bedeviled & beyond 02 - bedeviled & bedazzled (14 page)

Dialle moved down my body with his tongue and mouth, licking, savoring, marking me irretrievably. My body rose to meet his tongue, urging him on, almost begging.

He chuckled as I pushed his head toward the spot where I really, really needed sexual healin’ and the vibration of his deep chuckle almost brought me over. I cried out when his mouth finally found me and jerked into an almost instantaneous orgasm.

He sucked hard until I finished bucking against his mouth and then reduced the pressure to a gentle pull that had me screaming and bucking against him again in mere seconds.

Then I grabbed his dark, silky mass of hair and pulled him up so I could capture those decadent lips with mine. I tasted myself on his lips and something more, something deeper, that I recognized as rabid sexual need.

Opening my legs, I wrapped them around his hips, urging him with my body to take what he needed and give me what I craved.

Dialle centered himself between my legs and lowered his sexy mouth onto mine. His kiss was heat and flame wrapped together in the smoky scent that was his essence. We lost ourselves in a tangle of lips, hands, arms and legs for what felt like hours.

He ground his hard length against my stomach, prolonging the moment that we’d both been driving toward for weeks. I groaned against his lips, frantic, desperate to feel him sliding into me.

I reached for him but he grabbed my hand. He growled, crushing his mouth more desperately against my lips, his body more violently against mine, until we were like two rabid animals, mindless with lust and need.

Suddenly he pulled away from me and cried out, his black eyes wild and, amazingly, touched with something that looked like fear. The black depths of his eyes were filled with swirling colors that danced in rhythm to his heartbeat. He was panting as he tried to throw himself backward, away from me.

I felt him start to pull away and lost my mind. A small part of me was screaming that something was wrong. I ignored that small screamer and immediately wound my arms more tightly around his neck, pulling my legs up to wrap around his waist. I dragged him back down and shamelessly consumed his incredible mouth with my own, determined that he wouldn’t escape me before I had my way with him.

He jerked away from me again. “No! Astra, don’t you feel it? This isn’t us mating, there’s something in the room with us. We’re being controlled.”

I reached for him again and he grabbed my hands in one of his, shaking me just a little bit to distract me from the compulsion I was apparently under.

Panting, my body still painfully throbbing and tears rolling down my cheeks, I stared at him and shook my head. “Controlled?”

“Yes.” I was watching him very closely, still under the aura of heightened awareness that I was finally beginning to realize was not natural, so I saw the beginnings of his shift away from me. I blinked and he was standing as far away from me as he could get in the room, fully dressed.

“No...” I whispered to myself. Some part of me was still under the compulsion and I thought I’d die if he didn’t come back.

He shook his head, his face a pale mask. “It cannot be this way between us, Astra. There’s too much at stake. We will have our time. But this isn’t it.”

Then he was just...gone!

I leapt out of the bed and ran across the room. The raging lust I’d felt only moments before transformed itself to rage. I pounded on the wall he’d been leaning against when he’d shimmered away, screaming my frustration until my fists were bloody and my chest heaved from the effort. Then I threw myself back on the bed and cried myself to sleep.

CHAPTER TEN

Call the Fashion Police!

Our lady met the devil’s pet, in slippers made of fur,

But when our hero offered help, his fix was less than pure.

I was in the woods again, under a fat moon. The clouds were skittering across the face of it at an accelerated rate, as if they were agitated. The general feeling of the place was one of dark anticipation.

Part of me wanted to stop walking. To turn around and leave the wood. But another part of me needed to face whatever was coming so that I had a better chance of beating it back.

I reached the place where the trees thinned into nothing and stood there, just at the edge, feeling my heart pounding in my chest at a dizzying rate. The air around me pulsed with the deep base of my heartbeats.

Ba boom, ba boom, ba boom, ba boom...

The reverberation grew until it became the thunderous sound of hundreds of witches chanting and I suddenly knew with a clarity that came from true vision, what I would see when I entered that clearing.

It was all I could do to step through the last line of trees.

The crowd of witches was pressed tightly together, swaying with the rhythm of their chants. They were faceless, formless, creatures of the night. Purveyors of an evil so profound it couldn’t bear a human face.

They stood shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip in the small clearing, filling it completely. From the altar in the center to the black line of dense trees at the clearing’s edge, the space was filled to capacity. Still, a pathway opened for me and I walked through the crowd untouched by any of the dark celebrants.

When the last line of witches parted for me and I could see the altar I was not surprised to see myself on it.

But I wasn’t alone.

I was naked, on my back and entwined in obvious pleasure around a long, lean golden body with silky black hair that fell in soft curls and waves around a darkly whiskered face which was nuzzling my neck and therefore hidden from my view.

Though I couldn’t see the velvet of his black gaze or the finely chiseled planes of his well-formed face, I felt as if I knew that long, golden form like I knew myself.

We writhed and moaned upon the altar, our passion obvious to all who watched.

Movement above the altar drew my gaze. I looked up to find nearly transparent forms of silver floating above our heads. The Angels’ gentle heads were bowed as if they were in pain and their gowns danced softly in a frantic wind created by the dark purpose.

I recognized many of the angelic faces...even thought about calling out to them in greeting...but the trail of silver liquid down their nearly transparent faces stopped me.

Angel’s tears.

Shed only for the most catastrophic of events.

I covered my mouth in horror and my gaze flew back to the altar, where my prophetic lover and I cried out in unison and arched into the violent culmination of our mating.

I watched as tears ran from my eyes to splash against the hard, cold stone of the altar beneath our still writhing bodies. Almost immediately my partner on the altar started to thrash violently. He folded into a fetal ball and screamed in apparent agony.

Around us the celebrants increased the tempo and tenor of their chanting, pressing closer as my lover’s skin withered and dried away and his cries died to nothing.

Until he was a silent skeleton across my naked legs.

I screamed. Both from the altar and in my prophetic dream and tried to draw him close. But one voice, stronger than the rest and more powerful, called out to me.

“Do not touch him, Astra!”

The command in the voice was unmistakable. I looked up to where the leader of the black celebration stood high above the rest.

Her robes covered her from head to toe and a single lock of auburn hair fell from the front of the hood and rested across her breast in a soft curl. Her arms had been upraised in supplication to the dark purpose but she lowered them to push back her hood.

My Aunt Deirdre’s face emerged from the dark, rough cloth.

With an outraged cry, I started forward, intending to send her to Hell for her murderous actions.

But her voice rang out through the silent clearing and I stopped. Suddenly I was alone with the robed leader, who stood at the center, with a gentle moonbeam illuminating her form but not her face.

“You killed him!” My voice was filled with tears and that pissed me off. Tears were a weakness I couldn’t afford.

My aunt shook her head and lifted her hands. I saw again the teardrop mark on her wrist. “I have not killed him Astra you have.”

I gasped and murder filled my heart. “You lie!”

She shook her head, sending the reddish black strands swinging gently around her narrow shoulders. “No, I do not lie. You have killed him with your lust but you are not to blame.”

I tried to get to her, intending to vanquish her for good. But every time I moved she moved somehow too, though not appearing to.

“Damn you to Hell, then who
is
to blame! Tell me who I need to vanquish!”

My aunt’s form stood silent and motionless for long enough that I began to wonder if she’d turned to stone. Finally though the moonbeam fell across her features and revealed them to me.

She wore my mother’s face.

I jerked upright in my bed, breathing hard and sweating. I threw back the covers and jumped up to pace the room. What the Hades had the vision meant. It must have been symbolic. Surely I couldn’t accept it at face value. “Damned prophecy!” I exclaimed. “Why does it have to be so enigmatic?”

Still shaking from the nightmarish dream, I pulled the nightgown I’d discarded the night before over my head and slipped my chilled feet into slippers.

I knew I should get ready for work but I was too agitated and couldn’t even think about performing normal daily functions. Just like my previous vision, the dream had been a foretelling of some kind about Prince Dialle and me. I desperately needed to know what it had meant.

Deciding Myra might be able to decipher the dream vision for me, I reached for the large cross I wore on a chain around my neck and pressed it to my forehead.

Before I could call her though, the televisual beeped and Emo’s face swam into view. He took one look at my face and his handsome golden features creased in concern. “Astra are you all right? You look like you’ve seen an Agar.”

I flipped a dismissive hand and pushed sweat dampened hair off my face. “I’m fine. I just had a nightmare. Did you find out anything new on the hostages?”

“Actually I did. One of my informants at Demonica said they’ve been moving them every day. Apparently they’ve spent some time in the shadows.”

“That’s impossible!”

He shook his head, spilling shiny black curls around his square chin. “Not impossible. But certainly difficult.”

I blew out a frustrated breath. “Difficult is a distant fourth cousin to what this would be. It would take an incredible amount of black magic to pull that many humans into the shadows.”

Against my will, a memory of Raoul’s black mass in the wildlife preserve played itself across my memory and I grimaced, realizing at last what he might have been doing with all that power he’d summoned.

Emo nodded, in complete agreement. “So what do you want me to do?”

I fixed him with a stern glare. “All that really matters for our purposes here is where the hostages are right now. Did you get that?”

Emo looked reluctant to respond to that question. I decided to save him the trouble. “You don’t know do you?”

He gave me a slightly embarrassed smile, “Well no. But I’m riding my contacts pretty hard. I’ve called in nearly all my favors on this one, Astra.”

“Then call in the rest of them. And throw some threats of bodily harm in for good measure. I need you to get me that location. I assume I do not need to tell you that I don’t want to face off with Raoul over another mutilated body.”

Emo’s face darkened with temper. “Believe me, Astra, since the demons are targeting the royals I am not uninterested in this.”

I sighed. It seemed to be my week to piss off my friends. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m just a little cranky today.”

Emo harrumphed and disengaged the call.

I sat with my head in my hands for a few minutes, pouting. Then I remembered what I’d been about to do before Emo called. I placed my cross on my forehead again and thought Myra’s name. But before I could get the whole name out of my weary brain the air changed and Prince Dialle shimmered into view.

I opened my mouth to ask him what he was doing there and he reached for me.

Movement and sound stopped as he shifted me away. While we moved without seeming to move toward wherever in Hades Dialle was taking me, all I could think about was landing wherever it was in my girly jammies. By the time the world shimmered back to normal, I’d worked myself up into a complete, frothing tizzy.

We landed in the middle of Demonica.

And me in my pink nightie.

The first thing I said to Dialle was, “I’m going to kill you with my bare hands.”

He looked at me and grinned, “What?”

I glanced down meaningfully.

He followed my gaze and grinned. “I like the fuzzy slippers.”

While I glared at him my mind was churning. I really needed to rethink my sleepwear. Maybe I should invest in some slinky black silk somethings. That way, if I was ever spaceshifted into a nightclub against my will again, at least I’d look hot instead of just stupid.

“What am I doing at Demonica in the middle of the day in my pink nightie and fuzzy slippers?”

“Alcott has agreed to talk to us again.”

I continued to glare at him.

He gave a sigh and narrowed his eyes at me. The result wasn’t much better than my nightie.

I looked down and gasped. “I look like a street tart!”

“You look like every man’s fantasy.”

“Get me out of this getup right now!”

Two black eyebrows arched upward in a leer and I nearly stomped a foot in frustration. “Oh no you don’t! I’d rather wear my pink nightie than nothing.”

He waggled the eyebrows at me and I growled.

Finally, he laughed and turned away. “Come, Astra, we have work to do.”

I muttered foul deprecations under my breath and started after him, trying to tug the red leather micro mini skirt lower on my thighs as I walked. It didn’t do much good. Every time I took a step the rough underside of the leather got caught on the black fishnet stockings and rode up my legs, threatening to expose the red and black lace thong I was apparently wearing underneath the worthless scrap of a skirt. To further my indignity, every third step I had to stop and yank the red leather bustier higher on my chest so my boobs didn’t pop out.