Phantom Pleasures: Sexy Paranormal (Book 1, Phantom Series) (33 page)

Because stealing the sword was one thing. Keeping it was something else entirely.

She slid across the mat and dropped to her knees again. At Ross’s house, she’d barely had time to remove it from the case, wrap it in the blanket, and hightail it out of there. The last thing she needed was to be caught by someone on Ross’s staff. She had the legal right to the sword. Her attorneys had assured her that she was entitled to anything Ross had purchased for her as a gift during their marriage. But legal mumbo jumbo aside, taking the sword could mean the end of her career.

Ross had been indulgent during their marriage, but only when it suited his needs. Right now he needed her to star in the final Athena film, the fifth in an action-adventure series that had made her an international sensation. She’d agreed, since pocketing her generous salary, as well as a healthy portion of all residuals, had been her plan all along. One more movie with her ex and then she’d be free of him forever.

But he’d balked at letting her use the sword for the film. He’d laughed at her request in front of everyone, from the director to the key grip during a preproduction meeting.

In private, he’d reminded her with pointed ruthlessness of what he could do to her career if she challenged him so boldly again. There were things he alone knew about her past that could destroy her. One tip from him to the tabloids and she’d be finished.

That threat had been the final straw.

The old Lauren, the Lauren who’d once made her own way in the world and didn’t depend on anyone else—ever—would not have asked permission to use the sword. She wouldn’t have worried about consequences or folded under some jerk’s bullying.

And even if Ross gave up her secrets, he’d pay a hefty price himself—not only for keeping her secret, but for harboring a few of his own.

So tonight, to celebrate the final divorce decree, she’d broken into her former home and stolen the sword. Now, gingerly grasping the edges of the camel-colored blanket, she peeled aside the buttery soft wool until the lights above her flashed off the sword’s polished blade. She gasped, then moved to touch the steel, stopping when she realized that her fingerprints would mar its beauty. No, the only part of this sword she needed to touch was the handle.

She shifted so that her fingers slipped into the masterfully crafted grip, which seemed to enclose her hand. Immediately warmth spread through her flesh, causing her fingers to buzz as if she were gripping. . .her vibrator? She snickered at the thought, but erotic images quickly filled her brain. The impressions deepened. Darkened. Expanded.

Like the gold on the handle, naked bodies intertwined in her mind. Not anyone she knew—or did she? His hard sex pressed against her skin like the pommel and hilt of this magnificent sword.

Her nipples tightened painfully, and she released the weapon. A gentle throbbing intensified between her legs.

What the hell?
She knew swords were the ultimate phallic symbols, but she’d been around the damned things since her first turn as Athena six years ago. She enjoyed swordplay, but she certainly never got all hot and bothered over it.

Laying the blade gently on the blanket, she tore off the cropped jacket she’d worn over layered tank tops. The room had suddenly become stifling, so she scrambled to the door, lowered the thermostat and doused all but the few dim blue lights her trainers used to simulate fighting in the dark. When she turned and caught sight of the sword, she gasped. The handle sparkled and glowed.

Intrigued, she crept forward. The mat shifted beneath her, moving the sword as she walked. Jewels in the handle, fiery red amid the polished gold, captured the scant light and reflected back a brilliance that was nothing short of ethereal.

Damn, she’d known the sword was beautiful, but she’d never truly seen it, had she? The antiques shop had been dingy and dusty and gray. The case that Ross had enclosed the sword in had diminished its real beauty. Now she could see it. Now she could touch it.

She wanted to fight with it—cut the air with the blade and make the weapon sing as she parried and thrust. This was the weapon Athena would carry during this film, Ross be damned. Her final hurrah as the warrior goddess summoned to an alternate universe to smite the sadistic and pummel the unpure demanded a sword of unparalleled beauty and scarlet power. Invigorated, Lauren hurried to the video camera. Once Ross saw how she used the sword, once he witnessed the magnificence of it, he’d never deny her.

Not, at least, in front of the production crew, who would be wholly bowled over by the way the sword captured the light and reflected back pure power. They’d save a bundle on special effects, she was sure. At least, that was the argument she intended to use.

Once she had the video rolling, she dashed back to the sword and lifted it again, this time holding the weapon with a straightened arm to get a full feel for the weight. She’d never held anything so perfectly balanced. Warmth washed over her again, and in response her heartbeat accelerated.

She sliced the sword through the air once, then twice, instantly finding a controlled rhythm marked by the quiet swish of the blade. She spun and chopped downward, skillfully pulling up before the blade touched the ground. She turned and, with a precision that shocked even her, stopped dead before she connected with the hanging workout bag she imagined was an attacking foe.

“Wow,” she said, breathing hard, not from the exertion of lifting or wielding the sword, but from the overpowering surge of electricity shooting through the handle and into her arms. The steel reflected a luminous ruby gleam. It was as if the blade were. . .alive.

I am alive
.

The voice was deep, masculine, but so quick, so soft, she knew she’d imagined the words.

“Marco?” she called out.

No response.

She bent her arms at the elbows, bringing the sword parallel with her body, the blade shining a fiery red, the same color as the jewels prickling with heat on the handle. Leaning close and then gazing upward, she realized the steel couldn’t reflect the light from this angle.

And besides, it was the wrong color.

The light was coming from. . .within?

Touch me. Don’t be afraid
.

The voice, louder and more insistent this time, echoed in her brain. She hadn’t heard the command; instead the message had vibrated up her arms. She tried to drop the sword, but the handle seemed to curve tighter around her hands, tangling her fingers, encircling her wrists, holding her captive.

She knocked into the hard canvas workout bag, then, flying on the momentum, threw herself hard against the wall. Nothing dislodged the sword from her hand. Her vision swam. The blue lights above her merged with the luster of the blade, nearly blinding her in a purple haze. She turned the sword again, more slowly this time, trying to find a way out of the twist of metal, when she saw them.

Eyes.

As silver as the blade.

Powerful. Hypnotic.

Do not forsake me, Lauren Cole. Only you can set me free
.

Desperate and afraid, Lauren ran toward the light switches. Was this some sort of trick? Special effects? Was Ross paying her back for stealing the sword, or was her conscience twisting her triumph? But Ross couldn’t know she was here. And even if Marco had alerted him, he wouldn’t have had time to do anything more than burst in and demand her weapon back.

Forget him. You want me
.

“Who are you?” she asked desperately.

Embrace me and find out
.

Lauren struggled all the way to the door. She tried to reach for the lock, but her hands remained imprisoned by the handle’s coil. Stunned, she slid to the ground and lifted the blade.

Images flashed again. The naked bodies. The hard sex. The muscled man with hair the color of night and eyes as silver as storm clouds. She knew him. She’d wanted him.

Did she want him now?

“Tell me who you are,” she demanded.

Touch me and know
.

She swallowed thickly. Her heart slammed hard against her ribs. She squeezed her eyes shut, then forced them open, trying to see clearly, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The ghostly red light had not diminished. If anything, as her fear increased, the glow intensified.

And so did her desire.

She dropped the blade. The flat side of the metal touched her calf and stretched over her thigh. Intense sensations nailed her to the floor. Not pain. Not blood. She hadn’t been cut. She’d been. . .captured?

“I. . .can’t. . .breathe.”

*********

Read on for an excerpt from
Kiss of the Phantom

After rogue archeologist Mariah Hunter dumps a cache of ancient Mayan coins in the Mexican jungle, she ends up with a bounty on her head and needs a quick cash infusion to cover the debt.  So when she hears that a priceless stone is up for grabs in a remote region of Germany , she scrambles to reach it before her rivals.

Nearly three hundred years ago, in a futile attempt to rescue his family from a mercenary horde, Rafe Forsyth springs an evil trap that keeps him captive within a hidden stone.  Alone with his grief and rage for centuries, he is unprepared for the rush of attraction he feels for the beautiful adventurer who liberates his body...but can she save his soul?

Together, Rafe and Mariah race against time to recover the stolen coins and discover the means to free Rafe from the curse’s evil magic.  Because until the curse is broken, the Gypsy’s kiss is the truest danger of all...

Prologue

Gemma Von Roan dangled the antique keys in front of Paschal Rousseau’s face, shaking them enticingly, her back to the door he’d anticipated entering for more than six months. Inside a room hidden beneath this centuries-old manse in upstate New York was the secret horde of the K’vr, a cult founded to plunder the bounty of the eighteenth-century sorcerer Lord Rogan. Even through the thick oak door, Paschal sensed the blackguard’s bloody fingerprints on the cache within.

Gemma, young and stylish and cunning beyond measure thanks to a bloodline that she could trace back to the wizard himself, knew how badly Paschal yearned to explore the collection. Undeterred by his advanced age, she’d pulled out all the stops to entice him away from his family, promising him unlimited access to the vast assemblage of Gypsy-wrought artifacts.

All she wanted in return was the very thing Paschal had sworn he’d never give away.

“So we have a deal, yes?” Gemma asked. “I let you in and give you open access to my family’s store and you’ll show me how to do what you do.”

He frowned, his expression lost in the dim light. “It won’t be that easy.”

Gemma fussed with the keys, inserting one in the rusted lock as she spoke. “If my life were ever easy, we’d have had access to this place six months ago.”

“The radon and asbestos report really was genius,” Paschal complimented.

But Gemma only snorted in disgust. Having to resort to chicanery in order to gain entrance to a building owned by her family since the Civil War had chafed her pride raw.

Discounting her brother, currently awaiting trial for murder in Florida, Gemma was the last living descendant of Lord Rogan. And yet, because she was a woman, she’d been denied the leadership of the K’vr. For the past year and a half, the top spot of grand apprentice remained unclaimed while the council of elders determined if Keith Von Roan, the incarcerated brother, or Farrow Pryce, a wealthy businessman whose father had long served the Von Roan family, was better suited to serve.

But with Keith Von Roan looking at a long jail term and Farrow Pryce missing and presumed dead, the K’vr was in disarray. Never had there been a better time for Gemma to step in and fight the patriarchal attitudes of the elders. But instead she was helping Paschal, someone she’d once had a hand in kidnapping, in order to break into her family’s most secret and treasured storehouse. Paschal wasn’t sure why she’d chosen this course of action, but he had no doubt she’d betray him at the first opportunity.

Trouble was, he did not care. He just wanted her to find the right key.

“Need help?” he asked.

She flipped through the key ring again. “You’d think we already had the Source, with all these damned locks.”

Paschal cleared his throat unnecessarily. They’d carefully avoided this topic over the last six months. Both of them recognized that any conversation regarding the mysterious fire opal would go nowhere. She wanted it, but could not find it. Paschal knew precisely where it was—certainly not in this secret storeroom—but he would die before he gave away the location. The stone possessed a frightening amount of dark magic. In the wrong hands, the potential for devastation was too terrifying for Paschal to contemplate.

The Source had been the Holy Grail to the K’vr since Rogan’s disappearance in 1747. Gemma had probably been told bedtime stories about its limitless power. Yet, oddly enough, she did not seem to be after it at the moment. But even the powerful stone could not help Paschal in his quest. He needed whatever was inside the locked room, calling to him. Beckoning to him. Luring him to a fate that might just equal crashing on sharp and pitiless rocks.

“Let me try,” he offered.

Ignoring him, Gemma continued to try key after key. Paschal couldn’t help admiring how stubborn she was—or how lovely, no matter that she styled her hair like a porcupine. Her attempt to camouflage what amounted to a dollish, pretty face with spiked black and blond hair, dark eyeliner and darker lips revealed more about her true personality than she would ever admit. While on the arm of Farrow Pryce, she’d become a sleek, sophisticated seductress. Since his death, she’d taken on a tougher persona, from the shade of her lipstick to her Morticia Addams wardrobe. Paschal couldn’t help but wonder who was truly at the core of this ambitious young woman—or if he’d live long enough to find out.

To her knowledge, Paschal was over ninety years old. . .though he was still as virile as a man half his “age.” She no longer tried to use sex as a weapon against him, and for this he was grateful. He might be ancient, but he wasn’t dead. Besides, he was on her side now. She’d begun, a little at a time, to treat him more like a mentor than a conquest.

There was a responsibility in that role that Paschal had not experienced in years. While he’d enjoyed being a father to Ben, he’d spent too many years keeping secrets from his son to actually teach him anything of value. Now Paschal had a chance to influence a young woman who unknowingly possessed a unique power—one she could use for either good or evil. Perhaps her choice would depend on how he played this next challenge.

Gemma finally cursed and threw the ring of keys onto the ground, then kicked them until they ricocheted against the scuffed and rat-gnawed baseboard—a rare show of genuine, raw emotion. “What does any of this fucking matter if we can’t get inside?”

Paschal
tsk
ed at her colorful language, retrieved the keys and ran them through his fingers, trying to get a reading off the energy embedded in the metal. His talent with psychometry was trained and specific. Accepting energy from every single item he ever touched would be like boarding a bullet train straight to an insane asylum. Instead, he’d taught himself to focus on only the energy signature of members of his own family or on Rogan’s dark magic—which over time had become inextricably intertwined.

He found the key on the second pass and inserted it into the lock. He attempted a twist, but while the lock mechanism gave way, the door did not budge.

“Hot damn,” she said, nudging him out of the way so she could grab the doorknob. “The Lock is sticking. Means no one’s been inside for a long time.”

“Or someone hasn’t used the WD-40 in a while,” he offered. “When’s the last time you were inside?”

“Years ago. My father used to find me down here and totally lose his mind. If he ever found out I’d taken pictures of some of the items and kept them hidden, he would have died from an aneurysm rather than cancer.”

She grunted when the door finally yielded to the pressure of her shoulder. Stale air pressed into the dank tunnel. Almost instantly, Paschal felt the presence of Rogan’s magic. He’d had more than fifty years to hone his ability to sense the dark power, even from a distance. The trick would be to focus. According to Gemma, her ancestors had been notorious pack rats. If he did not call upon his psychometric tricks, it could take them weeks to explore every item warehoused in this underground cavern. And they didn’t have weeks. According to Gemma, they’d be lucky if they had days.

She flicked on the flashlight she’d brought along, found an ancient light switch and, with effort, flipped it on. After a few protesting flickers and the pop of a bulb somewhere in the distance, feeble amber light glowed above them. Paschal poked his head in and saw what appeared to be rows and rows of shelving. Layers of dust and cobwebs made everything gray and unappealing—to someone who had to rely on his eyes to find what he was looking for. Luckily, Paschal had other skills at his disposal.

Gemma groaned. “How lovely. You’d think the bozos running this outfit now would assign someone to dust down here every once in a while. My family’s legacy looks like piles of old junk.”

“You know what they say about one man’s trash,” he replied.

She snickered doubtfully. “If you can find a treasure in this abandoned trove, you’ll be worth the price I paid to get you here?”

Flashlight in front of him, Paschal moved through the rows. The shelves, stacked all the way up to the cramped six-foot ceiling, created a maze that snaked deep beneath the house. He found a wild array of vases and urns and boxes crafted in carved wood, fine pewter and even blown glass. Goblets and wineglasses collected inches’ worth of dirt and dust inside their sometimes uneven bowls.

Finally, he found the cup he sought—a pewter chalice marked with Rogan’s seal. Carved into the side of the dark metal, a hawk soared. A red stone glittered from within its talons. Gemma’s photograph of this exact item had lured him here. Could this cup possess the spirit of one of his missing brothers?

He hesitated before lifting it into his hands. He’d anticipated this moment for months. No, years. And yet, when he finally touched the cup, nothing happened; the metal was cold and dead in his hands.

He cursed, then noticed a second, identical chalice on the shelf. In fact, there was an entire collection of seven. Not a single one gave off the vibration he’d awaited for so long.

Yet he’d sensed Rogan’s magic even before he’d entered. Something of value had to be here. He simply had to find it.

The K’vr might be in disarray, but the storehouse of their legacy was divided down distinct boundaries. Household items. Jewelry. Crude mechanical devices and tools. Weapons. Paschal smirked as he looked over the swords, which were not quite as dusty as the rest.

“See anything interesting?” Gemma called, still in the entryway, from the sound of her voice.

“Not yet,” he murmured. But then, it wasn’t his eyes that were going to assist in finding what he sought.

When he approached a row of musical instruments, a shiver up his spine stopped him cold.

“Paschal?”

A golden circle of light rounded the corner. After a moment, Gemma joined him, holding a lantern as he pawed through a box of flutes.

He didn’t need two tries this time around. Not only did he recognize the instrument carved from ebony as belonging to his brother Rafe, but the echo of the half-Romani’s psychic signature, a mournful tune, nearly blasted in his ears. Gemma yelped and jumped back.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

So, the time had come.

“Yes, my dear, I most certainly did.”

“Someone else must be down here.” She stepped back toward the aisle that would lead outside. He grabbed her arm.

“No,” he assured her. “We are quite alone.”

Paschal rolled the flute across his palm, blocking the images from overwhelming him, acclimating himself to what must happen next. He was torn between rejoicing in the fact that he’d finally found an item to connect to the past, and lamenting that under the circumstances, he had to show Gemma the secret that might just undo them both.

“But I heard music,” she insisted.

“From this flute,” he explained. “This once belonged to a man named Rafe Forsyth. He lived more than two hundred and fifty years ago in Valoren.”

Her eyes widened so that the whites nearly outshone the shocked blue of her irises. “How do you know?”

“By touch.”

“That’s impossible,” she muttered.

He smiled. “You don’t really believe that or you would not have brought me here or struck our bargain. You’ve lived up to your end. Now take my hand and let me show you what you need to know.”

Surprisingly, she hesitated. “I never imagined that you were—”