Dark & Dangerous: A Collection of Paranormal Treats

by Julie Kenner

  “Are you pleased with what you see?” he asked without a hint of uncertainty.

  She eyed him boldly, moisture pooling between her legs. An ordinary man with a physique like his would be impressive enough. In his supernatural state, he stole her breath.

  “Are you?”

  His grin rose a tad higher on the right side of his face. “I’ve never met a woman like you, Eve—so bold and unafraid. The temptresses of my time preferred coyness.”

  She stretched out her leg and teased his sacs with her toe. “Do you prefer coy?”

  He groaned and she moved higher, stroking him with the slightly rough pad of her foot. He grew longer and harder as she aroused him. And yes, more solid. The tingling sensations of his ghostly existence lessened, but didn’t disappear.

  Viktor had been right. Making love to him might set him free. Sharing her sensual power with this specter from the past could give him back the one thing he wanted most—his life.

  She knew the very moment he became aware of the change, slight as it was. His eyes widened, his chest expanded and his jaw dropped. Eve crawled forward and stroked him with her hands, dropping her head to trail a path of moist kisses along his shoulders, his breastbone, his nipples. The hard nubs were cool beneath her tongue, but his groan when she took a little nip put her nerve endings on fire. He threaded his fingers into her hair, absently massaging her scalp as her kisses dropped lower and lower, following the thin trail of his chest hair, diverting around to the smooth, sensitive skin on his sides and hips.

  She cupped him, anxious to taste his cock, when he shifted and eased her onto her back. He captured her hands and secured them over her head, devouring her with his eyes and then his lips and tongue.

  “I’ll take the first taste, my sweet. I’ve longed to part your sweet lips with my tongue since the first moment I saw you.” He slid a hand down her belly, burying his fingers in her moist cleft. “Oh, yes. The flavors will be plentiful.”

  On his way down, he teased and taunted her breasts. He laved the curved undersides and plucked her nipples until she thought she might orgasm right then and there. But just as the tide flowed toward the edge, he allowed her a sensual reprieve. He slid lower, caressing the insides of her thighs, one, then the other, as he slid her legs over his shoulders and settled in to feast his fill.

  The minute his breath grazed through her tight curls, Eve knew the brink loomed. She braced herself, knowing the moment he tasted her, she’d come. She wasn’t wrong. He dipped a taut tongue and instantly found her clit. Colors exploded all around her, glowing with hot light. She seized a breath in her lungs, her chest tight, her eyelids clamped, awaiting his next lick.

  Only a second lick never came. In the midst of orgasmic overload, Eve blinked until her vision cleared.

  Viktor was gone.

  CHAPTER NINE

  GULPING GREAT GASPS OF AIR, Eve sat up. Her body protested, not yet done riding the wave of pleasure. She squeezed her thighs together, desperate to reclaim her ability to think, to speak.

  “Viktor?”

  She could feel his absence as if someone had dug into her chest and left a gaping, bloody hole. She grabbed her gown, pressing it against her as she ran throughout the house, hoping, but not expecting to find him in another room.

  She stopped herself in the kitchen, forced calm into her mind, body and spirit. Then, with a strong push, she sent out a call into the realm of the ghostly spirits.

  Viktor!

  No reply. She called out for Jeta, but heard nothing. In fact, she’d never experienced such silence, as if—

  No.

  Had she sent him back? Had she sent them all back?

  She tossed the gown over her head and wrangled with the straps until she was covered. She dashed out into the yard, yelping when bits of mulch and twigs bit into the soles of her feet. She crossed to the stone path that led to the gypsy graves and ran as fast as she could to the three lonely headstones.

  She sat as close to them as she could, cross-legged, and chanted an old charm she’d learned from a gypsy in Yorkshire. This was how the woman had been taught to call the dead and, at the time, Eve suspected the Romani crone had made up the nonsensical string of words to entertain the gaujo college student who’d come to do research for her master’s thesis. But she’d used the chant before when her conduit to the dead had been blocked, usually by extreme tension in her own life. Like when her mother had died and she’d been desperate to speak to her. For days, she’d chanted, fasted and rocked. For days, the dead had ignored her.

  She’d never spoken to her mother, but she’d finally tapped into a spirit who’d claimed her mother had crossed over quickly. Would someone know if the same had happened to Viktor?

  She had no idea how long she stayed outside, but the silence from the other side buzzed in her ears like static. Shockingly, Jeta, Nicholai and Alexis were nowhere to be found. She considered a trip to a nearby cemetery, but as she trod back to the house, another possibility assailed her. She ran to her room and found the bottle where she had left it—on the vanity.

  Only this time, the top was firmly in place.

  “Oh, God.”

  She cradled the glass in her hands and lifted the bottle near, snapping on the lamp. She peered into the facets, but saw nothing. She tugged at the top, but it wouldn’t move. She knew Viktor was back inside. Trapped.

  For how long?

  And why?

  “Viktor, I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. God, do you? Do you know?”

  She pressed the bottle to the curve of her breast, so that she could feel her rapid heartbeat reverberate against the fragile glass. The silver worked like a conductor and a jolt of energy shot into her, sizzling through her veins and pulsing at the most intimate points in her body. She gasped. Her nipples hardened and a pearl of moisture slipped between her thighs.

  He was there.

  “I’ll figure this out, Viktor. I have to.”

  The price she’d paid for the bottle became worth every penny the minute Viktor had materialized in her life. He was unlike any man she’d ever met, any man she’d ever meet in this lifetime. He knew things about the universe that no one else could ever fully understand. He’d done the unthinkable and, in return, had had the unthinkable done to him. And yet, he’d found a way to push aside his need for revenge and regret. He simply wanted to live. He simply wanted the life that had been due to him, though he accepted that he’d thrown it all away in a vain pursuit to keep his family together.

  He enthralled her, intrigued her. She could spend a lifetime learning the minutiae of his life, his thoughts, his dreams. She could spend a lifetime with him.

  Whether or not he wanted the same, she had no idea. She didn’t even really care. Eve knew enough about men and women to know when a connection existed—a connection that might have existed for centuries and that transcended the boundaries of life and death. Was she being overly romantic? She didn’t think so. It wasn’t her nature. She didn’t think she loved him yet—how could she when they’d known each other, really known each other, for less than two days?

  But could she love him? Oh, yeah. For a lifetime, if given the chance.

  But she’d never know now—unless she could free him again.

  VIKTOR HOWLED IN FRUSTRATION, hoping, if even for an irrational instant, that the power of his voice would shatter the silver-enforced glass. He shouted and cursed in every language he’d ever heard until his energy was nearly spent.

  He knew the keening was fruitless, but he hated the impotence of being trapped in his cage when life and love were just at his fingertips. Eve’s fragrance, so sweet and musky, still clung to him, enveloped him. Her flavor lingered on his tongue. How had this happened? He’d been so close! For the split second before he’d dipped into Eve’s sweet yoni, he’d felt a true and undeniable surge of blood through his veins. Every touch of her hand, every sweep of her lips across his skin had amplified the beat of his heart, the pull of his breath from deep insi
de his lungs. She’d led him closer and closer to living, then his freedom had been yanked away.

  Had that been Iliana’s plan? Had she cursed the bottle to retrap him if he ever came close to caring for a woman? If this had been her scheme, he couldn’t think of a more potent punishment.

  Evonne Baptiste, so unlike any woman he’d ever met and, yet, so familiar. Like a soul he’d encountered once before as a young boy in the woods, where the fairy spirits lived, back in the days when he still believed in the purity of Romani magic. Now, he couldn’t even communicate with her. He’d been trying for what seemed like hours, though judging by the light outside, a day hadn’t yet elapsed since he’d disappeared. Eve still wore the gold gown. Except for a few short absences, she hadn’t left her bedroom. Hadn’t slept.

  Instead, she’d pored over books at her desk, had made a few calls on the telephone. She’d sat cross-legged on the floor, chanting words that he suspected he might have heard before many years ago, but if they were meant to break the wall of silence between them, they were useless. She brought food into the room and ate while she read. She’d drunk what he suspected to be an entire bottle of wine, then chanted again.

  At first, she’d called to him. Only him. But when finally convinced he couldn’t respond, she’d tried to reach the gypsies who haunted her land. Viktor found it odd that they had not responded. He’d spoken to them. He knew their deep affection for Eve. Why would they abandon her now? Unless… Perhaps they knew the secret to his release and wished to keep the knowledge buried. Keep him buried. Only he wasn’t buried, damn it! He was caught like a lightning bug in a child’s glass jar.

  Helpless.

  He gazed through a facet in the glass, watching Eve as she tilted back the last of her wine. God, she was beautiful, even when her soul was torn apart. How long had it been since anyone truly cared for him? Cared about not only his future, but about his spirit? His soul? Cared about his absence. Not since before he’d been sent to live with the gaujo, before the woman of the house had initiated him into the world of bedroom intrigue. He’d been young. Angry. So blinded by resentment and abandonment that he’d brought the bengesko yak into his family the minute he’d returned, ten long years before he’d met Iliana Dulas or her wicked family. No matter his aim to keep his family together, he’d used the gaujo tools of seduction and intrigue to achieve his goal. If he had simply shown his family loyalty and respected the old ways, he wouldn’t have been murdered and cursed, perhaps for all eternity.

  But he also would never have met Evonne Baptiste. He would have died decades ago, a continent away. His legend would never have intrigued her, inspired her. He accepted that even if he never broke free of the curse, knowing that she cared about him, if only for a moment, brought him the only solace he’d experienced in a hundred years.

  For the first time since his idyllic childhood, he’d found someone to care for, someone he’d actually trust with his heart, if given the chance. Watching Eve weep from the other side of the bottle, unable to comfort her, unable to beg her forgiveness for drawing her into his cursed existence, weakened him more than any black magic ever could.

  After one hundred years trapped in the bottle, time meant nothing to him. If he could have lived and breathed and walked the Earth as a man again, he would have devoted whatever years he had left to capturing Eve’s heart. He didn’t realize until this moment how his anger had dissipated, how his own heart yearned.

  For life. For love.

  For Eve.

  Only he could not have her, unless she found a way to set him free.

  THE BOX.

  The voice popped into Eve’s brain, waking her with a start.

  “Viktor?”

  He wasn’t there. She grabbed the clock and yawned. An hour before dawn. She’d slept on the floor for four hours, and her body ached with exhaustion. Her heart bled with sorrow. She’d known him for only a few days, but he’d been ripped from her at a moment of intense intimacy. She wanted him back, dammit!

  The box.

  “Jeta?”

  Eve scrambled to her feet, but she knew before she dashed into the hallway that she was still alone in the house.

  Box? What box?

  Eve trudged back into her room, scanning the dresser and vanity table, her mind muddy with ragged emotion. Her eyes lit on the perfume bottle and suddenly she knew what Jeta meant.

  The box! The casket. The scarlet-lined wooden crate the perfume bottle had come in. Where had she put it? Viktor said that Iliana had used the box to seal the curse. Was it the key to freeing him again, perhaps permanently?

  She slid onto the floor, fairly certain that the last time she’d seen the box, it had been on her bed. Before Viktor had seduced her and she’d stripped the sheets. She pushed her hands blindly beneath the dust ruffle, yelping when her nails cracked on something hard.

  Excitement shot through her, but she paused and took a deep breath, hoping she possessed the power to use whatever magic or clue she found. She couldn’t bear to think that all of what she’d experienced over the past few days was for nothing. She’d finally opened her mind to the possibilities of love, to the off chance that she’d finally found a man who could hold her interest and share a passion for the culture she studied, respected and loved. Maybe she hadn’t found love before because she’d been meant to love a gypsy.

  Better yet, a gypsy king.

  She settled onto her bed and picked up the box. The crest carved into the inside bore no secret clue. She felt around for secret compartments, turning the box this way and that, pressing her fingers over every inch, prodding and jiggling every hinge. Desperate, she grabbed a razor-knife from her desk drawer and carefully cut out the lining. Beneath the stuffing—made from human hair, if Eve guessed correctly—she found another carving.

  She translated the word, but it wasn’t in Romani. It was in French. The Romani likely had no translation for such a word.

  Surrender.

  Was this the key? But she’d surrendered to Viktor! Body, mind and soul. She’d allowed him intimate access. She’d agreed to share whatever sensual exploration he thought would help him free his soul.

  Unless…she wasn’t the one who had to surrender?

  Eve climbed onto her bed, the box cradled in her lap, her brow frozen high over her eyes and her jaw lax with shock. She closed her mouth with a pop. She’d give Iliana Dulas one bit of credit—when she designed revenge, she went for maximum irony.

  Eve didn’t have to surrender to Viktor in order to release him.

  He had to surrender to her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “YOU HAVE NO CHOICE,” Eve whispered, her lips pressed intimately against the bottle. “Surrender to me. Do you hear me? You have to relinquish all of your power, all of your control.”

  Viktor couldn’t believe the depth of her request. Surrender? Him? The most powerful gypsy king in the history of his clan reduced to a slave? Again? Hadn’t he donned that role as a young man with Lynette? And what had that humiliation gained him other than the disdain and mistrust of his own clan?

  “Trust me, Viktor.”

  The most powerful gypsy king in the history of his clan…and now, the most impotent. Viktor was proud, but he also wasn’t a fool—not any longer. Now, he had nothing to lose and a world to gain—a world with Eve, if she’d have him. Fifty years ago, maybe even as recently as ten or five or even three days ago, his pride would have kept him entrapped. His pride and his arrogance. No matter how much he’d wanted to live, he’d wanted to preserve his legacy more.

  Now he realized his legacy had already found a place in history. No matter what he did today, the past could not be changed. Surrendering to Eve, fighting every instinct bred into his soul, meant a chance to build a new life.

  Concentrating, he formed a picture of himself in his mind. Outside the bottle. On his knees, subjugated before the woman who already held him in thrall. Deep in the center of his chest, a place once empty filled with devotion and deference.

>   I am your slave. Do with me what you will.

  His essence expanded, grew heavy and hot. Tendrils of smoke seemed to stretch out from where his chest began, forming into arms, legs, fingers, feet and hair. When he opened his eyes, he was right where he imagined. Right where he belonged. He looked through his transparent hands into Eve’s red-rimmed eyes.

  “Don’t speak,” she commanded, her voice wavering, but strong.

  He swallowed, but obeyed, a tiny smile teasing the corners of his mouth. He had a thousand questions for her, and he knew she would have an answer for each and every one. She wasn’t just stunningly beautiful, she was damned clever and incredibly resourceful. So why did she look unsteady, unsure?

  Still clutching the perfume bottle, her fingers were white-knuckled. He feared she’d crack the glass and cut herself if he didn’t warn her, but he hadn’t forgotten her directive of silence. He wanted Eve. Completely. He would make no mistakes this time.

  Even so, he had to fight to bow his head.

  “Good,” she said, a sigh of relief rushing out with the word. “That’s what you need, Viktor Savitch. A touch of humility. Perhaps a dose of personal risk. When you made love to me before, you focused on my pleasure, my body.” Confidence strengthened her voice. “Not that I’m complaining, but to turn all your charms on me, you gave only what was physical. To break the curse, you’ll need to give more. I’ll need your obedience. Your trust. Your love. Do you understand?”

  Viktor swallowed, his tongue thick in his mouth. Thick and dry, but feeling more and more solid by the moment. The concept was unthinkable—a gypsy man obedient to a woman in the bedroom? He’d been an obedient lover once in his life, as a boy. Could he bear the experience again, this time with Eve, a woman he craved so much he could barely control his desire to take her?