His Black Pearl
Page 6
He lifted his gaze, just a second’s worth, to the wall. She looked and saw three vases topped with lids. She pushed him back from her and took a step closer to the wall.
Not vases.
Urns.
And more than three. She turned, counting until he interrupted her.
“Before you? Sixteen.”
She came to the sixteenth urn and saw, next to it, the pearl shell.
Her shell -- just as she had painted it.
“Only the Green River Killer had that many.”
“I don’t kill, Hallie. I judge. I rule… I…” He approached an urn -- seemingly the first and the largest. “These are the women who have ruled with me -- who weighed each heart until their own grew too heavy from the task.”
For a moment, she felt sorry for him.
Until she remembered that he was crazy as a bed bug.
She took a step back, and then another. He lifted a hand as if to halt her and the lights dimmed. When she turned to run back up the passage, the walls and door were in shadow. Trailing her hand against a wall, she tried to remember; had there only been one doorway into the room?
He followed, stopping when she stopped, his hand out and ready to touch her but never bridging the gap between their bodies. “It’s your heart, Hallie.”
Bright light flared and died in an instant, leaving heavy black shadows dancing in her vision so that every wall looked like it had a door or two in front of it.
Turning sharply, she ran into Aaron.
“Let go!”
For once, he obeyed her.
If only he would stop talking.
“You can feel it.” He reached out, just far enough to stroke a fingertip down the inside line of her breast. “Not enough blood coming in. Just a small area of the aorta stretched thin right now.”
Taking a step back, Hallie fell to her knees.
“A few minutes at most, and it will tear.” He dropped to his knees with her. “Before then, your brain will begin starving for oxygen. You’ll begin to see things…”
She was seeing things now. She reached out and gripped his forearms while shadows danced behind his back like raven’s wings.
He inched closer, reversing their position until he was holding her by the back of her arms. “You don’t have to die, Hallie. I cannot give you life. But if you stay with me, I can give you afterlife.”
She was sinking to the floor. Aaron’s words grew fainter. He sat down and pulled her onto his lap, his whole body cradling her.
“Stay with me. You can sculpt deaths, conduct last breaths…”
Hallie thought of the studio, the draped furniture and crates. She rested her head against his chest, struggling to fill her lungs with enough air to speak until she managed a weak “But not create?”
He tilted his face to hers, his lips, for the last time, not quite touching hers in a kiss. “You can create beautiful deaths for the innocent, move the world to action with it --”
“But not paint,” she pressed.
“No, not that, kardhoola mou.” He put his hand over her heart, pressing as if he could slow time. His other hand cradled her head. Tears fell, as dark and brilliant as the rest of him. “Just a kiss, Hallie. That’s all I’m asking.”
You only kiss your wife. Was that it? To kiss him was to become Hell’s Mistress?
The words wouldn’t come. She tried, but cold crept over her chest, freezing her lips. He would have to take it, reading her consent in her gaze if he could.
Aaron dipped his head, his tongue gently prying at her lips. His thumb pressed at her chin, coaxing her mouth to open. He sealed his lips to hers, his every exhalation thawing her frozen limbs and filling her with something that was neither life nor death.
He wrapped his arms around her, kissing her more deeply. He explored Hallie’s mouth, his tongue stroking and wrestling with hers before he took her bottom lip between his teeth and tugged at it.
She looked at the urns that lined the wall. Would their failure be hers? Dismissing the idea, she wrapped her arms around Aaron’s neck and pulled him back into the kiss. Above them, doors slammed as the uncles left, disappointed.
It was time those old birds learned a new trick.
And she was just the dark queen to teach them.
Colette Howard
Born and raised on military installations across the U.S. and Germany, Colette Howard finally met the man of her dreams (a sexy Greek Ram!) five years ago and settled down in his hometown -- America’s Motor City, where she misses being close to her sisters but loves Detroit’s energy.
New to fiction, she has spent the last nine years writing and editing business content for a national audience. A blue-collar girl with a white-collar education, she’s grown into a first-rate chameleon, equally at home in the boardroom or down on the softball diamond, ordering up caviar or hot wings, Dom Perignon or Dos Equis. She brings the same variety to the sensual romances she pens late at night, after the Ram has collapsed into an exhausted but oh-so-satisfied sleep.