Brimstone Seduction. Barbara Hancock J.

she played, the water around the calla lily stems rippled, though the perfect petals remained calm.

      She didn’t.

      Her skin flushed.

      Her thighs tensed.

      Her breathing and heartbeat increased.

      This was no audition. It might be a test for him or for her, but it was no audition.

      Music had always been her protection. Now instead of sheltering her, the sound rose up and filled the room, swelling out to envelop a creature who obviously held himself apart as if she would embrace him and seek to soften his iron edge.

      In spite of his obvious discipline, Severne was touched. She could feel his response. Could see his chest expand and contract.

      She wouldn’t believe it. She couldn’t. His tenderness had to be a lie. The truth was in the muscle and tendon there for her to see and the fire in his blood she could feel.

      She told herself that this was a bargain. He would offer her a place and she could search for her sister while being close to the daemon child if she played well enough to pass muster. But she didn’t want simply to perform well. Always before, when Reynard found her, she fled, she hid. Not this time. This time boldness had led her here to help the boy, to find her sister.

      And to John Severne.

      Something was different in her. She could feel the blood rushing in her veins as if she’d come alive for the first time.

      She wanted to touch him.

      Though her hands were on the neck of her cello and the bow, it was Severne she tried to reach. His cheeks above his perfect, angular jaw darkened with some emotion she couldn’t name. His eyelids lowered to half-mast over his deep green eyes. His hard chest rose and fell as if he needed oxygen to cope with what her music made him feel. His response was heady. More so than a theater full of patrons. Her life was about hiding. Subsuming herself in the music of her cello so she couldn’t be found. But, here, now, she played to be felt, seen, heard, and her music was a call for the intimacy she’d always avoided.

      “Enough,” he ordered, and her hands faltered. The bow dropped from the strings and her fingers stilled. But her body continued to tremble. She wasn’t used to reaching out. She moistened her lips. It was as if they’d been in a heated embrace and he’d been the one to break it off and push her away. “Enough,” he repeated, and he stood abruptly.

      Katherine stood in response. Again, it was more adrenaline that came to her rescue than courage. She wouldn’t slump defeated in her chair. The rush she experienced in his presence wouldn’t allow it. Her best defense had failed because of that rush. She lifted her chin. She held her cello to the side so she wouldn’t seem to cower behind it again.

      Severne’s gaze froze her in place in spite of the heat she could feel from the Brimstone. He looked angry. She had played for him just as he’d asked, but he looked like he might want to throw her out of the opera house.

      Never mind the boy.

      Never mind Victoria.

      She couldn’t let that happen.

      “I’m not leaving,” Kat said.

      Severne met her wide-eyed stare. He didn’t soften. He didn’t ask her to leave or to play again.

      “A bargain, then. You’ll stay. You’ll...play. But only in the orchestra pit with the other musicians or for personal rehearsals. Not for me. And I’ll help you find your sister,” he said.

      He crossed the room until they were side by side, but it wasn’t until he walked away that she realized his nearness had distracted her from the calla lily he’d dropped into her open cello case. Its deep purple bloom looked almost black in the dim light.

      Never trust a daemon.

      But the lily wasn’t a gift. It was only a payment for her song.

      Her playing hadn’t displeased him. He had liked it. More than that, he’d been affected by it.

      He’d paid for her performance because the music had touched him.

      Kat sat again before her trembling legs could give out beneath her. The cello she gripped in one hand wasn’t nearly as comforting as it usually was. Her best defense hadn’t only failed against this particular daemon. It had become something else between them...a seductive promise. He didn’t want her to play for him again because her song breached his defenses. Her inhalations still came quicker than they should. Her skin was heated though the fire had left the room. She shivered in the sudden chill. This was a mistake. But it was one she had to make. For the boy. For her sister.

      She had to brave John Severne in order to find her sister even if her music was no shield against him.

      Quietly she slowed her breathing and calmed her heart. She vowed never to play for him alone again and to guard against her fascination with the daemon master of l’Opéra Severne.

      Because the calla lily hadn’t only been payment for her song. It had been a last-minute substitute. Her lips tingled. He’d been as hungry as she was for another kiss.

       Chapter 4

      Her bags were taken to a room off the corridors that surrounded the opera hall itself. They wound in concentric circles with the apartments set like the spokes in a giant wheel. It was dizzying, the walls a kaleidoscope of rich cherry wainscoting filled with elaborate carvings like the first hall she’d traversed to reach Severne’s offices.

      Her passage was lit by flickering sconces that made her wonder if the almost subliminal hiss her ears detected was air conditioning or gas to fuel primitive lamps. The dancing light made the carvings gambol around her in tumbling shadows. But it was her playing for John Severne that had upset her equilibrium. The music echoed mockingly in her ears. Too. Too hungry. Too evocative. Too needy of his reaction. Any reaction. The uncertain light made her path waver, but she wouldn’t have been firmly grounded even if there had been bright runway lights.

      He was hard. Both physically and mentally. To touch him with her music, even for a second, had been too heady for her own good. He wasn’t a man. He was a monster. He was a being all human souls had been taught to fear for centuries. But as the night deepened, the flutter in her stomach didn’t feel like fear. Not exactly.

      Her room was beside her sister’s. Supposedly Victoria’s room had remained untouched. When Kat tiptoed hesitantly in, not wanting to disturb the dust and silence, the room taunted her. It wasn’t empty. Seeing the normal, everyday mess her sister was prone to create—silk slippers tossed to the side, smudged tissues on the vanity table, the pale ivory stockings from her costume rinsed out and long since dry on the bathroom rack—tightened Kat’s lungs until each stale breath hurt. The air tasted bitter on her tongue.

      If Victoria had been free to sing and build a reputation under her own name, she would have been a much bigger star than a regional theater would hope to hire, but Vic loved to perform. It didn’t matter how or where. She could almost feel her sister’s anticipation for performance in the air.

      Gone.

      She’d known it. But seeing it was too final, too real. She sniffed the faint, weeks-old hint of Victoria’s perfume, and tears prickled.

      She stopped in the center of the room and willed them away, widening her eyes. She was not going to hide behind tears. She was here for a reason, and grief wouldn’t help her sister now. Katherine waited until her eyes were so dry they hurt. Then she forced an inventory of every detail.

      What had happened?

      There was no evidence of violence. All was painfully normal and undisturbed. Victoria could walk in at any second complaining about the lack of honey for her tea. But as the seconds ticked by, Katherine knew waiting for her sister’s familiar tread was in vain.

      Gone.