Brimstone Seduction (9 page)

“I know,” Severne whispered back.

There were only inches left between them. He'd tugged her closer and closer, and she hadn't pulled away. The heat from his body easily penetrated the thin satin of her gown. From Brimstone or his workout or both, he was an inhuman torch. She sucked in her stomach and held her breath, sure that an inadvertent brush of skin to skin would burn.

Yet she craved the burn.

She'd been so careful for so long. Hiding. Silent. Severne called her from her protected places. And he knew it. She could see the knowledge in his eyes. He had decades of experience reading others. He could see why she hadn't pulled away. He kept himself hard and untouchable, but he was playing a game with her.

He'd tugged her closer to see what she would do.

“I'll find my sister in spite of the Order of Samuel. We'll walk away when we're ready. Together. That's why I'm here. We've run long enough. It's time to cast off our chains,” Kat said.

“Easier said than done, but I'm fascinated by your determination,” Severne said. He glanced down at the medallion in his fingers.

“I don't expect it to be easy,” she said.

“Good. Nothing is easy at l'Opéra Severne. Trust me. Nothing. You've come to a hard place to make your stand,” he said.

“Hard doesn't scare me,” Kat said.

Finally, when he still didn't release her wrist, she pulled, and he let his finger slip from her silver chain. He let her go easier than she'd expected, quicker than she'd wished.

“You should have kept running,” Severne said.

“The Brimstone is always there. No matter where I run or where I hide. The Brimstone is with me always,” Katherine said.

She backed away from Severne's magnetism. He let her go. They were still the hardest steps she'd taken. Her feet felt like they slogged through nearly dried cement. Her body yearned to press toward his. She forced it to obey her will and move in the opposite direction.

John Severne lowered the hand that had held her bracelet and clenched it into a fist as if to stop from reaching out for her again.

“I know,” he said.

Kat continued to force herself to move away from a daemon pull she hated to resist. She wanted to go back to him and magically wipe the marks from his arm and the scars from his flesh. She thought of her mother's long-ago injury and of Lucie's shattered cheek. She couldn't help Severne any more than she'd helped her mother or her doll all those years ago. She could only help the sister who needed her now more than ever.

She left John Severne standing with clenched fists surrounded by heavier chains than she'd ever borne.

Chapter 10

T
he orchestra pit of l'Opéra Severne was deeper and wider than most. It dipped between the auditorium seating and the stage like a moat, which would swell with rivers of dynamic sound rather than stagnate with water.

When the pit was full of musicians, it flowed with rivulets of body movement to create the mood and emotional sense of shows that were often in a language the audience didn't fully understand. It wasn't the printed translations that truly conveyed the meaning of opera. It was the music itself.

Opera, more than most other forms of theater, was about feeling. The size of the orchestra at l'Opéra Severne showed the intention of its master to encompass the hall with emotion.

Funny that.

A being as hard as stone ruling over a theater and an art form that was in its essence the very opposite of the face he showed the world.

Kat was alone in the orchestra pit.

Rehearsals were over for the day, and the conductor had retreated to his chair in the passage between the pit and the halls, where he nodded with the heavy breathing of deep sleep. The lights were low, mimicking the gloaming of twilight that occurred in the outside world.

Tess had tried to get her to go out for dinner with some of the other performers and musicians, but she'd stayed behind. She hoped the house would empty enough in the night that she would be able to spend some uninterrupted time with the key she'd found in Victoria's room.

For now, she played alone.

She'd managed to avoid John Severne for several days, but she couldn't keep him from her thoughts.

She didn't play any of the pieces from Gounod's
Faust
. Instead, she played “The Swan” from
The Carnival of the Animals
because the piece was elegant and fun and very French. The beauty of the music reflected the beauty of the opera house while holding back its shadows. Though she sat in darkness, “The Swan” surrounded her with light.

She didn't play to call Severne.

She intended no siren's song.

Yet, as her bracelet pressed against her skin beneath the long-sleeved shirt she wore to keep it from interfering with her bow, she couldn't help remembering the way he'd held her chain. He'd pulled her closer with the reminder of her service to the Order of Samuel. The irony of that was seductive. As if he'd made a direct challenge to the Order itself. The crook of a sexy daemon's finger tugging at her chain was hard to forget.

She didn't consciously shift to a darker piece, but emotions drove her when she played, especially when she played alone, and this time her feelings led her into Elgar, a yearning, melancholy concerto that reflected her thoughts of Severne more than it should. She played it through, then stopped, too overcome to go on.

“It's as if you knew when I'd arrive,” Severne said.

Katherine relaxed back from her playing position. She dropped her bow hand and breathed out in a long sigh to release the air she'd been controlling while she played.

Severne stepped from the tunnel into the orchestra pit. His dark suit was pinstriped charcoal gray, but even with its modern sheen, it hadn't revealed his presence in the shadows. Had she felt him approach and subconsciously changed her song? Probably. Would she admit it? Never.

“The light has diminished. Night is falling outside,” she said. It was perfectly true, just not the true reason her song had changed.

“It's always night in the theater,” Severne noted.

He'd paused at the doorway when her playing halted, but now he placed his hands in his pockets and approached. His suit jacket was unbuttoned. The white shirt beneath looked lavender in the dimmed hall's lights. His tie, though probably black, seemed a darker purple.

She was reminded of the calla lilies in his office. Which, in turn, reminded her of the taste of his lips.

“The hush of an empty pit appeals to me. I love the size and depth of l'Opéra Severne's pit. I like to fill it. To play in the silence,” Kat said.

She stood to put her cello away, but he was already close enough to get in her way. He stood between her and her open case with exaggerated ease.

As usual, his casual posture was a lie. His true emotion was in the tightness of his jaw and the rigidity of his shoulders. He had come to her, but he didn't like that he had.

“The Théâtre de l'Opéra Severne was built in the seventeen hundreds. It was one of the first major buildings in Baton Rouge. The city rose around us. Severne Row has always been kept sacrosanct. The other neo-Gothic buildings in this district were all built to my grandfather's specifications. Some say he even influenced the architecture of the capitol,” Severne said.

The impromptu history lesson became seductive in his smoky accent. Her cello was no barrier between them. His body leaned toward hers as if he imparted a confession or was about to.

“I share this because even though it was built long before you were born, I would like to go back and personally construct it, stone by stone, with my bare hands, to give you the perfect place to play. L'Opéra Severne wasn't built for you. But I wish it had been. You fill the silence well,” Severne said.

As confessions went, it was a killer. His hands were still in his pockets. Hers trembled. Her lips had gone numb from all the things she couldn't say.

“It pleases me that you like this orchestra pit. It shouldn't. I should wish you away from this place,” Severne said. “You should go.”

His hands came from his pockets, and she held her breath. She needed him to be dark and dangerous. This gentle appreciation, though reluctantly given, was dangerous in a far more enticing way.

This time, he didn't search out her bracelet. He simply took her hand. Only when she felt the warmth of his palm did she know hers had been cold.

He cupped her hand, palm up, in his and lifted it to the soft light nearer his searching eyes. With his other hand, he traced calloused fingers over her calloused fingertips. He lightly touched each permanent crease caused by her cello's strings.

She forced herself to breathe. It was a triumph to appear calm. To take in air, lightly and normally, while her entire universe narrowed to his touch on her hand.

She should have pulled her hand away. When he touched her fingers, he plumbed the depths of her soul. Her greatest strength and weakness was written in the indentions on her hand.

“Art is pain, but you wear it well. You have a soft, feminine body, but when I hold you, I discover hidden strength. You have to be strong to play as well as you do. Physically and emotionally. You have to be able to climb and plummet and coax the depths and heights from the strings,” Severne said.

She was hypnotized by his perception. She couldn't pull away. When he leaned closer to her hand, but looked up to make contact with her eyes, she held her breath again. Weak in the knees though he perceived her as strong.

“But it's the marks from the strings that show the true sacrifices you've made. You've given flesh and blood to song,” he said.

She couldn't help it. When he pressed his lips to her callouses, one by one, brushing each digit with a kiss, she released her pent-up breath in a long, shaky sigh.

He watched her.

Yet she couldn't pretend to be aloof and untouched. Her eyes closed with each press of his lips and opened in fear and expectation of the next.

“Don't tremble, Katherine. I'm not here to seduce you. I shouldn't be here at all. I know that,” he said.

The hot coil in her stomach tightened as he paused over the last finger before gifting it with a brush of his lips, as well.

Then he lowered her hand and lifted his head, and she took possession of what he had temporarily claimed.

He was not a modern man. In spite of the contemporary cut of his suits and his painfully sculpted physique, Severne was a daemon that had lived through past times. He had made love to her by those old-fashioned standards. Her body might stand in the twenty-first century, but every inch of her throbbed nearly replete from the touch of his lips on her hand.

And the wicked, worldly creature knew it. He had the experience of decades with which to read her response.

He smiled.

“I've had a long day, and I need to retreat to my gym before we both regret my...lingering,” he said. He punctuated the words with a very Gallic shrug.

“Good night,” Kat managed to reply.

But she didn't try to put away her cello until he had stepped aside and walked away.

Chapter 11

S
he'd asked Tess about the key. Tess had explained that all the private dressing rooms had keys like the one she'd found. She'd advised Kat to turn it in to the costume matron because one of the principal players must have misplaced it.

Vic's dressing room hadn't been reassigned, though some of the costumes had been shifted to her understudy's room.

The key was heavy in the pocket of Katherine's silk pajamas tonight.

She'd played her cello in her room after leaving the orchestra pit long after midnight, when the opera house slumbered around her. Except for Severne, who had probably labored in his gym longer than she labored over her strings. Now she quietly clicked open her bedroom door and crept toward the hidden hallway beneath the stage that was lined with private dressing rooms. She'd decided against dressing in something other than her sleepwear. If anyone saw her, let them assume she was sleepwalking or headed to the kitchen for a midnight snack. She hadn't visited the cook's domain yet, but others who lived in the opera house treated it like the kitchen of their own home.

Severne would have given her a formal tour, but she didn't want his audience. She couldn't trust him not to mislead or misdirect. She was drawn to him, but it was an impulse she couldn't safely indulge.

John Severne was the opera's master. If a wealthy patron was involved in her sister's disappearance, then he might not be as interested in helping her find her sister's abductor as he intimated.

It wasn't only l'Opéra Severne that had mysterious shadows. Its owner was shadowed in his own right.

Kat slipped through the dark opera house. She moved with silent steps on slippered feet through passages that watched her progress with wooden eyes. She purposefully avoided looking at the murals. They gamboled around her, chaotic and indistinct in the darkness.

Somewhere a hellhound prowled and a daemon brooded. She was only a silent wraith wandering in search of the truth. If only she didn't suspect that the secret she probed was bigger and older than Victoria's disappearance.

She came to the room she searched for, still marked with a placard bearing her sister's assumed name. She took the key from the pocket of her silk pajamas and fumbled to insert it into the slot in the dark.

Kat cringed when the key slid home.

The rattle of metal against metal was loud in the silent corridor.

She held her breath.

Her heart pulsed in her ears, an embarrassing whoosh that mocked her.
Go get back in your warm, safe bed
, it said.

But her shoulders stiffened in response. Her spine went to stone. She stood her ground. She waited.

No growl. No steps. No whispering sibilance came from the sconces or the vents or the walls.

She turned the key farther, and oiled tumblers responded smoothly. In the quiet hallway, even the easy operation of the mechanism shouted her presence to a malevolent world.
Here she is. What is she doing? Why is she here where she doesn't belong?

She opened the door anyway.

The dusty cool air of the hallway met the rush of stale, closed-up air from the abandoned dressing room. Powder, freesia, hair spray...her sister's professional persona of wigs and stage makeup and elaborate make-believe wafted out to envelop her. It was subtly different than Vic's personal scent, but just as familiar to a beloved sister who worked side by side with a lyric soprano.

The opera was an escape for Victoria as it had been for their mother, but it was an escape that hinted at dark fantasy and the undercurrents of melodrama they lived with every day, both gorgeous and awful, both life and death, filled with lush, deadly beauty.

Their life, and the work that hid them from that life, were both music and madness.

Kat slipped into the room and shut the door behind her. Only then did she click on the lights. They sputtered to life in a flickering, unreliable glimmer from a mirror framed by glass bulbs that seemed almost as old as l'Opéra Severne itself.

Besides the dressing table, there were two lounges in the style of seventeenth-century fainting couches. Their upholstery was a faded tapestry that indicated they were authentic antiques. She jumped when the other denizens of the room were revealed. Several tall, headless dress forms stood naked to the side.

She calmed her heart, and then ignored a sudden pinch of emotion as she realized the barren forms had held her sister's costumes that had been taken to the understudy's room.

Kat walked over to one of the dress forms and placed her hand on its shoulder. The cage beneath its waist would have supported the heavy bustled skirts and petticoats of Victoria's costume. Now it looked skeletal. The papier-mâché bodice felt hollow beneath her hand.

The dress form was nothing without her sister.

Victoria D'Arcy would have been the most famous name in opera if she hadn't had to live a life in hiding. She'd taken smaller roles in smaller theaters than her talent deserved. She'd had to use assumed names, often changing her appearance and losing roles because she auditioned without her full résumé.

Kat turned from the form and stepped toward the mirror. In its wavy, vintage glass, the room behind her was emptier and darker. What had this room seen? She suddenly wished the shadows could whisper their secrets. Behind her, layers upon layers of old posters and playbills plastered the walls. Like the dress form, she felt papier-mâchéd by a hundred years of dramatic make-believe. What truths were hidden behind it all?

She forced herself to sit at the dressing table and open the drawers one by one. Tons of cosmetics and toiletries rattled and rolled at her touch. Among the jumble, an anomaly stood out.

Kat's gasp was more of a choked exclamation. She forced herself to reach out and scoop up the unmistakable charm bracelet her sister never removed. The matching bracelet on her own wrist tinkled gently like chimes whenever she moved.

But her sister's bracelet was drastically altered. It had been blackened until the Order of Samuel medallion hanging from it was charred. The sound it made as she turned it this way and that to examine it was dead and dull.

Her fingers shook as she held Vic's bracelet up to try to ascertain what had caused the damage. Fire? Brimstone? They had never removed the bracelets. They'd been afraid to. Just as Katherine always wore sleeves that pressed her bracelet to her skin to keep it from interfering with her bowing, Victoria altered her costumes to hide the chain whenever it was necessary.

Had Victoria removed it herself, or had someone ripped it from her wrist? And did the condition of the blackened metal tell a terrible truth about her sister's condition? Was she hurt...or worse?

Kat held the bracelet in her fist for a long time. Tears burned behind her eyes. She willed them away. She carefully placed her sister's bracelet in her pocket. She refused to give up hope. The bracelet wasn't a warning or a premonition. It was only another clue. A piece in a puzzle she would solve to find her sister, safe and sound.

Victoria was fine.

Kat would find her.

The only thing the bracelet revealed was that she was on the right track. She would pick up every precious bread crumb until she finally reached her sister's side.

She put her elbows on the powdery surface of the table and rested her face in her hands, but just as she began to close her eyes, the reflection of a name caught her eye.

Kat stood and turned.

Not only a name. She recognized a face and a particular set of eyes she'd known as well as she knew her own.

She moved toward the wall with hesitant steps.

From the vanity to the poster, she traveled back in time twenty years. Her mother had been a lovely Marthe. It was the fluttering corner of her poster that had caught Kat's attention and drawn her eyes to her mother's name. The paper was yellow and curled. She reached to touch the face she'd lost before she'd lost Victoria. Her sister had done the same. Kat knew she must have. Vic had stood where she stood now with her fingers trembling and tears on her lashes, with her heart trapped in the tightening cage of her chest. Had her sister remembered the full contralto swell of their mother's voice singing lullabies to her children as easily as she sang her dramatic roles?

Victoria must have peeled back the loosened corner. Kat peeled it back, as well. The move revealed a seam in the wood that ran down to her knees. It was a cupboard, one that had been papered shut decades ago.

But it had been loosened much more recently than that.

Kat slid several lacquered nails down the seam to edge it open. Inside was a shallow enclosure built into the wall. Perhaps it had been installed for costume jewelry or other small valuables, but the only thing in it now was a small bundle of folded letters bound in a faded satin sash.

She recognized the old belt to her childhood dress.

As she reached to close her hand around the stack, she glanced at the mirror over her shoulder. In it, her reflection looked small and humble and completely dwarfed by a hulking shadow on the wall. She reached for the stack of letters, and as she did, the shadow shifted and changed. The black mass of it swelled bigger and bigger. Large wing-like projections unfurled and stretched from corner to corner of the room. In the reflection, she was sheltered or threatened beneath those shadowy wings.

Kat left the letters where they lay and whirled. She stared at the shadow to determine where it came from. A flood of instinctive energy rushed to her legs, urging her to flee. Was it adrenaline that made the room seem colder? She could see nothing that would cast the shadow, and neither dress forms nor couches had moved. The lights around the mirror flickered and flashed. The wings stretched as if they would envelop her. But it had to be a trick of the light. She was in no danger from darkness.

As she tried to calm her heart and ignore the urge to run, the tip of one wing lifted from the wall.

The translucent shadow that was no mere shadow reached out to her and touched her cheek in a feathery slide down her face.

These black feathers would never give her freedom or happiness.

Her body went suddenly cold. Ice radiated outward from the shadow's touch as if flowing superchilled through her veins. She cried out, and the sound escaped from hard lips in a puff of white. A tingling numbness was following the ice. Her body was freezing while she tried to tell herself it couldn't be.

The whole room dimmed. The shadow was detaching itself from the wall. There were whispers now, all around. Urgent shushes and hushes she no longer wanted to hear.

She could think of only one person who might be able to combat the freeze.

Kat flung herself forward and away from the shadow. She wrenched open the door and began a stumbling run down the hall. It was desperate and probably foolish, but in that moment, John Severne and his Brimstone's fire seemed a salvation.

* * *

Whatever peace he'd achieved from hours of weights was shattered when the woman he'd tortured himself to forget rushed into the sanctum of his private gym. Grim leaped to his feet from his place at the door, but he didn't confront Katherine D'Arcy. He faced out toward the hallway instead, his hackles raised and a growl rumbling deep in his chest. The dog's hind legs dug into the floor until his claws pitted the rug as if he expected to be met and slammed with great opposition.

Severne was lathered, spent, self-flagellated to nothing but muscle and bone.

Still, he rose.

He met Kat as her momentum brought her to his side, but he didn't take her in his sweat-slicked arms. Instead, he faced the hallway as Grim faced it, planted, prepared, an unuttered growl filling his chest.

Kat stopped. She turned to face the hallway, as well.

“C-c-cold. S-so c-cold,” she stuttered.

It was only then that he saw she quaked until her teeth chattered as she tried to speak.

He had nothing to give her except the damnation in his veins.

While Grim guarded the door, Severne turned to the woman beside him and took her in his arms. Hours of forced separation and austerity fell away. This was what he most wanted and most feared. She was shivering, and her soft skin was ice against him beneath the delicate silk pajamas that provided no warmth. Thankfully, they provided no barrier, either. He hissed from the pain as their bodies came together. Her ice and his fire. Immediately he felt the drain as her frozen body absorbed his Brimstone heat.

More pain of a different sort flared when she touched him, both palms coming against his chest. Only strength of will kept him from dropping to his knees. The ice was agony. The contact was worse. Her reaching for him in need was torturous.

In spite of the pain, or maybe because he needed the lash of it to keep from feeling her softness, Severne pulled her closer. She'd been touched by a banished daemon, one that wasn't fully contained in the walls. His lean form pulsed with Brimstone. Banished daemons were completely drained of fire. How had one managed to free itself, and why had it reached out to Katherine?

Kat pressed into him, seeking his warmth.

Torture? He'd been tortured his whole existence, but Katherine hungry for his damned heat was worse than any hardship he'd ever endured. He gave it to her while holding an untouchable part of himself back. Here, now, he burned for her. He saved her with hell's fire.

He'd been right that her skin would be perfect and soft. He had reason to caress it now. Her cold was the perfect excuse to slide his Brimstone-heated hand over her skin. She trembled, but she didn't ask him to stop. Cold, fear, desire—what fueled her shivers? He held her with a strong arm behind her back while he ran his other hand gently over her arms, each one from shoulder to wrist, purposefully ignoring the tinkle of her silver chain.

A flush rose in response to his touch. Her pale, frozen flesh was brought back to heat and life. The silk of her nightclothes was nothing compared to the softness of her.