Eager to explore more of the delicious male specimen next to her, Zora rolled onto her side. She stroked up and down the man’s torso with her palm. Dimly, she heard a masculine groan of pleasure. She made her own sound of contentment, almost a purr. It had been so long since she had touched a man. Felt his heat and virility, and desired it. Yes, desire. It crept up through her on velvet paws, weighting her limbs, stirring sensitivity back to life after ... months ... years? She did not know. She knew only that she was a woman too long denied her own passions, and a perfectly delectable man lay beside her, gladly accepting—and enjoying—her caresses. For days now, she had been sharpened against the whetstone of need for Whit, honing her into a blade of wanting. Wanting, and denying, for there was always an impediment between them.
She had been denying herself, but she would no longer. Her explorations of the man beside her continued, and she allowed herself the indulgence of pretending this man was Whit, that she could yield at last to the beast of her desire.
A fine trail of hair wended its way down his flat stomach, and her fingertips followed it until it disappeared beneath the waistband of doeskin breeches. The leather was supple, soft, and it clung to the man’s body like another skin. Her hand moved lower. And now she truly purred, for she encountered the thick length of the man’s cock pressing tightly against the doeskin. The man sucked in a breath and rocked up into her touch.
A gorgeous cock, even if her knowledge was gained through touch and not sight. She traced her fingertips over the head and the ridge just beneath it. Then down the broad shaft. Oh, it would fill her most wonderfully, almost to the point of pain. Hot slickness gathered between her legs at the thought of taking this cock into her, stretching herself to accommodate its length and thickness. She wanted that. She tugged at the breeches’ fastenings.
“God, Zora. Yes.”
Her eyes flew open. Whit’s bright blue gaze burned into her.
For a moment, her hand paused in its work. They stared at one another. His bristled jaw was tight, his nostrils were flared. He was shirtless, clad only in his doeskin breeches. Zora wore her chemise—she must have stripped before collapsing into bed. Shadows suffused the room in which they lay. It was dusk. She had slept all day. And now she was fully awake. As was Whit.
Whit, the man who had cut through her life like that curved sword he wielded. Who had been her captor, her tormentor. Yet he had been respectful, in his way. In the moments when she forgot the nature of their relationship, she had found in him a kindred spirit, a clever man with a hunger for understanding. Though swathed in darkness and often hidden, his soul was good. Worthy. She and Whit had desired each other. He had wanted to give her things, anything she wanted. But the terms ... the terms had been terrible.
He had ridden to her rescue before she could ride to his. However, he had helped save her from creatures that he had unwittingly unleashed.
Lying beside him now, in this inn, sharing a bed ... a maelstrom of emotions crashed through her. Desire, yes, always that between them. Gratitude for his courageous strength against the demons. But there was anger, too.
She wanted to take from him. As he had taken from her, leaving a smoldering ruin in his wake. Strip him of everything, even gentleness, even mercy. Until, like her, he had nothing left.
Her hand cupped him through the snug fabric of his breeches. His cock jerked beneath her hand, and she squeezed. Hard.
He groaned hoarsely, the sound midway between ecstasy and pain. Yet he did not push her away or stop her. His broad hand actually came up to cover hers, pressing her even closer.
Power roared through her. She wanted more.
Zora levered herself up on one elbow and leaned over him. They continued to stare at one another as she stroked him roughly, pleasuring and punishing him.
“Ask me a question,” she demanded.
His gaze was hooded. “Do you want me?”
No magic pressured a truthful answer from her. She could say whatever she wanted now. His hold over her had been broken when she escaped.
“No,” she answered.
She lowered her head as he raised his own, and their mouths met. Their last—and only—kiss had been a slow, deliberate seduction, an exploration of each other’s tastes and textures that had left her breathless with wanting. This kiss was not slow. It was not deliberate. It was ... animal. Ravenous.
She plundered his mouth, just as he savaged hers. They let slip the tether that bound their basest feral natures. Tongues tangled, stroked. His lips were full, firm, devastating. He nipped at her and she bit back, like two wolves locked in a mating battle. They growled.
With one hand, Whit continued to hold her tightly to his thick erection, his hips moving against her. His other hand came up, tangling in her hair, tugging just enough to sting. The sensation traveled from her scalp all the way through her body, to gleam brightly in her breasts and her quim. Never before had she linked pain with pleasure, but now, the subtle fire of it heated her already burning body. She could feel her wetness, her need for him in her innermost place.
She maneuvered her free hand up onto his chest. Her fingers brushed against something small and cool, metallic. A ring, hanging from a cord around his neck. Her ring. The one she had flung out the gaming room door to test the magical prison. All this time, he had been wearing it close to him. Proof of his ownership? Or something more, something deeper?
Her nails raked a path, not enough to draw blood, but they would mark him for a while, her anger and desire leaving red trails on his flesh. The thought excited her mightily. And it excited Whit, too, for he rumbled like a wild creature at her scratch.
His fingers loosened from her hair, and he trailed his hand down her throat, over her collarbones. She gasped into his mouth as he cupped her breast through the thin chemise. Pleasure shot through her in hot, sharp jolts. His clever gambler’s hands stroked and rubbed, the heat of his palm burning through the fine fabric. With his thumb, he teased her nipple into a firm point. Then he took her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and pinched.
Zora moaned. Again, they tread on the narrow boundary between pain and ecstasy. One fueled the other, just as anger fed lust. And something more. Something beyond the need to punish and take. Beneath the complex web between them, something glimmered, bright and true, free from the darkness that ensnared them.
She did not want to know what that glimmering thing was. She wanted only to exorcise the rage pulsing through her, and hopefully banish her desire for him.
As Whit rolled her nipple between his fingers, she fumbled for the fastenings on his breeches. Their hands tangled as he helped her. His cock was freed and she took its naked length in her hand, gripping it tightly. He was velvety and hard. She scraped her nails down the shaft, and he shuddered in ecstasy. A bead of moisture gleamed at the very tip. She rubbed the tip in hard, small circles.
“Keep doing that,” he grated, “and I’ll spend in seconds.”
Which would give him release far too soon. She lightened her touch until she stroked him with delicate, fluttering caresses.
“Ruthless.” He spoke the word half in admonishment, half in admiration.
“With you, yes.” But she didn’t want words, for they contained too much intimacy, which led in directions she dared not follow. She took his mouth again, and he both gave and took in response. She slid her foot up his calf, testing the feel of his flesh against hers.
When his large hand clasped her ankle, she shivered. When his hand stroked up her calf beneath her chemise, she gasped. When his hand moved over her knee and up her thigh, she could not stop her groan. He touched her leg boldly, possessively, as if her body had been created for him and his pleasure alone. She badly wanted his touch between her legs. She needed his fingers delving into her quim, wet and eager for him. With absolute understanding she knew that the moment he touched her there, she would come. It would take only one stroke.
He lifted his head to watch her. His hand drifted higher, closer.
Yes.
His hand stopped. She urged her hips higher, encouraging, demanding.
“Now, Whit,” she commanded.
“I can’t.”
“Why the hell not?” She opened her eyes to glare at him.
His gaze was fixed on something over her shoulder. “Because there is a
ghost
watching us.”
She twisted around. Sure enough, a ghost
was
watching them. Rather avidly.
Zora released her hold on Whit. Wary, she sat up and protectively crossed her arms. “Livia.”
“Why do they stop?” The specter frowned. “Over a millennium has passed since I have seen such a magnificently carnal display. Makes me wish for a body of my own.” Her hands came up to stroke her neck, and her frown deepened into an angry grimace. “Nothing. I feel nothing. Not even the touch of my own hands.”
Zora felt Whit beside her tucking himself back into his breeches. Given his hiss of discomfort, the process was not an easy one. He’d been so thick and hard.
“The Roman ghost has a name,” said Whit. “You know the ghost’s name. And it is
talking
.” He eyed Livia warily as she angrily muttered, carrying on a conversation with herself in a corner of the room. Night had fallen, so she glowed whitely in the darkness, the only source of illumination.
“Unpredictable as gunpowder, too,” added Zora.
Strange how only a day had passed, but things such as demons and ghosts were almost familiar. The world had truly gone mad. Or Zora was mad, like Livia.
Zora did teeter on the edge of sanity, if from unsatisfied desire alone. In too slow increments, arousal began to fade, echoes of heat leaving her body in gradual pulses.
“Why are you here now?” Zora demanded. “You disappeared.”
Livia struggled to break from her muttered raving. Her eyes focused more clearly on Whit and Zora. “I ... am pulled. From this place of brightness into shadow. The world between worlds. Even now, I feel it. Drawing on me.” As she spoke, she guttered like a flame in a breeze.
Whit rose up from the bed. “Talking to a ghost,” he said, still amazed.
“Delicious male. A brand glowing in the darkness.” Livia eyed him, longing clearly written upon her spectral countenance. Though Zora understood to some extent that the priestess missed human contact, she still disliked the idea of Livia ogling Whit like a lioness sizing up a potential mate.
Good God, was Zora
jealous
? Of a
ghost
?
Livia’s shape flickered. “It drags me back. Too much time, now too little. They must know—before it takes me again.” Raising one ghostly hand, Livia pointed at Whit. “The glowing brand. His soul is the key.”
“Key to what?” Whit and Zora demanded in unison.
“Unleashing Hell on earth.”
Chapter 9
Zora heard Whit moving through the dark room. He seemed remarkably calm for a man who learned his soul was crucial to creating Hell on earth. Yet with his usual grace, he went to the candle stand, opened and closed a box, then struck a flint to light the candle. The glare temporarily blinded Zora, and she felt her pupils contract painfully.
Her eyes adjusted by degrees until the room came into focus. Compared to the opulence of Whit’s home, this bedchamber appeared spare and plain. It held the minimum necessary for a night’s stay: bed, table, battered clothes press. Yet it was still a
gorgio
room, heavy and immobile, and so she could not feel comfortable. Her gaze moved from the details of the room to something more ... not comforting, but familiar, in his way. Whit.
Clad only in his breeches, he stood at the foot of the bed, his attention fixed on Livia. Zora had already seen the priestess’s specter, so for her, Whit without his shirt was the greater wonder. She had touched him, learned his form and feel and knew from this exploration that his was a body worthy of adoration. Here was visual proof.
Gorgios
, she had learned over the years, were soft. Especially the wealthy ones. Some of them played at being hunters, at sportsmen, but that’s all it truly was: play. Their bodies bore the imprints of this charade. Even their young men at the height of their vigorous masculinity seemed fragile, vaguely unwell from a life deprived of air and sunlight. Looking at a partially clad Whit, Zora thought she might have underestimated
gorgios.
No, she corrected herself. Whit was unique. She had known that at the encampment days ago, and she knew it for certain now.
The fire of himself had burned away everything excess. He was all lean muscle, ridged and firm, his body arranged in precise shapes, gilded by candlelight, and she wanted to stare. She needed to touch, to see
and
feel the beautiful masculine composition—chest, abdomen, the lines from his hips angling down, offering the most enticing shadows. He radiated physicality much like a horse bred for racing radiated speed. Truly, there was something almost animal about Whit, so that the façade was not his playing at being a sportsman, but rather a primal male playing at being a gentleman. His clothing had hinted at but not fully revealed what lay beneath costly silk and linen. Now she knew otherwise.
Surely he did more than hold dice or cards, for his arms were powerful sinew, his forearms tightly muscled, sprinkled with dark hair. The bones of his wrists formed hard, sharp juts beneath his skin. She already knew the seductive quality of his large, dexterous hands. Zora’s gaze traveled up the length of his arms to his wide shoulders. Doubtless his tailor bemoaned having such a strapping client, for it required the cutting and fitting of his expensive shirts and coats into feats of complicated design. Gentlemen didn’t have shoulders broad enough to fill a doorway.
Her gaze stopped on his left shoulder. She had seen something there when Livia had first appeared but dismissed it as a fault of her sight in a poorly lit room. Now she saw that it hadn’t been a trick of the light.
Zora rose from the bed and approached Whit. He watched her, his gaze wary, as she reached out toward him. Her fingers hovered but did not touch. She felt a vine of fear knot around the base of her skull.
An angry wound marred the back of his shoulder, evidence of their battle against the demons. He had cleaned the wound at some point, and it looked as though it might leave a faint scar. Evidence that he had fought for her.
Yet her attention was snared by something else on his body. A pattern of flames covered his shoulder and ran down to the very top of his bicep, as though someone had drawn on his flesh. The design itself deeply troubled her. The flames snaked and twisted across his skin, as if they were trying to devour him. It was only a drawing, yet a malevolence imbued each line, each shape. Zora thought the candle must be guttering in a draft, for it seemed as if the illustrated flames flickered. She half expected his skin to give off an even greater heat.
“These pictures,” she whispered.
He grabbed his shirt from the back of a chair and shrugged into it, hiding the design. “They appeared after I and the other Hellraisers made our bargain with Mr. Holliday. Since that day it has ... grown.”
She felt her jaw slacken in horrified surprise.
“His mark.” Livia uttered this pronouncement bleakly. The candlelight had dimmed her own glow, and the struggle to remain fixed in this world showed as she shimmered. “Each moment the Dark One possesses the glowing brand’s soul, his mark grows.”
“And when it covers me?” Whit demanded.
“He asks for answers when I have none to give.”
“Hazard a guess,” he said tightly.
“When the flames cover him ... the glowing brand is lost. His soul will never be his.”
Zora seized the glimmer of hope that shone between Livia’s cryptic words. “Your soul might still be recovered.”
“Tell us more,” Whit urged.
A laugh like broken glass shattered from Livia. “These hot little children. Believing I have answers when the question is barely known.”
Seeing that the ghost was scarce on information, Whit turned to Zora. “How does she know any of this?”
“Livia summoned
Wafodu guero
long ago,” Zora said. “He tempted her with power, and she yielded.”
A humorless echo of a smile canted Whit’s mouth. He rubbed at his marked shoulder. “Not an uncommon occurrence.”
And the reason why Zora was here in the first place. Why her whole life had become a Guy Fawkes bonfire. She did not return Whit’s smile, looking away toward the window, and the night beyond.
“The Dark One feeds,” said Livia. “His chosen fare is not bread nor meat. Souls. They strengthen him, give him power. Those souls capable of good ... they are the most potent. The Dark One gobbles them up and grows in strength. Too late. I learned this too late.” Her form quavered, fading in and out as her agitation grew. “Are we lost before we have begun? How can it be stopped?”
“Calm yourself,” Zora urged. “Tell us what needs to be stopped.”
Livia stared down at the ground as if the flames of Hell licked at her hovering feet. “Darkness from below. Drinks the light. Steals the brightness. This world shall become his own. The underworld no longer beneath but all around.”
“What happened at my family’s camp is a taste of what may come.” Zora’s head whirled at the possibility, and she leaned against the wall to support herself.
Concerned, Whit moved toward her, but she held him back with an outstretched hand. She needed her own strength just now, for she could not yet rely on him, not when he had been the unwitting agent of future calamity.
Whit kept his distance, though the tension in his body revealed how difficult it was for him to do so. Tormentor or solace—he was both.
“I see it.” Livia looked up, but her horrified gaze was distant. “Each soul makes him stronger. His armies massing. Marching. The world covered in flame and darkness. Misery without end. Eternal suffering.”
Hell on earth
, thought Zora, shuddering.
“Then I have to stop it,” replied Whit at once. “Stop Mr. Holliday.”
“The glowing brand thinks it a simple matter.” Livia broke from her trance to stare at the scrapes and cuts on Whit and Zora, cuts made by the demons. “Already blood is spilled. My life lost.”
“We battled his minions and won,” Zora noted.
The priestess made a very unholy sound of derision. “A trifle, a tame little dance. He is a strategist. Player of games. The glowing brand knows games, how to win. Everything is not learned with the first roll of the dice.”
“Mr. Holliday is just testing us,” said a grim-faced Whit. “Discovering our strengths, our weaknesses. For the next time.”
So much certainty in that statement.
Next time.
It
would
happen. More of those awful beasts. More chances to fail, to die.
More chances to win
, Zora told herself. She had to believe that she and Whit could succeed. Or else she would give in to despair. Precisely what
Wafodu guero
wanted.
“What do we need to do?” Zora asked.
“The tokens are taken,” said Livia, “but not lost.”
“Brilliant. More puzzles.” Zora clenched her fists in frustration. “This ghost has all the makings of a fortune-teller.”
Yet it seemed to make sense to Whit, for he nodded with understanding. He spoke lowly, though steel and anger threaded his voice. “The
geminus
showed me a token for a soul it had won. It must have mine, as well. It mentioned something about a vault.”
He began dressing quickly, lacing his shirt and shoving it into his breeches, pulling on his boots, shrugging into his waistcoat and coat. He gathered his unbound hair to tie it back.
“I know how to find the
geminus,
” Whit said. “I have the means to summon it. All I must say is,
Veni
—”
“Silence!” Livia darted forward, floating above the ground, with her hand outstretched. She moved to cover Whit’s mouth, but she passed right through him. For a moment, both stood motionless in surprise. The ghost whirled away, staring angrily at her spectral hand. Her eyes flashed enraged, pure white. “Taken from me. It is so cold. So blasted cold.” A seething ball of light took form above her open palm.
Zora grabbed Whit’s arm and pulled him back the moment that Livia, shouting in fury, hurled the glowing orb at the far wall. It slammed into the timber and plaster with the noise and force of a thrown boulder, narrowly missing Whit. Chunks of wall fell to the floor.
He raised his brows at the close call.
“Mad ghost,” Zora snapped. “Allies don’t throw deadly magic at one another like footballs.”
“Is it wise to ally ourselves with her?” Whit asked under his breath.
“For good or ill,” answered Zora, “she’s all we have.”
Livia calmed herself, though the cost of summoning the ball of light sapped her, and she faded even more, as did her voice. “The
geminus
... will not come alone. The double’s face ... holds his master’s eyes. Sees what he sees. If it is summoned by the glowing brand, the Dark One will find him.”
“Then
we
must find the
geminus,
” said Zora.
Whit looked thunderous. “If the
geminus
keeps company with the Devil, you are going nowhere near that damned creature.”
“My fate is knotted with yours.
You
tied the knot that bound us together.” When she saw that Whit meant to object again, she added, “
Wafodu guero
knows I’m a threat. That is why he sent those demons to my camp. If I threaten him, I can fight him.”
“And die.” He crossed his arms over his chest, a forbidding sight.
“Or live.” She planted her hands on her hips. “The answer is me, is you and I together. We’ve always known it to be so, else you wouldn’t have chased me from one end of London to the other.”
Time stretched out, as tense as wire, as Whit glowered at her. She had no doubt that he had used the same glower on lesser aristocrats and at the gaming table with great effectiveness. Were she not so deucedly stubborn, she might have crumbled under such a look. But, she reminded herself, she was Zora Grey, a Gypsy vixen. She had willingly given up married life so she could honor her own judgment, make her own decisions and even her own mistakes. They were
hers
to make, and no one else’s.
Many times, she had gotten into arguments with Jem, or her parents or other members of her family. They wanted her to obey, yet if she disagreed with their logic, she could not comply. No one ever tried to use reason. They shouted, or, in Jem’s case, bullied. Her attempts at discussion were roundly ignored. Daughters and wives—women—obeyed. That was all she was supposed to know, or so the Rom believed.
Would Whit be the same? Would he
listen
to her when no one else did?
Whit’s gaze held hers, and she beheld the swirl of conflicting thoughts and emotions there, as intricate as a constellation. Gambler’s eyes: assessing, weighing, examining every outcome and possibility. Most astonishing, he was truly considering what she had said. He might not agree with her stance, still, he did not dismiss her or shoulder her aside.
She felt a strange lift of gladness, too, realizing that he did not immediately capitulate. He was not a weak-willed man, instead meeting her strength with his own. It might not make for a peaceful association, yet it certainly made things more interesting. More ... exciting.
At last, he drew in a long breath and slowly let it out. “As we pursue the
geminus
, will you do as I say?”