The Lost Enchantress

by Patricia Coughlin

  She hadn’t chosen this path—at least not consciously—but somehow this is where she’d ended up. She was accustomed to being able to look ahead at life and see exactly where she was going and how she was going to get there. Not now. The road ahead was cloaked in shadows, and like villains in an old arcade shooting game, they weren’t standing still. Instead, they were constantly shifting, revealing new truths and raising new questions. This path had to be walked one careful step at a time. And right now the next step had Pavane’s name written all over it. He could appear out of nowhere at any second, and when he did, she needed to be on-her-toes ready, emotions in check and firing on all cylinders.

  Saving the man she loved would have to wait until later.

  The man she loved?

  When had that happened? Yesterday? Last night? During dinner at Settimio’s?

  She didn’t even try to tell herself she hadn’t fallen hard for him or that she wasn’t sure what she was feeling. She was sure. Some things a woman knows in her heart long before her head is ready to make a leap of faith. From everything she’d read and seen in movies, she understood that the long, slow slide into love can be wonderful. But she and Hazard didn’t have that kind of time.

  Sometimes, when danger looms and the world has been jolted off its axis, even the most sensible and careful woman in the world has to tell her head to step aside so her heart can take the wheel. And that’s what she was doing now. She was going to let her heart lead the way. That was new territory in more ways then one, and she probably ought to feel a little apprehensive. She didn’t. She felt calm, and strong. She was ready for whatever was coming. At least according to Hazard.

  She couldn’t wait to see what she did next.

  It was a wry, slightly self-deprecating thought, but even before she’d finished thinking it she found herself at the bottom of the staircase, looking up. Standing there she couldn’t see the turret room, but strange as it sounded, she could feel it.

  Had that room also undergone a radical change? It was hard to see how it could have. There were no rooms to combine or rearrange, no walls to tear down. The only walls were inside her, and she had put them up herself.

  Without giving herself time to think, or lose courage, she started up the stairs, first to the second floor and then up the narrow, curving flight of stairs to the very top of the house, moving slowly and discovering her feet had a memory all their own. With each step, pictures of a snow-covered path and white rose petals and Chloe’s pink flannel nightgown flickered in her mind’s eye. She made no attempt to hold on to any one of them for a closer look, but she also didn’t resist them, not the images or the memories attached to them. She let them come, and go, as they would. Her pulse skittered and her heart pounded as if she’d climbed a hundred flights, but she worked to keep her breathing slow and steady as she reached the top step and crossed the threshold of the turret room for the first time since the night of the fire.

  She purposely didn’t turn on the light. The sun was quickly setting, but with windows encircling the room, there was still enough soft light to see. It wasn’t the way she remembered it. No surprise there. What did surprise her was how different this room was from the rest of the house. The color and personality lacking everywhere else were here in abundance.

  A deep blue rug with red and gold and turquoise designs covered the wood floor, and custom-built bookcases lined the walls beneath the windows and on either side of the doorway. She wouldn’t have to search very far for something to read; books filled the shelves, and those that didn’t fit, either because they were too tall or simply because there were too many books and too few shelves, had been piled here and there on the floor. Eve had to smile at the haphazardness; some were standing, some stacked, and a handful had been left sticking out as if there might be a need to find them again in a hurry.

  She stood for a moment and took it all in. The room, changed though it was, felt right to her, solid and safe. It smelled right too, like night and mystery. And Hazard, she realized, smiling again as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  Feeling more at ease, she ventured a little farther, noting the easy chair and ottoman on one side of the room and the daybed on the other. There was just enough light to read the titles on some of the aged leather book bindings, many written in ornate lettering and impressed in gold. Chaos Magic, Ancient Alchemy, The Lost Art of Necromancy. No wonder Hazard was so well versed in the art.

  Here was a book lover’s heaven. And it always had been, thought Eve, recalling the hours she’d spent there curled up with a book, Grand busy nearby. She reached to slide her fingertips along the windowsill closest to her, and then the edge of a bookcase shelf. Both were perfectly smooth. Just as she expected. No nicks, no scars, no traces of the past. A clean slate. All the years of messy and wonderful laughing, crying, loving that had been lived within those walls . . . gone. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that, and so she didn’t think about it. Instead, she distracted herself by checking out what else the room held besides books.

  There were brass scales and telescopes, as well as other mechanical gadgets she couldn’t name. On a table by the chair was an intriguing hodgepodge of smaller items: a crystal inkwell—complete with ink, she discovered by lifting the silver cover—and a magnifying glass, a letter opener engraved with a Celtic knot, and a fountain pen. A very old and very fine pen, she thought as she picked it up to admire the mother-of-pearl handle and silver grip.

  Noticing that there were words engraved on the side of the pen, she brought it closer, but before she could read them, the lights suddenly came on and she looked up. The light wasn’t coming from the overhead light or a lamp, but from a scattering of tiny white lights that seemed to be floating at the top of each glass windowpane, as if someone had tossed handfuls of stars into the air. Eve looked around and smiled. Fairy lights, she thought, and they were. They’d transformed the room into a page from a fairy tale.

  She glanced behind her and found Hazard standing in the doorway, watching her.

  “How did you—?” She swirled her finger in the air to indicate the circle of light around them.

  “I didn’t. The windows were custom-made for the previous owner. The lights are actually between panels of glass, and at night the wires are virtually invisible so the lights seem to be just hanging in midair. The inside panel pops out so you can replace the bulbs,” he added, anticipating her next question.

  “Very cool,” she pronounced, doing a full three-sixty.

  “Unus est ut unus praesumo,” Hazard said.

  Eve turned and looked at him quizzically.

  “I noticed you trying to read the inscription,” he explained, nodding at the pen still in her hand. “It’s Latin. One is as one dares. That pen is the closest thing I have to a family heirloom; it was the only thing left to me, all that remains from that time in my life.”

  “It’s beautiful. Did it belong to your father?” She asked because “M. Hazard” was engraved above the Latin phrase.

  The slight, sudden coolness in his eyes and the nearly imperceptible dimming of his smile might have been missed by someone else, someone not entranced by his every movement and slightest gesture, but the reaction wasn’t lost on Eve.

  “Actually, it belonged to my mother. My father, the esteemed fifth Earl of Shafton, left me nothing . . . not entirely unheard of treatment for a bastard son.” He folded his arms in front of him and rested his shoulder against the doorjamb in a display of indifference she was certain he didn’t feel. “He was the love of my mother’s life; she was his mistress from the time she was seventeen until she began to show her age and he found someone younger and more to his taste.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She didn’t know what else to say.

  “Don’t be. It was a very long time ago. And there wasn’t a better mother than Molly Hazard; she taught me . . . everything. She more than made up for his failings as a father.”

  “I’m glad for that.” She gazed at the in
scription and then back at him. “One is as one dares. If that was her philosophy, I’d say you’ve done your mother proud. Of course,” she added in a dry tone, “you did manage to get yourself beaten and cursed in the process, and that’s only the stuff I know about.”

  “It was worth it.”

  Eve’s brows shot up. “Really?”

  He gave a nod. “Every blow that landed. Every miserable year of being alone and afraid to do anything about it. All the anger. All the frustration. All worth it.”

  “How can you say that?”

  He came away from the door and walked toward her, slowly, his gaze never leaving hers. His gray eyes were dark with intent, and Eve’s breath caught in her throat.

  “A week ago I wouldn’t have said it,” he admitted, stopping only inches away from her, close enough for her to smell the hint of soap on his skin and feel the heat of his body. “Do you want to know what’s changed since last week?”

  Eve nodded.

  His somber gaze moved over her slowly. “Everything.”

  “Because of the talisman? Because you found what you were looking for?”

  “No. Because I found exactly what I wasn’t looking for. I found trouble and complications and danger. I found you.”

  As he spoke, he lifted his hand and played with the drawstring tie on her shirt, letting the side of his hand brush the side of her breast.

  Eve shivered.

  Hazard smiled.

  And the love she’d only just acknowledged to herself poured through her, filling dark empty places she’d learned to pretend weren’t there.

  He moved his hands to her shoulders and held her lightly. “Everything that’s happened to me, every mistake I’ve ever made and stupid thing I’ve ever done, has been worth whatever it’s cost me in blood and tears, because it’s brought me where I am, standing here with you. I choose to believe that this isn’t a random event, that it means something, that it’s the work of someone far wiser than I am.” His tone had become self-deprecating. “Because I never could have made it here on my own.”

  “In that case,” she countered, looping her arms around his neck, taking pleasure in the silky caress of his hair on the inside of her wrists, “I’m very glad you just stayed out of it.”

  He bent his head and kissed the hollow beneath her ear and the side of her throat and rubbed his mouth along her collarbone. “Staying out of it worked so well for me, I’ve decided to keep doing just that. No more denying what I feel when you’re near me, no more second-guessing, no more trying to save you from myself.”

  A ripple of excitement tore through her as he tugged on the drawstring, not playing now.

  “No more trying to control myself around you.” He loosened the bow and slid his fingertips inside; she definitely did not want to be saved from this.

  “The reasons I gave for bringing you here were true,” he told her. “But there was another, much simpler reason I didn’t mention. You’re here because I want you here.”

  Eve’s pulse leapt as he pulled her closer.

  He held her gently, his hands exploring only the hollow of her back, but she felt him everywhere, all over her, and she ached for more. His sweater was soft beneath her fingertips, his body hard against her own. And when she drew a deep breath, she breathed him.

  Desire built inside her, fed by her senses as just being in his arms flooded them with pleasure, layer upon sweet restless layer. And sweetest of all was knowing he wanted her as much as she wanted him, although in a saner moment she would argue that it wasn’t possible, that no one ever had or ever would want anyone as much as she wanted Gabriel Hazard.

  He still hadn’t kissed her on the mouth, and the promise of it throbbed in the air around them, the deep rumbling of an approaching storm. He bent his head and his cheek brushed hers, the light contact tantalizing.

  “There was an occultist,” he said, his lips close to her ear. “Last century. His name was Levi Eliphas, and he had a very interesting theory.” His cadence was slow and lulling, his voice pitched so low it was almost tangible, vibrating against her skin, as much sensation as sound. “He believed that if a man breathed in exactly the right way, in exactly the right spot on the back of a woman’s neck, she would surrender to him, mind, body and soul.”

  As he spoke, he lifted her hair off her neck and the moist heat of his breath sent shivers cascading through her. The blend of sensation and anticipation was excruciating.

  Please, please, thought Eve, kiss now, talk later.

  “Does that really work?” she managed to whisper.

  “I have no idea,” he confessed. “I only know that when it comes to you and me, you don’t have to breathe, you don’t have to touch me, all you have to do is be . . . to exist, and I want to surrender . . . everything. Everything I believe, every vow I’ve made. Suddenly I want what I’ve hated, and feared, for so long. I want to live.”

  Nineteen

  With his hand tangled in her hair, he tugged her head back and met her gaze, his own dark as soot, all trace of silver gone. “I want you, Eve. Enough to take any risk . . . too much not to.”

  I want you . . . I want to live.

  His words sent warmth spiraling through her; her heart lifted with relief, and with yearning. The yearning was more than physical, but at that instant it was the physical commanding her full attention.

  And then he was kissing her and rational thought slipped further away. His tongue plundered her mouth as his hands roamed over her arched back and raked the curve of her hips. His mouth crushed hers, consumed it, with lust, with tenderness. It was an intoxicating combination, one she’d never tasted before, one she never wanted to do without again. She couldn’t. She would die if he stopped and pulled away, die of thirst, and of hunger, all of it for him, Hazard, a man she barely knew and didn’t understand and who, through some dangerous magic that was his alone, had come to own a piece of her soul. Wrapped in his arms, surrounded and overwhelmed by him, she felt as though a part of her had always been his, and always would be. Now, she thought, now she understood the weakness of an addict who would do anything, say anything, sacrifice anything, for what he needed to stay alive.

  She needed Hazard. And even with her senses saturated and her mind drowning in the overflow, she recognized the corresponding need in him; she tasted it on his tongue and felt it in the strokes of his sweet, rough hands. He kissed and touched her as though he were a dying man and the only key to salvation was buried deep inside her.

  She lifted into him, willing to give everything, greedy for even more . . . more of the fierce, leashed strength in his caress . . . more of the bruising perfection of his mouth . . . more of everything that was him. He tasted like wine and dark, sweet pleasure, and smelled like nighttime, like midnight secrets, like the fearless wind that sweeps everything clean and makes a new day possible.

  Their kiss wound on. The floor beneath her tilted, and the ring of starry lights danced all around her. It was a moment of bliss, of grace. Wanting to hold on to it, Eve let her eyelids flutter shut, and suddenly she was flying. She felt her legs give way, her knees like butter, her bones like feathers, and then she felt Hazard lift her and carry her to the daybed.

  He lowered her gently and stretched out on his side next to her, all panther grace and pirate smile. Watching her face, he trailed a fingertip down the center of her body and back up, circling her breasts in a figure eight, barely touching, putting urgency aside, wreaking havoc. When he plucked at the first tiny button of the long row on her shirt, Eve’s impatience surged; she tried to help.

  Hazard brushed her hands aside, chiding her in a tone pitched low. “No. No. Not this time.”

  And then he went to work seducing her—as if there was any need—one nerve ending at a time.

  She wasn’t accustomed to being cherished, or experienced at being treated like the rarest and most fascinating of treasures, as if it mattered that she was loved to perfection and there was all the time in the world to do it. Her instinct t
o fidget or, worse, giggle, was no match for his ruthlessly patient touch, however. In the end she sighed and surrendered to him complete control of pace and tone.

  And so the release of each button became a ceremony, the crook of her elbow and dip of her waist places of worship. His hands drifted over her skin, followed by his adoring and clever mouth.

  When he lowered the zipper on her jeans and drizzled kisses along her hip bone, Eve quivered. When he slid lower, dragging jeans and lace with him, her breath thickened and her mind blurred.

  He bent her knees, drawing one long leg up to rest on his shoulder, and kissed his way from calf to thigh. He would not hurry or be rushed, not even when she whimpered softly and arched her back like a cat after cream.

  He nuzzled and licked and nibbled, and Eve shimmered beneath him. He stroked her with his open mouth and whiskered jaw, and she clawed the bedcovering she was laying on.

  He made her shiver and sweat. With a velvet glove he drove her to the edge of madness and held her there, for heartbeat after delicious, unbearable, exquisite heartbeat, until craving became need and need spilled over into something deeper, and older, something timeless.

  She wanted him, and she wanted him with her, in her, one with her.

  Panting from the climb, hovering near the peak, she reached down and tangled her fingers in the silky strands of his hair, tugging so he would lift his head and look at her.

  Come with me. Please, come with me, is what she intended to say to him.

  But when he did look up and his eyes met hers, she was silent. Speechless. Lost in him.

  Lost in the mesmerizing tumble of dark hair across his forehead, the smoky gaze, and wide, beautiful mouth, the elegant arrangement of bones that formed a face like no other she had ever seen.