by Jenn Stark
But it was a very effective illusion.
The Magician’s breath was hot, urgent, and his lips trailed in its wake, scorching a line of kisses over my completely bare shoulder.
“Armaeus.” The word was half-entreaty, half-order, and his chuckle sent vibrations chasing down my arms.
“It seems I the answer is yes,” he murmured. He tightened his fingers into my soft skin, and they trembled against me. That more than anything else, the idea that Armaeus was somehow affected by touching me, somehow as frantic as I was every time our bodies connected, skin against skin, made my knees buckle slightly, the fraying edge of my control tearing further.
I closed my eyes against the sheer sensual assault. I couldn’t let myself give in to the swirl of doubts and need, the want that bubbled up inside me. My world worked because I stayed separate. Nobody got hurt, nobody died. I’d fallen in love once before, stopped paying attention as much as I should have, and that had ended with explosions and death. I was never going back to that girl, lost and alone, walking away from everything she’d ever known. I just—couldn’t.
I sagged forward to brace myself on his chest, muttering words I couldn’t fully process, not caring that my display of weakness suddenly turned Armaeus’s chuckle into a hard, dark laugh. Tugging me away from the bar, he didn’t stop until my back was up against the nearest wall. He pulled my hands high, flat against the cold surface, then leaned down close to me, his golden eyes searching mine with an intensity that called to something deep inside me. An intensity that beckoned to me so forcefully, it was almost a physical pain. It demanded what I couldn’t—wouldn’t give.
Not yet. Not now.
“Armaeus—” I said again, but my words ended on a gasp as he pressed his body against mine, setting my blood on fire. The muscled planes of his legs braced themselves against my thighs with an achingly familiar intensity, as if we were born to this act. I tried to twist away from the contact, my actions feeble as need swamped me again and again, but Armaeus held me tight.
“I can feel your heat, Sara,” he murmured, and his words once again didn’t so much as brush against my ears as resonate inside my mind.
“We can’t do this, Armaeus,” I moaned. He’d been there, dammit. The first time we’d tried to make love. He’d been lying right next to me when I’d blacked out in the middle of, arguably, should have been the most incredible sexual experience of this lifetime or any other. And then my brain had deleted everything about that evening so forcefully from my memories that I could still almost hear that door slamming shut, warning me to stay away.
Armaeus didn’t seem to care about any of that, not easing the insane torment his body was wreaking on me even slightly. Instead, he leaned forward and brushed his lips against mine, the movement so needed, so perfect that I couldn’t fight the whimper.
“We can do this,” he murmured. “We are doing this.” And the fire grew higher within me as he kissed me, hard and sure. Somewhere in the dim recesses of my brain, I realized that his hands were moving down my body, ripping something open as if he was undressing me, before he pressed my arms high above my head again. Though I’d already felt naked under the influence of his illusion, this was something different, something more. Now I really was exposed.
“Armaeus!” I flared back toward reality with a burst of cognition, partially breaking free of the spell he’d wrapped around me. Which was good, because that was about all that was wrapped around me anymore, my pants and boots now tossed to the side, my jacket gone, nothing but the my tank and amulet on my body. And my hands were—
“Hey!” I yanked my hands forward, but they remained high above me—cuffed to the wall in some sort of apparatus I sure as hell hadn’t seen before. “What in the—”
“Stop thinking, Sara,” Armaeus said. He stretched his body along the length of mine again, his fingers entwined in mine, his heavy arms flush against my forearms, my shoulders. He flattened himself against me, lifting me up with the force of his hips and chest, until I hung suspended against the wall, my breasts to his chest, my legs falling naturally around his hips. My eyes almost crossed at the intimate contact, but he held steady, staring into my face, his own expression racked with torment and wonder and—
With a guttural growl, he stepped back from me, and oxygen rushed back into my lungs as I fell forward, my collapse stopped harshly by the clamps on my wrists. In front of me, Armaeus had dropped to his knees, and I realized my entire body was trembling violently as he grasped my hips, his lips drifting against my thigh. Panic shot through me with violent strength—both panic that he would keep going and panic that he would stop. My heart was pounding so loudly in my ears that it almost unhinged my brain from the explosions of sensation at my thighs, my belly, while Armaeus held me hard, his lips plundering my body as if he sought to brand me with his mouth, to claim me for all time.
And…there went my knees again.
“What are you doing?” I swayed forward as Armaeus’s harsh chuckle floated up around us.
“Research.” As he spoke, he dragged his mouth against me, drifting ever closer to the vee between my legs as I fought against the restraints holding me high. “The Tyet is strong, and yet, I suspect it is…” His words broke off then, and he shuddered out a ragged breath before he could continue. “Quite specific.”
His lips finally reached the most sensitive point on my body, and something gave way within me, something hot and primal that ached for Armaeus on the level of blood and bone. Was this what I had experienced before, a need so strong, so devastating, that my mind had discarded the memory of it rather than force my modern, mortal sensibilities to deal with the fallout?
I didn’t know, and I was long past caring. As the wet heat of Armaeus’s tongue slid out to meet my own surging reaction, I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. I threw my head back and cried out, sagging against the wall as Armaeus sent whorls of fresh panic and desire surging through me, my body shuddering against him as his fingers suddenly replaced his mouth to send me skittering out of control in an entirely different direction.
While my attention fractured, unsure where to focus, Armaeus kissed a northward arcing curve up over my belly, his body swaying into mine as he stood again. Then his free hand lifted to push my tank top out of the way of my straining, desperate breasts.
“Very specific,” he murmured, words that meant nothing to me at this point as he caressed my left breast with a long, lingering kiss, taking the nipple between his teeth. All the while, his fingers stroked deep within me, curving and twisting, taking me fast and hard down the path to my release. I’d almost lost myself to the play of his hand again when he sucked the tip of my breast into his mouth, hard.
I rammed right up against the edge of orgasm, every nerve in my body ripped tight with tension. Then the pressure fell away, and I blinked my eyes open, barely able to focus, only to find that Armaeus’s face was right before mine, his eyes shimmering with an unearthly intensity. His fingers twitched again, and their renewed insistence twisted me into a knot as primal and complex as the one hanging around my neck.
“Please,” I managed brokenly, though I didn’t know what I was asking of him. Did I want him to stop? To keep going? To rip off the amulet and—
No. A force so deep in me it seemed etched into my bones shot out, matching my carnal desire with its own desperate demands. Stay away! Go back! You can’t—
And then something, just—shattered.
I didn’t so much fall over the edge as crash off it, my hands coming away from the wall with sudden freedom as I tumbled into Armaeus’s arms, my body sprawling over his, all legs and arms and half-muffled screams. He caught me easily, crushing me in his grasp as if by strength alone he could keep my skin intact. I came apart, my lungs heaving, my heart thundering, and a new and unholy need swamped me so hard that I nearly blacked out. Armaeus murmured something to me in a foreign language that very well could have been English at that point, but all I could do was gasp and shake m
y head violently, tears of rage and panic threatening to surge forth.
“Make it stop!” I cried, realizing dimly that I was pounding his chest. “I can’t do this!”
“I could remove the—”
“No!” I shoved him away as I felt the slender silver pendant shift on my chest, heat exploding from the amulet. I stumbled backward across the floor, landing on my ass near the pile of my discarded clothes. I snatched them up, then stumbled a few more feet away for good measure. “Don’t touch me!” I snarled, the demand unreasonable even to me, given that he was now halfway across the room.
Armaeus nodded, but his eyes looked almost…inhuman now. Lit with a fire I had never seen before, at least not that I could remember.
“This sucks,” I bit out, wrenching my clothes on, reholstering my gun, pulling on my jacket as I patted pockets, sleeves, collars, reassuring myself that everything was still there. “This absolutely sucks.”
“We could try it again if you were unsatisfied—”
“Right.” I drew in a long, staggering breath. I’d held firm. I’d stayed separate.
So why did I feel like crap?
Looking as if he’d done nothing but poured himself a drink, Armaeus leaned against the solid wooden chest, watching me with interest, but no longer the kind of interest that inspired such terrifying, blinding need inside me. So, hey. Progress.
I straightened under his regard. “Was that why I blacked out the first time?” I asked. “Why I lost my memories? It was all just—too much?”
The Magician shrugged, but he could not hide his own fascination with the question. “I can assure you, I do not know.” His lips quirked into a dangerous smile. “Yet.”
“Not going to happen.” I shoved my hair back over my neck, resecuring my ponytail, no longer caring how he watched my every movement, no longer caring about anything except how glad I was that the Tyet had worked in the end, just as Nikki Dawes had said it would. I remembered everything that had happened between Armaeus and me this time, even if I couldn’t understand it. Even if I didn’t ever want to feel that horrible sense of panic, of urgency, that drive to have sex with Armaeus that was so strong it couldn’t be right. This wasn’t lust. It sure as hell wasn’t love. It was a need that I couldn’t merely classify as carnal, and it had come so close to burning through my defenses that I still could barely breathe.
What was wrong with me?
Armaeus, seeing the torrent of emotions no doubt plainly chasing their way across my face, took a step toward me, and I all but hissed, holding out a hand to stop him in his tracks.
And speaking of hands…
“You tied me up,” I spit out. “How dare you do that! How dare you think to do that?”
Now it was his turn to let anger harden his features for a moment, as his brows rose in sardonic curiosity. “You asked me to bind you, Miss Wilde,” he said, his certainty inviolable.
“I what?” I stared at him, shock flooding through me. I didn’t remember asking him to do anything like that, I didn’t remember! Yet there was no question that I had; I could see it in Armaeus’s eyes. The Magician might be insufferably arrogant, might use any trick in his impressive arsenal to persuade me to a course of action, but he was honorable, in the end. He did not trespass where he was not wanted. And I had wanted him—apparently, I’d wanted him so much that I’d asked him to…
I shook my head—I truly couldn’t recall what I’d said, but that was secondary to the larger issue. Why had that memory been wiped away? What was my mind protecting me from?
“Did I…” I grimaced, hating that I had to ask for such clarification, but I had to know. “Did I ask you to do that last time?” We’d never spoken about the first time we’d almost made love. As soon as Armaeus had realized that I’d truly lost all recall, he’d gotten very quiet and very intrigued and had just…watched me. Like he was staring at me now, in fact. I’d gotten out of his bedroom so fast, my feet had barely hit his insanely expensive marble floor, and I’d found Nikki and her Tyet the next day. And the Tyet had held this night, after all. No matter what I’d asked of Armaeus, no matter how much I’d desired him, I hadn’t given in to that unfathomable need.
Not completely. Not yet.
“Miss Wilde—”
I waved off his response. “Never mind,” I said heavily, willing myself to put everything that didn’t matter aside so I could focus on what did.
The job mattered. Only the job. That and putting one step in front of the other, walking and walking and walking until you knew no one was behind you. You knew no one was looking. You knew that no one cared.
So you couldn’t hurt them.
I squared my shoulders. “Okay—what do I need to find this little gold box of yours? You have a map or something, or am I just going in with the cards?”
Armaeus looked as if he was going to say something else, then he nodded. “I suspect the cards will be helpful, particularly in this search. And you will also be needing this.”
I frowned as he reached into his jacket, which still appeared perfectly pressed, and drew out the slender gold disk. “The seal of Ceres? So it does actually has a purpose?”
“It provides a potentially easier path to our goal, yes, which might also explain SANCTUS’s current interest in taking it out of circulation.” He shrugged. “The relic is not a necessary tool. Nevertheless, as it has graciously made itself available to us, we may as well take advantage of it.” Armaeus’s gave me the disk. “Beneath all of Rome lies the Mundus Cereris, or world of Ceres. It was a shallow vault of passageways that extends beneath the city, used by the goddess to search the uppermost levels of the underworld. For our purposes, it leads equally well to the Vatican necropolis.”
“Catacombs.” I stared at him. “Great. And this seal is supposed to do what for me?”
“The entry to the Mundus Cereris has been hidden since the times of antiquity. Although most historians agree it was housed somewhere in the Roman Forum, the opening, a stone lid known as the manalis lapis, has never been located.”
“And this matters…”
But Armaeus was not to be denied his history lesson. “Ceres was the sister of Vesta, the two of them committed to the feminine concerns of hearth, home, family, fertility, and the harvesting of grain. It is not surprising that when Ceres began her search for her daughter, Proserpina, who had been taken into the underworld by Pluto, she turned to her sister, Vesta, for help. But to protect this passageway, which opened up an entire world beneath the city, she needed an entrance that no man would find and use for his own purposes.”
“So she stuck it in her sister’s temple, dedicated to womanhood, home of the Vestal Virgins, guardians of the eternal flame. Got it,” I said. Did he think I’d been working in the arcane artifact trade for the past five years for nothing? “And you’re telling me this…”
“Because Ceres made several keys to her underground realm, one of which we happen to now have, thanks to you—and, of course, to me.” As he broke his arm patting himself on the back, I turned the seal over in my hands. I noted the raised ridges again on the back again, but frowned at him.
“If this is the lid to some secret passageway, we’re in trouble, Armaeus. That’ll be a pretty small opening.”
“There is no lid, unfortunately. Not anymore.” He shook his head. “But Ceres prepared for that contingency as well. Beneath the manalis lapis rested another entrance point, said to be etched into solid rock.” He nodded at the gold seal. “I can give you the point at which it is located, but what lies beneath the temple is a world I have not seen for a very long time. Still, it begins with the seal—though I would caution you to be careful. When placed upon the bedrock of Rome itself, I am told it is a single-use key. And another thing, Miss Wilde.” He smiled at me, amusement lacing his words. “Though your passage will be underground, you should not encounter any of the dead for the majority of your trip. Roman law forbade the burial of citizens within the city walls.”
He had
to remind me about the dead bodies. “Yeah, well, Rome started out kind of small,” I grumbled. “That doesn’t account for much terrain.”
Nodding his acknowledgment of this point, Armaeus gestured to my chair and took his own seat. “You’ll need to leave soon, and I must give you the rest of the instructions,” he said. “You’ll need to memorize them.”
“Uh-huh. And where will you be while I’m off playing capture the flag?”
“I regret that business requires me to immediately return to Las Vegas. Where I look forward to you rejoining me late tomorrow, in fact, with the reliquary intact.”
“Fair enough.” I stowed the seal in my jacket. “So in preparation for that, why don’t you go ahead and get your bank online as well. I’ll want my money transferred the moment I toss you your pretty gold toy.”
Chapter Eight
The driver Armaeus had hired to pick me up from Leonardo de Vinci Airport wasn’t a local. It wasn’t until I’d slung myself into the back seat of the dark blue sedan that I realized this important fact, as he started talking to me in a rich French accent. Just what I didn’t need.
“Welcome to Rome, mademoiselle. Where are we off to?’
“The Forum,” I said. “Anywhere close to the main entrance on Via dei Fori Imperiali.”
“Mais non! It is far too early. Your boss, he is unreasonable.”
I blinked at the man, catching his wide smile in the rearview mirror . “Excuse me?”
“It is Rome, at night under the stars. Sending you straight to a tourist trap, and not even one of the better tourist traps, is—pfft.” His censure was more amusing than it should have been. Maybe I was tired. But he kept going. “Bien sûr, the Forum, it was quite grand back in its day, but its day is long past. It’s not like it’s the Colosseum or the Trevi Fountain. Mon Dieu, send you to the basilica at the very least, but the Forum? Please. The place, it is locked up tight!”