Brimstone Seduction. Barbara J. Hancock

only sensed before.

      He wore a pair of low-slung shorts; all else was bared to the lamplight and her stunned gaze. She’d been to gyms. She’d seen people ripped for appearance or for health. This was so obviously not that.

      Severne walked into the room wiping his chest and arms and the back of his neck with a snow-white towel. He came around a beautiful desk that would have looked at home in a French palace, and Kat instinctively placed her cello case on the floor in front of her. She didn’t hide behind it...exactly, but she blushed when Severne saw the move for what it was. Defense. His gaze flicked from her face to the case and back again. Green eyes. Deep, dark green that had looked black when she’d seen him before at night.

      “I want to see him,” Kat replied, looking at John Severne during the day for the first time.

      He was still shadowed. There were few windows to let in outside light. Those that existed were heavily draped in black and red satin. But she could still see him better than before. What she saw confirmed what she’d already supposed. He was no polished gentleman. Almost nude, his hard, muscular body was too seriously honed to be called athletic.

      How had she ever supposed him to be human?

      She wasn’t a sculptor, but if she had been, she would have wept because Michelangelo was dead and a master should memorialize John Severne’s body. Yet the leanness of him, the lack of one ounce of spare flesh, was as painful as it was beautiful.

      He took not one second of ease.

      His tension was absolute.

      She knew this about him as surely as she knew how to coax the perfect note from a string.

      His pale skin, so harshly honed, was marked by more than exercise. There were faded scars across his chest, abdomen and back. She tried not to trace them with her eyes. Whatever suffering he endured—or courted—wasn’t hers to see. The black slashes of numerous tattoos down one arm from his shoulder to his elbow were almost as sacrosanct as the scars. Something private. She tried to look away, but the marks gleamed darkly like his hair and his eyes.

      “He’s having his lessons right now. I thought a semblance of normalcy would help him adjust. He seems bright. He’s definitely had schooling in spite of his unusual circumstances. But he’ll join us for dinner. Later tonight,” Severne said. “I’m glad you accepted my invitation.”

      The fine-cut lines of his lips stood out, or was it only the memory of the taste of them that made them seem noticeable to her?

      She could feel his Brimstone heat even at this distance. It prickled her skin as if she was in the same room with a roaring fire.

      How could she have stayed away?

      With the boy involved, it wasn’t a choice to her at all. But deeper parts of her had to acknowledge the pull of John Severne had influenced her decision to come to Baton Rouge as much, or more, than the child.

      He stood across from her, but he wasn’t even pretending to be relaxed. Not like before. His energy was there for her to see, barely contained. As if he might take her in his arms again if she said or did the wrong thing. Or the right thing. Depending on how you looked at it.

      The thought made her stand frozen, a rabbit who sensed a predator and feared to twitch a whisker in case the movement would lead it into a leap for the fox’s mouth rather than standing idle and waiting to be devoured.

      “What about Victoria? Where is my sister?” Kat asked.

      “I travel often,” Severne began. “Various business interests require my diligent attention. I wasn’t here when your sister disappeared, but I’m told she was—is—a brilliant Marguerite. The first performance of the season is two weeks away, and...”

      “She’s gone,” Kat said, as any hope that Reynard might have been wrong evaporated.

      “I came to you in Savannah and invited you here because there’s no evidence of foul play. She was performing under an assumed name, as I understand she often does. She told us she has a stalker. My manager was more than happy to accommodate her wishes to engage her stellar talent under an alias. I’m assuming I met this stalker last night? He seemed completely ignorant of her whereabouts. The only hope of finding your sister is in the clues she might have left among her life and friends here at l’Opéra Severne. If you follow in her footsteps...” Severne suggested. “I’m afraid there’s a distance between me and my employees that prevents me from discovering more about her disappearance.”

      He was a daemon. He couldn’t be trusted. And yet she was so conditioned to fear Reynard that this seemed better. Not safer, but better. He’d asked her here because Victoria had disappeared. There was more to it than that. There had to be. But walking away wasn’t an option. Not when the last place her sister had been seen was this opera house.

      “I might vanish without a trace, as well,” Kat said.

      “No. That won’t happen. I’m here now,” Severne said. “I won’t be called away again. You’ll have my undivided attention.”

      As if his mere presence would keep her safe. He was a daemon. Not a bodyguard. He might look like he could take on an army of Reynards, but it would be a mistake to trust him. Why should he stand at her back and protect her from the Order of Samuel and other daemons while she tried to ascertain what had happened to Victoria? He couldn’t have perfectly altruistic motives. He was a daemon. They weren’t known for noble intentions.

      “Play for me. Let me see what I’ve done in offering you a seat without an audition,” Severne challenged her.

      His bare muscular body stood out in stark relief against the polished antiques of his office. On the desk, several deep purple calla lilies sat in a crystal vase. Like Severne, the lilies stood out. A hint of passion, life, color...but their petals were stiff and perfect like Severne’s physique.

      Kat hesitated. She should walk away. Where better to leave a daemon child than with a daemon? But the memory of the boy’s angelic face and the hope of finding clues to her sister’s whereabouts held her in place.

      And pride.

      There was no denying the frisson of need that rose up in her when he said “Play for me” in his deep voice, smoothed by a creole accent less influenced by modern inflections probably because it had been influenced by Parisian émigrés decades ago. Daemons weren’t immortal, but they lived a very long time. If she played for him, she would be playing for someone who had heard celebrated masters play.

      Now he reined in his energy to appear more casual. He moved closer. She could detect a hint of smoky sandalwood, sweat and a lightly concentrated scent that was the heated air of the opera house itself settled on Severne’s hair and skin. The sensual impact of that recognition made her knees turn soft.

      She loved the theater scent. To breathe it on him messed with her equilibrium.

      He couldn’t be trusted. He smelled like heaven, but his veins flowed with the fires of hell.

      “Play for me, Katherine,” he repeated, and this time her eyelids closed against the compelling drawl in his words.

      “I’ll play for Victoria,” Kat said to cool whatever charge there was between them.

      Severne sat on a straight, tall-backed chair as if it was a throne. He’d placed the towel around his neck, and it hung there like a gentleman’s scarf. He waited for her to sit on a chair arranged across from him and open her case. She took out her cello and her bow. The familiar motions were a meditation even under Severne’s watchful eye.

      This was her best defense against the fascination building in her for this daemon she couldn’t avoid. She’d always used music to fight the pull that drew her to daemon blood. Maybe it would help her against the pull she felt for lips and lean muscled heat, for the musical history he’d lived through.

      But she couldn’t dismiss the fascination of centuries or the ears of a connoisseur.

      When she sat, when she played,