My Lady Gambled (11 page)

“I’m in,” she said. “I must go with you!”

Brynmore did not look happy about it, but he nodded. It was one of those trustworthy male agreements. In the end he would do what he thought was best for her and claim, if he faltered on their agreement, that it was for her own safety and protection. Well, she would keep an eye on him. He would find it hard to detach himself from her.

Then, she blurted something strange, even to her, as she looked up at Brynmore. “I wonder what you look like without all that hair,” she muttered.

Kit told herself that it had nothing to do with anything, and she had only said it to throw Brynmore off balance. But, nothing in his body moved, his eyes, his lashes, his mouth—even his breathing, it seemed, yet his presence intensified. So much so that she stepped back with the female inside her feeling checkmated. She had never felt such a powerful amount of maleness in a man before, and she realized in that moment that Brynmore could affect her. Woman to man. Male to female. That surprising realization, more than the duty she felt to try to unravel real-life, dangerous mysteries, sent her hurrying away from Brynmore, toward Yojo, to find out what she could.

Yojo was difficult. However, having a fuller picture helped her to lead his babbling talk in a somewhat more informative direction. She got him to come out from under the bed. He sat on top of it, fidgeting, but still a bit calmer.

“We want to be friends, Yojo, to help each other.”

Yojo peered at her. “You would be my friend?”

“Yes, of course,” Kit promised, sitting next to him.

Kit noted that Brynmore stayed strategically across the room, trying, it seemed, for a more relaxed and nonthreatening pose for his large frame.

“Yojo does bad things,” Yojo muttered, looking down at his square hands. Then, he bounced them on top of his short legs. “But I help pretty Lady Joelle!” he added suddenly, with excitement rising in his voice, then falling away.

“Yes, Brynmore told me. She wants to thank you, I believe,” Kit tried.

“I can see Joelle?” Yojo exclaimed.

“Yes, if you want to,” Kit said, patting his leg in an effort to hopefully keep him calmer. “But, to do that we need your help. You need to tell us about Lord Incubus and Lord Hellion.” 

At just the mention of the names, Yojo squeaked, then turned and scrambled under the pillows at the head of the bed. “Damn,” Kit muttered.

Brynmore moved as though he would leave his station across the room, and Kit raised her hand stopping him. “Yojo, we know all about The Order of the Satyr. Joelle told us everything, and we still want to be friends with you. We need your help. I need your help.”

It was a coaxing affair, lasting over thirty minutes. Yojo would reveal some things, then become afraid again, and she would coax him anew. By the end, she had likely promised him the very moon, and she wondered at Yojo’s methods, because she felt bound to her assurances and promises.

He told them in bits and pieces that he was very frightened because Hellion and Incubus had a very loud argument and falling out. Hellion was furious at Incubus because Incubus was going to leave Hellion and stop their partnership. There was more to the actual reasoning and how it happened, however Kit could only get this fact out of Yojo. The next informative jewel, Kit could see immediately excited Brynmore and it completely distressed Yojo, was that Incubus had left Yojo behind. But, Yojo knew where he had gone—St. Petersburg!

Hellion, it seemed, wanted to kill Incubus. There was simply no leaving Hellion’s Order of the Satyr. It was stay or try to leave and die. Yojo was terrified that Hellion wanted to kill him also, and he said over and over that he just followed his Master Incubus’s instructions. Kit could readily see why Yojo wanted to desperately cling to his “new” friends and to Joelle. It seemed his life was in danger. Yojo was becoming so agitated, she knew the end was coming to what she could reasonably gather from him for the evening.

Nevertheless, she had gotten Brynmore the essential parts that he needed, and now it was her turn. “Yojo, I think my brother, Clay, knew Incubus. But now, Clay is missing and I want you to think hard if you have seen him.”

Brynmore started forward hearing Kit’s sudden turn of direction in her questioning. “Clay has golden eyes, Yojo, nearly like a lion. He is as tall as Brynmore, and-.”

“Golden eyes?” Brynmore uttered, at the same moment Yojo exclaimed.

“Never see him! Yojo never, never, never sees him!”

Dread crawled up Brynmore’s spine. He knew immediately that Hellion would crave unusual golden eyes. He was thrice grateful that he had left out Hellion’s human appendage altar from his explanation of events to Kit. Nevertheless, he could tell by the look on her lovely face that she saw Yojo’s reaction as clearly as he did, to mean the opposite of what Yojo exclaimed. He had to divert her. There was no use speculating.

When he reached the bed, he interrupted something Kit was about to say, and Yojo’s excessive noise, by speaking sharply. “Pack one bag, Miss Montoya. You, I, and Yojo, we are all going to leave for England immediately. Then, I go onto St. Petersburg.”

Yojo fell silent, looking up at Brynmore, but Kit’s voice caught, seeming to change direction as she stood and grabbed his arm. “Tell me what happens to the missing men, Brynmore.” Her voice rose. “Tell me!”

Brynmore wanted to grab her hand, and then pull her close to comfort her in her rising panic. Instead, he shrugged off her arm and winced inwardly at the sharpness of his voice. “We have no time for this. If you are going to accompany me, I will give you ten minutes to dress and pack, because there is a ship set to leave at midnight and Yojo and I will be on it!”

Brynmore moved away from Kit, lifting his hand toward Yojo’s shoulder, “Yojo, do you have things to pack. I’m taking you to see Joelle.”

Kit followed, grasping his shirt sleeve. “Tell me what happens to them!” she exclaimed. Then, she turned to Yojo who had trundled down, off the bed. “Yojo, tell me what happens to them!”

Kit went down on her knees before Yojo as Brynmore nudged Yojo toward the other bedroom. Only Yojo’s pitched voice could be heard clearly, and he shrieked, “Hellion God, sacrifices the worthy.”

“Sacrifices as in kill?” Kit asked, exclaiming. The sound Yojo returned, as Brynmore coerced him away, while not saying “yes,” was a clear affirmative.

Then, an unexpected event happened to all of them it seemed to Brynmore. The bedroom door came open with its solid surface slamming onto the wall. A tall slender man appeared and marched into the room along with the door leaping open. Brynmore turned with the intent to defend against an assailant, when he heard the thin man yelling.

“What the hell are you doing here with my wife? Kit, is this what you do? Sneak away to fuck this bear!”

Kit gasped, then came to her feet, exclaiming. “Don’t be ridiculous, Nick. How did you find me? What are you doing here?”

Brynmore halted his attacking advance. Strangely, he felt as though he had been punched in the gut. Kit was married!

“When a man’s wife, of infantile character, disappears on some addled-minded investigation, it is her husband’s only course, to save her from her own folly! I’ve had to lower myself to bribe hotel managers to tell me the room of the short blonde-haired American woman staying in this establishment!” Brynmore watched this “Nick” stop in front of Kit and glare down at her imperiously. “But, I see I was only partially right, instead you are of cheap character and not involved with an insipid investigation, but engaged in fucking bears and midgets! My god, Kit, have you fallen completely into your idiocy?”

Brynmore shoved Yojo into the side bedchamber, charging under his breath tersely. “Get your bags. Hurry!”

“Nick, this is none of your business!” 

“It is all my business! Someone must school you from your defective ways!”

Brynmore was stunned and livid at the same time. The man was an ass. However, what shocked Brynmore was feisty Kit Montoya taking the ridicule from the donkey-assed husband of hers. He could see she was aghast, but also shamed and somehow instantly downtrodden. It was a travesty, and he wanted to leap to Kit’s defense and show the bastard what a fine woman he was abusing with his demeaning words and attitudes.

Brynmore knew he would forever regret not doing so. He tried to defend his next unconscionable action by telling himself that this was Kit’s husband and he had no right to interfere. However, that was a sham, because his real intent was to immediately use this situation to leave Kit behind, and he hoped to get her out of The Orders mess and the resulting danger. Cold hearted, aye. He was a bastard, but he would damn well catch the killers in the end.

Kit tried to tug her arm out of Nick’s grip, but Nick held her from following Brynmore and Yojo out of her hotel room.

Brynmore’s last briskly spoken words still hung in her mind. “I will leave you to this mess. Fix your marriage and dinna follow us! I will find out what happened to your brother and send word.”

Kit’s heart fell. How could she let Nick do this to her? How could she react just like he accused her of being and-and in front of Brynmore? Then with more force, and by catching Nick in a momentary lapse of his grip, she did manage to jerk her arm free. Kit turned angrily toward her traveling bags and began packing them with jerky motions.

“What are you doing? You are not following them or leaving here. I forbid it!” Nick said angrily.

Kit snapped. She could feel it like a whip cracking, and she did something she had rarely done in her life, she yelled. “I am divorcing you, Nick Ralston! I have contacted a lawyer, and I never want to see you again!” She only regretted saying it too late, as angry tears threatened, she wondered why she cared if Brynmore Duneagan heard her say that or not. Trying to regain her dignity was the answer that clamored in her mind.

Joelle attached the last veil to the scanty outfit she wore. The assem-blage was nothing more than twenty sheer veils of varying colors draping her body from startling pinks, deep reds, to green, and even a gossamer black one. She was nude beneath and used light gold chain ropes with bangles attached, wrapped around and above her breasts with another one low around her hips to hang the veils on. It was a gypsy dancer’s attire, a most seductive one used specifically for a licentious belly rolling dance they did. A veil dance that she knew how to perform and intended to do for Saxon as an answer to some questions and adamant opinions he had raised.

“Opinions he has stuck to, damn, him!” Joelle muttered, biting one fingernail as she studied herself critically in the full length mirror. She was in her bedchamber at Gabriella and Drummond’s London mansion, which to her was part of the glaring problem. “I should be at Saxon’s home in London, not here!”

However, Saxon had wanted it this way. Ever since Saxon had bought them passage to England, in separate cabins, she thought in exasperation, he had made love to her only once on the ship. After their escape from The Order, that added up to only two times in all these weeks. The minute Saxon’s boots had touched English soil, he had undergone a change. Not that she knew him well enough to say that this was a change at all. This could be the real Saxon, for all she could say that she honestly knew. Being kidnapped and sexually abused by a cult did not necessarily allow one’s true bearing to show. The dangerous adventure, which she and Saxon had lived through, might not begin to portray Saxon’s everyday character.

But, she did not really believe that. She might have wondered, a little at first, after his change, however, Saxon had not left her completely clueless. He had said on several occasions that she deserved better, not better than him, but better treatment. Then, they had also been extremely busy. Neither of them had any intentions of letting The Order of the Satyr continue blithely on it way. Destroying The Order was of the utmost importance to them, and the swiftness of events unfolding took a lot of their time, but it shouldn’t interfere with making love! 

“Regularly!” Joelle stated succinctly, undulating her hips once with a returning jingle of the bangles.

Nevertheless, she had finally discovered Saxon’s purpose concerning her, why he would kiss her with controlled passion, but then stop when it should naturally go further. Oh, she remembered his words exactly and while it was sweet, endearing, and loving even, it was totally ridiculous compared to the reality of their life and how they had come together or intended to stay together.

Saxon had said, when she had confronted him in frustration last night, after he had stalled their building passion once again, “Joelle, I want to court you. I am courting you. Wooing you, like the beautiful woman, you are.”

“What rubbish,” Joelle muttered, with tears sparkling in her eyes. Either one of them could die attempting to destroy The Order of the Satyr. They did not have time for courting. They needed to live, to be alive, and to feel alive.

“To love,” Joelle sighed, as she absentmindedly fingered a fuchsia colored veil draped sheerly two inches below her belly button and falling over her mound. It followed her length to just above her ankles. Her soft belly protruded in just the right amount of enticing bareness for a seductive belly dance. Her hips were round enough to swing becomingly and her bottom plush enough to roll with an alluring display. It was her breasts that worried her. They were full globes, but one was a bit higher than the other and she had no deeply plunging cleavage. Joelle raised her arms. She could see one dark nipple through the light-blue silk scarf over it. That was better, she decided, with her arms high her breasts looked level and cleavage appeared.

Saxon had invited her to his home for dinner this evening, a romantic evening he called it. “And, I have a surprise for you, Saxon.” Joelle teased the mirror with a seductive look as she shimmied her body and the bangles jingled all around. She was going to seduce Saxonhurst, Marquess of Hartely, this evening. And, if he did not start pulling the veils off her until she was entirely nude, there was going to be trouble.

Saxon paced his formal dinning room. The table was set elaborately with gold and crystal, the wine was breathing, candles were lit, and a fire flamed in the fireplace. The gas lamps about the room were turned down low and besides an elegant dinner, there was champagne and chocolate cooling on a table next to an intimate settee he had placed by the fire.