He traced a finger down the silhouette of her figure as she walked out the 7-Eleven door. It was the only one of her walking away. He didn’t like this picture. He slammed his flattened hand down on it and crumpled it in his fist.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
“I have just one question for you,” Rune said. The gryphon’s long legs were spread out, his eyes curious. “How did you know to send me there and what to look for?”
Dragos looked up with a flash of secretive jealousy. “Never mind how. We’ve found her and your part in this is done. You can go back to your regular duties.”
Rune nodded at the photos. “What about her?”
“I’ll take care of her.” Dragos bared his teeth. “I’m hunting this one. Alone.”
He sent Rune away, climbed to his penthouse bedroom and opened the French doors. The late-spring air licked into the room. He stood in the doorway looking at the gleaming city lights.
Where are you, thief? I know you’re running somewhere, he said to the night. He lifted his head to the breeze, which carried the city’s complex mélange of scents.
Power, magical or otherwise, has its own set of habits. He realized he had fallen into a bored complacency. Either life conformed to what he desired or he bent it to his will. He didn’t ask, he took. If a business interest threatened him, he had them destroyed. No mercy. He had settled into the unsophisticated laziness of brute force.
Dragos summoned his Power and began whispering beguilement into the night. He held the image of his thief firm in his mind. The magical threads flexed like long-unused muscles and began curling outward on the breeze. It was only a matter of time before they found their target.
I’ve got you now.
THREE
Pia dreamed of a dark, whispering voice. She tossed and turned, fighting to ignore it. Exhaustion was a concrete shackle. All she wanted to do was sleep. But the voice insinuated into her head and sank velvet claws deep.
She opened her eyes to find that she was standing at the edge of a spacious balcony that hung high over New York.
The night scene was dazzling. Lights of all colors were spray-painted on massive skyscrapers against a purple-black background. She looked down. She was barefoot and stood on flagstones, not concrete.
There wasn’t a railing.
She shrieked and fell on her ass as she stumbled back. She scrambled backward until she put several feet between herself and the precipice. Then she noticed her long bare legs pouring out from a simple white negligee. The negligee accentuated her runner’s light, strong build, slender muscles both racy and muscular.
Negligee? She fingered the satiny material. She didn’t own a negligee. Did she? She could have sworn she hadn’t gone to bed in it. By the way, where had she gone to bed again?
A gentle pearly luminescence lit the flagstones around her. The blood rushed through her body on a surge of adrenaline.
Oh shit, she was glowing.
This was so not good. She pushed the hair out of her face. The glow made her feel more naked than she would have if she’d been nude. She hadn’t lost control over the dampening spell since she was a child.
She fumbled for the spell that would shield the luminescence and make her skin appear human. It was dangerous for her to be so exposed, but she seemed to have forgotten how to cast the spell.
“There you are,” a deep, quiet voice said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
That voice. Whiskey and silk, ageless and male. It poured over her and set her body on fire. She was bereft of air. Her lips parted on a soundless gasp.
She turned toward elegant open French doors wrought of black iron. White, gauzy, floor-length curtains billowed in the breeze. They obscured as much as they revealed.
“You want to come inside now.” That incomparable beautiful voice created a deep yearning that shook through her. She scrambled to her feet.
A small part of her mind rebelled. Um hello, that part of her mind said to her. Not into yearning much. Remember what happened the last time you gave in to yearning. You fell for a shithead who blackmailed you? You lost everything and had to go on the run?
The scene around her flickered and started to fade. The dark whispering surged in strength until it was all she could hear or think about. She was so lonely her chest ached. It actually, physically ached. She pressed a hand between her breasts and looked around in confusion.
The hypnotic voice ordered, “You will come inside now.”
All of a sudden that was the only thing she wanted to do. She went to the curtains and gathered them up in one hand as she looked inside into a huge shadowed bedroom. She caught an impression of a fireplace and large sturdy furniture sprinkled throughout the room.
A male reclined on pale covers on an enormous dark-framed bed. He had a massive physique, thick muscles bulging over long limbs, the bare skin of his torso dark against pale linen. The fall of hair onto his strong forehead was darker still. A sensual mouth quirked in a cynical smile. Only his eyes gleamed against the darkness with a faint, calculating, witchy glow.
Unease skittered on light mice feet down her back. There was something important she had to remember about his eyes. If only she could think of it.
Power like champagne filled the room until she felt like she was swimming in it. She had never been in the presence of so much magic before. It pressed against her skin, exhilarating and terrifying, addicting. It turned the fire the voice had ignited in her into liquid desire. An animal sound came out of her.
The man uncurled a long muscular arm and extended a hand to her. Resistance melted. She went to him in a rush. She had barely reached the bed when he exploded into action. He took hold of her arms, dragged her across his body and slammed her into the mattress as he rolled on top of her. Pinning her down with his heavy body, he locked his hands around her glowing wrists and yanked them over her head. The corded strength in his fingers make the flesh and bone they shackled feel slender and fragile.
Magic and desire choked her. Her breathing turned erratic at his controlled violence and the dominance of his body pressing her down. Sexual heat pooled low in her body as the juncture between her thighs grew slick.
A rumble started low in his throat. The bed shuddered with the feral sound. His harsh, shadowed face was hewn out of the same indomitable mountain that had formed his body. There was something familiar about his spiked black hair.
“Look at me,” he said, thrusting his face down until they were nose to nose. “Look at me.”
In the pearly glow of her body, his gaze flashed gold like a falcon’s eyes. Predator’s eyes. Sorcerer’s eyes.
Something shouted a warning in a distant part of her mind but it was too late. She had already flung back her head and looked into his eyes. Just like that she was snared like a spider in a web. He could do anything he wanted to her now, anything at all.
She found it impossible to care. She found she wanted to be snared. She rubbed against his taut, sexy body. It felt so good to be pinned by him, a renegade pleasure that went against everything she’d been taught or thought she understood about herself.
“Oh, what’s the matter with you,” she groaned. She arched her neck and tried to angle her hips just right. That area between her thighs was beginning to throb with a deep, insistent, empty ache. “What are you waiting for?”
He stilled as if she had surprised him. Then something changed between them. She didn’t know what it was, but she could feel when it happened. The air grew even more electric, a live wire jumping ungrounded, building force as it bounced back and forth between them. Then he shifted with slow deliberation, settling full on her. His growl deepened, the rumble vibrating in that immense, muscled chest. His eyes were wild, ravenous. His head came down on her with the force of a raptor’s plummet.
Hard open lips captured hers. The gentle seductiveness that had been in his voice earlier was gone. He shoved into her mouth, penetrating her with a hot, hungry tongue while he ground her into the bed
with his hips. Something lay stiff and heavy along her flat stomach. With a thrill of shock she realized it was an enormous erection.
Her lips shook beneath his as she whimpered, “That’s so good.” She worked her back muscles, trying to rub her hips on his cock.
He sucked in a breath and muttered a shaken curse. He made his body into an enormous cage constructed of bone and muscle and starvation as he bowed around her, pinning her with arms and legs and weight. She arched up with all her strength, exhilarating in the cage, which gave her a paradoxical feeling of release. She moaned as they ate at each other’s mouths, frantic to consume each other. His hands moved on her wrists, a restless shackle. His tongue thrust an aggressive rhythm as he fucked her mouth.
The ancient primitive rhythm only made her need flash hotter. She needed him to penetrate her in other ways. She writhed and he moved so that thick muscled thighs were on either side of hers, which brought his hips in full alignment with her aching pelvis.
It also brought the length of his erection against her clitoris. He ground against her, flexing like a great hunting cat, rubbing the hot, hard length of flesh along the graceful ridge of her pelvic bone. Pleasure raked frenzied claws through her. She cried out into his mouth and pushed her hips against his.
Vaguely she knew something was wrong. She was acting out of character even for a sexual dream. It had something to do with a lifetime of loneliness, with the electric sensuality this male exuded, with him calling her to him with sorcery and with her looking into his eyes and becoming snared, with his seductive, cunning patience. She tried to hold on to those thoughts but they ran like water flowing through her fingers. Her sexual frenzy—his sexual frenzy pouring over and through her—overrode all of it.
He dragged his mouth from hers, turned his head to one side and gasped something. The words were foreign, the language harsh and burning with Power. They sounded like curses. His hands slid away from her wrists. One dove to the small of her back to yank her hips tighter against him. The other came up to palm her small breast while he lay hard against her. His marauding lips plunged down the side of her face to her throat.
He bit her, a savage and archaic gesture that sent an earthquake through her body. She shrieked and raked her nails down the immense musculature of his back while she wrapped her legs around those taut pumping hips and pulled him even closer.
They were almost there, almost there. He rolled with her until she lay sprawled on top of him. She adjusted to the new position with an eager wiggle, mouth turned to him, seeking his. Hard hands sank into her hair and held her head imprisoned against his hairy chest. She needed him to push inside her like she’d never needed anything before. She plunged one hand between them to grip the velvety, broad head of his penis. It was damp at the tip.
Then, his lungs working hard, he pulled her head back until their lips were just touching. Still pushing his hips against her pelvis in that slow, hard sexual rhythm, rubbing his thick cock against her palm, he whispered into her open mouth, “Tell me what your Name is.”
Okay, wait. She had to remember something about that. She struggled to think past the burning need for him.
“Tell me,” he whispered, the words winding around her, snaring her tighter.
Wait a minute. Her breath shook. Names have Power. Power, like that in his voice.
She cast around in her desire-fuddled mind for a good lie but heard herself say, “P-Pia Giovanni.”
She panted in real pain and rubbed herself along the length of his body, trying to rediscover the rhythm he had begun. She needed to come so bad she could have screamed.
“Pia.” He didn’t so much say the name as breathe it. His hot breath coiled around her like tendrils of smoke from an infernal fire. “Pretty.”
God, it felt unbelievable, as he stroked her all over with nothing but the Power in his voice. He licked her hot skin and murmured, again with that caressing, dark, seductive voice, “But that’s your human name, isn’t it, darling? You’re some kind of Wyr. I need to know your real Name.”
Then as if he couldn’t help himself, he cupped the back of her ass and pushed up against her so hard his hips left the bed.
But just wait.
Giving him her real Name would give him Power over her.
“May all the gods have mercy, tell me.” The agonized groan came up from his core and blasted her swollen, moistened lips.
The ghost of her mother’s voice touched her desire-crazed thoughts with cool lucidity.
Don’t ever tell your real Name to anyone, my love, she had said to Pia. Over and over her mother had repeated this lesson. She spoke it with Power of her own in her voice, so that the lesson would be fixed in Pia’s mind because she had been a bit of a flighty child at times. If you tell someone your real Name, you have forever given that person Power over you. It is your most precious, private treasure. Keep it safe as you guard your life, for your Name is the key to your soul.
The dream spell shattered. “No,” she whispered.
Was she denying him or her mother? She tried to clamp down with her legs on his torso to hold on to him, clutching at that black spiky hair with greedy fingers.
He roared. He sounded like he was in as much pain as she was. He wrapped hard arms tight around her, but she was already growing insubstantial. The raw silk of his hair melted through her grip.
She threw out her hands, reaching for him. For a moment she felt his questing fingers brush along hers. Then he was gone.
She hurtled to wakefulness and plunged upright in her bed with a soundless shout. Her heart hammered like she had just raced a marathon. Her dirty clothes were soaked in sweat, the motel bedspread tangled underneath her. The air conditioner rattled, blowing stale, deodorized air through the room. The remnant of magic lay flat in the air like soured champagne.
Her hungry body wept. With a moan, she plunged one hand between her legs and pressed. It only made her ache more.
She had never felt such a wretched, unconsummated lust. She curled into a miserable ball, starving for that dream lover and terrified of him at the same time. Something deep inside her started to whisper his name. Then panic shut it down. She couldn’t think it, couldn’t let what happened become too real because that would be beyond disastrous.
Then she jerked as she realized that she was still glowing. The low-level glamour that hid her skin’s pearl-like sheen was fed from her own life force. It was supposed to remain active at all times, even when she slept. Her mother had helped her put the spell in place. She hadn’t lost control over it in years.
She renewed the spell and dampened herself to look human again.
She was so screwed.
Grimacing, she curled into a tighter ball.
Dragos exploded out of his bed, face contorted, one hand holding his painful erection. His balls ached so badly he stumbled forward to grip at the edges of a nearby mahogany dresser. He bowed over it, shuddering.
What the hell?
The beguilement he sent was supposed to seduce his thief with her deepest fantasy, her most heartfelt desire. He had expected anything but this, a dream of riches or power, success or even fame, but sex? The ultimate opportunist, he had laughed to himself and had been quick to oblige, as he beguiled her deeper into his dream trap.
Then she stepped into his bedroom and his world stopped.
She was lovelier than he could have imagined, her body glowing with its own internal moonlight. His mind seized. What was she? His knowledge of the Elder Races was near encyclopedic, compiled as it had been over the long ages. He cast back, searching for any memory of this type of creature, and slammed into a blank wall. All that came to mind was that distant tantalizing memory of the time he had caught the hint of a scent on the breeze that had driven him wild.
He remembered now. Centuries ago he had plunged into the forest in North Umbria and chased after an elusive wild scent very like his thief’s, catching and losing it again in fitful spurts, sure that he heard the sharp rustle of folia
ge as some mysterious creature bounded away from him. The forest had teemed with the Power of green growing things, back when both he and the world were so much younger.
In the dream he concentrated everything he had on this woman, greedy to understand and categorize what was happening, to find its appropriate place in his vast memory. Yet he met with absolute failure. The magic that was an inherent part of her was delicate and filigreed, layered with feminine complexity and beauty. It felt wild and mysterious, cool like her moonlit glow. His whole body had tightened with shock as he watched her walk toward him with a graceful roll of slim hips, generous lips parted and her gaze radiant with sensual yearning.
Yearning for him, the Great Beast. Cuelebre. Wyrm.
He did not recognize himself then, or the volcano that erupted inside him. The beast pounced and took her with violent, voracious force.
And she had loved it.
Blind lust took him over then, scorching him in a way he had never experienced before. He fell prey to it and to her, body and old wicked soul. The beguiler became the beguiled. The sensual undulation of that graceful female form underneath his felt like some kind of epiphany. Eating at her plump, eager mouth made him ravenous. All he could think about was plunging his cock inside her in an ecstasy of ravishment.
He had managed to hang on to the reason for the spell he had cast, as he recognized in one corner of his mind that however intense and pleasurable this dreamscape felt, it was designed to feed a hunger, not assuage it. It worked to use his prey’s weaknesses and desires against it so that he could pull it into his control. Neither of them would gain fulfillment from the dream, only increased appetite.
But when he tightened the spell and pressed her for the ultimate surrender, she denied him.
His thief said no to him.
He snarled and tore the mahogany dresser apart. He picked up the bed and hurled it across the room, then whirled and drove his fists into the wall. He must have hit a girder because something inside the wall groaned and buckled.