by Brenda Joyce
BRENDA JOYCE
DARK SEDUCTION
For my son, the genius who brainstormed the original concept with me—without the “hot” parts, of course!
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
COMING NEXT MONTH
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without many different layers of support and faith. I would like to thank my agents, Aaron Priest and Lucy Childs, who suspended their own uncertain feelings toward the paranormal genre and got solidly behind the original concept for The Masters of Time, allowing me to “sell” the concept to HQN. I must also thank my editor, Miranda Stecyk, for her lavish support. Although uncertain of some paranormal elements, she was open-minded enough to let me “go for it,” and became a great cheerleader for the work in progress, encouraging me as a writer, while sharing her enthusiasm in-house, and for both I am indebted. And of course, my assistant and proofreader, Laurel, once again offered priceless support, enthusiasm and encouragement. Thank you all!
PROLOGUE
The Past
WHEN CLAIRE AWOKE, it was the dead of night.
For one moment, she was disoriented and confused. It was raining heavily outside. She lay in a canopied bed in a room she did not recognize. As she blinked in the darkness, she saw a fire in a stone hearth and two small, narrow windows. Instead of glass, iron bars bisected them. Through the bars, she saw a torrential night sky. And then she heard him.
Claire…come to me.
Claire bolted upright, alarmed. Instantly, she recalled Malcolm’s near brush with death. But he wasn’t with her in the room; she didn’t know where he was. Was Malcolm all right? How long had she been unconscious? The sky had been cloudy earlier, but there hadn’t been any sign of rain.
Claire…upstairs…above ye. I need ye…
Claire froze, breathing hard. She was very much alone, but he was using telepathy to communicate with her and his thoughts were as clear as if he’d spoken them. He was somewhere above her. She could feel him. Claire faltered, her insides hollowing with terrible urgency. He was hurt, close to death. They had locked him up somewhere. She could save him.
Claire jumped from the bed. She was warm, but not from the small fire—her blood was running hot in her veins from his potent summons. She had to find him. She was choking on desperation. Claire tore the brat from her body and flung it aside, but she found no relief from the feverish heat. She had to be with Malcolm. Swallowing, she became very still, listening for him.
It took but a moment to get past the sound of her pounding heart. And then she felt his torment. He was weak from the battle, his body savagely cut, and he was in pain. He could not even sit up. She had to find him. He needed her. He needed to be deep inside her, taking power from her.
Claire tensed as heat flared between them. He had heard her. He knew she was coming and he was waiting for her.
She looked up at the ceiling. Aidan had told Royce to take Malcolm to a tower. There were four towers, one on each corner of the curtain walls of the castle. Both gatehouses had towers, too, but she was certain he was directly above her. Claire jerked on the neckline of her leine, the linen sticking to her wet skin. It did not become easier to breathe.
She ripped the offending gown from her body, panting hard, clad only in her denim skirt and T-shirt. Where are you?
Claire. Upstairs. Above ye. ’Tis the East Gatehouse.
She smiled, her heart pounding with renewed urgency. I am coming. Claire tried the doorknob and realized it was locked. She was instantly enraged. They had locked her in the chamber!
Hurry, lass.
Claire inhaled and caught his scent. She could smell sex. His lust filled the room from the ceiling above. Frenzied, she pulled on the old-fashioned door handle. Her fear had given her superhuman strength, because the door blew in, the lock snapping.
Panting, she peered into the corridor and saw that it was empty, a single torch burning in one wall sconce. Barefoot, she soundlessly ran up the narrow, winding stone staircase. Her flesh felt as if it might explode from her body if she did not leap into his arms soon.
Another landing faced her, one torch burning in the hall. Claire didn’t stop. She went to the next level, where she found a small round antechamber instead of a corridor. A heavy wood door faced her, bolted from the outside, an iron padlock on it.
A throbbing tension filled the anteroom. Malcolm’s.
He was on the other side of that door, hard and hot, promising her a universe of ecstasy. Claire now knew she would eagerly die for his touch.
Claire moaned and found her dagger stuck into the waistband of her skirt, jamming it into the padlock. In New York City, she would have never been able to pick such a lock. But now she viciously thrust the dagger into the lock and it sprang open. Moisture began to trickle down her legs. Claire flung the bolt aside and yanked the door open.
His silver gaze slammed into hers.
Malcolm lay naked on his back on a pallet at the far wall, a pale linen bandage glaring in contrast against his swarthy skin. His head was turned toward her and he was watching her carefully. He was fully erect. Claire understood; he had become the hunter lying in wait for her. She was eager to be his prey.
Claire wanted to run to him, but at the sight of so much beauty and the anticipation of so much pleasure, she simply could not move.
A smile began as he sat up slowly, grunting with pain. The bandage was stained with red blood. “Come t’ me, Claire.”
Claire stumbled forward as he carefully stood, clearly weak from the battle and loss of blood. She caught him, wrapping her arms around him, and when his entire naked body came into contact with hers, tears of desire began.
“Lass,” he gasped, holding her in a viselike grasp. He flung his head back and his power fell over her like a huge cloak. Claire was cocooned in warmth that began an invasion from the outside, in. She was acutely aware of a soft, sweet draining sensation—and as aware of Malcolm, groaning uncontrollably, head flung even farther back. Suddenly she felt his terrible pleasure begin.
He cried out thickly. “Aye, Claire!”
She met his gaze as he seized her arms and she saw the triumphant lust there. He smiled savagely, spread her thighs, his mouth against hers. He thrust deep, gasping. “Ye taste good.”
A huge wave broke and Claire wept in more pleasure than she had dreamed, but Malcolm moved now, draining her and coming at the same time, and the wave kept breaking. Lightning comprehension shocked her as the universe became solidly black and filled with exploding stars, each one another one of her climaxes. This time she would be lost in this galaxy of endless pleasure, she was never coming out and she didn’t want to. Every climax was more violent, more brutal and better than the one before. It didn’t matter. This was how she wanted to die, giving Malcolm her life, while riding his huge hardness into eternity.
His seed streamed and burned. He roared his pleasure as he took her, the sound that of a beast, not a man.
Claire wept and begged for more, and more always came. She somehow knew she could not withstand this, but she wanted it a
nyway. Another terrible wave broke, crushing her with ecstasy.
Suddenly Malcolm roared a final time—and thrust himself away from her.
Claire wanted to protest but she couldn’t. She was in a vortex of pleasure and pain and spinning away so rapidly now that she realized she was really dying. She could feel the last essence of her life spinning out of her, faster and faster, like a whirling top about to keel over….
Claire began to settle, limp and empty, fading away. She looked down on her nearly naked body, sprawled out on the stone floor, and saw Malcolm standing by the window, staring at her in horror. Aidan and Royce bent over her now. And suddenly the tower was filled with blinding light. Suddenly she saw the Ancients faintly outlined and crowding into the room….
“Is she alive?” Malcolm cried.
CHAPTER ONE
The Present
CLAIRE WAS AFRAID of the dark.
It was dark now—and something had just thudded downstairs.
She stood absolutely still in the bedroom that was above her bookstore. Claire sold old and rare books and manuscripts, as well as the occasional used but rare tome, and because of the quarter-of-a-million-dollar inventory she kept downstairs, she had a state-of-the-art security system, a Taser and a gun. She knew she hadn’t left a window open, as it was sweltering in the city in July, and she would never leave a window open anyway. It was too dangerous. Crime was out of control in the city. Last month, her neighbor, a wannabe model, had been murdered, and although the police weren’t saying so, she suspected it had been a pleasure crime. She strained to hear, debating getting her Beretta from her bedside drawer.
But she heard nothing now. As she stood there, clad in a pair of cotton candy-striped boxers and a thin ribbed tank top, her bedroom looking as if a tornado had cycled through it, the stray cat that had appeared earlier that day wandered in from the hall outside. She was flooded with relief. The cat had knocked something over! She shouldn’t have suspected the worst—after all, her motion-detection sensors hadn’t gone off—but even after all these years, she hated being alone at night.
Terrified, the child crouched by the door, as a dark, deathly shadow drifted by.
Claire scowled at the handsome black cat, refusing to allow a single thought of her mother’s long-ago murder to invade her consciousness now. “You! I shouldn’t have fed you, now, should I?”
Purring, the cat slithered between her ankles, rubbing sensually there.
Claire scooped him up, the first time she had done so, holding him tightly to her chest. “Rascal,” she whispered. “I need a dog, not a cat, but if I didn’t know that someone was missing you, I’d keep you.”
The cheeky creature actually licked her face.
Claire wiped her chin, dropping the cat to the floor, knowing she’d have to post some Found notices in her Tribeca neighborhood before she left for the airport tomorrow. She was in the midst of packing for a long-overdue vacation. Tomorrow, she was bound for Edinburgh, and on Friday she would be driving across the Highlands. This time, her first stop would be the starkly beautiful island of Mull.
Excitement filled her. The cat had made himself comfortable on her bed, and Claire stepped away to return to her packing. She went to her antique bureau, purchased on a previous trip abroad in Lisbon. She traveled extensively for her business. Smiling as she tossed her dark auburn hair over her shoulder, she pulled out a pile of tanks and tees. She was twenty-eight years old, soon to be twenty-nine, and she ran an extraordinarily successful business, with half of it conducted on the Internet. Since graduating from Princeton with a master’s degree in medieval European history, she’d taken exactly two personal vacations. Her first had been to London with a tour of Cornwall and Wales. At the last minute a friend had told her she had to spend a few days in Scotland, and even though she was not a creature of impulse—Claire liked to be in control—she had changed her itinerary the day before departing to do so. The moment she had passed Berwick-upon-Tweed, an odd excitement had filled her. She had instantly loved Scotland.
It had almost been like coming home.
She’d given herself the standard tour that time—Dunbar, Edinburgh, Stirling, Iona and Perth. But she had known she would come back to explore the Highlands. Their stark majesty and rugged desolation called out to her in a way she had never before experienced. Two years ago, she had returned, spending ten days in the north and northwest. On her last day, she had discovered the small, craggy, beautiful island of Mull.
She had traveled to Duart on the sound of Mull, the seat of the Maclean lairds for many centuries past. An intense need to explore and discover the history of the area had overcome her, but wandering through the castle hadn’t satisfied her at all. Just before leaving the island, she had stumbled across a charming bed-and-breakfast in Malcolm’s Point, and she had been directed to Dunroch by its owners. She had been told Dunroch was seat of the Macleans of south Mull and Coll and that the current laird remained in residence, although he was rarely seen. He was a recluse, they said, and unwed, a terrible shame. Like most aristocrats, financial reasons forced him to open the grounds and a few rooms to the public.
Intrigued, Claire had rushed over to Dunroch an hour before closing. She had been so overwhelmed by the gray castle that the moment she approached the drawbridge that lay over the now-empty moat, chills had begun to run up and down her spine. She had been breathless as she passed under a raised portcullis and through the short, dark passageway of the gatehouse, realizing it had been a part of the original castle, built in the early fourteenth century by Brogan Maclean. She had paused in the inner bailey, staring not at the bare courtyard, but toward the sea and the keep. She didn’t have to be told to know that the tower, looking out over the Atlantic, was a part of the original fortifications, too.
All of the rooms were closed to the public except for the Great Hall. Once inside, Claire had stood there, oddly mesmerized. It had seemed familiar, although she had never been there before. She had stared at the large, sparsely furnished chamber, seeing not the three elegant seating arrangements, but a trestle table, occupied by the lord and his noblemen. No fire burned in the massive hearth, but Claire felt its stifling heat. When another tourist had walked past her, she had jumped, almost expecting the see the laird of Dunroch. Claire could have sworn she felt his presence.
She could still recall the sight of the imposing castle from the road below the high cliffs as if she had been there yesterday. She’d thought about the castle a lot and she’d even done some research, but the southern Macleans were mysterious. A Google search and her online research library hadn’t brought up any reference to any of the southern Macleans since Brogan Mor, and he had died in 1411 at a bloody battle called Red Harlow. The lack of information only whetted her appetite, but Claire had always been insatiable when it came to history.
Claire sorted through a pile of jeans, breathless now. This trip, she was spending one night in Edinburgh and driving directly to Dunroch. She was staying at the bed-and-breakfast, Malcolm’s Arms, and she had given herself three entire days on the island. But there was more. As a seller of rare books, she intended to ask the present-day laird if she could have access to his library. It was an excuse to meet him. She didn’t know why she was compelled to do so. Maybe it was because there was no history on this branch of the Macleans since Brogan Mor. Claire had decided the current laird was probably sixty years old, but she had an image of him in her mind, like a mature version of Colin Farrell.
Claire tossed a few pairs of jeans into her suitcase, deciding that she was almost done. She was tall for a woman, standing five foot ten in her bare feet, and she was incredibly fit from kickboxing, running and weight training almost every day. Being strong made her feel safe. When Claire was ten years old, her mother had gone to the corner grocery store, leaving Claire alone in the one-room apartment, promising her that she’d be back in five minutes. She’d never come home.
Claire tried not to remember about that endless night. She’d been
a fanciful child, believing in monsters and ghosts, annoying her mother to no end with her claims that creatures lived in her closet and beneath her bed. That night, she’d seen terrifying shapes in every shadow, every drifting drape.
That had been a long time ago. Still, she missed her mother. To this day, she wore an odd pendant which her mother had never taken off—a highly polished pale semiprecious stone set in four arms of gold, each arm intricately detailed with an obviously Celtic design. Whenever Claire felt particularly sad, she would clasp the pendant in her palm, and her grief would ease. She didn’t know why her mom had been so attached to it, but she suspected it had something to do with Claire’s father. The stone was the dearest memento Claire had.
Not that she had a father. Her mother had been painfully honest, explaining that there had been a single night of passion when she had been young and wild. His name was Alex, and that was all Janine knew—or said she knew.
After her mother’s death, Claire had gone to live with her aunt and uncle on their upstate farm. Aunt Bet had welcomed her with open arms, and growing up, Claire had become close to her cousins, Amy and Lorie, both near her own age. When Claire turned fifteen, Aunt Bet had sat her down and told her the gruesome truth.
Her mother hadn’t been murdered for the money in her purse or her credit cards. She’d been the victim of a pleasure crime.
That knowledge had changed Claire’s life. Her mother had been murdered by a perverted madman. It confirmed her worst fears—bad things were out there and they happened at night.
And then, in her sophomore year of college, her cousin Lorie was murdered while leaving a late-night movie not far from campus. The police had swiftly determined that Lorie had been the victim of yet another pleasure crime. That had been five years ago.
