31
DAMIEN
I woke to a familiar feel… and smell.
It wasn’t just the sheets, or the pillows, or the beautifully vaulted ceiling. It was the unmistakable smell… of her.
Damn.
I bolted upright, and Karessa was there. She was standing on the other side of the chamber, wearing nothing but the sheerest red silken robe. She moved delicately, lighting burgundy candles from the end of a long flaming taper.
“About time.”
Her voice was soft, sultry, seductive. Her ‘favor’ voice. The one she used whenever she wanted or needed something. It was the voice she also used to placate us whenever we’d get angry, or challenge her, or—
I winced hard as a white hot pain flared through my head. Everything ached. Everything was still foggy too. I reached up tentatively and found a huge lump, just behind my right temple.
“How’d I get here?” I asked.
“By force,” Karessa said simply. She spoke as if it were nothing.
I glanced to the left and right. We were alone. All alone in the citadel’s main bedchamber. Or at least, it sure seemed that way.
“So I’m your prisoner? Is that it?”
She lit another candle without turning around. “Do you feel like one?”
“Yes,” I said, a little hesitantly. “Maybe.”
“You’re not bound.”
She was right. My hands, my wrists, my legs… they would’ve all been so easy to tie to the 17th century, four-poster bed. I flushed with embarrassment as I thought about all the things we’d done here before. To her… with her…
Back then it was usually Broderick and I tying her down. Right now however, I was totally and completely free.
“Damien,” she breathed softly. “Oh my Damien…”
She sang my name like a song. Spoke it with a beautiful lyrical, quality.
“How did we let it get like this?”
She turned, and her robe had fallen open. Intentionally so, of course. I could see her skin beneath, all creamy and smooth and scented with oils. I could make out the sensual curve of her neck. Her alabaster breasts, set above the flat of her taut stomach.
And below that: the well-kept thatch of soft red hair. Forming a pretty little ‘V’ where her legs met…
A thought occurred to me suddenly, sending my heart into my throat. But when I reached up to check, it was there. My totem, still hanging securely and reassuringly around my neck.
“I didn’t take it,” she said, stepping closer. “Not this time.”
I was otherwise naked. Naked except for a thin pair of silken boxers. I couldn’t remember if I’d been wearing them in Paris, or if they’d come from somewhere else.
“I could’ve though,” she told me. “I could’ve easily done anything I wanted…”
Warning lights flashed in my skull. Klaxon horns alerting me to danger, even as she shrugged the robe from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor.
“What do you want Karessa?”
She hooked one finger into the corner of her mouth. “Want?”
I gulped hard. She looked pretty damned amazing. Even better than before we’d left.
Lack of sleep. Not eating. Not leaving the citadel…
No-so-foreign thoughts floated into my mind. They were feelings. Connections.
Missing you…
They were fact.
“What makes you think I want anything?” Karessa asked.
She put one knee on the bed.
“I have everything I want, really.”
Climbed on with the other.
“Almost everything,” she said coyly. Reaching out, she laid one hand on my bare chest. Somehow, I let her.
“Except you…”
Her eyes were emeralds. Her skin, like white fire. There was a heat to her that had always been undeniable, and in the past there’d been no reason to deny anything. But now that heat burned with such brightness and intensity I had to look away.
Damien… just go.
She knelt face to face with me, daring me to give ground. Stubbornly I refused. Both outcomes were in her favor, though. I was playing into her hands.
I held fast and our lips brushed… ever so slightly. I inhaled deeply, and her scent was intoxicating.
DAMIEN!
She leaned in to kiss me, as she’d done a thousand times before. Only this time… this time I pulled back. This time, I actually refused her.
“No,” I shook my head. “You’ll never have me. Not anymore.”
Her look flashed from one of sensual seduction to utter hatred, all in the span of a single heartbeat. It was almost inhuman, the way she could do that. The way she could turn off emotions of love and adoration, and channel them instantly into hate or ruin.
“So that’s it then?” she snarled. “You’re both throwing in with that dark-haired slattern?”
I laughed at the word. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what it meant, but I could hazard a guess.
“What we do is our business, Karessa. Not yours.”
She was furious now. Either at the refusal or the laughter. Probably both.
“Now where is Broderick’s totem?”
She bounced from the bed, her beautiful ass not even jiggling the slightest bit from the impact. God… I could remember holding that ass in my hands as I entered her. How it felt. How it looked, riding slowly up and down the length of me, every time we—
“If Broderick wants his totem,” Karessa said, “he can come get it himself.”
I’d figured as much. Nothing could be that easy.
I looked up again, and she was waving at me dismissively. “Now go, Damien. Go, before my patience wears thin.”
I frowned at her. She looked back at me sadly.
“Go before I do something I might later regret.”
I stood and began gathering my clothes. Everything had been neatly pressed and laid out beside the bed, in the same place it always was.
By the time I reached the other side of the chamber, she was sitting on the bed, head down. Ringlets of soft red hair fell about either side of her pretty face, which rested in the palms of her hands.
“Karessa…” I said from the doorway. “I—”
“It was never you, Damien,” she sneered, looking up one final time. Her eyes were blood red. A single tear ran down her cheek. “Sure,” she went on, “you were certainly fun.” Her expression hardened. “But it was always, always Broderick.”
Silence reigned. At least for a little while.
“I know,” I said to her at last.
And I did.