Читать книгу Brimstone Seduction - Barbara J. Hancock - Страница 12

Chapter 3

When Kat made it to Baton Rouge after driving the rest of the night and into the next day, she couldn’t shy away from her memories any longer. The city was a blend of modern glass and steel from the present and neo-Gothic architecture from times long past. It wasn’t hard to find the opera house because it sat on Severne Row, a street time had forgotten to touch. While much of Old South Baton Rouge had been claimed by poverty and, later, revitalization, Severne Row had stayed the same for decades.

They’d been to l’Opéra Severne as children accompanying their mother on tour. Even then, the theater was infamous for being devoted to a darkly Gothic version of Gounod’s Faust, its most popular draw. Their mother had been a contralto Marthe for several nights while they’d watched in awe on velveteen seats of pale, faded scarlet.

She pulled up to the theater and parked the nondescript sedan she’d rented with a friend’s help so her name wouldn’t be on the paperwork. Later the rental company would come to claim it. Kat was an old hat at traveling quietly and lightly. She had only a couple of suitcases in the trunk.

She carried them to the side entrance, where Victorian-style signs directed employees away from the main portico. She did pause to look up at the grand porches with their arches and massive stairs. The curving style of the rails was both beautiful and intimidating, oversized to denote the palatial quality of the building they pointed to.

When she moved to the side door, it pressed inward easily, and the shadowed interior sighed a welcome to her travel-weary senses.

The scent of the place evoked sudden visceral memories: swinging her legs clad in white tights, her feet tucked into polished Mary Janes, the scratchiness of her ruffled tulle skirt with its wide satin belt far too fancy for fidgets, and Victoria humming along, lost in rapt enjoyment of their mother’s inspired performance.

She could sense again the hush, the thrill and the music swelling until it claimed her to the marrow of her bones.

That night she’d known she would never sing.

It was the polished maple that called to her, the hollow reverberations coaxed to fill an entire room—lofted cathedral ceiling and all—in spite of humble nylon and steel beginnings.

Dust. Lemon floor polish. Wax and powder. As soon as she breathed the air in the two-hundred-year-old opera house again, she knew she’d missed it. She’d been in thousands of auditoriums, theaters and even more magnificent venues.

But it was the Théâtre de l’Opéra Severne that had shown her the way in which she could hold Reynard at bay.

She’d been fascinated by the orchestra pit, but especially the stringed instruments. The sound and movement of the musicians had transfixed her, and when they had plucked at the strings, they had plucked at her soul.

Her first cello came soon after. Then lessons. Then obsession. Her calloused fingers, the muscles in her gracefully bowed back and her well-shaped arms all because of Severne’s opera house.

Had she recognized its echo in him? The interior of the whole building was as expectant as John Severne was coiled and prepared. The same ready-for-what-was-about-to-happen filled both the theater and the man.

The daemon, she corrected herself. Lest she forget. The residual heat that still made her movements languid and slow—it mocked her.

Kat walked through the side mezzanine with her cello case, though she’d left her suitcases in a pile by the door at the usher’s urging. Now the same usher led her through the building to Severne’s offices.

Compared to the humid outdoors of Baton Rouge—more moistened by the Mississippi River than cooled by it—the interior of the opera house was shadowed and cool. The atmosphere was close down the columned corridor with almost too many details to make out in the scant light of midafternoon, when no candles were lit and few lamps glowed. She could see the rough texture of carvings on the wainscoting, but she couldn’t pause to make out exactly what the carvings were about. It was only her imagination that made it appear as if hundreds of faces rendered in the wood turned to follow her movements as she walked by.

She was escorted. It was formal and old-fashioned, but she didn’t want to be rude to the eager-to-please uniformed young man. Whether he strived to please her or his employer, she couldn’t be sure. But she thought the latter because there was an urgency to his steps slightly more colored by fear than a young woman in a sundress would inspire.

As she followed, his mood was contagious. She thought maybe her old tulle and satin would have been more appropriate for a job interview in this vintage setting than the light cotton dress she’d worn for travel between one hot Southern city and another even hotter. She recalled with perfect clarity John Severne’s hard, deadly form beneath his shredded evening attire, and as she did, she also recalled the velvet tease of his tongue.

Her arms and legs might be gauche and exposed, but she’d already been more intimate with the daemon than she’d been with another man. It was impossible to forge relationships when your lifestyle was one of running, constantly running. She couldn’t trust intimacy. She avoided it at all costs. Oh, she’d had hurried kisses in moments when her guard had fallen, but she’d never allowed herself to fall fully, to indulge fully in desires to touch and taste.

And now was probably not the best time to wonder why a daemon had been able to breach her usual defenses.

The usher opened the double doors of what she supposed to be John Severne’s office. With a flourish and a bow, he stepped aside. Her wedge sandals on the Persian carpet didn’t fit into this sudden 1863 in which she found herself.

She wanted to play her cello. She could make music that would fit, music that would fill, no matter the time or place or her attire.

“The boy is fine,” Severne said. He walked into the office from another room. The desk, the polished cabinetry and gleaming glass, the dark cherry floor covered in luxurious woven rugs no doubt created decades ago in the Middle East—none of it prepared her for this John Severne.

She’d thought his evening clothes had given a false impression of sophisticated ease. She’d been more right than she could have known. She’d felt the hardness of his form, his energy and his heat. She’d sensed his preparedness.

Now she saw what she’d only sensed before.

He wore a pair of low-slung shorts; all else was bared to the lamplight and her stunned gaze. She’d been to gyms. She’d seen people ripped for appearance or for health. This was so obviously not that.

Severne walked into the room wiping his chest and arms and the back of his neck with a snow-white towel. He came around a beautiful desk that would have looked at home in a French palace, and Kat instinctively placed her cello case on the floor in front of her. She didn’t hide behind it...exactly, but she blushed when Severne saw the move for what it was. Defense. His gaze flicked from her face to the case and back again. Green eyes. Deep, dark green that had looked black when she’d seen him before at night.

“I want to see him,” Kat replied, looking at John Severne during the day for the first time.

He was still shadowed. There were few windows to let in outside light. Those that existed were heavily draped in black and red satin. But she could still see him better than before. What she saw confirmed what she’d already supposed. He was no polished gentleman. Almost nude, his hard, muscular body was too seriously honed to be called athletic.

How had she ever supposed him to be human?

She wasn’t a sculptor, but if she had been, she would have wept because Michelangelo was dead and a master should memorialize John Severne’s body. Yet the leanness of him, the lack of one ounce of spare flesh, was as painful as it was beautiful.

He took not one second of ease.

His tension was absolute.

She knew this about him as surely as she knew how to coax the perfect note from a string.

His pale skin, so harshly honed, was marked by more than exercise. There were faded scars across his chest, abdomen and back. She tried not to trace them with her eyes. Whatever suffering he endured—or courted—wasn’t hers to see. The black slashes of numerous tattoos down one arm from his shoulder to his elbow were almost as sacrosanct as the scars. Something private. She tried to look away, but the marks gleamed darkly like his hair and his eyes.

“He’s having his lessons right now. I thought a semblance of normalcy would help him adjust. He seems bright. He’s definitely had schooling in spite of his unusual circumstances. But he’ll join us for dinner. Later tonight,” Severne said. “I’m glad you accepted my invitation.”

The fine-cut lines of his lips stood out, or was it only the memory of the taste of them that made them seem noticeable to her?

She could feel his Brimstone heat even at this distance. It prickled her skin as if she was in the same room with a roaring fire.

How could she have stayed away?

With the boy involved, it wasn’t a choice to her at all. But deeper parts of her had to acknowledge the pull of John Severne had influenced her decision to come to Baton Rouge as much, or more, than the child.

He stood across from her, but he wasn’t even pretending to be relaxed. Not like before. His energy was there for her to see, barely contained. As if he might take her in his arms again if she said or did the wrong thing. Or the right thing. Depending on how you looked at it.

The thought made her stand frozen, a rabbit who sensed a predator and feared to twitch a whisker in case the movement would lead it into a leap for the fox’s mouth rather than standing idle and waiting to be devoured.

“What about Victoria? Where is my sister?” Kat asked.

“I travel often,” Severne began. “Various business interests require my diligent attention. I wasn’t here when your sister disappeared, but I’m told she was—is—a brilliant Marguerite. The first performance of the season is two weeks away, and...”

“She’s gone,” Kat said, as any hope that Reynard might have been wrong evaporated.

“I came to you in Savannah and invited you here because there’s no evidence of foul play. She was performing under an assumed name, as I understand she often does. She told us she has a stalker. My manager was more than happy to accommodate her wishes to engage her stellar talent under an alias. I’m assuming I met this stalker last night? He seemed completely ignorant of her whereabouts. The only hope of finding your sister is in the clues she might have left among her life and friends here at l’Opéra Severne. If you follow in her footsteps...” Severne suggested. “I’m afraid there’s a distance between me and my employees that prevents me from discovering more about her disappearance.”

He was a daemon. He couldn’t be trusted. And yet she was so conditioned to fear Reynard that this seemed better. Not safer, but better. He’d asked her here because Victoria had disappeared. There was more to it than that. There had to be. But walking away wasn’t an option. Not when the last place her sister had been seen was this opera house.

“I might vanish without a trace, as well,” Kat said.

“No. That won’t happen. I’m here now,” Severne said. “I won’t be called away again. You’ll have my undivided attention.”

As if his mere presence would keep her safe. He was a daemon. Not a bodyguard. He might look like he could take on an army of Reynards, but it would be a mistake to trust him. Why should he stand at her back and protect her from the Order of Samuel and other daemons while she tried to ascertain what had happened to Victoria? He couldn’t have perfectly altruistic motives. He was a daemon. They weren’t known for noble intentions.

“Play for me. Let me see what I’ve done in offering you a seat without an audition,” Severne challenged her.

His bare muscular body stood out in stark relief against the polished antiques of his office. On the desk, several deep purple calla lilies sat in a crystal vase. Like Severne, the lilies stood out. A hint of passion, life, color...but their petals were stiff and perfect like Severne’s physique.

Kat hesitated. She should walk away. Where better to leave a daemon child than with a daemon? But the memory of the boy’s angelic face and the hope of finding clues to her sister’s whereabouts held her in place.

And pride.

There was no denying the frisson of need that rose up in her when he said “Play for me” in his deep voice, smoothed by a creole accent less influenced by modern inflections probably because it had been influenced by Parisian émigrés decades ago. Daemons weren’t immortal, but they lived a very long time. If she played for him, she would be playing for someone who had heard celebrated masters play.

Now he reined in his energy to appear more casual. He moved closer. She could detect a hint of smoky sandalwood, sweat and a lightly concentrated scent that was the heated air of the opera house itself settled on Severne’s hair and skin. The sensual impact of that recognition made her knees turn soft.

She loved the theater scent. To breathe it on him messed with her equilibrium.

He couldn’t be trusted. He smelled like heaven, but his veins flowed with the fires of hell.

“Play for me, Katherine,” he repeated, and this time her eyelids closed against the compelling drawl in his words.

“I’ll play for Victoria,” Kat said to cool whatever charge there was between them.

Severne sat on a straight, tall-backed chair as if it was a throne. He’d placed the towel around his neck, and it hung there like a gentleman’s scarf. He waited for her to sit on a chair arranged across from him and open her case. She took out her cello and her bow. The familiar motions were a meditation even under Severne’s watchful eye.

This was her best defense against the fascination building in her for this daemon she couldn’t avoid. She’d always used music to fight the pull that drew her to daemon blood. Maybe it would help her against the pull she felt for lips and lean muscled heat, for the musical history he’d lived through.

But she couldn’t dismiss the fascination of centuries or the ears of a connoisseur.

When she sat, when she played, it couldn’t be for Vic...not with Severne in the room.

From the first note, she could feel her affinity vibrating the air between them as if the strings of her cello also invisibly existed between her body and the inhumanly hard body across from her. Whatever drove him to discipline his body, inch by inch, sinew and tendon and skin as taut and smooth as untouched steel, didn’t stop him from feeling her song.

She chose Victoria’s favorite concerto. The first she’d learned all those years ago. A simple Beethoven piece that was nonetheless lightly intricate when played by an expert. She meant to keep it light and airy, but it deepened with Severne as its audience.

The music wasn’t a barrier between them. It was a conduit for the electric connection that was already there.

She closed her eyes and remembered the flash of his bare chest when he’d fought Reynard and the heat of his arms around her when he’d cradled her and carried her to bed. Betrayed, but with a tenderness that didn’t seem possible from such a hard creature.

She played every note perfectly...for him. She infused every movement of her bow with emotion...for him. Years ago, she’d decided the instrument had called her to play at l’Opéra Severne, and now she played it as it had never been played. The striated maple and polished spruce were more a part of her than they had ever been, and the music twined between her and Severne’s Brimstone blood only a few feet away.

While she played, the water around the calla lily stems rippled, though the perfect petals remained calm.

She didn’t.

Her skin flushed.

Her thighs tensed.

Her breathing and heartbeat increased.

This was no audition. It might be a test for him or for her, but it was no audition.

Music had always been her protection. Now instead of sheltering her, the sound rose up and filled the room, swelling out to envelop a creature who obviously held himself apart as if she would embrace him and seek to soften his iron edge.

In spite of his obvious discipline, Severne was touched. She could feel his response. Could see his chest expand and contract.

She wouldn’t believe it. She couldn’t. His tenderness had to be a lie. The truth was in the muscle and tendon there for her to see and the fire in his blood she could feel.

She told herself that this was a bargain. He would offer her a place and she could search for her sister while being close to the daemon child if she played well enough to pass muster. But she didn’t want simply to perform well. Always before, when Reynard found her, she fled, she hid. Not this time. This time boldness had led her here to help the boy, to find her sister.

And to John Severne.

Something was different in her. She could feel the blood rushing in her veins as if she’d come alive for the first time.

She wanted to touch him.

Though her hands were on the neck of her cello and the bow, it was Severne she tried to reach. His cheeks above his perfect, angular jaw darkened with some emotion she couldn’t name. His eyelids lowered to half-mast over his deep green eyes. His hard chest rose and fell as if he needed oxygen to cope with what her music made him feel. His response was heady. More so than a theater full of patrons. Her life was about hiding. Subsuming herself in the music of her cello so she couldn’t be found. But, here, now, she played to be felt, seen, heard, and her music was a call for the intimacy she’d always avoided.

“Enough,” he ordered, and her hands faltered. The bow dropped from the strings and her fingers stilled. But her body continued to tremble. She wasn’t used to reaching out. She moistened her lips. It was as if they’d been in a heated embrace and he’d been the one to break it off and push her away. “Enough,” he repeated, and he stood abruptly.

Katherine stood in response. Again, it was more adrenaline that came to her rescue than courage. She wouldn’t slump defeated in her chair. The rush she experienced in his presence wouldn’t allow it. Her best defense had failed because of that rush. She lifted her chin. She held her cello to the side so she wouldn’t seem to cower behind it again.

Severne’s gaze froze her in place in spite of the heat she could feel from the Brimstone. He looked angry. She had played for him just as he’d asked, but he looked like he might want to throw her out of the opera house.

Never mind the boy.

Never mind Victoria.

She couldn’t let that happen.

“I’m not leaving,” Kat said.

Severne met her wide-eyed stare. He didn’t soften. He didn’t ask her to leave or to play again.

“A bargain, then. You’ll stay. You’ll...play. But only in the orchestra pit with the other musicians or for personal rehearsals. Not for me. And I’ll help you find your sister,” he said.

He crossed the room until they were side by side, but it wasn’t until he walked away that she realized his nearness had distracted her from the calla lily he’d dropped into her open cello case. Its deep purple bloom looked almost black in the dim light.

Never trust a daemon.

But the lily wasn’t a gift. It was only a payment for her song.

Her playing hadn’t displeased him. He had liked it. More than that, he’d been affected by it.

He’d paid for her performance because the music had touched him.

Kat sat again before her trembling legs could give out beneath her. The cello she gripped in one hand wasn’t nearly as comforting as it usually was. Her best defense hadn’t only failed against this particular daemon. It had become something else between them...a seductive promise. He didn’t want her to play for him again because her song breached his defenses. Her inhalations still came quicker than they should. Her skin was heated though the fire had left the room. She shivered in the sudden chill. This was a mistake. But it was one she had to make. For the boy. For her sister.

She had to brave John Severne in order to find her sister even if her music was no shield against him.

Quietly she slowed her breathing and calmed her heart. She vowed never to play for him alone again and to guard against her fascination with the daemon master of l’Opéra Severne.

Because the calla lily hadn’t only been payment for her song. It had been a last-minute substitute. Her lips tingled. He’d been as hungry as she was for another kiss.