fire and flight and shadows and song. Daemons were an ancient race. Their history was dark and tragic. They’d fallen from Heaven. They endured a revolution in hell where once-angelic beings fought lesser daemons that longed to conquer paradise. And Severne was somehow caught in between.

  A hint of wood smoke flavored his tongue as he teased past her lips. And she boldly met him with hers, tasting, savoring, feeling the thrill of fear at his heat and obvious strength of the desire that shook his body against hers.

  He encircled her with steel arms and she twined her arms around his neck to keep from falling, but also to feel how their twining tongues affected the strong being she wasn’t supposed to be allowed to touch.

  Daemons were hated. Hunted. Killed.

  His muscular arms were living, heated stone, but she could feel the shiver, the tremble as he reacted to her taste and touch.

  When he pulled his lips from hers to kiss her neck, her shoulder, and trail his mouth down to the swell of her breasts above the dove-gray silk gown, she cried out. His mouth was so hot and her skin had been so much colder than she’d known.

  The winged shadow’s chill evaporated off her skin like invisible steam everywhere Severne’s lips caressed.

  “Grim will lead us privately back to my rooms, but only if you desire it. I will walk away now if you don’t ask me to stay,” he said.

  Her legs had buckled. He held her fully, with her back bowed and his face at her breasts. His words were a raw whisper that teased over nipples distended under clinging silk.

  She answered by leaning to kiss his upturned face—forehead, cheek and then jaw as he rose with her once again in his arms. His skin was salty sweet against her tongue, his mouth slightly opened when she reached it. He moaned when she kissed him and paused at the door with the jamb at his back when she dipped her tongue inside his mouth, as if she weakened his knees. An impossible feat but one she gloried in. She felt empowered in his arms. Not like the quiet, hidden bloodhound for madmen. But like a woman with the world at her fingertips.

  “Grim,” Severne called hoarsely.

  The hellhound materialized out of the shadows and led the way quietly, down dark, unoccupied passages filled with fog and impossible forest scents.

  She’d never been to Severne’s private apartments. She would never find them on her own. The way was long and far from every other part of the opera house. She wondered as the passages turned to carved stone if it was part of the world she knew at all.

  Finally they came to a stone archway and a great wooden door. It looked more castle keep than opera house.

  The door opened with a loud clang of rusty hinges and locks when Severne brushed it with his hand. Grim lay down in the hallway, and Severne stepped inside.

  * * *

  Just inside the threshold, Severne placed her on her feet and turned to shut the door. Her stomach plummeted as if she’d fallen from a great height. Fear, adrenaline rush and desire caught her. She firmed her spine and balled her fists. The door clanked multiple times as if locking itself even though Severne only pushed it closed.

  He stood with his palm against the wood for a long time. She watched his broad shoulders rise and fall. His need for a pause cranked up the adrenaline flooding her veins. She wanted his kiss. She wanted to flee. She wanted...

  “You fear me,” he said as he turned to her.

  The intensity in his face caused her heart to pound. She’d feared much in her life. Dark nights when she’d been stalked by killers using her to perpetuate their deadly cause. The loss of family. The loss of hope. She’d feared that one night she would stop resisting and become a willing slave to the Order of Samuel, negating years of the fight against darkness and death.

  The tension in Severne’s body caused her to ache to soften his shoulders and ease his constant muscular readiness for destruction.

  “I fear what we are together,” Kat said. “What we feel together scares me.”

  “I’ve denied myself for a long time. But I won’t hurt you,” Severne said.

  “Not physically. I know. I trust your touch. You’ve shown me you can be gentle and responsive to my need. I fear how we might hurt each other tomorrow,” Kat said.

  “Grim is outside. You can leave. He’ll lead you back to your room,” Severne said. His stance between her and the door said other things. Darker, needier things.

  And she didn’t mind.

  “I’m here. With you. I’m not going anywhere,” Kat said.

  It was a bigger confession than she’d intended to make. She didn’t mean for tonight. She meant for as long as she drew breath. But he didn’t have to know that.

  * * *

  He wanted to promise her the same. He clenched teeth against the impossible pledge. He wasn’t a free man. He was bound. He could only pleasure her with all his might. Take some ease for the ache in his bartered soul. And then crush her promise to him tomorrow or the next day or the next.

  For all his strength, he was weak in this. He couldn’t send her away with Grim tonight. He had to accept her offer to stay. He couldn’t draw another breath without her promised touch.

  Chapter 24

  She 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 expres
sion, 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.