Virgin Star (40 page)

"The bank had closed a short month or two after I had sailed out. There was no forwarding address. No one had any idea of where the 'bankers' were, much less the money I had been sending them. Of course, I raced to the flat where I had left them. The landlord was surprised; he had forced Kenzie and the children out December before last after tiring of her pleas for understanding, promises of her rich husband's returning soon from sea. And he had no idea where they had gone to.

"I cannot describe my search of months; I will not try. I finally found Brenna. She was lying on a small cot in a huge room of maybe fifty other sick and dying children; she wore only the tattered rags of a beggar. She was lice-ridden, filthy, and suffering the last days of an influenza.

"The little girl lived long enough to tell me how Kenzie was frantic with grief, certain, of course, that I had died. When they were forced out of the flat and onto the cold streets, Kenzie sold all our possessions, hoping to get enough to buy passage back to Ireland, to their parish. The parish would have kept them indefinitely, and I always think I—"

His pause was a struggle to continue. "She did not have enough. The money barely got them out of London, and then as doors shut along the way, they were forced to turn back. They had no place to go. Kenzie sold her hair but it wasn't enough. Winter set in, and, dear God, they say that winter was the worst in twenty years.

"Brenna remembered when little Christopher died. In Hyde Park. They were rushing through a bitter storm to get to a church on the other side of town. 'Twas the third church they tried that night. Brenna said she couldn't walk anymore: she was too tired and hungry and it was so cold. Kenyon tried to carry her but he started stumbling. Then Kenzie tried to carry her with little Christopher. She had to stop. They thought they would rest a moment. The little girl didn't remember anything more, until she was roused by Kenzie's screams. The baby wouldn't wake. No matter what Kenzie did, little Christopher wouldn't wake. Later, she said, Kenyon tried to take the babe from her to put in the gravediggers' cart, but Kenzie couldn't let go of him. The boy finally dug a hole right there in the park!

"Kenzie stopped talking after that, Brenna said. She wouldn't eat any of the bits of bread that came their way, what little it was. Kenyon joined the poor children scouring the sewers for trinkets—mudlarks, people call them. The little girl's eyes lit up when she told me that once Kenyon found a man's brass billfold and fetched a 'whole half-farthin' for it.' Kenyon bought her a hot potato with it. She didn't remember anything else until first Kenyon and then Kenzie got sick and someone got them into a poorhouse.

"Kenyon died first," she said. The rest was a blur in her feverish mind. The last thing she told me was how happy she thought Kenzie would be that I came back at last, that I hadn't died. She would tell Kenzie as soon as she saw her in heaven, and it would be just like Michaelmas Day to see Kenzie smile again ..."

Shalyn stared at the moonlight filtered through tears. She closed her eyes as she felt Butcher kiss her forehead and turn away from her. The warmth of his lips lingered with the image of a young girl with soft brown eyes and long dark hair, the face, she knew, that Butcher saw in every beggar he passed. She opened her eyes and stared at the cold and dispassionate moonlight before she turned to the place she knew she'd find comfort.

Seanessy ...

She slipped quietly inside. The moonlight followed her. A gold lamp lit the space as well. He was mercifully asleep on the bed, lying on his stomach. A sheet covered him to the waist. The discarded hookah lay on the floor, alongside a water pitcher, a wooden cup, and a whiskey bottle. She silently moved to the place.

The rich sweet scent of opium hung in the air. She drew deeply, reaching a hand to smooth tears across her cheek. The soft lamplight merged in moonlight and bathed his still and naked body. Her breath caught. A curious tingling rushed through her as her gaze traveled over the smooth and powerful muscles encasing his back with lean and sleek lines and the golden color of a Bengal tiger, all of him indeed an exercise in masculine perfection.

Seeing it, she leaned closer. She wiped her eyes as if to clear her vision, and only because she couldn't believe what she saw. An angry red knot of tension went from the back of his neck to spread out over the width of his back. Tension from pain. As if indeed all his great strength had gone into bracing against the pain, causing so much more, his own strength working against him. The impossibility of it was that the tension could seize him still; after he had smoked the pipe.

She suffered a long moment's pause. If he had sunk into an opium haze, she should not wake him. And yet her fingers trembled with her desire, her need to stop it, to ease the tension and pain from his body—

As she stood there in indecision, her gaze came to rest on the pipe on the floor. The pipe. She stared without seeing as a distant memory burst on her consciousness: a man holding her down, the sweet thick choking smoke bursting in her lungs as she screamed Ti Yao's name over and over, fighting and kicking for all she was worth until the smoke worked through her veins and stole first her strength and then her will.

Who was it? The man was loud and large and smelled of the sea and whiskey and fear. She did not like him. The man was...

Her Father! Thoughts spun over this vital memory, her only memory of her father. Dear Lord ...

Seanessy was not asleep, the opium had worn thin some time ago. Her shadow slipped across his face as she leaned over and he opened his eyes to see who stood there. The silence should have told him—in all his life he had never known anyone or anything that could move as silently as Shalyn.

His hand snaked around her wrist as he turned his head to see her, bracing against the rush of pain this slight move brought. She swallowed her startled scream in a gasp. The memory vanished as she stared at the handsome face. His eyes were changed, that was all. There was no sign of his pain, save for those eyes. A feverish intensity filled his gaze as he stared back at her and made him look cruel. Worse than cruel. He looked like a ravished wild animal who had caught his prey.

"Shalyn ..."

He too stared, just stared. The light shone from behind her, casting the lovely face in shadows. She wore only a thin shirt, he saw, nothing else. Every curve silhouetted to tease, arouse, ignite his hunger. Desire shot hotly through his slowed blood and pulse, ricocheting through his pain-wracked body in the cruelest punishment. His next breath came in a groan as he braced against the brutal wave of this torture.

"What the devil are you doing here?"

His deep harshness beat the extreme fragility of her emotions and forbade, absolutely, a reply. Fear changed her eyes as she felt the inexplicably tightening grasp of his hand on her wrist. A soft bewildered cry escaped her lips as his cruel hand forced her to her knees, the better to see her face. The emotions there confused him. He wondered what caused the sadness. The fear, however, he understood. He released her wrist to keep her safe, turning away.

"Get out, Shalyn."

He tried to ease back into the merciful silence and stillness and he closed his eyes tightly against the relentless pounding in his head. Shalyn watched this struggle with alarm.

What she did next went through him in a wave of shock. He felt her small weight coming over him, straddling his back. He tensed dramatically; his breath caught. A wave of pain washed over him, so hot it sent him into blackness a moment, recovering to feel her hands on his back.

He started to turn to her in violence.

"No, Seanessy. Please. Let me."

He collapsed as the pain ricocheted through his head. He held perfectly still, waiting for it to subside, always waiting for the pain to subside and yet it never did. Not for a day and sometimes two, not until he was beaten into an unconscious mess of muscle and bone, too weak to lift himself from the bed.

Skilled hands started at the tight knot at his neck. She knew to put all her strength and will into her hands as she kneaded his flesh in the queer tight circles that Gschu had made her practice again and again in the dirt before she ever let her touch a patient. Over and over, her breaths perfectly matched the strange rhythm of her hands until her heart felt in synchronization and the whole of her awareness was tactile, the world felt through his warm and vibrant flesh beneath his skin ....

He first kept bracing for a wave of pain that would not come, forgetting to breathe for long moments only to draw air into his body, and release it, mercifully, with impunity. Once his mind grasped this miracle, it changed. Slowly, like a drug, the warmth and strength of her skilled hands penetrated first his worn senses, then the hard knots of flesh. More and more he felt himself sinking into the mercy brought by her touch.

Time circled, in the movement of her hands, and yet disappeared, dissipating as she eased her strength into his muscles. Over and over, harder and harder, the skilled hands slowly moved to the top of his spine and outward, over the tightly corded muscles of his shoulders, over and over, moving down his spine and back up to his neck again to start anew.

She was a sorceress and this was her magic. The sharp throbbing began to ebb, more and more as the rhythm of her hands on his flesh became the rhythm of his pulse and blood. He didn't know when it happened, only that it did. At some point the pain was gone, forced from his flesh by the miracle of her hands.

"Shalyn, sweet mercy, it's gone. The pain is gone."

She had known before he had. The muscles were

smooth now, the knots were gone, but still the movement of her hands on his back did not stop. The rhythm changed, slowing. For: "Gschu always said a man is not done until he floats away on a shimmering sea of warmth. Let me, Seanessy," she whispered. "I want to give you this ..."

Gschu had taught her first on her own body. She remembered the pleasure well. She remembered the hot steam baths and lying naked on Gschu's mat as the old woman's strong skilled hands worked their magic and drugged her senses, the thick pleasure penetrating to touch the very core of her being ...

She began alternating the slowed rhythm with a hard, swift pounding of the side of her palm. This felt at once arousing yet soothing, the pleasure exquisite beyond reason. He gave himself over to the erotic magic of her hands. And, dear Lord, it was erotic. His consciousness began drifting away on this shimmering sea of pleasure for long periods, then collecting anew, only to find the pleasure magnified, changing the pace of his heart and breaths as it gathered potency. Heat flowed languidly through his veins, and yet burned hotter than an exploding sun.

He knew long before she did.

Shalyn felt the power and vibrancy of his muscles beneath her fingertips, the growing heat between them. Her heart and pulse seemed to slow to a thud, then rush to start faster again. Her breaths changed and she shifted slightly, as if to ease back to the languid place of the sweet dreamscape she had so carefully constructed.

Impossible. The air between them was electrified. The dreamscape vanished, replaced by heightened senses. She felt a tingling awareness up through her legs. She shifted slightly—

A sudden warmth between her legs made her breath catch. Her hands stopped; she released her breath in the whispered rush of his name. "Seanessy..."

He turned over in a fluid easy movement, careful to keep her straddled over his naked male hips. Hot chills emanated from the place their bodies touched. Her hands braced against his wide shoulders, and her startled eyes shot to .his face, her consciousness riveted on the hard hot part of him pressed against her parted thighs. "Seanessy..."

Seanessy brushed back the mass of gold hair, his touch as gentle as the kiss of a warm breeze. "Shalyn." He studied her eyes, seeing the haunting light. "What has made you so sad?"

"Butcher and Kenzie."

A strong hand came gently to her cheek with a soothing stroke of his thumb. "You know, Shalyn," he said in a heated whisper. "When Butcher first told me of Kenzie, I had so arrogantly assumed he loved Kenzie more after her precious life had been stolen from him. Because until now I had not a clue about how powerful love can be."

Emotion shimmered in her eyes. She closed them then, more frightened of the declaration than of the desire. To love and be loved, it seemed an impossible dream she had long ago parted from, only to realize now, as his words resonated through her, that it scared her. Like nothing else, it scared her.

His hands reached to the buttons of her shirt and for a moment she lost herself in the shimmering depth of his gaze. "Seanessy ... no, I—"

"No?" he questioned, his voice husky with passion, the lingering warmth of his drugged and slowed senses. "I don't think you understand. I asked no question that needed an answer. For, Shalyn ..." He parted the shirt as he spoke, his hands sliding over her straight slender shoulders, a caress as magical as hers, before he lifted first one hand, then the other, his movements maddeningly unhurried. "Resisting you is like touching the moon or turning back its tides. An impossibility I would not try ..."