"If you die, it's not because I didn't do my damnedest to keep you alive," he said.
"I don't want to die," I told him. "I just want to sleep."
He halted long enough to take a breath that I felt against my ribcage. I had the distinct impression he had patted me on the backside playfully, and I wondered why I didn't care.
"Hold on," he said.
Hold on. I guessed we were about to portal through to the dreaded Shadow Bazaar. I would have gripped him by the waist if I could move my arms. Instead, they just dangled against the backs of his thighs in a most frustrating way.
There was a moment when I thought the gate would engage its magic and I'd either lose my consciousness or feel a scorching prickliness against my skin. The last gates I'd traveled so far hadn't been pleasant, and I didn't expect this one to be either. I held my breath after sucking in a big draft of oxygen.
I waited. Braced myself.
A strong vibration ran through my entire body, and that was how I knew we'd entered the portal. It felt much like the sensation of putting a vibrator to a sensitive spot, except it erupted from my solar plexus and swept over my entire frame, shooting out to my fingertips and toes.
"Oh," I breathed, surprised and delighted at the pleasant sensation. I could feel. Something. I wasn't dead yet by God.
It went on for several seconds, building and letting go, building and letting go. If it kept up, I thought I knew what the result would be. I hoped for it. Cleopatra came to mind—or rather her words about having an orgasm or two a night and I held my breath in anticipation.
But before that climax of sensation could crest, it abruptly cut off. The vibration that had been washing over me from the inside out shot straight back into my solar plexus and went cold.
"What a rip off," I complained. After feeling nothing for the last half hour, that sensation was even more intense. The absence even more acute.
"What?" Maddox said in a distracted voice.
Things swam into focus. I could make out a wooden floor scuffed in places by years, maybe decades or centuries, worth of boots scuffing across the grain. I smelled leather and books and pipe tobacco.
So we had arrived. I recognized the fragrance of his office even if I couldn't see it.
"It sucks," I said, trying to lift my head. "The gate. Ripped me off."
He spun in place and I managed to lift my head enough to see familiar bookshelves and a broad, open-hearth fireplace. It leapt to life even as I caught sight of it. I couldn't be sure he hadn't snapped his fingers to light it. I never knew what sort of magic he owned. It just always came to my aid when I needed it. This time, the warmth of the fire couldn't reach me.
"What did you expect?" he said.
"Like the Stones sing about," I said. "Can't get no satisfaction, apparently."
He strode across the floor and the sound of his boots against the wooden boards made me relax as though the sound itself was a lullaby. Man, I was really sleepy now. Maybe the heat was getting to me after all. That or the long-ass night I'd had. Maybe I'd even had that orgasm and didn't realize it.
I heard him drop the box and book onto a table before he spun toward one of the big chairs. Everything was backwards for me but I saw its partner beside the fireplace and assumed as he moved, he was heading toward the other one.
He cupped the back of my head and swept forward, using the momentum to dump me into a wing-backed chair next to the fire.
He knelt in front of me then, adjusting the pillow behind my back and pulling my knees up to my backside. The chair was much bigger than I'd thought. Nice. It was as good as a sofa.
"No satisfaction?" he said as he looked at me. "I don't understand."
One look at his furrowed brow explained that he really didn't. I cleared my throat and looked him directly in the eye, feeling braver than normal.
"Usually when a woman is treated to that sort of vibration she gets to. Well, she gets to. Um..."
I found I couldn't finish the sentence with him looking all naive like that, but I tried.
"Well, it's just that..."
"That what?" he said.
His hands landed on mine and although I couldn't really feel them lying against my skin, I felt the pressure. It was insistent and it was demanding.
"Oh my God," I said. "You have no idea what the gate just did to me."
He canted his head to the side with an innocent, childlike smile that tugged at my heart.
"It purred," he said with pride. "I thought you'd like it."
He was so obviously pleased that I laughed. I laughed and I didn't care if it hurt his feelings.
"Is that what you call it?" I said. "Purring?"
"Why else would I call it The Pussy Gate?"
"Sweet Jesus," I said. "Virgins. Oh my God."
I tried and failed to swing my legs off the chair and onto the floor. He saw me struggling and swept them aside for me, moving to sit beside me on the chair. It seemed to grow to accommodate him, but the fit was snug. I could smell his scent, but that tingle that always ran along my skin when he touched me was gone.
I guess I was spent. Really spent.
"What did you think I named it that way for?" he said.
"I thought it was a commentary on my courage."
He chuckled. "I wouldn't exactly call you a pussy, Kitten. You've faced some pretty nasty business."
"Well, I have issues, OK." I didn't want to say that I always assumed the worst because that was what Scottie trained in me. "Let's just say I believed it right up until the time it treated me to a full body vibration."
"That's what purring is, Kitten," he said. "It's your gate. I thought you'd like it."
"Oh, I liked it."
I tried to wiggle my toes and realized they tingled. Just a little. I caught him watching me and I saw the firelight reveal his slowly dawning understanding. He jerked his chin in the direction of the doorway.
"You mean the gate just... "
I nodded.
He turned around to look at the place we'd just come from although there was nothing there but the wooden slats of his floor and the wall behind us that led to the street.
"You mean it..."
Again, I nodded.
He swallowed and I swore he blushed, but then he straightened his shoulders and heaved himself to his feet. He tugged at the bottom of his leather jacket and went all business.
"Lucky you," he said, very prissily. "Had I known what I was doing, I would have built in an equal experience for me."
"If it's any consolation, it didn't finish the job."
He harrumphed but didn't say anything. Instead, he headed for the bookcase, stopping momentarily to retrieve the grimoire from the table. He slipped it onto a shelf that had nothing on it.
He shifted two steps sideways and pulled out an old-fashioned rolodex from another shelf. I watched him spin it, thumb through, and poke his finger down into it.
"Doesn't the Shadow Bazaar have cell phones?"
He looked up at me.
"Why do I need a cell phone?" he asked. "I'm not calling anyone."
"Then why the rolodex?"
"I need the ley-lines to Kerri's shop."
"The ley-lines?"
He eyed me like a man who wasn't sure he should or could trust the person he was talking to, then he shrugged.
"Her shop isn't exactly one you can find by strolling along the boulevard. This system tracks all the clients who have shops or businesses that can only be reached through certain means."
I groaned. "Don't tell me I have to go through another one of your gates. Or maybe we could go through mine again."
"Yours only goes from your home to my library," he said. "And you won't be going anywhere. She'll come here."
He busied himself rolling through the stack and I couldn't help thinking how thick it was. If these were businesses that weren't accessible strolling through the bazaar, I wondered how big the bazaar was.
"You know you could use a laptop to keep a
ll that stuff. Might be a bit safer."
He flicked his gaze over me. "Safer? Than my own handwriting in a library no one can enter without express permission?" He snorted. "You humans put so much value on technology."
I tried to roll over on the chair to see him better. "Someone could break in," I said. "A thief with no morals."
His eyebrow lifted as he regarded me. His finger was on one rolodex card that started to smoke.
"Are you that kind of thief, Kitten?" he said. "Because I welcome you trying to work out my little system."
I saw the challenge in his eyes. "I might be."
He snorted again as the smoke rose and curled into shapes in the air much like steam. "This is infallible and unbreakable. I'd tell you what the codex is but as you say, I can't be too careful about thieves."
I watched the smoke change color as they transformed into definite shapes. He stood back and panned his gaze from top to bottom, not left to right, and he hummed a little as he tapped his index finger to his lips.
As fascinating as it was, I started to lose interest and laid my head back. I really did feel pretty exhausted. I wondered how many hours it had been since I slept.
"Isabella," he said and I bucked upwards in surprise.
He was standing over me with his arms crossed. The room smelled of a fragrance I couldn't name and didn't recognize. It made me sneeze.
"Did I drift off?" I said with a yawn.
"You tried to," he said and knelt in front of me. I expected when he ran the back of his fingers over my forehead that I'd feel the same tingle of longing I did every time he touched me.
Happily, I felt nothing.
"I can't tell if you have a fever," he said as he leaned closer, enough that I could see a fleck of gold in his eye that seemed to spark with the firelight.
He pulled his hand away and tucked it between himself and the chair cushion. I watched his mouth twitch thoughtfully and before I could assess what he planned to do, he leaned toward me and planted a lingering kiss on my forehead.
I felt the pressure of his skin but not the warmth.
He drew back so sharply I lost focus of him for a full second. He pushed himself to his feet and ran for one of his bookshelves. I watched absently as he ran his finger along a variety of spines.
"Need a recipe?" I said.
"She's not going to get here fast enough," he muttered, though I didn't think he was speaking to me. "I need to find something to buy time."
"Buy me time? What for?"
He spun on his heel with a flat expression that did nothing to quell the panic in his voice.
"For your life, Isabella."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
KERRI CAME LIKE A THIEF in the night.
One moment I was watching dispassionately as Maddox pulled book after book from the shelf and tossed it behind him on the floor after no more than a cursory study. The next, I considered it an uneventful and fruitless use of my energy. I didn't even care that something niggled at me, telling me I should have been alarmed at his reaction, but even that seemed to leak from my mind like so much air from a punctured bicycle tire.
So when a flash of crimson slipped through the shadows on the other end of the bookcase, where Maddox was busy spending an inordinate amount of energy, I shifted my attention to watch it.
At first, I thought I was seeing things, and the curiosity seemed to enliven some deadened synapses in my mind. I waited, enjoying almost too much the dichotomy of Maddox on one end flinging books to the floor while on the other side, that flash of crimson started to reveal a long and curvaceous calf, and delicate foot shod in a silver sandal as it too emerged from the shadows.
Kerri. Wearing a Grecian style gown that flowed over her lithe frame as though it was made of living blood. One second it shone in the firelight with a wet sort of glint, the next, crimson satin caught that light and smothered in it, plush folds.
She didn't see me curled up in the armchair by the fire. Instead, as she emerged fully from the shadows, she sought out Maddox, obviously realizing she'd poked that elegant leg into his shop and knowing he'd be nearby. She smiled broadly when she saw him; her full lips enhanced, I thought, by a hint of gloss that might have been saturated with diamond dust.
I should have felt the tight pang of jealousy. Instead I found myself admiring her. She was more beautiful than the last time we'd met. That evening had been the same night I'd decided to steal an artifact from a new museum exhibit and she'd been Maddox's date. Despite her obvious sensuality, and my fledgling crush on a man I'd barely met, I'd liked her right away.
Tonight, her long silver hair was plaited to the side and swept over a shoulder bared by the style of dress she wore. She watched Maddox for a full moment, amused it seemed, by his outright tossing things from his bookshelf. When she decided to call to him by name, it was on the heels of a rather large tome being tossed over his shoulder and landing with a dusty thud onto a pile of discarded books.
It held power, that voice. It was nothing like the very human timbre I'd heard when we'd met at the museum. Tonight, it brought gooseflesh to my skin, and despite the strange sense of disconnectedness I was experiencing, I felt it so acutely I shivered.
Maddox pivoted on his heel at the sound of her voice, with a book still in his hand, spine cupped in his fist.
"Kerridwen," he said.
"You summoned me." She strode toward him with a grace that made me doubt she was even touching the floor. One hand reached out, as she glided across the floor, and ran it along the bookcase as she approached him. Her fingers spider-walked along the edge.
He stood still at her approach like a hare under a hawk's gaze.
"Thank the gods," he said. "I need you," he said.
His voice was calm and measured, a stark contrast to the sound of the weight of the book striking the wooden floor when he dropped it.
Kerri propped a hand on her hip, cocking it with a haughty thrust that indicated she had heard something similar from him before.
"Had I known you wanted me, I'd have worn something more suitable."
I didn't know what could be more suitable for her than the dress that drenched her skin, but I kept my tongue. The dress slid open and closed against her creamy thigh with each movement. I thought of a barber's pole turning endlessly on a rotation meant to tempt customers.
"It's not me," he said, turning toward me. "It's Isabella."
Her gaze landed on me with surprise at first, and then concern. Sometime during the steps it took her to get from the corner to the side of my chair, the dress fell away and was replaced with a simple white collared shirt and black leggings. The scuff of her boot soles sounded too loud as she fell to a squat beside me.
"I'm not averse to women," she murmured playfully. "But I don't take advantage of friends." She inclined her head toward me. "Certainly not ailing ones. Isabella?" she said. "What are you doing here?"
He raked his hand across his buzz cut and then cupped both hands behind his head as he regarded us both.
"She's not well," Maddox said, rather unnecessarily.
"I can see that," she said without taking her eyes from my face. Her eyes glowed like rubies for one moment and then she shook her head.
"You should have called me right away," she said with a sharp tone. "She's losing it."
I heard myself cackle. "Losing it? Lady, if I ever had it, it was on loan."
I decided to try moving in the chair as though I were looking for something beneath the cushions, but I couldn't manage to make my hands or hips work right. I had to settle for grinning at them stupidly.
She and Maddox both pursed their lips at the same moment. It looked rehearsed, the way they both crossed their arms over their chests and scanned me head to heel. While she looked stunning as she did so, Maddox looked like he could use the friction of his lips to light a fire.
"Careful," I said to him. "You might ignite."
Kerri backed up a step and stood next to Maddox. She put a finger to her li
ps in thought, propping the elbow on her forearm.
"You know what it is," she said.
Maddox looked miserable. He kicked at one of the books on the floor.
"I thought she was just dying at first," he said.
"Just dying?" I barked. "Just? What could be worse than that?"
I shifted on the chair, delighted to discover I could move again. I even felt strong enough to sit properly, which I did.
Kerri nodded as she watched me.
"That's not good," she murmured.
"She couldn't move a few moments ago. She was cold and clammy."
Kerri nodded like she understood.
"So will you help?" he said.
She laid a hand on his arm, compassion, I thought, or something else. I thought of the dress she'd worn to come a visiting and realized some part of her loved him. Strangely enough, it didn't bother me. But I liked her enough to alert her to one incredibly useful tidbit that make save her a lot of agony.
"He's a virgin, you know," I said and sat up fully, my back nice and properly straight.
With my feet on the floor, I felt much better. I shook out my shoulders and took in a deep breath all while they watched me as though I was about to collapse.
I eyed Maddox.
"Does she know you're celibate? You shouldn't keep it secret from her, you know. Wouldn't be fair."
He blinked at me but it was Kerri who stepped forward.
"Isabella," she said. "You need to listen to me closely."
I gave her my attention as she pushed next to me on the chair. I was surprised that it seemed to fit us both. I felt her hand rest on mine. It was warm but not moist, firm but not demanding. I lifted my gaze to hers and waited, happy to know that I could feel something.
In seconds that happiness sort of fizzled out, leaving me as full as an alcoholic's last bottle.
She took both of our hands and laid them, my palm first, against my solar plexus. I might have thought it was too intimate a touch, but it didn't feel that way. I felt a subtle jolt of something through her hand to mine, one that spread into my chest. I recognized the feeling of compassion as though it were my own, and it crested over me before settling somewhere at my feet, leaving me feel like a template of sorts. Ready to be used, but useless on its own.
Soul Merchant (Isabella Hush Series Book 5) Page 9