Brimstone Bride

by Barbara J. Hancock

  Her eyes were still closed, but she wasn’t surprised when his warm hand touched her face. He traced the outline of her cheek and jaw and then, as she thought the soft tickle would kill her, he allowed the pads of his fingers to trail over the outline of her lips. She drew in a breath and released it in a shaky sigh. Her nipples peaked. A rush of adrenaline flowed to her legs then drained so that her knees were left weak and trembling.

  “I’m fascinated by your mouth. But I know it isn’t where your song starts. I know it starts lower,” Adam murmured. His fingers left her lips to move down to her throat where he gently cupped them near her voice box. The move from a different man would have felt threatening, but his hand was light around her throat. His palm was hot and soothing against the skin that hid her damaged vocal cords. The doctors said she’d breathed fire trying to save her son. Sometimes she dreamed about a dragon flying from the burning opera house with Michael on its back. She didn’t open her eyes. She focused all of her senses on Adam’s touch. It wasn’t Brimstone that made her throb intimately when his hand left her throat to trail down to her chest. It was his touch and the slight tremble of contained desire she could feel in his fingers as he moved his hand to her diaphragm, as if he traced the path her song would take if it ever decided to fly.

  “I can feel it in you. The music. The melody. Its grace fuels your every sigh,” Adam said.

  He’d moved his face down to hers and he spoke against the lobe of her ear. She shivered in response to his Brimstone-heated breath. She wanted to feel it everywhere. When he moved his hand to nudge her T-shirt up so that he could spread his fingers against her bare stomach, her respiration went shallow and quick. She could no longer remember being cold. She was molten inside and the flow of lava seemed to have settled in the V between her legs.

  She startled as his lips touched hers, and her eyelids fluttered open enough to see Adam’s eyes close in a savoring swoon. Hers drifted closed again and she opened her mouth in welcome as his tongue teased against hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck to keep from falling. She buried her hands in his hair. They kissed and she forgot all about keys and Malachi. Her chills were erased. Her loneliness and worry forgotten. Their bodies didn’t care that they weren’t allowed to explore their connection. The affinity and the Brimstone, once loosed, were nearly impossible to restrain.

  Adam’s body burned. She pressed against him as close as their clothes and position allowed. It wasn’t close enough. He groaned deep in his throat. She hummed in response. Her skin began to tingle wherever it touched his. She was more than willing to hold him until she burst into flame rather than let him go.

  His hand moved from her stomach to trace the zipper of her jeans all the way to the juncture of her thighs. She cried out into his mouth when he found the heat he’d kindled and pressed it firmly beneath the palm of his hand.

  It was an ATV rumbling along the garden pathway that broke them apart. They stood, each trying to regain their equilibrium as the gardener passed. He waved at them and Adam raised his hand in reply. Victoria stumbled down the steps to put distance between her and the damned man she craved. Her affinity ached. Her unsung song left a cold knot in her chest.

  “I wanted to ask you to dinner. Only that,” Adam said. He pushed one hand up into his hair and smoothed it back from his forehead. She stared at the droplets of sweat that glistened on his upper lip. She resisted the urge to step back into his arms and lick them up.

  “Only dinner,” Victoria said. She pressed her hands against her stomach and breathed in deep as if she was centering herself to step onto the stage.

  “You’ll join me?” Adam asked, sounding surprised. He stepped down the stairs, but walked a couple of paces away as if he didn’t trust himself to stand near her.

  She had no choice but to join him. He was back on the estate and she needed to increase her efforts to find his secret prisoners. But that justification didn’t fool her affinity. It sensitized all of her nerve endings so that every touch they’d just shared replayed again and again with arcs of feeling that shook her to the core.

  “Yes. I’ll join you,” Victoria said. She lifted her chin to face him. His gaze tracked over her from her eyes to her flushed cheeks and swollen lips to her chest that still rose and fell more deeply than it should. “For dinner. Only that.”

  He was far more experienced at control than she was. He no longer breathed too deeply. The Brimstone blush on his skin had already faded. The perspiration on his lip had dried. Only the swollen curve of the lower lip she’d nibbled indicated that they’d shared a passionate kiss moments before.

  “Until then,” Adam said. He was back to the sophisticated host who would seem completely untouchable to someone who hadn’t tasted his fire.

  Unfortunately, she had and those tastes only made her burn for more.

  Chapter 9

  She wore the red dress Sybil had secretly packed for her.

  The fabric slid over her body like shimmering liquid once she’d decided to pull it from the closet. She shivered beneath its silky touch negating the idea that she’d ever intended to wear the black dress at all. The red had been sewed for her, each stitch placed to complement her curves. She was slightly bustier now than she’d been before Michael, but Sybil never missed by a millimeter.

  The dress seemed to love her new figure. Her fuller bust and rounder hips seemed to suit the simple cut of the flowing skirt and soft draped bodice. She had more cleavage where the V neckline dipped. She turned full circle to survey the effect and was surprised how feminine and sultry a figure she cut in the floor-length mirror. She wanted to wear this for Adam Turov. She wanted to see his hard, angular face soften in appreciation. She wanted to see if his color heightened, if his breath quickened. For long seconds she thought of how those things might happen in an intimate setting where she might see his paler skin, untouched by the sun, become flushed from her touch. But that was getting far too carried away.

  The keys were her top priority. She had to find every locked door on the estate. But she couldn’t help if her imagination found Adam a locked door in many ways as well. Surely he was well beyond a mere mortal woman’s reach. Yet she had seemed to reach him. Again and again. In intimate ways. He hadn’t wanted to kiss her, but he had. Almost as if he couldn’t help himself. She wished she could pretend there was no allure in that.

  She placed the keys in a small clutch embroidered with pavé crystals. Hiding the keys in plain sight was a bold move, but the clutch complemented her sandals perfectly, both glittering against the red simplicity of her dress.

  She expected one of the vineyard’s ATVs to pick her up, but when she left the cottage and walked down to the pebbled drive she discovered a gleaming black vintage limousine instead. Its rounded fenders and narrow wheels looked like a vehicle that would take her to a speakeasy instead of a modern dinner. She could see her reflection in the glossy fender as she approached the liveried driver who also seemed out of a different time.

  “Good evening, Ms. D’Arcy,” the older man greeted her as he opened the rear door.

  “Thank you,” she replied as she sank down into buttery tan leather.

  She’d thought Adam might be riding with her, but the backseat was hers alone. Only a fluted glass of pinot noir waited for her. The driver closed the door behind her and she reached for the glass to sip as the car smoothly pulled into the night. The tinted windows were so dark she couldn’t see their route.

  Would her appearance hide her true intentions as well as the tinted windows hid the world outside the car? She had to admit one of her intentions was to look attractive for Turov. Actually playing with fire—his Brimstone blood and her affinity for it—was bolder than she’d been since before Michael was born.

  Her skin flushed with the idea of enjoying their attraction in spite of her mission. She could still recall with total clarity the press of his l
ips and his white-knuckled grip as he’d held himself back from more. It was too bold to want him to release the grip he had on his control. But imagining how it would be between them if he did caused her breath to quicken and her pulse to jump.

  She had a dark mission to fulfill at Nightingale Vineyards, one that made any relationship between her and Adam Turov impossible before it even began. But he drew her. Oh, he drew her. His lips could soften...for her. His eyes could focus on her with laser intensity as the rest of the dark world fell away. His pinot noir—so rich, so rooted in heritage and heart—could ripen and sweeten when shared between their lips and tongues.

  Victoria closed her eyes and swallowed the last of the glass the driver had prepared as the car slowed and came to a smooth stop. She waited for the driver to exit and walk to her door. He opened it with a flourish and offered her a gloved hand. She accepted his help more to linger over the old-fashioned procedure and slow her arrival than because she needed help. She needed a pause. She needed to catch her breath. She needed to decide if she was experiencing anticipation or dread.

  “Mr. Turov is waiting for you inside,” the driver said.

  Victoria gathered herself and squared her shoulders. She held her clutch tight in her nervous fingers while she looked around. The car had stopped in front of a hillside slope where a massive set of double oaken doors was set into a curved semicircle wall made of stone block and concrete. Moss and grass grew on the stones, turning the wall verdant green in ever increasing patches. It was surreal to approach and take a hammered copper handle in her hand, as if she prepared to enter a fairy mound while the driver watched, stoic and still. He was another one of Adam’s loyal people. Did he often deliver unsuspecting women to a fey master?

  It was a fanciful thought when she knew it wasn’t a fairy realm, but a hell dimension that Turov served.

  The door opened easily, but she could see where a key would fit below the handle, more conscious than ever of the keys hidden in her clutch. Cool, earthy air met her as she stepped inside a long, lofted space carved out of the ground, lined with large, familiar stones. This man-made cave matched the main house down to the hammered copper fittings.

  She paused as her eyes adjusted to the artificial light and as she paused her attention was drawn up, up, up where a giant chandelier made of twining branches dominated the room. It curved down from the stone ceiling glowing at each of a thousand tips in an artistic tangle of twinkling vines.

  “I had it custom crafted from roots taken from some of our first vines,” Adam explained. “It’s a fitting reminder of our humble beginnings.”

  The first vines. The first roots. Victoria could only absorb the idea of a chandelier created from beautiful twisting and twining grapevine roots preserved forever with lustrous varnish that glowed brightly with a thousand tiny bulbs. She could almost imagine the elaborate fixture was still connected to plants far above that fed its light directly from the sun.

  “It’s perfect,” she breathed.

  The chandelier drew the eye from the cavernous space that once must have held hundreds of barrels of wine. Now it was a banquet space complete with a highly polished dance floor that glowed with a sheen from the light high above it.

  Adam had risen from the seat at the head of a large oak table. Its surface was smoothed by generations of use, but there were only two place settings beneath the chandelier. Hers and his. She walked beneath the chandelier’s glow to meet him. He watched her approach. The look in his eyes was hard to ascertain, but more than the appreciation she’d hoped for. Much more.

  This place wasn’t meant for a casual dinner.

  This was a place meant for family and celebration, for large gatherings of loved ones full of warmth and home. Yet he’d invited her here. He moved to hold out a heavy chair that matched the table. Much used. Much loved. The plain, enduring oak was the perfect complement to the delicate complexity of the root chandelier above it.

  She looked from Turov’s face up to the light and back again. The glow and shadow from its coils painted his handsome face in mysterious ways. He was both young and old. Passing time was apparent in the depth of his eyes and the stone of his jaw. Even though his skin was smooth.

  He was no daemon.

  He wasn’t immortal.

  But he seemed ageless and forever beneath his vineyard roots. Too planted for someone like her to understand.

  “I’m glad you came,” he said.

  As she sat his hand brushed her arm.

  Just that. The softest, inadvertent touch and she hummed in response. Out loud. And they both froze as they burned.

  “I should confess how I long to hear you sing,” he said.

  This time, when he touched her arm, it was on purpose, the lightest caress. The heat of it flowed down her spine to liquefy everything in her—all resistance, all caution, all intention—until nothing was left but instinctive reaction.

  “I’d like to sing...for you,” she replied.

  It was an answering confession. One that caused him to take a step back. His retreat was a reminder that they weren’t free to explore the connection urging them otherwise.

  Victoria sat, far too weak in the knees to stay on her feet, and he moved to take his own seat. Though they were at a giant table, the length of it wasn’t between them. Their place settings of delicate vintage china were close together. His chair on the end was only separated from hers on the side by a couple of feet.

  “This is a lovely pattern,” she said. She traced the familiar crimson-and-gold firebird on her plate with a trembling finger.

  “Do you know the story of the Russian firebird? There are several versions. My mother’s favorite was the one in which the firebird escaped a prince who had imprisoned it for greed and gold,” Turov said.

  He watched her closely for a reaction. Too closely.

  “I’ve noticed the birdcages. There are several in the cottage and the main house...” Victoria trailed off.

  “There are dozens upon dozens. Hundreds. All open. All empty. My mother loved the symbolism of an empty cage,” Turov explained.

  “And the firebird with its flaming feathers,” Victoria said, tracing the gilded scarlet tail.

  “Yes. I hadn’t thought of that, but all the firebird art she favored was the flaming image. The glow of the free firebird in flight,” Turov said.

  Victoria looked at the man beside her, at the glow of the chandelier on his face. He looked at her in the same moment and the blue of his eyes was vivid in the backlight of shadows.

  “Did the firebird ever sing in the tales?” she asked.

  “Burned mostly. I think singing is left to nightingales,” Turov said.

  Several servers interrupted then, carrying food from an anteroom she hadn’t seen. Turov noticed her surprise.

  “This was one of the original wine caves that we abandoned when we constructed newer ones in the ’50s because of more modern construction methods and better technology for temperature control. But I’m a nostalgic man. I didn’t want to give up on this first one completely. We reclaimed it as a dining hall. Although since my parents died I’m afraid it’s been mostly abandoned again,” Turov said.

  He’d said “we” in the ’50s when he shouldn’t have been born. She didn’t correct him. The keys she’d borrowed were on the table in her sparkling clutch in plain sight. His near immortality was also in plain sight. Neither of them acknowledged their secrets, known or unknown.

  After the food was served and the servers withdrew, Adam spoke quietly while she picked at the filet mignon.

  “I found a recording of one of your performances as Juliet. I enjoy it. Immensely,” he said.

  Her eyes moistened, but she didn’t allow any tears to fall. She cleared her throat, but she could still feel the scratchy tightening that had been with her since the fire.

&nb
sp; “I would sound very different now. My voice is changed. I’m no longer the singer I once was,” she said.

  “Your vocal cords may be different, but your expression, your emotion, your depth? Those would be the same,” Turov argued.

  Victoria forgot about keys. About daemons and monks and filet mignon. Her fork paused in the air as she looked at Adam. She could feel the truth of his words in her chest where emotion tightened and squeezed.

  “There are different ways of singing. When one song is taken from us, there’s always a new song. Every day,” he continued.

  Victoria thought about the years ahead of her. She was young. She had never made a conscious decision to never sing again. But she felt to her bones the impossibility of singing opera again. It was indelibly tied to her past and her loss even if she regained her singing abilities. The urge to sing she felt with Turov, her affinity to his Brimstone, was a new song, full of hope but not despair, full of possibility not tragedy. She didn’t want to perform a part for him. She wanted to sing the truth from the depths of her heart.

  And that’s why it scared her.

  She didn’t understand it. She didn’t know how to trust it. She was a nightingale firmly locked in the safety of its cage.

  “I hope you’ll sing for me one day. I burn to hear your voice live, smoky, sweet as I imagine it would be now. But even more I hope you’ll sing for you. To continue to express all that you have inside. All that I can sense sitting here with you, though you don’t make a sound,” he said.

  Victoria had gone utterly silent and still. She was afraid to breathe lest she sing. She was afraid to move lest she break out in a sultry siren’s song that would break down all the protective bars of her cage.

  She wasn’t here to play with the affinity and his Brimstone burn. Especially when all that was at stake felt too serious to be playing at all.