by BETH KERY
She was dreaming.
She was definitely dreaming.
She lay in the middle of a chamber that was so exquisite, so decadently grand, she might have awakened in one of the Medici’s Renaissance palazzos. She couldn’t tell if it was night or day, the chocolate-brown velvet draperies and amber silk panels were so luxurious and thick. Her gaze skimmed across the hand-painted frescoes on the domed ceiling—the artistry unlike anything she’d ever seen. The eye could get lost in the elaborate details of the plaster moldings.
It would be like awakening in a Medici Renaissance palazzo if it weren’t for the modern conveniences, she thought to herself when she saw the enormous carved wood entertainment center and the fully stocked, granite-topped wet bar.
I can just imagine what a Snickers would put me back in this hotel.
The thought steadied her, made it possible for her to whisk back the amber silk sheets and sit up. She refused to acknowledge the other thought that slunk like a black shadow in the background.
This is no hotel you ever checked into.
It was difficult to banish that frightening thought when she realized she was naked, save for her black velvet gloves. She’d bought the gloves, along with a sophisticated evening dress, for the reception at King’s College. At least whoever had removed her clothes had the common sense to leave her the protection of her gloves.
The car wreck a year and a half ago had marked a turning point in her life in more ways than one. She’d been in a coma for six months before she awakened, but when she did, everything was different. Not only could she sense other people’s auras and sometimes read minds—abilities she’d possessed for as long as she had memory—she’d somehow acquired a terrifying new power.
With just a touch of her hands and fingertips, Isabel would learn an object’s history through flashes of the identity and feelings of those who had handled the item. Unfortunately, what often came through with the most clarity were violent and traumatic events associated with the object.
Touching other people could be worse. Far worse. She had never known the amount of pain, loneliness, lust, hatred, fury and sadness a human being could possibly harbor beneath skin and bone until she’d awakened from that coma. The knowledge had tipped Isabel’s known, familiar world off its axis.
Lester Dee, a professor from New York University, had sought her out a year after she’d left the hospital. He’d read an article about her abilities as a psychometrist and tried to locate her for six months. When he found her, she’d been living in a halfway house, malnourished, depressed and straddling the threshold between life and death.
Who wanted to live when touching objects, and especially fellow human beings, could be pure agony? She was destined to die alone.
Lester had lifted her out of the abyss, helped her find ways to cope with her new ability even as he studied it and shared his findings with her. Lester had been the reason she was making a tour of universities in the United Kingdom. His research articles on her abilities had gained great interest as well as controversy in the academic community. She’d always wanted to see England, so she’d been more than happy to accompany Lester so that he could validate his claims.
One thing Isabel had learned when it came to anything paranormal—scholars never believed without seeing proof firsthand, and they rarely believed even then.
Was Lester in this grand establishment as well?
She squinted, trying to locate memories in her brain. It was a little like grasping for a feather in an unfamiliar, pitch-black room. Fear rose in her, causing a bitter taste at the back of her throat. She stood, pausing a moment while she steadied herself with a hand on the mattress. It wasn’t a normal dizziness. Strangely, she felt overly energized, not drained, as if she’d just drunk a potent stimulant.
The room spun and then resolved into magnificent grandeur once again. She spied a carved door and staggered toward it. Inside, she discovered a closet that was larger than her apartment bedroom. The closet led to a bathroom, she observed, peering through the door. Only two garments hung on the empty clothes rack in the closet—her purple dress and a soft microfiber robe. She grabbed her dress and hurriedly donned it, eager for even that flimsy bit of armor when she felt so vulnerable. Her heart began to pound uncomfortably in her chest. Now that her dazed disorientation was lifting, panic was quickly rushing in to take its place.
Had Lester brought her here? The memory of her mentor’s tatty tweed blazers and generous heart, yet emaciated pocketbook, didn’t make the possibility seem likely.
She rushed back into the bedroom. The wet-bar was well-stocked with premium liquor and wine. She flipped open drawer after draw and finally found what she wanted.
The small, sharp knife in her hand didn’t make her feel any safer, but it steadied her.
She opened the bedroom door and stepped warily onto an open landing. Her feet struck cold, hard marble. She rushed down the remainder of the hallway into a vast foyer with a domed ceiling. The ornate balustrade she passed was so white it might have been carved from snow crystals. She didn’t draw a breath as she flew down the grand staircase, her bare feet making her descent eerily silent.
She reached the bottom and found herself standing in a circular gallery with multiple doorways leading off it and magnificent tapestries and paintings adorning the walls.
She purposely pricked one of her fingertips with the small knife. Pain flashed through her, sharp but quickly gone. No. She wasn’t dreaming.
Isabel had grown up in Lettering, Pennsylvania—a gray, meager, mean little town. She’d never seen colors, textures and riches as she did in that moment, let alone dreamed them. Yes, she’d seen true wonders since arriving in England six weeks ago, and her visions while touching objects often revealed wondrous places. But those were other people’s memories, other people’s lives…
…and none of them even compared to this.
She stilled and raised her knife when she heard male voices in the distance then a woman’s laughter. Her rabid curiosity to understand how she’d ended up in such a wondrous house outweighed her fear at waking up in a strange place with a large black hole in her memory.
She eased into the narrow opening in the wood paneled doors and peered cautiously into the room.
It was a salon, of sorts—large, but made intimate with a roaring fire and multiple seating areas furnished with rich, plush fabrics on the chairs and sofas. Closest to her she saw a man with a patrician, handsome face twisted into dissatisfaction as he looked at something outside of Isabel’s vision.
She started when she fully took in his aura.
It was…bizarre. Unlike anything she’d ever seen—more like an inverse of an aura, like a film negative. He wore a crisp white shirt and a wool scarf tied artfully around his neck. His straight-legged black pants were modern enough—actually quite chic—as were his highly polished black shoes. He spoke adamantly.
“Not that tint for her breast, you fool!”
“Now you are a master painter as well, Cane? Being a master of magic and architecture and alchemy and medicine isn’t enough for you, you are now the master of Lorenzo Titurino?” An Italian-accented voice boomed in fury from the part of the room Isabel couldn’t see.
A woman laughed. “Well, Aubrey is a Renaissance man, after all, Lorenzo.”
Isabel heard a sound of disgust. “Most of the Literati are Renaissance men, my pet, being born in the sixteen hundreds. I myself am considered to be the epitome of a Renaissance artist,” the man said pompously.
“Of course, Lorenzo. It’s just that in the modern meaning of the phrase, Aubrey is the ideal Renaissance man.” The woman’s voice went from patient to a purr. The man called Aubrey Cane, whom Isabel could see, smiled slowly, all evidence of pique gone from his face. Isabel had the impression he and the woman were flirting across the space that separated them. “He is talented and knowledgeable in so many areas, you know. He is an architect, a doctor, a poet, a warrior, an athlete.”
“A braggart—”
“A lover,” Aubrey interrupted Titurino lazily. Aubrey stood and started toward the other side of the room, his walk reminding Isabel of a panther on the prowl.
“Ah, the famous Renaissance man is hungry, I take it,” Titurino said with disgust. “Must you feast on my Venus?”
“I must,” Aubrey replied. She could not see him, but there was a smile in his voice. Isabel heard a loud sigh and a giggle.
“I suppose I could use a break—and a snack,” Titurino conceded after a pause.
The woman gave a loud sigh of pleasure.
Isabel couldn’t refrain from looking into the room a moment longer. Her father always did say she was as curious as a coon. She moved farther into the opening and peered around the door.
What she saw nearly made her drop the knife she clutched in her hands.
A nude woman reclined on a scarlet, velvet-draped elevated platform, her lush blonde hair a darker shade of her pale gold skin. She lay on her left hip, her upper body braced on her elbow, the other elbow bent over her head. Her breasts thrust forward, an emerald-green silk cloth swooshed behind her from hand to hand, an eye-catching contrast to the crimson velvet and her golden beauty. The pose should have looked awkward, but the woman managed to make the posture seem natural, supple…sensual.
Perhaps the last impression was due to the fact that Aubrey Cane stood behind her, his hands slowly caressing a curving hip and full breast, his mouth pressing kisses along the woman’s waist.
Venus sighed and shivered visibly.
Isabel trembled as well. The scene before her was shockingly erotic and palpably beautiful, but her reaction came from the sublime expression on Aubrey Cane’s face as he kissed the woman with lips that seemed so firm, so hungry…so appreciative. The only thing she could think of was that what she witnessed wasn’t even remotely similar to watching a scene of pornography. The woman was exquisite and Aubrey was equally so.
Titurino set down his paintbrush near a half-finished canvas and moved behind the woman. Isabel examined the painter fully for the first time. He, too, possessed a strange aura, though not quite as neon-bright as Aubrey’s. He was a large, robustly handsome man, so it surprised Isabel a little at how gentle he was as he gathered the woman’s hair into his large hands, pausing to caress her neck and jaw. Both men touched with a sensitivity that enraptured her. She, of all people, knew the power of touch more than most human beings.
Aubrey’s kisses and caresses were becoming hungrier now. Titurino’s Venus moaned, arching her back, and both men slid one hand along her lustrous skin, molding her breasts so that the nipples protruded between strong fingers. Isabel watched breathlessly as Cane’s head lowered and he meticulously detailed the beading crest with a dark red tongue.
Heat flashed between her thighs. Her death grip on the knife loosened. She told herself to step back. Nothing had changed. She still didn’t know where she was, and she certainly wasn’t accustomed to playing the voyeur. Something about the lush sensuality of the scene, though, the sheer wanton beauty of it, wouldn’t allow her to move.
Titurino gave a low grunt of appreciation as he watched Cane suckle and finesse a nipple, apparently all irritation with his companion now vanishing in the steam of arousal. Cane lifted his head a moment later, giving the woman an apologetic smile when she gave a whimper of protest.
“Never fear, lovely. I will not make you suffer long,” Aubrey murmured. With no further ado, he lifted one of her long legs and buried his face between her thighs. When the woman cried out in sharp ecstasy, Titurino used his fingertips to caress her spread lips.
“Shhhhh,” he growled, the sound rough and soothing at once. The woman captured his large, blunt forefinger and pursed her lips around it. She suckled it with her eyelids closed, her expression rapt. Isabel’s pussy ached in sympathy when she heard the woman’s low, profound purr of pleasure.
“I would hate to put such lovely vibrations to waste,” said Titurino. He drew his wet finger from the woman’s mouth, moved to the front of the velvet-draped table and unbuttoned his trousers. Isabel caught a glimpse of a ruddy, thick penis, but then Titurino stepped closer to the woman, his back to Isabel. She watched, spellbound, as Titurino placed his hands on the woman’s head and his trousers fell about his thighs, exposing smooth, olive-skinned, muscular buttocks. The large muscles began to flex as he thrust his cock into the woman’s mouth with small but deliberate movements.
Venus moaned. Titurino groaned in reply as her pleasure resonated into his sensitive flesh.
A moment later, Isabel heard a muffled feminine cry and saw the woman’s body shudder. Her aura altered before Isabel’s eyes from a pulsating spectrum of pink to red to magenta with shards of gold spiking through it. Cane’s head moved more rapidly. He seemed so avid to experience the woman’s pleasure, to taste it on his tongue, as though he could actually swallow the energy of her bliss, as if it could nourish him.
Isabel didn’t realize just how hungry Aubrey was for the woman until he lifted his head and smoothed his hand over the expanse of an inner thigh. His eyelids were heavy from arousal. Two long fangs extended down over his lower lip.
He lowered his head, obviously intent on biting flesh.
“No,” Isabel cried out in shock. The experience had gone from witnessing a scene of tender, potent eroticism to one of nightmare proportions in a second.
Titurino’s head whipped around at the sound of her voice. Aubrey looked up slowly. He smiled, his fangs still extended, his nostrils flaring. It struck her like a slap to the face that he’d known she’d watched them all along. How that was possible, she didn’t know, but his calm, knowing expression spoke volumes.
She turned and rushed across the grand gallery toward the wide staircase, her only thought to get back to the room where she’d awakened. If she returned to bed and slept, would this strange dream come to an end? Would she wake up from her nap in her Ritz London hotel room, needing to prepare for the reception in her honor to be held at the University of London’s Senate House?
You already got ready for that reception, her mind screamed as she leapt up the marble steps. She saw herself putting on makeup and styling her hair in the mirror. Isabel perfectly recalled zipping up the purple dress she’d bought special for the occasion, remembered walking down the hallway toward the elevators, planning to meet Lester in the lobby, then…
Nothing. A black spot in her memory.
The recollection made her stumble. She put out her hands to block her fall on the marble steps. The knife clattered onto hard stone and she was airborne.
Her fall ceased abruptly. She was in someone’s arms…a large, solid someone.
“What in the… Put me—” Her agitated sputter came to an abrupt halt when she saw the face of the man who held her. She gaped, suddenly convinced that her bizarre dream had escalated to include being swept into the embrace of intimidating dark angels.
Memories collided in her brain, causing a frightening chaos of vision, sound and emotion.
She cursed and began to struggle like mad in the man’s arms, sent into a frenzy of panic. When she realized he still held her effortlessly, she drove up on his nose with the hard ridge of her palm.
He grunted in pained surprise. “What in bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded in a furious, rough voice.
“Let go of me,” she grated out. She raised an elbow and cocked it in preparation for a jab. She didn’t have a chance to strike at her captor again, however. He abruptly set her down on a step as if he were dropping a sack of doorknobs. Her teeth struck together like clacking pebbles in her head. She immediately reached for the knife she’d dropped, but he kicked it away from her gloved hand with a negligent tap from a rugged black boot.
She scrambled up from the step and backed away from a dark, menacing tower of male brawn. She paused next to the banister and watched him warily, her heart beating so loud in her ears it felt as if her whole world had become the sound of her fear.
>
“I remember you. You-you—” she broke off, panting in rising agitation as she tried to gather her fragmented memories. “You were there…with that…that thing, that crystal—”
She broke off in rising confusion, her mouth hanging open.
No, that wasn’t who he was. Was it? She swam in confusion. This man…surely she knew this man?
Her memories seemed as strange and unlikely as her entire experience since waking up in the luxurious room.
She couldn’t pull her gaze from his eyes. They were singular—not green, exactly, but green, amber, gray and brown blended, hundreds of thousands of tiny crystalline dots. The first impression was of dark green until one took a second glance and was drawn into the depths.
Agate eyes.
The eyes were the same as her nightmare’s, but this man possessed hair—beautiful hair, thick, black and glossy. His jaw was shadowed with whiskers. He was tall—much taller than most men. His jean-clad legs seemed impossibly long from her sitting position, his torso was lean and sinewy. He gave the impression of power leashed, strength coiled tight. He arched one raven brow at her words, the subtle expression striking her as surreal on a face that otherwise might have been carved in rock.
“I was there, with the crystal,” he said.
“You-you kidnapped me. Why?”
“I never kidnapped you,” he said in a quiet, seething tone. “Do you think I’d choose to have you here?” He looked away from her, seeming impatient, edgy. “I have brought you to Sanctuary as my prisoner, but it wasn’t me who wanted you.”
“But…I saw you. I remember your face, only—”
She hesitated as she studied him again with growing wonder. He wore faded jeans and an untucked, dark green cotton T-shirt that ghosted his lean torso. His height and dark, piratical looks would certainly peak interest on a London street, but he could still pass as…normal. He might have, anyway, to most people. People who didn’t have her special sight.
“You’re not him,” she mumbled in disbelief. Even though her mind doubted the truth of her words, her spirit knew what she said was true. That other male had possessed no life force. She recalled the pure terror she experienced at witnessing the bizarre anomaly. Nature didn’t allow such monstrosities, did it?