Haunting Beauty (44 page)

His eyes seemed to darken, and the look in that sea of green and gray somehow mirrored the complex and chaotic emotions churning inside her. He understood. He felt it, too. The knowledge rolled over her and stole her breath.
He felt it, too.

He smiled then, a slow, knowing smile that spread across his face and showed the two dimples that Danni had fallen in love with so long ago. She felt herself smiling back, though her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry. The rest of the world seemed to fall away, and there was only Danni and Sean and endless possibilities. The future before them was bright and shining and waiting for whatever fate had in store for them next.

“Welcome back, Danni,” he said, his voice a smoky baritone that brushed against her skin like velvet and made her lean closer. She reached out, needing to touch him, to believe in the overwhelming rush of what she felt. He took her hand, pulling her closer still, and a million thoughts filled her head, but not one of them was to resist. This was where she belonged, where she was meant to be.

He paused, his gaze moving over her face, as if to memorize every feature. And then he spoke again, his words as soft as the warm and fragrant breeze. “It’s good to have you home. Isn’t it forever I’ve been waiting to see you again?”

Dear Reader,

Thank you for selecting
Haunting Beauty
from all of the many fabulous choices in your bookstores and libraries. I hope you enjoyed Danni and Sean’s story. I know writing it changed my life.

I love talking to readers and would love to hear from you. You can find me at
www.erinquinn.info
, where you can read first chapters of my upcoming releases and find my blog, where I probably talk too much but occasionally say something interesting. You can also e-mail me at [email protected]. I promise you’ ll hear back.

All my best,
Erin Quinn

Turn the page for a preview of the next
paranormal romance from Erin Quinn
Haunting Warrior
Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

"
H
URRY, Ruairi. Hurry.”

The whispered command tickled the inside of Rory MacGrath’s ear, feather light and taunting. He brushed it away and rolled over, trying to block out what he instantly knew. He wasn’t dreaming anymore. If he opened his eyes, he’d find the woman standing beside him.

He acknowledged this even as he accepted that seeing her wouldn’t make her real, wouldn’t make her more than a projection of his own mind. A fantasy he’d conjured and spewed into this semi-somnolence. He felt his heartbeat begin to race; his breath slowing and deepening—combatant symptoms to the paralyzing awareness.

He thought he opened his eyes, but couldn’t be sure if he only imagined it. Either way, he saw her waiting impatiently beside the couch where he’d fallen asleep watching ESPN. The apartment was dark, lit only by the flickering screen of the TV behind her. It cast her in gray and white dreamscape shadows. And then the flashing screen went blank, and they were both bathed in darkness.

This—of all that was about to come—it was
this
that he hated the most. The black on black void held him captive for interminable moments.

Sound came before the light was restored. It was rumbling, indistinct, but a sensory input that his panicking mind grasped gratefully. There was something out there. Something more than his fear. More than his sleep-deadened body.

A flicker heralded the flame of a candle. An instant later others sparked to life until the boundaries of a room could be determined in the glow. He was no longer in his apartment.

He scanned his surroundings quickly before fixating on the woman again. It was impossible not to. She looked the same as she had last night and the night before and the night before that. She had dark hair—too burnished for black, too velvety rich for brown. It was full and silken and glossy as mink. It hung to her waist in a wave of body and bounce, gleaming with the flicker of the candlelight. Her eyes were brown, dark with flecks of gold that burned like the tiny flickering flames around her. Even his dream self couldn’t believe their luminousness. Her lips were full and soft, one corner caught between her teeth. She looked exotic, her skin dusky and her features fine.

She wore a blue dress with white sleeves—something that laced in places where there should have been seams or zippers. It bloused and flowed over her round shoulders, past hips that made him think of sex in a deep, drowning way. The hem brushed a scattering of twigs and straw on the floor. Not even her feet peeped out.

She stood in the center of a room with three stone walls. Behind him hung a thick woven curtain that served as the fourth. He knew it without turning to look. There was a table with a pitcher on it in the corner beside a lumpy bed covered by a scarlet blanket. The room was damp and drafty, making the tapestries on the walls billow, but the woman seemed oblivious to the cold.

As he watched, she began to untie the dress, letting it fall, revealing a white shift beneath it. The thin material silhouetted her body for a moment before she began to remove that, too. Even as some part of him shouted again that she wasn’t real, Rory succumbed to the seduction. She was every fantasy he’d ever had, ever wanted.

Her skin was so smooth it might have been carved from the waxed light that made it gleam. Her breasts were full and heavy, and he felt the air leave his lungs as she bared them. She glanced up then—every time, every night, at just that moment. Almost as if she’d heard him. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes defiant. Anger, bordering rage, filled their depths. So much of the dream made no sense, but that part—that look of fury mixed but never diluted by acquiescence. It bewildered him the most.

When she was stripped bare, she stood in the flickering light and stared at something just over his shoulder.

And this was where the fantasy ended.

He turned—every time he turned—even though by now a part of him knew what he’d see. A tall man with overlong hair stood just behind him. A man dressed in a weird get-up that looked like it had come from a movie set. Archaic, like the dress the woman had stripped off.

The man wore a cloak made of some animal fur—not politically correct faux fur, but the real thing, with paws stretched flat at four points and the stub of tail nearly dragging the floor. It was flung back from his massive shoulders, revealing a heavy circle of gold round his throat. An obscure word floated to the top of Rory’s thoughts. A torque. That’s what it was called. It was as thick as Rory’s fingers and engraved with Celtic spirals covering its surface. It looked heavy. The man’s shirt had a wide slit for his head and boxy sleeves that fell to his forearms, and the front was embroidered with more spirals and symbols in purple and gold at the hem and seams. It hung to his thighs, like a dress. Beneath it were short pants that gathered below his knees and leather sandals wrapped midway up powerful calves, Roman style.

But even his bizarre attire was not the strangest part. What made Rory gasp was more tangible. It shook him no matter how many times he faced it.

The man looked exactly like Rory. He didn’t resemble; he wasn’t similar. Literally, he could have been Rory’s reflection.

As Rory stared, he became aware of the ebb and flow of noises coming from beyond the curtained wall, a rumble that now distinguished itself into laughter and conversations he hadn’t noticed while he’d watched the woman strip. He’d heard only the beat of his heart pounding in his ears then. Now sounds surged into the candlelit room, the drone of speaking men mingling with raucous hoots and jeers, an occasional giggle or shriek of mirth from the women. One man’s words rose above the rest as the speaker threatened to come in and show Rory where everything went. The man used Rory’s name, but pronounced it with the same Gaelic inflection that his dream woman had used when she’d urged him to hurry. Ruairi.

Rory frowned, realizing he recognized the voice. He knew he’d heard it before. From their expressions, it was familiar to the naked woman and his identical twin too.

A surge of lewd cheers followed the man’s threat. Volunteers offered to help with the endeavor.

The taunts galvanized Rory’s twin into action, and he began stripping away the strange costume with nimble, frantic fingers. He unfastened a gold chain holding the fur cloak at his throat and tossed the heavy garment onto the bed before bending to untie the sandals. Frowning, Rory went back to watching the woman as she watched his double. She stood straight and proud, neither hunching to cover her nudity or posing to flaunt it. She wore no expression, but her eyes sparked and flared with something Rory couldn’t quite identify. It couldn’t be longing. There was too much anger for that. Her fingers curled in on each other in a tight fist. Then they eased, then they contracted again.

But it was the way her gaze swept over his twin, the way her breasts lifted with a soft breath and her tongue moistened her lips that enthralled him.

He couldn’t look away, though that distant awareness inside him was shouting again, warning him not to relax, not to be mesmerized by the rise and fall of those lovely breasts. But he couldn’t stop himself as he stared at her, aching to touch her.

He knew the end of this fantasy dream was coming, as it always did just at this point when he felt he might explode with the want and need rising inside him. He braced himself for it, for what came after when he awoke alone and aching. She would torment him during the wakeful hours afterward. The sight of her, close enough to touch . . . to smell . . . to taste. . . . He would imagine she was every where, just out of reach.

But this time the dream took another turn, veering toward a new ending to a movie he knew by heart. It shocked him, the divergence.

Rory tensed, suddenly uncertain in unknown waters. What next? Would his body double do what the real Rory longed to? Would he take her in his arms and bury himself deep between the woman’s warm thighs? Would watching them be better or worse than always wondering what came after that heated look in her eyes?

Her gaze flitted over his twin’s body, lingering on the bunched muscles in his shoulders, the tight ridge of his abs, sliding lower to the hard-on that stood tight against his belly. She flushed and turned away, moving with jerky steps to the table where she filled a cup with wine and gulped it down. Rory found himself entranced by the play of candlelight on the slope of her spine, on the curve of her ass, the long length of leg. His body double watched with equal fascination.

She took another drink before facing his twin again, but whatever Dutch courage she’d gained vanished when she turned. She looked so vulnerable standing before the massive size and barely restrained power of his muscled twin. Rory wanted to intercede, not trusting his double with his dream woman. Even now, a part of him caught the irony in that. Rory was no more trustworthy than this stranger who looked like him.

He watched with growing frustration as the two met in the center of the room. As his twin reached out and touched her skin, slid his hands from shoulders to buttocks, pulled her tight against his body. It enraged him, watching. Confounded him, because he also felt some strange sense of participation. The old phrase, taking a shower in a raincoat came to him. It fit exactly. He experienced some of what his twin must be feeling, and yet only through the thick layer of distance.

His twin and woman backed up until they reached the crude bed and then fell on it. Rory’s gut tightened as they came together in a tangle of limbs and passion. There was little love, that was apparent, but there was heat and need that perfumed the air and sizzled in the silence. The two seemed to clash in a battle for control, yet neither relinquished it and neither retained it. Rory could only ride the wave, dry and isolated while his mind and his body yearned to take his twin’s place, be one with the complex and fervent confrontation.

When it was over, he was twisted tight and hard as a rock. He cursed under his breath, damning this dream world that had dominated him. Wishing to awaken but unable to bring his consciousness back to his sleeping body.

He heard a sound to his right. Confused, he looked at the stone wall and saw the woven banner with a crest at its center billow and then move. A man appeared—dressed like Rory’s twin had been, only not so fine, not so resplendent. This man’s clothing lacked the adornment and embellishment, but it had the same ancient look to it. He was armed with a bladed weapon—too short to be called sword, too long to be a knife. His manner said he knew how to use it.

What happened next came in a jerky blur—a film strip that jumped and dragged then sped forward without pause. His twin leaping off the bed, the woman sucking in a harsh breath that seemed to clog the scream she wanted to release. There was recognition on all of their faces, and Rory understood that this intruder was no stranger.

Unfettered by the vulnerability of his nudity, his twin crouched in a fighting stance as the new man circled him with that long and wicked blade clenched tight in his hand. Then they charged one another, one naked, one garbed. The fight was quick, silent, and violent. Rory’s twin overpowered the other but not without a struggle. Then in a blur, he unarmed the attacker, slamming him against the unrelenting stone and crushing the intruder’s throat with his bare hands.