The Concubine's Tale (10 page)

Who else could be here? No one else had after-hours access to the shop, not even the Chen women. Lit only by the occasional flare of fireworks and the feeble glow of a single string of paper lanterns entwined around a clothesline several stories above, the alley out back had been heavily shadowed and completely empty when Bree arrived. No one could have seen her enter.

That meant the slow, deliberate footsteps that creaked across the shop’s dusty back room belonged to an intruder, a thief.

Bree slowly exhaled through clenched teeth.
I don’t have time for this.
She had a schedule to keep and a client to appease. She had to retrieve the artifact tonight or face losing more than just a percentage of her meager commission. The plane ticket wedged into the back pocket of her tight black jeans was non-refundable. Perhaps as a testament to her client’s confidence in her abilities, her travel arrangements had been made for her on a promise
—
one guaranteed by her life.

Bree waited another ten seconds before climbing out of the niche behind a towering curio cabinet. She listened and gauged her rival’s whereabouts in the mazelike storeroom.

One aisle over to the left, a shadowy form stretched to snatch an object off a high shelf. Bree took mental inventory. That’s where Chen kept the dragon bones and the pearl handled daggers that he claimed could produce non-healing wounds with their short, blunt blades.

Nothing there worth taking
. Chen had those objects mass-produced to appeal to the souvenir hunters and seekers of the macabre.

Bree took one measured step, then another. If the intruder wanted only dime store novelties, she might be able to grab the real treasure and be gone before he
—
or she
—
noticed.

“I’ll give you sixty seconds to climb back out that window and get lost before I call the police.”

Bree went still at the incongruous threat. That voice! Deep and sharp with a hint of Australian accent, it pierced her confidence to the bone. She caught her breath and berated herself for indulging in foolish fantasies when she was supposed to be focused on her job. Much as it might sound like him, she didn’t believe in ghosts.

She held her position, calling the intruder’s bluff.

“Thirty seconds.”

God, that voice sent shivers through her body and froze the breath in her lungs.
It can’t be. It just can’t be.
Fatigue and stress had to be causing her to hallucinate. Her conscience told her to run, to ignore the tumult of long-forgotten feelings and get away before the memories derailed her mission.

Her heart had other plans, though. How could she slink away in the night, leaving her treasure behind, and never know to whom the haunting voice belonged? She turned the corner, her heart thumping against her ribs as if it meant to escape and flee the scene.

The intruder hesitated only a moment before stepping out of the shadows next to a shelf lined with Yeti hands and petrified dinosaur brains. Bree let her gaze ride up from his black boots to the familiar cattle-horn belt buckle at his waist, past the white T-shirt and scuffed black leather jacket to the shaggy mane of sun-streaked hair.

She might not have believed it, might have dismissed his appearance as coincidence, until she looked into his unsettling smoke-gray eyes. Her heart seemed to plummet to a spot just below her navel where it lay fluttering like a wounded bird. The air in her lungs hardened, and her blood congealed. Had she lost her mind, or was she staring at a dead man?

Fortunately she’d survived too many tight spots to be rendered mute and immobile for long, but the single second of complete, numbing agony at seeing him again cost her.

Swallowing the bitter taste of his betrayal, she smiled at the man who had shattered her soul two years ago. At least he had the decency to look equally shocked when he recognized her.

“Mason MacKenzie,” she said, proud that her voice remained steady and smooth. “I thought I killed you.”

Recognition hit Chance MacKenzie like a cold blade in the gut. Bree. Good Lord, she hadn’t changed at all. Even with her raven hair pulled back in a thick ponytail and her luscious figure hidden by a black sweatshirt, she took his breath away.

Of all the places he might have encountered her—all the places he’d studiously avoided since their last disastrous adventure—he’d never have imagined finding her here in New York’s Chinatown, slinking around in the back room of Chen’s famous curiosity shop.

This was no place for priceless treasures of any kind.

“You used to call me Chance,” he said as soon as he found his voice. The shock made his heart skip a beat. He could not have been more nonplussed if he’d encountered one of the Yetis that supposedly belonged to the gnarled, shriveled hands lying on the shelf behind her head.

“Only your friends call you Chance, and I’m
not
one of your friends.” Her reply stung, like a sharp pinprick in the callus that had grown over his heart since he’d seen her last, since he’d held her in his arms and planned a future with her at his side. Pushing aside the ache that had begun in the middle of his chest, he smiled wide, partly to throw her off guard and partly because the pain reminded him that he hadn’t
actually
died two years ago.

“Aw, can’t we get past that, luv? I forgive you for killing me. Since I’m not really dead, I can’t hold a grudge.”

The corners of her lustrous blue eyes sparkled. After what he’d put her through, he’d never have expected to see tears in those eyes, only the cold hatred of a woman badly scorned.

He looked away as she swiped at her eyes. Her voice wavered when she asked, “So how is it you’re not really dead?”

Love sometimes comes late and, perhaps, at too great a price
.

Damon’s Price

© 2010 Ali Katz

Widowhood agrees with thirty-eight-year-old Claudia Sabina. Her husband and father left her wealthy, but her most prized possession is their gift of independence. She enjoys a freedom few women in male-dominated Roman Society will ever know.

One of her most valuable assets is Damon, a young Greek slave bequeathed to her by her father. Intelligent, resourceful and educated beyond the norm for even a freeborn Roman citizen, Damon is a man of many talents. It doesn’t hurt that he is also a pleasure to look at.

For months, Damon hides the fact he’s fallen in love with his new mistress. He convinces himself he can be satisfied with her nearness—until the night he walks in on her bath, and his rigid control deserts him. Consequences fail to matter as he offers her full use of talents that, until now, he’s never revealed.

In a moment of weakness, Claudia crosses the line laid down by Roman law and custom, immersing herself in an illegal and dangerous love affair. A choice that threatens both their futures.

Warning: Imagine what you might do with a naked, Greek god whose sole purpose is to satisfy your every whim, then keep on imagining. This title contains an abundance of hot, hot, hot M/F loving.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Damon’s Price:

Damon crossed the room to deposit the tablets and take his place beside the desk.

“I knocked,” he said.

“The right thing would have been to leave quietly and come back later,” she warned him coldly. She slid into the chair without looking in his direction.

“I didn’t want you to worry about who had tried the door.”

“Kind of you.” She should tell him to leave. He could wait elsewhere for the correspondence.

Instead, Claudia tried to focus on the first letter. Damon’s meticulous transcription decayed to a blur on the tablet. She needed all her concentration to control the trembling in her hands.

She heard a sharp intake of breath and glanced up to catch him staring at her breasts.

Her body’s instant reaction stunned her. Her nipples grew taut against the slick fabric of the robe. A warm, liquid rush dampened her sex.

The evidence of his arousal swelled behind the fabric of his tunic. She turned in the chair to face him. The robe didn’t turn with her. It slipped open, exposing her chest and all of one leg. She made no attempt to correct the problem.

With one hand gripping the back of her chair, she returned his scrutiny. The boy was certainly a pleasure to look at. She’d admired his form often enough, but always with the appreciation one might give to an especially fine marble likeness—almost always.

At the moment, there was no comparing him to any image carved from stone. His living heat radiated between them. She drank in his rugged charms—sweetly disheveled hair, black as night, worn longer than was fashionable, black brow, midnight eyes. The shadow of a beard darkened his face. He was slim but well fed and well muscled, and he was the most intelligent man she’d ever known.

Yes, man
, she reminded herself.

“How old are you, Damon?” she asked.

“Twenty-six,
Era
.”

Titus, her son, would soon be twenty-three.

“Why would you suggest such a thing? What do you expect in return?”

The question clearly insulted him. He cast his gaze aside, but not fast enough to hide a spark of anger.

“To watch your pleasure,” he said.

As simple as that? Not likely. She read no dissemblance in his face, however.

Against her better judgment, Claudia continued her examination of his beautiful body. She was playing with fire, but the fire in her loins and in his eyes compelled her. Without diverting her interest from the breadth of his shoulders beneath the loose fitting tunic, she amazed herself by asking, “If I said yes, what would you do?”

A sudden gasp stopped the rise and fall of his chest. The quick glance with which she’d intended to judge his reaction became a prolonged gaze into his eyes when she recognized in them something she had not seen in a very long time. This beautiful young man lusted for her—for her, a woman twelve years his senior.

“What would you do?” she whispered.

His full lips parted for a sigh. “First, I would take down your hair.” His hand twitched. “Do you know how beautiful your hair is? How it shines in the sun? Why do you hide it in a knot behind your head?”

“This is how matrons wear their hair.”

“You’re no matron.”

“I am a matron with two grown children, Damon. I’ve outlived a husband and a son.” Her words did not have the sobering effect she’d expected—on either of them. “Tell me, what do you want?”

His gaze traveled over her exposed throat and chest. A little groan escaped him.

“I want to feel your flesh quiver under my touch.” Again, his lips parted. His tongue slipped between to wet them. “I want the weight of your breasts in my palms. I want to drown in the sounds of your pleasure.”

Every hair on her body stood on end. She shivered, as much at the sound of his voice as at the words he spoke. It was madness to encourage him. Death came to mind. Rome did not look lightly on her women having sex with slaves.

“What you’re suggesting might be quite costly for either of us. Both, more likely.” Yet everyone knew the practice was as common as a man taking a mistress.

“I have a mouth for your pleasure,” Damon said. “No one will know. I’ve longed to taste you from the first moment I saw you.”

His breathy baritone purred over her skin, raising goose flesh. Once the possibility took root, it would not be wrenched free.

Too far,
she thought.
I’ve let this go too far
. She had invited him to seduce her and had willingly succumbed.

“Show me,” she breathed.

Before the words passed her lips, Damon moved in to straddle her knees. He swept the band from her hair, letting the steam-dampened curls shiver down her back. His long, slender fingers combed through the curls, tugging slightly, smoothing them.

Claudia’s eyes drifted closed. Fingertips grazed the length of her neck and nudged the robe past her shoulders. The soft fabric whispered to her waist.

He knew just where to touch, how hard, how fast. His hands fluttered over her back and shoulders. Her flesh quivered beneath their callused surface. These were not a scribe’s hands, but the hands of a man used to sharing in the planting, pruning, harvesting, hauling—hard labor their business required. Labor he was not obligated to do.

Those wonderful hands trailed fire wherever they fell. The rough pads of his thumbs brushed her aching nipples. Claudia bit her lip, willing herself to silence. Though her rooms had their own wing, she couldn’t take the chance any of the servants might hear. Her breath came in silent gasps.

One knee insinuated itself between her legs. Without volition, they opened to him and he knelt on the floor in front of her, tugging at the knot of her robe until the fabric fell away and the reality of what they were doing sank in.

Her breath seized in her throat. She shouldn’t allow this. She didn’t know this man, not like this. He was loyal, but to whom? She’d moved in on him, usurping his position when she took over her inheritance. Until four months ago, he was in charge and she’d never considered he might resent her. Yet, here she was, considering it. Common sense warned her. This shouldn’t happen. He could ruin her. She needed to stop.

But when his whispered endearments reached her ears, “…beautiful…
Era mea
…”, and she felt his hot breath bathe her flesh, she knew there was no stopping. The tenderness in his voice drew her eyes. Even in the dim light, she could see the heat in his half-lidded gaze. He appraised her with something akin to worship. Right or wrong, she trusted him. No one could look at her like that and mean her harm.

But how would she forget that look in the morning?

Without warning, Damon dug his fingers into her sides and yanked her toward him. The coarse shadow of his beard rasped over her skin as he covered her breast with his mouth and sucked.

Claudia stifled a moan and leaned into him, encouraging him. The smooth surface of his tongue stroked the sensitive nipple. Her sex throbbed to his rhythm, seizing now and then, hinting of things to come.

Damon shuddered. His kisses moved north, alternately nipping and kissing in a line to her shoulder and neck, nuzzling his way to her ear. His lips brushed her cheek and over her lips, just a breath.