The Lost Enchantress (36 page)

And then he went to work seducing her—as if there was any need—one nerve ending at a time.

She wasn’t accustomed to being cherished, or experienced at being treated like the rarest and most fascinating of treasures, as if it mattered that she was loved to perfection and there was all the time in the world to do it. Her instinct to fidget or, worse, giggle, was no match for his ruthlessly patient touch, however. In the end she sighed and surrendered to him complete control of pace and tone.

And so the release of each button became a ceremony, the crook of her elbow and dip of her waist places of worship. His hands drifted over her skin, followed by his adoring and clever mouth.

When he lowered the zipper on her jeans and drizzled kisses along her hip bone, Eve quivered. When he slid lower, dragging jeans and lace with him, her breath thickened and her mind blurred.

He bent her knees, drawing one long leg up to rest on his shoulder, and kissed his way from calf to thigh. He would not hurry or be rushed, not even when she whimpered softly and arched her back like a cat after cream.

He nuzzled and licked and nibbled, and Eve shimmered beneath him. He stroked her with his open mouth and whiskered jaw, and she clawed the bedcovering she was laying on.

He made her shiver and sweat. With a velvet glove he drove her to the edge of madness and held her there, for heartbeat after delicious, unbearable, exquisite heartbeat, until craving became need and need spilled over into something deeper, and older, something timeless.

She wanted him, and she wanted him with her, in her, one with her.

Panting from the climb, hovering near the peak, she reached down and tangled her fingers in the silky strands of his hair, tugging so he would lift his head and look at her.

Come with me. Please, come with me
, is what she intended to say to him.

But when he did look up and his eyes met hers, she was silent. Speechless. Lost in him.

Lost in the mesmerizing tumble of dark hair across his forehead, the smoky gaze, and wide, beautiful mouth, the elegant arrangement of bones that formed a face like no other she had ever seen.

Her silence didn’t matter. As if he heard the words that dissolved on her tongue, Hazard planted a hand on either side of her, pulled himself up in one fluid motion so that he was on his knees, straddling her, and brushed the hair from her face.

He pulled his sweater off and tossed it aside, and as soon as he did, Eve’s gaze was drawn to the mark on the left side of his chest. She couldn’t look away. For a long string of heartbeats, she couldn’t breathe. He bore the same mark, in the same place as the mark she’d been born with. The difference was that the mark on Hazard’s chest was red and slightly raised, and the flesh around it was just the least bit puckered. And it had been put there years before she was born.

She didn’t need to ask how or when or why.

“He used the hourglass to burn you,” she said.

“To brand me. To seal the curse and remind me of that night in his garden. The night my life ended . . . and became endless at the same time.”

She lifted her left hand and lightly put her fingertips to the mark Pavane had seared into his flesh, and there was an immediate surge of heat along her arm. Hazard’s eyes widened. He felt it too. It wasn’t her imagination or a trick of her passion-glazed senses. It was a bond. A connection. The same one that had been there between them from the first moment their paths crossed, but it was different now. Stronger. Brighter. It was power, Eve realized, a steady stream of it flowing between their hearts, joining them in a way she didn’t quite understand, and couldn’t come close to explaining. But she was willing to trust it.

It was time. She was ready.

She opened her arms to Hazard and he came to her, and as he did the space around them faintly glowed, as if the air was filled with sparkling gold dust, a gleaming circle within the circle of light that encompassed them from above.

Her body was still humming with desire, and it took little for him to make her blood sing and her senses clamor all over again. Only it was better this time because he was with her, his strong arms wrapped around her, his long, powerful legs entwined with hers, their bodies fitting together as if by design.

With his hands and his mouth and the grinding pressure of his hips against her own, he took her to a place she’d never been before. A place no one had ever been before, she realized hazily. How could they, when it didn’t exist until now, until Hazard and she created it together. It was where her dreams and desires and passions intersected with his, a nameless, uncharted speck in the cosmos that belonged only to them.

When they were both clinging to the last thread of reason and control, he braced his weight on his hands, staring down at her, the visage of every dark erotic fantasy she’d ever had as he made the first glorious slide of his flesh into hers.

Eve threw her head back and lifted her hips to accommodate his thrusts as they became faster and deeper, finding a steady, pounding rhythm that suited them both. She clutched his back to pull him impossibly closer, and he made the impossible possible by pulling her legs wider and higher until they were wrapped around his hips.

There was no surrender now, no submission, no quarter given and none asked. There was only skin against sweat-slick skin, and hunger, and possession.

Hazard’s passion was the flip side of her own, a single white-hot coin spinning between them until need and demand and sensation and pleasure melded together in an unbroken chain, spiraling around them and lifting them higher, always higher, until they found the most far-flung, purest peak of all, the jewel at the top of the universe, beyond the sun and moon and stars, a place without reason or control or rules, a place of giving, and glory, and where everything else, everything less, is left behind.

They stole another hour in each other’s arms, touching, whispering, and then a half hour more, before finally getting dressed, a lengthy process blessed with many interesting detours and interruptions.

They would both rather stay there, high in their fairy-lit turret, lost in the wonder and splendid newness of what they had found in each other, venturing forth only to fetch wine and cheese and bread and jam.

But they both knew that acting as if things were normal wouldn’t make it so. Hoping Pavane would just go away wouldn’t make it happen, and it was dangerous to pretend otherwise. Reclaiming the talisman had taken on a new urgency. Eve had known it was linked to the curse, but seeing the visible proof on Hazard’s chest drove the point home to her with heart-wrenching clarity. He’d told her he wanted to live, and she believed he meant it. For now. But life as he’d been cursed to live it had become so unbearable he’d devoted himself to finding a way to end it. How long would it be until the same frustrations and problems resurfaced and overshadowed whatever they had together? She refused to let that happen. There had to be a way help Hazard without killing him, and everything she knew about magic told her the talisman was the key to it.

When they’d finished dressing, she hung back and let him go downstairs without her. She wanted a few moments alone there, and he seemed to understand why without her having to explain. She’d been apprehensive earlier, wary of the changes she would find at the top of the stairs, unsure of how her heart would react being back there. Now, thanks to Hazard, she was very much relaxed, and she wanted another look, and a memory of this night to take away with her. It couldn’t wipe old memories away, but it might make them lighter.

She stood a moment in silence and then turned in a complete circle, realizing that the imprint of Hazard on that space was so vivid it left little room for anything else. All around her were Hazard’s books, Hazard’s treasures, Hazard’s scent.

At peace with that, she turned to go, and as she reached for the light switch, she caught the toe of her boot on something and stumbled. Catching hold of the door frame to steady herself, she glanced down to see what had tripped her and noticed a nail that had worked loose and was protruding from the threshold.

“It looks like they don’t build them like they used to,” she said to herself with a small measure of satisfaction. She made an attempt to stomp the nail down with her boot heel, thinking she’d never tripped over any nails in the old threshold. When stomping didn’t do the trick, she looked around for something to use as a hammer and spotted an old cast-iron doorstop shaped like an anvil. Grabbing it, she knelt down to get a better angle on the nail. If this didn’t work, she’d leave it for Hazard to take care of, but she’d done enough home repairs to at least give it a try.

Three solid whacks and the nail was almost flush with the wood. Adjusting her grip on the doorstop, she swung her arm back to get a little extra oomph, and slammed the point of the anvil into the door frame behind her.

Wincing, she turned to see the damage and found it was worse than she’d expected. The sharp edge of her “hammer” had made a deep gouge in the wood and caused the paint all around it to splinter. Already some chips had fallen, exposing the dark wood underneath, and a few others looked as though they were hanging by a prayer.

She puffed out a disgusted breath and ran her fingers over the area; even a light touch sent white flecks raining down.

Crappy paint job
, she thought. She’d painted a few rooms in her time and learned the hard way how important it is to wash and sand the surface first. Otherwise the new paint doesn’t adhere properly and the teensiest little whack with an anvil will cause it to chip. Her guess was the painters had skipped the prep work on the door, which was surprising considering the great job they’d down elsewhere in the house. Now instead of helping, her little do-it-yourself effort had made more work.

Sighing, she brushed paint chips from her jeans and started to stand only to stop short when her attention was caught by what she saw at the very bottom of the area of chipped paint.

It might have been a natural imperfection in the wood, and most people wouldn’t have given it a second glance. But Eve knew exactly what it was: the top of the letter C.

“Hazard,” she shouted, shock driving the blood to her face. “Can you come back here?”

Too excited to wait for him, she grabbed the letter opener and started scraping. By the time he returned, she was almost done.

“Chloe was here,” he said slowly, reading over her shoulder as she uncovered the final E.

Intent on scraping, Eve hadn’t noticed him; now he hunkered down beside her.

“Chloe wrote this when she was eight,” she told him, her mind racing. “She did it with a wood-burning pen she got for her birthday.”

His dark brows lifted. “Isn’t eight a little young to be wielding something hot enough to char wood?”

“My father bought it for her,” Eve explained, shrugging one shoulder. “He wasn’t exactly a stickler for safety. The instructions said ‘Adult supervision required’; to him, supervision meant remaining within shouting distance. And it didn’t preclude plopping himself in front of the TV with a cigarette, a beer and whatever game was on.”

He nodded without comment.

“Grand supervised; that’s why Chloe wrote it up here. Grand never would have let her hurt herself. For all her . . . unorthodox tendencies, she was a wonderful grandmother. And trust me, when it comes to grandmothers, I know the difference between wonderful and . . . something else,” she finished on a sardonic note. She looked at the carving again. “I remember the day she did it. I was sitting right over there and . . . and that’s the point. Don’t you see? She wrote it. That means this is the same wood that was here when she was eight . . .
before
the fire. That doesn’t make sense.”

Hazard stood and ran his hand across the top of the door frame. Eyes narrowed appraisingly, he stepped back onto the landing and examined it from that angle. “This is definitely a weight-bearing wall,” he concluded. “So from a technical standpoint, it would make perfect sense to leave it in place if it wasn’t damaged and build around it.”

Incredulous, she stood facing him. “Wasn’t damaged? It wasn’t just damaged, it was gone.” She waved her arm around. “All of this was destroyed and had to be rebuilt. Most of the second floor went too. The damage wasn’t so bad on the first; that’s where our room was, Chloe’s and mine. Grand’s was on the second, but right at the top of the stairs.” She paused to breathe and clear her throat. “She ran down and got us out, but she couldn’t . . . that is, there wasn’t enough time . . .”

She stopped.

Hazard nodded without comment and rubbed the center of her back for just a few seconds. It was exactly what she needed. Too much sympathy and she would cave in and let it all come rushing back.

“Are you certain that’s how the fire happened?” he asked when she looked up, her emotions back in check.

She nodded vigorously. “Yes. I’m certain.”