Brimstone Seduction

“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.