Brimstone Bride. Barbara Hancock J.

her the course she had to follow.

      Though she’d only been in the house fifteen minutes, it seemed to take far longer to make her way out than it had to make her way in. A whistle down one hallway caused her to hold her breath and crouch for long moments on the first landing. A maid passed, carrying a basket of folded laundry. Victoria moved again when the woman turned the corner away from her. The stairs seem to protest her downward path even more loudly than they’d protested her upward one.

      But she made it outside without running into a soul.

      Unfortunately, before she could even take a relieved breath of night air, she ran into a man who had sold his soul long ago.

      * * *

      Turov wasn’t wearing a tuxedo or a suit. His casual work clothes were gone as well. He wore black as she did, and she suspected for the same reason. Only a glimmer of eyes and teeth showed well in the garden light. Unlike the dark clothes she’d found from an ordinary wardrobe, his outfit looked made for the night. His black uniform was strategically fortified with leather quilting in vital areas such as chest, abdomen and thighs. It hugged his muscular form like a second skin.

      She’d suspected he was athletically built and she’d been right, although she couldn’t have guessed how lean and hard because she’d never seen this kind of body in real life. Not even her sister’s husband, John Severne, who was obsessively fit from two hundred years of daemon hunting could possibly be this lethally made.

      Victoria took in his appearance in seconds. The broad shoulders and hard arms above a trim waist and equally sculpted legs. He took in her appearance just as fast, just as well. Did her outfit scream cat burglar? Did the bulge of keys in her pocket show in the shadows?

      “I thought you were going out for the night,” Victoria said. Her voice was too breathless. Adrenaline robbed her lungs of their usual power.

      “I did. I finished sooner than I expected. I didn’t have to travel as far as I intended,” he said.

      She risked a glance at his face, but he didn’t meet her eyes. Was that blood in his hair?

      They’d been moving quickly enough that he put up his hands to catch her arms when they almost collided. Through the light material she could feel each of his fingers scorch. She looked down, surprised they didn’t glow with Brimstone embers. Then she looked up. His eyes were closed, almost as if he was in pain.

      “You should be inside. It’s safer,” Turov said.

      “Safer than here? In the garden? With you?” Victoria asked.

      He held her, but not close enough. The wide expanse of his chest was a foot away. She wanted to press against it, to feel his Brimstone heart beat against her cheek. Only with effort did she swallow the hum rising in her throat like a morning dove that sensed the dawn.

      “Yes. Definitely safer. You should keep a locked door between us,” Turov murmured, almost to himself. He relaxed his elbows. Her body immediately swayed toward him of its own volition. He allowed it. She allowed it. Long, heated seconds of her body leaning lightly against his. In forbidden time, it was an eternity. In real time, it was less than a minute. But it felt like the most intimate thing she’d ever done because he wasn’t a man that allowed any intimacy at all.

      She tried to soak in his Brimstone heat, his hardness, his smoky masculine scent that was somehow also green and earthy and fresh. A song rose within her, but it was a song she couldn’t allow herself to sing.

      Victoria stepped back and he let her go.

      “Good night, Adam,” she said.

      She retreated several steps and then she turned to the warmly lit cottage. She assumed Turov moved away as well. She didn’t look back to watch him go. She concentrated on placing one foot after another. She walked away. It was a triumph of willpower. She made it into the cottage and shut the door behind her. It was a testament to Turov’s heat that the cozy fire that greeted her seemed cold.

      * * *

      Adam strode to his spiral staircase and climbed to his rooms. Every step felt like a lie. Victoria beckoned. She called to him, a siren in a storm-tossed sea, and it would be just as disastrous for him as an unwary sailor if he heeded her song.

      Damnation.

      Adam braced himself as unbidden memories assailed him.

      He’d had a taste of spring that morning so many years ago. He could recall the crisp bite of it still. It had expanded his lungs with a chill that shivered happily along his spine. Outside the Order of Samuel’s compound, the mountain had been coming alive with tender green grasses and wildflowers. He’d walked around the struggling patches of color, inspired, but also frightened by their precarious hold on new life. A killing frost or a late snow at this elevation would end their struggle.

      He had identified.

      How many times had he tried to run away from the Order, getting a taste of life and freedom only to have it cut short when they dragged him back to the enclave?

      Malachi said he’d been taken in too late. Most novitiates were stolen from the cradle or gathered in before they could barely walk and talk. But Adam had been nine when he’d been “adopted.” He’d been stolen on a market day by a monk who’d taken advantage of the chaos and crowd to snag a healthy youth. Adam had been old enough to remember his mother and father and the lessons they had taught that had been so very different from the lessons that the Order tried to supplant them with.

      He remembered one failed escape more vividly than all the rest. That morning so long ago he’d breathed the fresh air deeply into lungs that were weakened from a long, damp winter. He’d known he might fail again, but at sixteen he’d been ready to try rather than be buried alive beneath evil zealotry. Malachi hadn’t been able to beat away the memory of his mother’s face or his father’s strict but fair hand. Malachi’s lash was cruel rather than strict. And there was nothing fair about being pressed into an Order of merciless killers.

      The mother’s milk of this mountain orphanage was blood.