Dark Pleasures

by Aja James

  Very much in the flesh.

  “Devlin,” she said, turning to face him, “meet my aunt Maria. She comes over almost every day at lunchtime for a visit before heading off to work at the Little Flower Orphanage in the afternoons.”

  That’s right. Devlin remembered just a tad too late. This was precisely why he didn’t sleep in beds that were not his own. He was at the whim of someone else’s schedule. An intruder in someone else’s home.

  Since Aunt Maria didn’t take his outstretched hand in hers, Devlin dropped his arm awkwardly and tried to exude a sophisticated confidence despite his state of undress.

  “A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said with a beatific smile, hoping to blind her with its brightness.

  A strange gurgle emerged from the woman as she remained rooted to her spot. Only her eyes moved as she slid them to the left to look at her niece.

  Not picking up on the vibes of awkwardness and discomfort, Grace stepped forth to retrieve the forgotten bags.

  “What did you bring today? We were just deciding whether to stay in or eat out. Now we have our answer. Oh! Tapas from Boqueria. Great choice.”

  Grace seemed oblivious to her aunt’s silence and paralysis as she took the takeout bags to the kitchen counter and began to set out dishware for three.

  Devlin scratched the back of his neck with acute embarrassment, but then realized that he was flashing Aunt Maria with his armpit hair as her gaze darted like a nervous rabbit, following his movement.

  “Do excuse me,” he muttered, dropping the offending arm and attempted to inconspicuously search for his discarded clothes.

  The smell of something burning in the kitchen finally got the elderly woman moving.

  “Grace! Did you put the aluminum in the microwave again?”

  Aunt Maria hurried over to rescue the burnt dish as Grace backed away from the confounding appliance.

  “Why do they put food in these trays if we aren’t meant to use them?” Grace said curiously, with a touch of exasperation.

  “You’re supposed to warm them up in the oven,” Aunt Maria replied. “They’re better that way and it only takes a few minutes.”

  Grace shrugged. She should have just taken the food out and served them at whatever temperature they happened to be, like she usually did. Strangely, she’d gotten it into her head that lukewarm food was good enough for herself, but not good enough for Devlin. She wanted him to eat well.

  She had the most inexplicable desire to take care of him.

  Meanwhile, her lover (because somehow calling him sex partner in her head didn’t sound quite right) had surreptitiously pulled on his pants and shirt and was edging his way toward the exit.

  “Stay,” Grace called out before she was even aware she’d opened her mouth. “I want you to stay. Please.”

  Aunt Maria regarded her with something like a flummoxed expression while Devlin paused in putting on his shoes.

  “I don’t want to intrude—” he began, but she cut him off.

  “Aunt Maria asked me about you yesterday, didn’t you, aunt?”

  The woman in question grunted a bashful response.

  “She can ask you directly now that you’re here,” Grace continued. “And after lunch, we’re going to the Orphanage together to visit the kids. You can come with us if you want.”

  Despite himself, her grudging invitation spread tingling warmth through Devlin’s chest. Strangely, he really wanted to spend more time with her. Get to know her better.

  Outside the bedroom.

  In his old life, he never would have hesitated to accept such an invitation from a potential collaborator or source of important intelligence. He’d spent months developing this connection with Grace Darling for the explicit purpose of gaining her trust and, through her, find critical leads on Medusa.

  Why was he hesitating now?

  Because the more time he spent with her, the less Devlin could separate what he did for his mission from the real intimacy that was developing between them. He wasn’t sure any more whether he was the Hunter or the man where Grace was concerned.

  “Please don’t leave on my account,” Aunt Maria added her own encouragement. “I so rarely get to meet Grace’s… friends.” More like never, since Grace had no friends.

  Devlin sighed inwardly, resigned to his fate. He curled his lips in an engaging smile and put his shoes back by the door.

  “Thank you, I’d be delighted to stay,” he said with his best manners. “The food smells fantastic and I’m quite famished.”

  He joined them at the kitchen counter, taking one of the four available stools, while Aunt Maria prepared their plates.

  Conversation was surprisingly easy and thankfully superficial. After her initial shock, Aunt Maria quickly warmed to him as Devlin concentrated on winning over the lady.

  He had to concentrate because the noonday sun made him want to hibernate, as if he’d taken a double dose of Temazepam straight through the veins.

  It was a monumental effort not to snore off in the middle of dessert. A full belly made him even sleepier. Added to his physical exhaustion, he was surprised he hadn’t fallen off his stool and passed out on the kitchen floor by now.

  Devlin blinked to refocus his gaze, as his vision grew fuzzy around the edges. But the lowering of his eyelids made them realize that they wanted to stay down. It was like raising a castle drawbridge to peel them apart again.

  “Oh, honey,” Aunt Maria said, generous with her endearments, “you look beat. Why don’t you lie down and take a rest on Grace’s bed?”

  He meant to argue but his tongue wouldn’t cooperate and his mouth didn’t want to move.

  “Yes, do take a nap,” Grace insisted. “You’ll want to store up a reserve for tonight.”

  Aunt Maria gasped and looked away, hiding her rosy cheeks behind a glass of water as she quickly took a few gulps.

  Devlin should have been embarrassed but he couldn’t muster the energy to care. So what if Grace’s only living relative, by all appearances a dear old lady with conservative leanings, knew that he was boning her niece so thoroughly that he was on the verge of losing consciousness from exhaustion? Devlin was afraid he was beyond mortification at this point.

  Just as he leaned sideways on his stool, about to topple off, Grace was there beside him, her strong little hands encircling his arm, keeping him steady. She helped him walk the few steps to her bed, guided him under the covers and tucked him in.

  Within seconds, Devlin was fast asleep, a smile hovering on his lips as she laid a barely-there kiss on his cheek.

  *** *** *** ***

  “That is one fine man,” Aunt Maria said for the umpteenth time as she and Grace rode the Line 4 to Brooklyn.

  “He’s a keeper, you take my word for it, Grace. I know these things.”

  Grace couldn’t argue with the “fine” part of it, but she didn’t know why she’d ever “keep” a man.

  Well, okay, Devlin Sinclair was no hardship to have around. He had beautiful manners. He was beautiful to look at. He cooked like a five-star chef. And he certainly served her needs better than anyone in existence, she was absolutely sure, but that didn’t mean she’d “keep” him.

  How did a woman keep a man anyway?

  Marriage could end in divorce. Relationships could be broken. Death could take one or the other or both at any given time—just look at her parents. Nothing was permanent.

  “My goodness, that smile of his,” Aunt Maria continued, fanning herself with a brochure she picked up at the station, “phew! I don’t think my heart’s beat that fast since I was decades younger!”

  It was true, Grace could attest, Devlin had that effect on her as well. Her pulse raced when he was near. Her heart pounded, her blood roared. She’d wanted nothing better than to go to bed with him instead of coming out to the Orphanage with Aunt Maria, as much as she liked being with the children.

  But then he wouldn’t have rested at all, given what she had in mind.

&nbs
p; “Why haven’t you ever married, Aunt Maria?” The question popped into Grace’s head all of a sudden and out of her mouth.

  Her aunt looked over at her with a tender, reminiscing gaze.

  “I was in love once,” she confided. “Grew up with him in our neighborhood and went to school with him all the way through high school. Your mother knew him too; he and his brothers were always around.”

  She sighed and her eyes became unfocused.

  “But he was a rebel and my family didn’t think his was good enough and I was too young to know whether what I felt for him was merely passion or real love. It felt like real love, but I was only nineteen when I had to decide whether to stay in our small town with him or explore the world on my own and go to college out of state.”

  She plucked at her skirt and sighed again. “Well, I left. And shortly after that, he left too, never to be seen again.”

  “That’s why you haven’t ever married? Because you still love him?” Grace asked, genuinely puzzled. It was a long time ago. Surely her aunt would have gotten over her young obsession by now?

  Aunt Maria looked at her and smiled sadly. “I don’t know if I still love him, Grace. I don’t know if I’d still love him if we grew up together, grew old together. But my heart seems set on him. I don’t know how to explain it. Sometimes… sometimes you just know.”

  Grace caught her breath. Her aunt’s statement resonated somehow. It struck a chord deep inside of Grace.

  “Know what?” she whispered, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “That he’s the one,” Aunt Maria replied. “And no one else would do. For me, no one else ever did.”

  Damn, Grace thought, as the subway train slowed into their stop. For once, she understood exactly what Aunt Maria meant.

  She didn’t think any man would ever “do” if he weren’t Devlin Sinclair. After two nights of physical passion, Grace had become addicted, obsessed, with the man. She wanted him for longer than two weeks. Even if it took a hundred years, she didn’t think she’d ever tire of him or want him less.

  She needed him. She needed him. In a way she’d never wanted or needed anyone before.

  Grace was feeling a whole deluge of emotions now. She could even name them—panic, confusion, worry. And most of all:

  Fear.

  *** *** *** ***

  “That’s actually a comb, not an eating utensil.”

  Sophia was so absorbed in her cataloguing that she didn’t hear the man enter the small back office in the Persian wing of the MET where she set up her work.

  With a start, she looked up abruptly and blinked at the figure half hidden in shadows.

  “Excuse me?”

  The man shifted slightly so that his face was revealed in the soft light of the lamps.

  “This belongs here,” he said and reached over Sophia’s shoulder to put the forked object in the pile that Sophia was categorizing as feminine toiletries.

  “Oh.” She looked at the instrument more closely, stroking the four, widely spaced tines. “I guess that makes more sense. But it’s so small for a comb, and the handle is so long.”

  “The handle makes it easier to twist the hair and style it however the woman chooses,” the stranger said, “like this.”

  Before Sophia could object, he took the fork-comb, separated a wavy lock of Sophia’s hair with it, wound it around and down, pulled the instrument out at the bottom, leaving a pretty loose spiral knot in its wake.

  “Wow,” Sophia said, gently patting the spiral of hair on the side of her head, “you’re really good with that thing.” As if he used the comb daily on women’s coiffures.

  And then she remembered what she was doing and how ancient the objects in her care were.

  “But you shouldn’t handle these artifacts so carelessly,” she admonished lightly, not wanting to offend but also wanting to do her job properly. “They’re really, really old.”

  The stranger’s lips tilted at one corner.

  “But they’re not fragile for all that,” he said. “These are everyday instruments meant to be used. Yet now their fate is to be stored away within display cases, wasting away.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Sophia retorted. “We’ll make sure they’re preserved properly.”

  The stranger tilted his head a bit to regard her.

  “If you were the comb, would you rather spend your days sifting through soft, silky hair and helping to make it shine with a glossy sheen, styling it just so to enhance its owner’s beauty, or would you rather sit in an airless cage being gawked at by strangers?”

  Well, put that way…

  Sophia mentally shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met…”

  “You may call me Enlil,” the man said. “I am the owner of this exhibit.”

  Sophia stared at him in confusion. She was relatively certain the Metropolitan Museum of Art owned the exhibit, and that her manager was not named Enlil nor looked like this man before her. She’d made Mr. Richard Sims’ acquaintance yesterday when she came by to register and get her intern badge.

  “Ah, I don’t think—” she began, not certain how she could phrase things to let the deluded man down gently.

  “I own the items in the exhibit,” Enlil elaborated, “and lent them to the MET for the fall season.”

  Sophia’s eyes goggled. “You own the artifacts? But…but they must be priceless!”

  That corner of his lips tilted again, hinting at amusement.

  “Perhaps to you and the general populace,” he granted, “but to me, they are just everyday things that happen to be very, very, old.”

  Sophia looked to the large chest of remaining items to catalogue for the day. There were many more chests stacked on top of each other in the back of the room to continue sifting through.

  There engraved on the gold enameled lock were the letters “E. N-A.”

  “My initials,” Enlil supplied, noticing the direction of her gaze.

  Sophia felt like she should be standing in the presence of someone of such importance. Either that or someone with an unfathomable fortune. Probably a remote oil-rich country’s King or Prince.

  She got up from her chair to face him fully.

  “Well, I’d just like to say… on behalf of the Museum, we’re very grateful for the loan, Mr…?”

  “Just Enlil,” he insisted softly.

  “Mr. Enlil,” Sophia amended. “I myself love ancient history and all things Persian. We don’t often get these kinds of exhibits in the U.S., though I do recall seeing a small showing once in the Louvre. At least, I haven’t seen one of this size with this sort of everyday collection before. It’s an honor to be able to help curate the display.”

  He regarded her closely. She felt almost hypnotized by his stare.

  “You are very serious for one so young,” he murmured, “almost regal in your bearing.”

  Sophia huffed a startled laugh. “That’s the first time anyone’s ever said that about me. I hate to disappoint you, but I’m pretty average and goofy when I’m not surrounded by history.”

  “Something about these ancient things brings out a different side of you, I suspect,” he said easily, looking into her face unblinkingly.

  Sophia was beginning to feel just a tad uncomfortable. The man was quite… strange.

  His effect on her was eerie. She didn’t feel threatened and she didn’t sense any evil intent wafting from him, so she knew she was safe. It was her Gift to be able to see into the souls of others.

  But she still felt uneasy.

  “Um… Mr. Enlil, I should probably get back to work now. It was nice of you to drop by,” she said finally with a false bright smile.

  His lips quirked again.

  “Of course, Sophia St. James,” he said, “I’ll leave you to it.”

  And with that, the mysterious man disappeared into the shadows that led down the long dark corridor from the back office.

  Literally disappeared.

&nbs
p; One moment he was there, and the next Sophia couldn’t see any trace of him.

  Very weird.

  Sophia sat back down and stared at the objects spread out on her back-lit glass table.

  Who was that man? Knowing his first name and initials didn’t really tell her anything at all about him. But she did discern two things that raised the fine hairs on her arms and neck:

  One, he knew her name even though she’d never introduced herself. She’d taken her badge off when she went out for lunch and hadn’t yet put it back on, storing it in her purse instead, so he couldn’t have read her name tag. Besides, the tag only had her first name on it.

  Two, he reminded her of someone she knew. It was not someone she claimed any particular friendship with, though she liked him quite well from their brief interactions, and Enlil looked a lot like him. The large, black, almond shaped, double-lidded eyes. The shape of his mouth and the way he tilted his lips just so.

  The man bore an uncanny resemblance to the Dark Assassin Ryu Takamura.

  Chapter Eight

  Grace sat on the bed beside her still slumbering lover, her eyes taking in every detail, storing each one away covetously.

  Lover. Covetous. Words she never thought she would use to describe any aspect of her life. And here she was, coveting her lover.

  It was already after ten o’clock at night, after Grace had finished her dinner and fed her creatures. And still, her golden lover slept on, breathing deeply, evenly.

  He had worked his way outside of the covers by now and lay diagonally across the king-size bed. His shirt was untucked and rumpled around his body. Most of the buttons had come undone while one bottom corner flapped open to reveal his flat, taut abdomen.

  Even relaxed, Grace could see the grooves that delineated his washboard abs. His limbs were thrown every which way, one arm curved at the elbow toward his side, the other arm flung above his head. One leg was extended straight down, while the other was bent at the knee.

  He looked like he was sleepwalking a pirouette. Or sleep-lying, rather, since he was horizontally disposed.