by Liliana Hart
“Your compensation will be the full amount for the seal of Ceres you were demanding from Monsieur LeMaitre, and—”
“LeMaitre?” Now I did widen my eyes. “That’s who hired me?”
Armaeus gave a disgusted sigh, anger darkening his features. “You insist upon entering these agreements without my help, Miss Wilde, despite full awareness that the work has become exponentially more dangerous. It is entirely unprofessional. And, some would say, suicidal.”
“Take it up with the union.” I waved him off, still mulling over LeMaitre’s involvement. If magic was a two-sided coin, Guillaume LeMaitre was on the dark side of the toss, one of the grittier adherents to the practices of the occult, rumored to specialize in unique drug concoctions that assisted with demonic possession. He wasn’t yet involved with the trafficking of psychics, so he did have some standards, but still. He was one nasty customer. No wonder my contact had been so uptight at Le Stube—and so unhappy when I’d balked at giving him the artifact. LeMaitre was not a boss you wanted to piss off. “Why on earth would LeMaitre want the seal of Ceres? What is this thing, anyway?”
Armaeus’s mask of cool civility had slipped back into place. “In addition to the amount you intended to extort from LeMaitre, I will provide you with another fifty thousand US dollars. Payable to you—or directly to Father Jerome, as you wish.”
I thinned my lips, suddenly catching on. I was good at what I did, and I was used to being paid well. But even for me, fifty thousand dollars for a few hours’ work was not my standard day rate. It wasn’t even my night rate. “What’s the catch?”
His gaze tracked me across the space that still stretched between us, a space that now seemed markedly…smaller. “There is no catch, Miss Wilde. If you take the job and return the reliquary to me within the next twenty-four hours, you will be paid handsomely. It is generous compensation for work quickly rendered, and, if I am not mistaken, timely payment is of the essence to you. I can have the money transferred to your account immediately upon delivery.” His smile turned a shade more predatory. “In addition, I have information on two of the young psychics you are seeking.”
A cold prickle iced my nerves, and I narrowed my eyes at him. “What information?”
Armaeus waved a lazy hand. “There is reason to believe two teenaged females of exceptional abilities have recently been transported to Las Vegas. Sisters, if my information is correct, from the Greek city of Kavala, who have been purchased as testing subjects for—”
“Sisters!” I sat up straight in my chair, my mind instantly ping-ponging back to my discussion with Father Jerome about the two girls who’d been taken weeks ago. “From Kavala. Where are they now, specifically? Who has them?” The rest of his words registered, and I frowned. “If they’re in Vegas, why haven’t you done anything about it?”
“The council’s role is not to dictate how magic is used.” Armaeus shrugged. “Just that it remains in balance. Where there is light, there must also be dark.”
Anger flared within me. This was a battle Armaeus and I had already fought far too many times, and it never failed to irritate. “That’s what you call balance? Those girls were abducted, Armaeus. If they’ve been in Las Vegas for any length of time, they could already be dead. Or worse. You know that.”
“Then it would seem you have urgent business in the city after all, Miss Wilde. And, additionally, the need for the funds and transportation I can provide you.” The Magician’s gaze flicked to mine, and I read nothing but calculation in them. “I will give you the young women’s location and assist your efforts to extract them, once you’ve delivered my reliquary intact. And I will pay you well, to help with their relocation. Do we have an agreement?”
I sat back in my chair, pretending to consider the matter. Armaeus was certainly playing to all my weaknesses: greed, speed, and need. Even though I figured he’d still get the better end of the deal, my end was looking pretty good.
And, of course, the money wasn’t even the most important part of this transaction anymore. If the Kavala twins were in Vegas, they wouldn’t last long. The practitioners of dark magic were not known for their restraint. The fact that the girls had still been alive upon delivery to the city meant they weren’t just being harvested for some low-level ritual, at least, but that was cold comfort. They’d be used as tools, somehow. Vessels or conduits, their psychic gifts strained beyond endurance, their minds and bodies eventually broken in the process. If I wanted to get to Vegas fast enough to make a difference, I had to accept the Magician’s offer.
“Fine,” I said, nodding to him. “Now give me back my amulet.”
Armaeus tossed the silver Tyet to me, and I caught it easily, turning it over in my hand. It was definitely mine, and it felt the same as it ever did. I slipped it over my neck and instantly felt better.
“All right,” I said. “What else do I need to know about this little job of yours?”
The Magician’s smile seemed to grow a little darker, right along with the ambient lighting. I glanced around as the lamps dimmed in the cabin, my fingers twitching more nervously, my heart rate picking up. “We have only a short time together, Miss Wilde,” he said. “Surely you’re curious to see if the Tyet can do the task for which you purchased it?”
“It seems to be doing just fine.” I stood, knowing I needed to put distance between myself and Armaeus. It was warm in the cabin now—too warm. Too close. The Tyet amulet lay against my chest like an oasis of ice, but around it, my skin was fairly blazing. “Did you do something to it?” I crossed to the wet bar and picked up a bottle of single malt scotch. Splashing some of it into a glass, I didn’t miss the fact that my hands were shaking.
Armaeus didn’t either.
I didn’t hear him move from his chair, but a breath later, he was at my back, his arms reaching around me. He took the bottle from my right hand and steadied my left on the glass, encasing me in a cage of sensual heat. His mouth grazed my neck as he leaned forward to pour the scotch, the scent of fire and cinnamon now drifting around me, heightening every one of my senses. “Miss Wilde,” he murmured. “Just what were you told the amulet could do?”
He let go, and I held the glass in both palms, willing it to stay steady as I raised it to my lips. Unfortunately, as the scorch of alcohol hit my tongue, Armaeus’s hands lifted up to rest on either side of my waist, pressing beneath my open jacket to the thin material of my shirt, his heat searing through the fabric. “Because it does not appear to stop me from doing this—” He slid his hands up the sides of my torso until his fingers drifted along the curve of my breasts. “Or this,” he breathed, bending his head down to draw his lips along my ear, the movement instantly reducing my brain cells to a quivering pulp.
“Armaeus,” I said warningly. Or at least I’d intended it as a warning. The soft sigh that came out of me sounded distressingly like an invitation, even to my ears.
“I think I like this amulet of yours,” the Magician said, the words vibrating against my neck. “I wonder if it will let me do…this.”
Chapter Four
Armaeus’s body seemed to surround me suddenly, his palms shifting forward to take the full weight of my breasts in his hands. His whispered words were so quiet that only my subconscious heard them, and instantly the scene shifted in a slight but critically important way.
Namely, we were still on the plane, still at the bar, and Armaeus was still pressed up against me, his mouth at my neck, his fingers playing over my shivering skin.
Only now we were naked.
I glanced down, horrified and fascinated at once to see Armaeus’s bronzed fingers flat against the swell of my breasts, with only the glinting silver Tyet remaining to adorn my skin. In some distant part of my brain, I knew all this was an illusion…and yet 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 now completely bare shoulder.
“Armaeus.” The word was half-entreaty, half-order, and
his chuckle sent vibrations chasing down my arms.
“It seems the answer is yes,” he murmured. He tightened his fingers into my soft skin, and I felt them tremble 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 sagged forward to brace myself on the bar, muttering words I couldn’t even process, not caring that my display of weakness suddenly turned Armaeus’s chuckle into a hard, masculine laugh. Instantly, he turned my body into his, shifting me away from the bar and toward the cabin’s wall, his hands pulling mine up flat against the smooth surface. He leaned down close to me, his golden eyes searching my gaze with an intensity that called to something deep inside me. An intensity that beckoned to me so forcefully I felt battered and tossed. 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 close to me, his hips fitting against mine, stoking a need I hadn’t even realized was spiraling up within me. The muscled planes of his legs braced themselves against my thighs, his body pressing against mine 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. He’d been lying right next to me when I’d rushed awake with no clue of what had happened at the very end of what, arguably, should have been the most incredible sexual experience of this lifetime or any other. The first time we’d made love had been exquisitely memorable in every way—except for the final coup de grace. Which I couldn’t remember at all. At the exact moment of orgasm, my brain had deleted the event 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 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 away as if he was undressing me, before he pressed my arms high above my head again. Even 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 just about all that was still wrapped around me anymore, my pants and boots now tossed to the side, my jacket gone, only my tank and the amulet still on my body. And my hands still—
“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—”
“Just feel,” 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 in 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. “What are you doing?” I gasped, panic shooting through me again 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. I swayed forward as Armaeus’s harsh chuckle floated up around us.
“You should thank your friend,” he rasped, and though amusement laced his words, there was also the intrigue of a man not used to being surprised. “I have never met a woman as able as you to enter the fire, Miss Wilde, and yet you resist me, resist me even under an aegis of illusion, even when what is between us is as needful as the cup of magic itself.” 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 I felt something give way within me, something hot and primal that ached for Armaeus on the level of blood and bone. Was this what I had felt 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 now 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 shifting, taking me fast and hard down the twisting 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 felt myself ram 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 now right before mine, his eyes shimmering with an unearthly intensity. His fingers shifted again, and I felt their renewed insistence twist me into a knot as primal and complex as the one hanging around my neck.
“Please,” I managed brokenly, though even I didn’t know what I was asking him for. Did I want him to stop? Did I want him to keep going? Did I want him to rip the amulet off and—
No. A force so deep in me it seemed etched into my bones shot up, matching my carnal desire with its own desperate demands. No, you must resist! You must not go further! You must not…!
And then something, just—shattered.
I didn’t so much fall over the edge as plummet 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 my head violently, tears of rage and panic threatening to surge forth.
“Make it stop!” I cried, realizi
ng only dimly that I was now pounding his chest. “I cannot do this!”
“I could remove the—”
“No!” I shoved away from him, even 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 snagged the thick flannel blanket for good measure. “Don’t touch me!” I snarled, the demand unreasonable even to me, given that he was now several feet away.
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 just absolutely sucks.”
Dry humor laced the Magician’s voice as he watched me. “We could try it again if you were unsatisfied—”
“No!” I whirled around, scowling at him. Looking as if he’d done nothing but poured himself a drink, Armaeus now leaned against the cabin’s wet bar, watching me with interest, but no longer the kind of interest that inspired such terrifying, blinding need inside me. Progress.
I straightened under his gaze. “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 said, anger finally beating out the last flames of lust. 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 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 even classify as carnal, and it had come so close to burning through my defenses that I still could barely breathe.