Phantom Pleasures: Sexy Paranormal (Book 1, Phantom Series) (24 page)

Searching for him took more than an hour. Every corner she turned provided yet another stab in her heart, another blow to her ability to hope. Only a few small rooms on the upper floors and a row of small chambers beyond what she learned was the kitchen remained untouched. She was about to backtrack when a frustrated shout rent the air.

She followed the sound through an archway at the very back of the castle. On the other side, she discovered an odd circular room she didn’t remember from her initial explorations. Very little distinguished the space from an outdoor patio, except that it had a roof and curved walls on all sides. Otherwise, the floor-to-ceiling windows invited the outdoors in so much that she was shocked to see Damon collapsed onto his knees in the center of the room, his head buried in his hands.

She called his name.

“Leave, Alexa. Now. Before it’s too late,” he muttered, though even the thready words brimmed with barely checked fury.

Disappointment and loss flooded through her. How could he use the magic so thoughtlessly? He’d known the consequences. How could he risk everything without first giving her a chance?

“What have you done?”

He slapped his hands against the polished marble floor, and pushed to his feet. He did not face her, but his shoulders bunched with barely contained tension.

The word was more growl than command. He’d done so much magic. Did she dare stay?

She took a step forward, her hand outstretched. If she could only. . .

He spun on her. “Go!”

“I won’t!”

He charged toward her, slashing his arm as if he meant her to fly backward with the momentum of his movement. She didn’t move, but a large urn near the doorway rose into the air and crashed against the wall.

She jumped, startled, but held her ground. He slashed his arm again and the urn’s partner exploded. A hailstorm of ceramic shards rained against her legs but did no damage.

Only inches in front her, Damon panted, furious, then stared at his hands. Horror was etched into the stunning planes of his face. Horror at what he’d tried to do? Or at his impotence to hurt her?

When he looked up, his eyes burned. A red glaze had formed over his irises.

“Get. Out,” he ordered.

Her heart cracked and the emotional pain nearly doubled her over. Then, completely on instinct, she grabbed his shirt and yanked until her lips crashed against his.

The contact lasted only seconds. He threw her backward and she lost her footing, falling and sliding across the floor. Debris from the shattered urns bit at her hands, but not enough to scare her off.

She stood and dusted the dirt off her slacks. “I won’t go.”

“Then you’ll suffer unspeakable pain,” he responded, but the voice wasn’t his. He’d clearly gone too far. Too much of Rogan’s magic had infected him. Was there any of him left?

“Like you are?” she challenged. “You can’t leave, can you? All that magic, all that power, and you’re still trapped like an animal. Only through me can you find your way out.”

He yelled, fury raising his voice to painful levels. Lifting his hands, he focused his gaze on the wrought-iron chandelier hanging above them. The masonry shook. The stone cracked. The heavy collection of candles and metal plummeted toward her.

Alexa threw up her hands. Any second now, she expected the excruciating pain of being crushed beneath solid iron, but nothing happened. She looked up. Just above her canopied arms, the chandelier had stopped in midair.

Instantly, she dashed out of the way. The moment she was clear of danger, the light fixture crashed to the ground. She flattened herself against the wall, gasping for breath, while Damon stared at the twisted remnants, blinking wildly, rubbing his eyes, trying, she hoped, to break free of the dark infection.

“How did I. . .stop you?” she asked, the question meant more for herself than the monster Damon had become. He’d tried to kill her, hadn’t he? But he had not succeeded. Why?

She couldn’t assume she’d lived because his heart wasn’t in it. The chandelier would have crushed her if she hadn’t stopped its momentum.

Heat burned between her breasts. She tore her blouse aside, expecting an injury, but finding the charm. The charm was protecting her.

But for how long?

After a second, her body and brain caught up with each other. She could not stay any longer. She ran, dashing around and through doorways, jumping over footstools and trunks, knocking over knickknacks, her entire focus on escaping the castle before Damon snapped out of his odd trance and pursued. Once at the front door, she reached for the latch only to find her way blocked by Damon’s materializing form.

She stumbled back. “Leave me alone. You wanted me to leave.”

Sweat splashed down his face and glued his shirt to his body. His eyes continued to glow red, as if a veil of blood had descended over the stormy gray irises. His breathing was heavy. His fists clenched and unclenched. Was he fighting the evil he’d unleashed by using the magic so completely? Or was it too late to help him break free?

With no other option, she tossed herself against him. Her lips crashed against his as she grabbed the damp stays on his shirt and ripped it free from his body. If touches and kisses had cleansed him of Rogan’s evil before, then she’d have to go farther to save him this time.

He shoved his hands between them and pushed her away.

“Don’t touch me!” he ordered.

She tore off her blouse and kicked off her shoes. “Touch me, then,” she countered, just as forcefully.

He took a step away from her, but didn’t dematerialize or strike out at her again. As she unclipped her bra, his gaze feasted on her bare breasts. She could feel his eyes rake a path over her, and for a split second, she glimpsed the Damon within. Her nipples hardened and a surge of need flooded through her until her blood burned.

She shimmied out of her slacks and panties. Bare to him in the dazzling light from the torches, Alexa experienced a vulnerability that nearly broke her down. Her legs shook. Her knees threatened to buckle. Her heart pounded so hard, her chest ached. A war played across his face and she knew she’d made the only choice.

She drew her hands up her body, sliding her palms from her thighs to her abdomen, then lifting her breasts tauntingly. “You know you need me,” she whispered, flicking her thumbs across her thick, dark nipples. “Take what you want.”

In a split second, his clothes flashed off his body. His sex jutted from his groin. Hunger raged behind his eyes. She braced herself, but when his hands clamped over her shoulders and his mouth descended on her neck, she hooked one leg around his waist and gave in to the need.

She couldn’t hold back. She couldn’t allow her fear to waylay her passion. In a leap of faith unlike any other, she surrendered to the madness of his lust. She speared her hands into his hair, lifted his head and kissed him wildly, their tongues battling without surrender. She streaked her nails down his muscled back, then gripped his buttocks with keen possession, grinding her sex into his until he could resist no longer. He spun them and lifted her flat against the door, then thrust inside her, his hardness blinding her with rough sensations she’d never known.

He grabbed her thighs, buoying her against him as he found a rampant rhythm. Clutching her arms around his neck, she lifted herself high. Hungrily, he took her breasts into his mouth even as he drove deep, long and hard. He bit. He pumped. Awareness of anything beyond him and the ecstasy building in her body disappeared. She lost track of time—lost track even of her purpose.

She only knew she wanted him. For now. For always.

When he came, he howled, arching his back and shouting to the ceiling as hot fire burned inside her. When he looked down at her again, wet streaks cut grooves into his face.

And the only color in his eyes was silvery, stormy gray.

Paschal stood beside the barred window, his profile even more striking with moonlight playing across the planes of his face.

“Nice place,” he said as Gemma shut the door behind her and raised the volume on the piped-in music. “Though I find it hard to believe that all this security is just for me. How inept must you people be if you need armed guards and security bars to keep an old man from slipping away?”

She turned so her face wasn’t visible to the not-so-hidden camera. “I don’t much care if you escape, Monsieur Rousseau, not so long as you tell me the location of the Queen’s Charm before you leave.”

Paschal arched a curious, if not stunned, brow. Gemma had calculated that her use of the necklace’s proper name would evoke a response from the Gypsy researcher. Even Farrow didn’t know what the golden triangle was called, and thanks to her, he had no clue as to its potential power.

“I’m disappointed,” he said finally, his expression cool and inscrutable, “No seductive come-ons? No womanly wiles meant to loosen my tongue? I’ve used the facilities and brushed my teeth for nothing, then?”

She narrowed her gaze. Any other man wouldn’t dare mock her, and yet, this one made her laugh. At him. At the situation. And admittedly, at herself. “There’s no time, I’m afraid. I just intercepted news that a hotelier by the name of Alexa Chandler has taken possession of property that is rightfully mine. I can only get it back with the Queen’s Charm.”

“How is this property yours?”

“By birth,” she stated simply, but then her bitterness broke through and she allowed her tone to drip with it. “Though no one around here believes I deserve it because I lack a Y chromosome.”

His gaze locked on her. She nearly shrank back under his scrutiny—but only nearly.

“Where is this place?”

“An island off the coast of Florida.”

A corner of his mouth quirked. Not in a grin, exactly, but he knew what she was talking about, that was for sure. “So you’re a child of Valoren?”

She sneered. “I’m not Gypsy, if that’s what you mean.”

“Then what are you?”

She stepped fully into his personal space. “A woman who is running out of patience. I want the charm.”

“I don’t know where it is,” he replied.

“You’re lying,” she insisted.

“I wish I were. I had the necklace years ago, but I’m afraid it was stolen. You’re one step behind your rival, I’m afraid. Who is, I suspect,” he said, the lilt of a guess in his voice, “your brother?”

Gamma’s heart clenched in her chest. There was a family resemblance. Supposedly around the eyes, though she didn’t see it. “You know Keith?”

Paschal rubbed his chin, his strong, square jaw speckled with white stubble. “We’ve met. He took my class at the university. I don’t think he realized that I knew who he was. Honestly, took some time for me to figure it out. He had a tattoo. Gave him away.”

Gemma nodded. She had that same tattoo, but not in a place visible to the general public.

“So he has the Queen’s Charm?” she asked, her tone bitter. She’d wondered, when she’d taken Farrow’s side in the schism, why Keith hadn’t been more upset. He’d been one step ahead of her, the prick.

“I assume he has it, but I do not know for sure. The necklace was, however, stolen from me before he was born. Twenty years ago now. I’d returned to Germany to figure out where I went wrong in unlocking Rogan’s secrets. A common thief snatched it from my hotel room safe. Poor bugger likely had no idea of its true purpose and power. Probably pawned it for a pint. Then, a few months ago,” he said, his eyes twinkling as if she’d find this portion of the tale amusing, “the charm surfaced with a jewelry dealer in Berlin. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived at the shop, a young American man had paid an obscene amount to entice the dealer to sell it to him rather than to me.”

“Keith doesn’t have obscene amounts of money,” she argued.

“I suspect, though, he has friends who do?”

Click. Alexa Chandler. Jacob Sharpe. He was the hotelier’s stepbrother and he had at least as much money as Farrow, likely more, at his disposal.

“At first,” Paschal went on, oblivious to Gemma’s revelation, “I supposed this American thought it would be a nice trinket for his girlfriend. But then I heard about the fractious doings within the K’vr—”

She gasped.

“Yes,” he said with a nod, “I know of the K’vr. One cannot explore the history and legacy of Lord Rogan without knowing of the K’vr, my dear. Charming group, yours.”

Paschal’s dismissive attitude infuriated her, but she held her tongue. This wily old man could prove even more useful than she’d originally imagined, even without the Queen’s Charm. If her brother had it, she’d need to rethink her alliances. If Farrow had somehow acquired it and his quest to recover it through her had simply been a ruse to keep her busy while he usurped all the power for himself, that changed things as well.

She’d always assumed that her techno-addicted baby brother had not taken the time, as she had, to read the actual books, letters, diaries and sociological papers about the history of Lord Rogan and the followers of the K’vr that had been handed down through generations. According to her studies, the K’vr had possessed the charm sometime in the eighteen hundreds. The leader at the time—a great-great uncle twice removed or some such—had explored the charm’s magic to near obsession.

He’d learned that the necklace that had once belonged to a Hanoverian queen who’d then bestowed the trinket upon a British nobleman sent as governor to the Gypsy haven of Valoren, was literally a key. The magic woven into the links of the gold chain and the delicate points of the interlocked triangles not only provided a powerful protection spell, but had been enhanced by Rogan himself to immunize the wearer against his magic.

With the key in her possession, Gemma would finally enter the castle of Valoren, now rebuilt on an island off the Florida coast. And inside, Rogan’s magic existed. The source of his legendary power would be hers for the taking. Once she was inside.

“So you know what it does?” she asked.

“Quite,” he replied.

Gemma grabbed Paschal by the arm. “Does the source of the magic exist in the castle? Will the charm get me what I want?”

He countered her move and wrapped his hand around her wrist, his thumb pressed painfully between her wrist bones. Strength surged through his wrinkled skin. “You know what I know, don’t you?”

“Let go of me,” she ordered.

The corner of his mouth tilted into a sardonic smile. “You weren’t so adverse to my touch yesterday.”

“Yesterday, I thought you had what I wanted.” He loosened his grip and she yanked free. “Now you’re useless.”

“Am I?”

She marched toward the door, but the cockiness in his voice stopped her. She turned. If ever a man resembled a cat who ate the canary, it was Paschal Rousseau.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

With a flick of his gaze, Paschal alerted Gemma that he knew about the surveillance equipment. Clearly, he wasn’t simply an erudite professor with obscure tastes in Gypsy artifacts. He knew about the K’vr. About the inner strife for leadership. About her brother. Though a copy had been hard to find, she’d read his paper on the existence of Valoren and the cover-up by the court of King George II to erase its existence from the history books. Apparently, he knew, as she did, that the colony had been a breeding ground for unparalleled magic—magic she intended to take for herself.

“The charm alone will not invoke the magic you seek,” he informed her casually. “I know. I tried.”

“You?”

“Twice. Once in Germany, and once”—he moved forward, wrapped his arms around her waist, thrust her close and whispered into her ear—“after
I
moved the castle to Florida.”

He nibbled on her neck, which she supposed played well for the camera. Thankfully, she was facing the window, so her shocked expression remained out of anyone’s view. Farrow himself likely wasn’t watching, since he’d called a meeting with the elders of the K’vr—a gathering he’d kept her from attending by demanding she get answers from Rousseau before the night was through. She suspected his blind faith in her had started to falter. Between that and the news about Alexa Chandler, which she’d intercepted, Gemma was running out of time. No more games. She needed Rousseau’s knowledge, but not here. If Farrow had even an inkling of suspicion that she planned to double-cross him, they’d both be dead within the hour.

She closed her eyes and, for a few moments, allowed Paschal’s skilled lips to soothe away the tension in her neck and shoulders. She supposed she’d made worse bargains than trading sexual favors for information from a fascinating man like Paschal. He clearly knew more than even Farrow suspected. Her smartest move would be to get him out of the estate now, while Farrow was occupied and darkness was on her side.

“If your brother has the charm,” he murmured, “he’s one step ahead of you.”

She retrieved Paschal’s hand from kneading into her buttocks and pulled him toward the door. “Come on,” she instructed.

“Where are we going?”

She looked straight at the hidden camera. “To tell Farrow what you just told me. He’ll be eternally grateful,
monsieur
.”

She glanced at the barred window, at the door, then winked. Paschal’s crooked grin told her he understood. Once they’d escaped, she’d pump him for the rest of the information he undoubtedly possessed. If he knew the charm wasn’t enough to gain entrance to the castle, did he know what else she’d need?

Tearing open the door, she was immediately confronted by two of Farrow’s armed guards.

She grabbed the muzzle of one’s gun and shoved it out of her face. “How dare you! Professor Rousseau has important information for Farrow. Move out of my way.”

They complied. Walking proudly, Gemma strutted down the corridor, Paschal’s hand still tight in hers. Once at the archway, a right turn would lead them to Farrow’s suite. Left led into the main rooms of the house, through which they could access the grounds and, if lucky, escape.

At the end of the hall, Gemma moved to the left, but Paschal tugged her hard toward the right.

She opened her mouth to protest, but he placed a soft finger over her lips and moved her out of the sight of the guards.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my many years, my dear, it’s that subtlety can be a valuable skill.”

They had to keep moving. Security cameras were everywhere. If they hesitated too long, they’d be found.

“So you really want to tell Farrow what you told me?” she asked.

“Farrow Pryce? That power-hungry upstart? Good God, no. But I also don’t think his associates will allow us to waltz out the front door, no matter how incredibly persuasive you are.”

“I haven’t persuaded you of anything.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself. You’ve persuaded me to help you.” He glanced briefly down the hall, then reached up and tapped a decorative tile on the wall. A panel immediately swung open and he yanked her inside mere seconds before it slid shut again.

They were drowned in darkness. “How did you know this was here?” she whispered.

His chuckle belonged to a much younger man. “I know something about secret passageways. Judging by the fortified armaments, I guessed this hacienda was owned by a drug lord or other unscrupulous type. And drug lords always have secret passageways.”

“That doesn’t explain—”

“Is now the time, or should we simply make a run for it?”

At that moment, an alarm sounded. Screeching wails blasted around them, though the painful pitch was muted by the walls behind which they hid.

“I guess someone figured out we’re up to no good,” she said.

“It’s been years since I’ve been up to no good,” Paschal said wistfully, then tugged her tight into his arms. “Let’s make the most of it, shall we?”

***

“This is Mariah. You know what to do.”

With a curse, Ben snapped his cell phone shut. He’d already left three messages. Why he’d thought for five seconds that his ex would be hanging around town, twiddling her thumbs, waiting to provide aid in his personal crisis, he didn’t know. Mariah Hunter was a lot of things, but accessible wasn’t one of them—not unless she had something to gain.

“Any luck?” Cat asked, glancing at him from the driver’s seat.

He shoved the phone into his pocket. “No, but keep going. I know where she keeps her bird. I’m sure she won’t mind if I borrow it for a few hours.”

“What if she’s taken it?”

Ben would deal with that contingency when and if necessary. Born into a family of bush pilots from the Northern Territory of Australia, Mariah preferred her Cessna to her Eurocopter. She’d won the chopper in a poker game and the craft had saved both their asses more than once during their string of retrieval operations in southern Mexico. Ben hoped the whirlybird would provide the same good luck this time. if Cat’s visions were accurate—and he had no reason to believe they weren’t—they didn’t have much time to rescue Paschal from the Hill Country before all hell broke loose.

“If she’s got the bird,” he replied, “we’ll take her Cessna and make do.”