Masked Possession

by Alana Delacroix

  Her scars! Caro rose slightly onto her elbows as he slid lower.

  The scars were gone.

  Before she could wonder at this, his hand dipped down between her legs. He stopped and gazed into her eyes, asking a wordless question.

  “Yes,” Caro whispered. “More.”

  Instead, he moved his hand back up to stroke her breast, then bent over her to follow the same trail down her body with his tongue. Caro choked back a whimper. This time, he lingered at her nipples, flicking one at a time and giving her a tender bite that made her jump and moan. He traveled lower.

  “Let me taste you.” His voice was raw as he put a hand on each of her thighs and spread them gently apart. “God, you’re wet.”

  Keeping his hands on her, he leaned down to paint small circles on her inner thigh with his tongue. Incredible. There were no other words for it. As the circles slowly widened, the anticipation made her entire body tense with need.

  As she was about to tangle her hands in his hair and move him to where she needed him most, he slid his mouth onto her core. He started slowly and gently, teasing licks combined with the tip of his finger stroking lightly against her slick entrance. Caro arched her back and writhed on the skin, panting. She wasn’t sure if it was Eric, or the fact it had been over two years since she’d last had sex, or the combination of both, but what he was doing was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to her. He tormented her mercilessly, bringing her to the brink, then again before slipping a finger inside as he lashed her with his tongue. Her hips bucked and she screamed out loud as she came.

  As she lay breathless, Eric moved up beside her and began to nibble her ear. Leaning against him, Caro reached down to take him in her hands. Now it was her turn to enjoy him. The sound of his growl close to her ear almost brought her to the edge again. To be able to arouse this man intensely was mind-blowing.

  She pushed Eric down and licked her upper lip as she knelt over him, straddling him to rub against his hard cock. Letting go of his wrists, Caro spread her hands wide over his chest. Eric was stunning, built like a statue—hard steel under warm, supple flesh. She ran her hands over his arms and down the muscles. Leaning down, she slid her tongue across his nipples, feeling them harden under her touch.

  “Caro. I want you. Now.” His voice sounded labored and rough, and suddenly she couldn’t wait either. But she would. Instead of coming down on him, she slipped off and took him in her mouth, running her tongue up and down the smooth shaft as she grasped him with both hands.

  It didn’t last long. With a groan of desire, Eric reached down and pulled Caro up, then over onto her back. Before she could react, he was between her thighs, pressing them down with his hands.

  Then he stopped. Waited.

  “Please.” It was more of a whimper than a word.

  He slid in easily, his entry causing her to moan as she bucked her hips up to get him even deeper. They moved as one, each knowing exactly what would bring the other to the edge. Caro wrapped her legs around his back, wordlessly demanding more, and began coming in endless waves. As she reached her peak, she grabbed his shoulders and pulled him down against her, their bodies slippery with sweat. She cried out and he echoed her a moment later, pushing into her with one last hard, shuddering thrust.

  Then blackness again.

  Chapter 8

  When Eric opened his eyes, he saw Caro hovering over him, dark hair now loose around her shoulders and eyes wide with shock and confusion. She reached her hand out to touch his face softly and shivered when he kissed her palm, her gaze never leaving his. The door banged open and Stephan ran in, Tom right behind him with his gun drawn.

  “What happened?” Stephan demanded sharply. “I heard you call.”

  “I don’t know.” Caro sounded dazed. “He collapsed and said it was convergence and I tried CPR, then there was a room but it was a cave, not a room, with dancing people and it was black and now I’m here but I was there and I don’t know what happened.”

  She was rambling. “Stephan, give Caro a drink. Brandy.” Eric sat up and experienced a dizzying wave of nausea. “Better make that two.”

  “I’m ordering the medics.” Stephan already had his phone out.

  “No!” Eric’s voice sounded harsher than he intended and he softened it. “No. I’m fine. We’ll talk about it later.” He shot his lieutenant a look that stilled Stephan’s hand. Tom was on alert, checking the room while keeping his laser attention focused on Caro.

  Eric would deal with Tom’s suspicions later. Despite his horror at what had happened, his concern was for Caro. What she had done should have been impossible. Completely impossible. Somehow she had managed to get into his mind, to see the dark cavern where he kept the memories of his past masques. Only Hierarchs and the best healers had the power and ability to do that. He replayed what had happened while she was there, but began to get hard almost immediately. Now was not the time to think about the way her soft, strong legs had wrapped around him. He put it firmly out of his mind and leaned over to face her. “Caro. Caro, look at me.”

  She raised huge starry eyes and when she met his gaze, flushed a red so deep that Eric would have laughed had he not been shaken. She remembered everything. She shouldn’t remember. Then again, she shouldn’t have been able to do what she had done in the first place, so why was he surprised?

  “Did that happen?” Her voice quavered. “Where was I?”

  There was no way to sugarcoat it and he couldn’t lie to her. “In my mind.”

  “You’re kidding.” She stared at his forehead, then passed a hand over her eyes. “Seems a little small for the two of us.”

  A huge wave of relief passed over him. Caro was resilient. He took her hand and felt her stiffen at his touch. He hoped to God it wasn’t with distaste. “I’m not. I think you stopped the convergence. You grounded me, stopped the feedback loop.”

  Stephan handed Caro a small snifter and she took it without speaking. His lieutenant handed Eric his own glass. “Is that true?” he demanded.

  Eric wrapped his arms around Caro, who was now shaking uncontrollably. “Change what I said and get the medics. I think she’s going into shock.”

  Caro pulled out of his embrace, and he fought the intense desire to bring her back into his arms. “No, no medics. Some more of that brandy though.” Her voice grew stronger. In a moment, she rose to her feet and walked, unsteadily, over to one of the chairs. Pushing her hair away from her face, she pointed at Eric.

  “Tell me exactly what that was about,” she ordered, clearly not caring that she was addressing the Hierarch. “None of your masquerada lies.”

  Tom took a threatening step toward her but Eric waved him off as he rose to his feet. He was slick with sweat and stripped off his shirt without thinking twice. Caro’s eyes flickered slightly and he smiled inwardly, loving the effect he had on her, before grabbing a blanket and draping it over his shoulders.

  “What did you see?” he countered. He was having trouble processing it himself. His mind was in turmoil.

  She responded instantly. “A cave. High ceiling. Long and dark, with figures whirling around like dervishes. Different ages and ethnicities. Men and women and children. They wore costumes from different time periods. The ones in more modern clothes were at the back, toward you. Why were they moving? They looked frenzied, wild, but their faces were frozen.”

  Eric and Stephan shared a glance. “They’re usually still, almost as if they’re posed,” Eric said. “It must have been the convergence.”

  “There were so many,” she said softly. “How long have you been a masquerada?”

  “Over four hundred years.” A sharp pain pierced Eric’s head. It was hard to think of the past while close to a convergence point.

  “Then what happened?” asked Stephan. Tom listened closely, a heavy frown on his bronzed face.

  “Ah, Eric was hid
den at the end of them, lying down under a sheet.” Caro looked helplessly at Eric and he felt himself twitch again.

  A summary would suffice. “She put her hand on my face and we found ourselves back here.” Stephan shot him a suspicious look but said nothing. Eric ignored him. “Caro, what you did— I don’t understand how you did it. Only a healer should have been able to do that, and they’re adept masquerada who have been well-trained. Even then, they’re rarely successful.”

  Caro drank down the snifter and poured herself another generous tot. She drank down the third brandy and coughed. “What do you mean by stopping the feedback loop?”

  “Convergence is caused when you lose control of the masques. They keep coming up through your psyche, fighting your core self until they overwhelm it.” Caro’s gorgeous eyes were wide, but she motioned for him to continue. He forced himself to speak, although thinking about what he’d narrowly avoided gave him a feverish, sick feeling. “You stepped in between, broke the cycle. Gave the core enough time to master them all.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” she said roughly.

  “Then how can this have happened?” Tom’s hand was firmly on the handle of his holstered gun. “Is there something you should tell us? Are you a masquerada, Ms. Yeats? Can you at least keep your mouth shut?”

  Caro started as though he had slapped her, then her brown eyes narrowed. “I’m discreet.” She put down the empty glass with a steady hand. “This is no one’s business but yours.”

  “Good. Much depends on that. Discretion means not telling your boss, by the way.”

  Eric clapped his hands together. “Enough, Tom. Caro said she would keep what happened to herself. It doesn’t matter how it happened. It’s done.” He felt the heavyweight horror of the experience, and an overpowering fear that it would happen again. He couldn’t let it. “Caro, is your plan ready to go now?”

  “What?”

  “Your plan. The one you presented earlier. I need it right now.”

  She shook her head as though clearing it. “Of course. Give me a moment.” She shut her eyes for a few seconds as she took a deep breath. Then her voice became completely professional. Eric admired her self-discipline, strong enough for a masquerada. “We still need thirty-six hours for the main show, but can start reducing the others immediately.”

  “Stephan?”

  “Not a problem.”

  “Caro, begin.”

  She turned to Stephan. “I’ll need your help.”

  “Whatever I can do,” he said immediately.

  Caro checked her laptop and began to list off items in a firm voice.

  Stephan nodded as he took notes. “Anything else?”

  “The Hierarch can’t leave this house as any of the affected masques.”

  “That’s fine,” Eric said. The mere thought of masquing at all made him feel ill. He needed to come to grips with it himself.

  Caro gave Stephan a few more rapid instructions about possible flight times. “I need to get in touch with our field crews.” She shut down her laptop and slid it into her bag. “Stephan, I’ll call you by noon.”

  She gave Eric a quick, confused glance as she nodded farewell but that was it. He didn’t push her. She would need time to think about what had happened, as did he. She was already on her phone as Tom and Stephan walked her out.

  * * * *

  When Stephan returned alone, Eric was lying on the sofa, staring at the wall. The lieutenant didn’t beat around the bush. “Tom doesn’t trust her. He’s doing a background check. She must have some masquerada blood.”

  “Maybe.” It would make a lot of sense if there was some in her background. There were definitely statics walking around with an ancestor’s indiscretion hidden in their cells. Although most would never be affected, the masquerada line occasionally ran true.

  “What the hell happened there? Is it true?”

  “It happened,” Eric said. He didn’t want to think about the convergence and how he had come close to losing himself. Instead, he wanted to think about how good Caro felt against him, and the soft feel of her hot tongue on his skin.

  “Those masques are dead to you now,” Stephan said roughly. “You nearly converged. Christ, you did converge. You’re lucky as hell you’re not sitting there with six legs.”

  Stephan was right. He couldn’t deny it. “Okay.”

  “You can’t change into any of them again. I want the medics to check you over. No masquing at all until they give the go-ahead. None.”

  Eric nodded. “Fine.” No problem there—he was in no particular hurry to live through that again. It had been sheer luck that Caro had been there to ground him.

  “This needs to be kept quiet.” Stephan started to pace the room. “If Caro talks, we’ll be in real trouble. Iverson won’t hesitate to use this as a weapon against you.”

  “I know.”

  To Iverson and his followers, strength lay in the shifting ability. It wasn’t only them, either. Almost every masquerada believed the same thing. Those who could shift into multiple masques were automatically given a respect not accorded to those who could not, even though the ability was one masquerada were born with and was usually hereditary. Since the type of masques one could take on couldn’t be changed through hard work or practice, Eric found this class structure deplorable and unjust. He’d spent years trying to combat it. It was slow work.

  If it got out that he couldn’t shift…there would be problems.

  He sighed. At least that wouldn’t happen. He could still take on masques. All he had to do was take a few days off. The medics could be trusted to keep silent and so could Caro. He knew it. Then he caught sight of Stephan’s frown. “What now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve got the worst poker face imaginable. Give me the rest of it.”

  Stephan looked resigned. “You won’t like it,” he warned.

  “Jesus, spit it out.”

  “I’ll say it one more time. Frieda has experience with convergence. She’s a registered healer and they take a vow of patient secrecy.”

  Eric nodded. Stephan probably had a point. “As long as she doesn’t take this as a willingness to enter a personal relationship.” Not again.

  “I’ll make it clear it’s professional and consultative only.”

  Eric rubbed his head, too tired to argue. “You win. Call her in.”

  “She must be a masquerada,” Stephan said.

  “You know she is.”

  “Caro, not Frieda. How else could she do that? Get into your mind like that?”

  “I have no idea.” Could she be? He hadn’t felt a thing from her, none of that subtle energy that helped masquerada identify each other.

  “Tom will find out. I’m curious myself.”

  “Me too,” Eric murmured.

  Though perhaps not for the same reasons.

  Chapter 9

  Back at the office, Caro called Julien, who celebrated her success by audibly retching before muttering an excuse and tossing the phone onto a table, where the clatter of its fall was mixed with the sound of his vomiting. She made a face, hung up, and spent the rest of the day in a chaotic flurry, connecting with the field teams, figuring logistics, and doing a vast amount of troubleshooting. Stephan and Tom arrived in the afternoon with the items she’d requested, and they walked through the plan several more times, testing it for weakness and filling in the gaps.

  Standing to grab herself a coffee, Caro looked down at Stephan’s notes and was astonished to see his words flowing across the page in a gorgeous copperplate script. “That’s your usual writing?”

  Stephan nodded and held up a pen that she saw had an old-fashioned nib. “I type when I need to,” he said. “I enjoy writing by hand.”

  “When did you learn? That looks like something I’d see in a museum.”

 
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that a comment on my advanced age?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I’m joking, Ms. Yeats. I was a slave in the south and when I escaped, I got myself a tutor. This was her hand.” He squinted at the pen. “She’s long dead, but I kept the style of writing to remind me of her.”

  “I’m sorry.” The two words seemed inadequate. Caro remembered the many figures she’d seen in Eric’s mind. Like Stephan, Eric must have experienced tragedies without count.

  Stephan shrugged. “Longevity has its ups and downs. Now. What about the second mer team?”

  Caro knew a dismissal when she heard it and came back to the table. They worked for another hour. Then Caro glanced up after sending a flurry of emails. Tom stared at her with an unreadable expression.

  “Is there a problem?” she asked. The security chief had been watching her closely for most of the day and it was getting on her nerves.

  “No, ma’am.” Tom’s voice was tight.

  Who said ma’am these days? It made her feel like an old lady. Maybe it was a deliberate attempt to throw her off. “Are we missing something in the plan?”

  “If you add in that spotter near the docks, I think it’s all covered.”

  He examined her with steely eyes. Ah. Suddenly Caro understood. He was trained to protect Eric and here she was, blithely planning the deaths of his boss’s masques. It must be hard. In the interest of effective collaboration, she’d try to be more understanding.

  “It’s covered.” She smiled reassuringly. “It’ll work.”

  No answer except for that same icy stare. Asshole. Her commitment to being sympathetic went out the window. The phone rang and broke some of the tension: Julien, now well enough to add a few more tasks to Caro’s lengthy to-do list.

  The day was intense, hectic and, Caro admitted as she sipped from her cold cup of coffee after Stephan and Asshat Tom left, one of the best she’d had in a while. Her sneakers lay abandoned under her desk and she leaned back in her chair with her feet propped up. The busy and challenging hours had flown past, and she hadn’t felt this pleasantly drained since she’d left the Post.