by Zoë Archer
He moved away long enough to tug off his boots and disarm himself. Yet he kept both his pistol and sword close, both of them just beside the couch.
No sooner had he divested himself of these cumbersome obstructions than he lay fully on the bed, stretching out atop her. She purred as he settled himself between her legs, one arm wrapped around her shoulder, the other moving in heated exploration of her clothed body. She held his shoulders, stroked down his arms and back—all the while they kissed with a building, insistent hunger.
He learned anew her mouth, her flavor, her need as covetous as his own. She whispered against him, words that could have been a prayer or incantation or demand. Whatever it was she asked for, he was more than eager to give it to her. As her hands shaped over his straining back, he slipped from her mouth to graze his teeth along her jaw and down her neck. He inhaled her scent and warmth, and when he bit lightly at her collarbone, she arched up, moaning.
“Need to feel you,” he muttered thickly. He pulled at the fastenings of her gown, hands clumsy with desire. He knew his way around women’s clothing, yet suddenly everything became a mystery, an obstacle to her flesh.
She tried to help, though she knew the way of these garments far less than he. “Curse these modern fashions. Sewn by fiends.” She tugged at the ties beneath her stomacher, and the hooks attaching the skirt to the bodice.
“Let me.” He urged her up. With single-minded purpose, he stripped her from her gown and threw the whole thing aside in a flurry of peach fabric.
He allowed himself a moment to admire her in her stays and chemise, delighting in the contrast between the white cotton and the olive shade of her skin. Yet he could only admire for so long before he needed more.
He turned her around. Rather than immediately unlace her stays, he ran his mouth down the length of her neck, and lower, between the wings of her shoulder blades. The stays prevented him from moving farther down, so he traced the exposed flesh of her back with his lips, murmuring formless words against her skin.
“Please,” she gasped. “Free me from this cage.”
Quickly, he unlaced the stays, the stiffened material spreading apart until he was able to pull it off and cast it onto the discarded gown. She tugged off the chemise, dropping it to the ground, and turned back to him.
Thought fled. He could only stare at her as she sat upon the bed, nude, dark hair loose about her shoulders. She was lushly formed, narrow of waist, long of leg. Her generous breasts, full and round, had large coffee-colored nipples drawn into hard points. Between her thighs, her curls were ebony black. He drew his heated gaze up her body, lingering over her curves, to her face. She wore a look of changeless female power as she gazed back at him.
“In all my cursed life,” he rasped, “I’ve never seen anyone or anything as beautiful.”
She tipped her head in acknowledgment, and he smiled to himself, for she accepted his compliment as her due. This was a woman who understood her own strength and allure.
“I demand the same privilege,” she murmured.
He obeyed at once, throwing off his clothes with a lad’s haste. He no longer was the veteran seducer, who had divested himself of his garments with a seasoned and practiced air. All he desired at this moment was to remove all barriers between them.
Their clothing made twin piles upon the ground. The dust would stain everything. He didn’t care. He concerned himself only with the longing and desire in her gaze as she watched him disrobe. When he was naked, standing beside the bed, she sighed with pleasure.
“I could not conjure a man half so wondrous,” she breathed. Her gaze moved over him, seeming to take pleasure in all his hard surfaces, the body he had meticulously maintained as a weapon. Even his scars seemed to excite her. Yet when she looked upon the marks of flame on his chest, her eyes darkened, and her lips compressed. The markings had grown, dipping down all the way to his hipbone. Consuming him.
She appeared to deliberately move her gaze away from his markings, and her attention centered precisely where he showed his need for her most. His cock grew even harder under her scrutiny, pulling high and curved up toward his navel. A look of purest lust crossed her face.
“We’ve looked long enough,” he growled. He lay down upon the bed.
Then, finally, their nude bodies touched, and he understood that, of all his transformations, this one would be his last.
Chapter 13
The future kept itself swathed in shadow. If they had only this night, Bram would luxuriate in every experience.
His body partially atop hers, he touched her everywhere. Arms, legs, the soft curvature of her belly, the roundness of her hips, elegant and earthy. He felt a moment’s regret for the roughness of his calloused hands—practicing his swordplay without gloves had left him with hands far from aristocratic. Yet she writhed beneath his touch and seemed to draw further pleasure from the rasp of his rough palms against her glossy skin. He smoothed his palms over her breasts and growled.
God and damn and hell. She overflowed his hands, abundant, pagan. He teased her nipples to yet greater tightness, and then, when he had her gasping, he covered one with his mouth.
She moaned. Her fingers wove into his hair and pressed him closer. As he licked and sucked one nipple, he continued to toy with the other with his fingers. She was luscious beneath his tongue, vibrantly hot. And the sounds she made, throaty and unbound, traveled through his body and straight to his cock.
He moved his mouth to her other nipple, and his hand traveled along the architecture of her ribs, down her stomach. Until he found her soaking quim.
He growled against her flesh to feel her like this. Liquid, silken heat. He willed himself to a blind man’s sensitivity, discovering her most intimate place through his fingertips. The folds of her sex, the pearl that made her gasp and twist beneath him.
This is what he had been born to do, this was his purpose upon the blighted earth—to stroke and caress Livia, taste her skin, bring her pleasure upon pleasure by any means.
He touched her folds and moved lower, to circle her opening. Two fingers he sank into her, feeling all that clinging, tight heat.
Sounds of abandoned ecstasy tumbled from her throat, and he brought his mouth back to hers in a deep, demanding kiss, his fingers flowing in and out of her.
A rumble of surprise resonated in his chest when he felt her fingers wrap around his cock. Again, he wrestled with his control, needing to last even as the sensation of her hand on him pushed him perilously close to madness.
“You’ve magic in your hands, sorceress,” he managed to gasp as she stroked him.
“This is a spell only we can create.”
It seemed unreal, that the woman he caressed and kissed, and who caressed and kissed him back, was Livia, the woman for whom he burned but could not have. Now they were here together, in this conjured bed, making one another moan and sigh with pleasure. Carnal need built, testing his resolve to go slowly.
“Need my mouth on you,” he said, hoarse. “Need to drink you up, swallow you whole.”
“My appetite is far from sated.” She arched her eyebrow, the wickedest woman beneath the stars, and he the lucky bastard sharing her bed. “Lay back.”
He responded to her command, stretching out his long body. When she positioned herself above him, her hips over his mouth while she faced toward his feet, he couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs. His hands gripped her hips, lowering her to his mouth. At the same time, he felt her breath upon his cock. The first stroke of his tongue against her was the culmination of every desire.
Yes yes yes yes.
Her flavor was exquisite, the feel of her on his tongue sublime. And the way she tasted him, drawing his cock in and out of her clever mouth . . . perhaps he had stayed in the realm of the dead. Perhaps he had been forgiven and this was the promised reward of perfect bliss.
He heard and felt her scream in release, his cock in her mouth, his lips drawing pleasure from her quim. He had brought her a kind
of pleasure when she had been trapped in her ghostly form, but this was real, her shudders and cries were real. He had given this to her, him and no other.
They made this together, their shared selves creating pleasure.
For the first time in his life, he wanted to brand himself upon another. Mark her as his. Only one man upon the face of the earth would ever bestow this pleasure upon her. Him.
His possessiveness—unexpected, unfamiliar—shook him. Yet he was too far immersed in sensation. He could only obey the increasingly primal demands of his heart and body. So he continued to lap at her, thrusting his tongue inside her, and she cried out and trembled. Over and over, he brought her to climax. And all the while, she sucked at him, bands of fiery sensation radiating outward through his body.
Yet it still was not enough. He wanted all of her.
“More,” he demanded, pulling away. He moved quickly, flipping her onto her back. He knelt between her legs, hands gripping her taut thighs, gazing down at her. She looked up at him, eyes dark as mystery, skin flushed and lightly glistening with sweat, her arms stretched overhead to grip the edge of the couch. She was so vividly alive his eyes burned and his throat ached.
“Everything, Bram,” she said with her siren’s voice. “I’ve been without for over a thousand years. Give me everything.”
He lifted her hips, raising them up from the cushion. Then, in one stroke, sank into her.
He sounded like a beast, like an animal, the wordless growls he made, but he didn’t care and he couldn’t stop.
Her hands clasped the edge of the couch, the sleek muscles of her arms tight as she pushed herself closer. Lamplight touched the rounds and hollows of her body. Her eyes closed. She threw back her head, exposing the curve of her throat, and cried out.
Much as he wanted to move and lose himself in the primal demands of his body, he held still, reveling in the sensation of her all around him, of him as deep within her as he could be. They had shared thoughts, and while that connection had been severed, they could share this profound closeness, their bodies joined so intimately.
He drew back his hips, then slid forward. His thrusts were deliberate, measured, for all that he wanted to simply pound into her. But this slow drag and plunge gave such boundless pleasure he refused to go any faster. This had to last forever. He would make their sex into the whole of the world.
“Yes, Bram, yes, you are so . . . yes . . .” Her words ran together, and he adored her, this cunning, ruthless woman who gave herself and took from him immoderately.
His thrusts grew stronger, deeper. Her breasts shook with the force of their bodies moving together.
“This is what you wanted,” he growled. “What we needed.”
Her only response was to moan and urge her hips closer to his.
With one hand on her hip, he brought the other between her legs. He stroked and rubbed at her pearl, feeling its readiness beneath his fingers. She arched up with a cry, contracting around him.
Seeing her in the throes of her climax, he could not stop his own response. His release poured forth, incendiary. He lost himself in the pleasure, in her, as it surged on and on. His body shook, his heart opened, he was ablaze with sensation. Only when the very last tremors wracked him did he sink down, spent and devastated and vast as the sun, to lay beside her.
They were quiet together, bodies slick with sweat, the only sounds their breath slowly returning to normal. He ran his hand along the length of her thigh and discovered goose bumps, and only then did he realize how chilled it was within the warehouse. He found a woven blanket draped at the other end of the couch, and drew it over them both.
She wrapped her body around him. Here was another sensation he’d never known—not merely the fulfillment of his own needs, nor the smug acknowledgment that he’d given his lover pleasure, but that they had created ecstasy together, a selfless giving and taking.
“A thousand years is a small price to pay.” Her voice was a sleepy murmur, gratifyingly satisfied. Her fingers traced shapes on his chest.
“Not if you know what you’re missing.” He waited for the sense of restlessness that usually arrived after he’d concluded his bedsport. It never materialized. There was nowhere he wanted to be more than here, in this drafty warehouse by the river, the gloom barely held back by the lantern, the scent of sluggish water and layers of dust heavy in the air. These were not a voluptuary’s ideal conditions. But having Livia nestled in his arms, both slack and languorous from what surely was the most intense lovemaking he had ever experienced—he could think of nothing finer.
He felt none of the clinging darkness within himself, the shadowed thoughts that invariably crept in. From bed to bed he had leapt, finding relief from that pall during moments of base pleasure. The darkness always quickly returned, however.
For once, his demons were silent.
The actual demons were still a danger, the war with them and the forces of the underworld looming like a storm. Success was uncertain. Yet for now, here were beasts he could defeat.
He felt Livia’s limbs relax against him, and he indulged himself by stroking her shoulder, her arm, and the curve of her waist.
“You should have been a priestess of Venus,” he murmured.
She made a soft scoffing noise. “I’d no interest in advancing the cause of love. That was for girls with no ambition. Choosing the path of magic brought us here.”
“All roads lead to this moment.”
Her shoulders rose and fell. “The other priestesses, they said that everyone’s fates were already inscribed. The three deathless sisters spun, measured and cut the threads of our life. What could any mortal do but let their thread be severed? Myself, I believe the gods merely watch, and do nothing. The thread is ours to spin. Whether it is to be knotted or straight, short or long, that’s for us to decide.”
“Not a very priestess-like stance.”
“When it came to the devotional aspects of my duties, I did not excel.” Yet she smiled as she said this, and he smiled with her.
His smile faded as he stared up at the shadow-shrouded beams. “A baron’s son, well-favored, rich. Obliged to no one, as a second son. The world bent to my will. So I thought. The Colonies taught me otherwise. Nothing but chaos and destruction there. A good man or a sinner, scrupulous plans or adrift on the current—none of it mattered. Everything resulted in death.”
Her arms tightened around him, and he realized how bleak his voice sounded.
“Only one end to this journey of life,” he said. “None of us can avoid it.”
“You did,” she noted. “Only today.”
He needed no reminder. That shade would chill him the rest of his days. “I’ll have to make that voyage again, with no coming back. It’s inevitable. However,” he added, seeing her solemn expression, “what we do with the intervening years, that is our decision, and the measure of our consequence.”
She levered herself up, leaning on his chest. Cupping his face with her hands, she bent forward and kissed him, a kiss of unexpected sweetness. She pulled back enough to look into his eyes.
“We aren’t paragons, you and I,” she whispered. “The way of goodness does not come easily to us. Perhaps therein lies the secret. To see the more difficult course, and to choose it, anyway.”
“Sage counsel.” He brushed back a few clinging strands of hair from her forehead.
Her smile was wry. “I had over a thousand years to reflect on my shortcomings. Given enough time, and with a proper amount of boredom, anyone can become a philosopher.”
He pulled her back for another kiss. Her mouth was supple and eager against his, and he felt himself stirring again, wanting her.
The kiss ended in sensuous increments, until they broke apart and she settled against him with a sigh. He loved the feel of her hands on him, her breath soft against his flesh as she fell asleep.
Gathering her close, he continued to stare into the darkness. He’d no knowledge what the following day would bring. More
revelations. More danger. The hazard of death all over again. Worse, the possibility of literal hell on earth.
As she slept in his embrace, he remained awake, in vigil, refusing to grant himself slumber’s oblivion.
He’d died today. And his single thought, as he lay dying on the floor of his father’s deserted house, had not been for the Hellraisers, nor the fight against the Devil. He’d only thought of Livia. This same thought came to him now.
I’m lost without her.
Livia started awake. She had heard something, the faintest noise, yet it had penetrated the depths of her sleep. Sitting up, she felt Bram’s arm warm and heavy across her waist. It surprised her that, with his keen senses, he continued to slumber. There it was again, that sound. As if someone walked back and forth, sandals rasping against the stone floor.
The room in which she had awakened was not the warehouse. Glancing around, she saw elegant marble columns, frescoes of pastoral scenes, and mosaics inlaid upon the floor. Light from oil lamps painted the chamber in flickering gold. Platters of apricots, almonds, and spiced cake sat atop a low table. Someone in another chamber played upon a flute, the notes low and coaxing.
A bronze silk tunic lay across the end of the couch, and Livia slipped it on as she rose to investigate. Bram did not stir.
She walked from the chamber, down a corridor lined with burning torches. This was no warehouse, but a villa, precisely the sort she had known in Rome, and Londinium. Everything she passed sparked pained recognition, from the braziers perfuming the air to the pots of rosemary placed between supporting columns. Through the narrow windows, the night sky sparkled, free of coal smoke and choking fog. It had been an age since she had seen a truly clean sky.
The villa stretched on, and she followed the sound of footsteps. Yet as she walked, she passed no one. No other inhabitants, no servants, no slaves. Wariness marked her steps, but she did not stop. She needed to know who was pacing back and forth, and what they wanted.