Sounds of abandoned ecstasy tumbled from her throat, and he brought his mouth back to hers in a deep, demanding kiss, his fingers flowing in and out of her.

A rumble of surprise resonated in his chest when he felt her fingers wrap around his cock. Again, he wrestled with his control, needing to last even as the sensation of her hand on him pushed him perilously close to madness.

“You’ve magic in your hands, sorceress,” he managed to gasp as she stroked him.

“This is a spell only we can create.”

It seemed unreal, that the woman he caressed and kissed, and who caressed and kissed him back, was Livia, the woman for whom he burned but could not have. Now they were here together, in this conjured bed, making one another moan and sigh with pleasure. Carnal need built, testing his resolve to go slowly.

“Need my mouth on you,” he said, hoarse. “Need to drink you up, swallow you whole.”

“My appetite is far from sated.” She arched her eyebrow, the wickedest woman beneath the stars, and he the lucky bastard sharing her bed. “Lay back.”

He responded to her command, stretching out his long body. When she positioned herself above him, her hips over his mouth while she faced toward his feet, he couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs. His hands gripped her hips, lowering her to his mouth. At the same time, he felt her breath upon his cock. The first stroke of his tongue against her was the culmination of every desire.

Yes yes yes yes.

Her flavor was exquisite, the feel of her on his tongue sublime. And the way she tasted him, drawing his cock in and out of her clever mouth . . . perhaps he had stayed in the realm of the dead. Perhaps he had been forgiven and this was the promised reward of perfect bliss.

He heard and felt her scream in release, his cock in her mouth, his lips drawing pleasure from her quim. He had brought her a kind of pleasure when she had been trapped in her ghostly form, but this was real, her shudders and cries were real. He had given this to her, him and no other.

They made this together, their shared selves creating pleasure.

For the first time in his life, he wanted to brand himself upon another. Mark her as his. Only one man upon the face of the earth would ever bestow this pleasure upon her. Him.

His possessiveness—unexpected, unfamiliar—shook him. Yet he was too far immersed in sensation. He could only obey the increasingly primal demands of his heart and body. So he continued to lap at her, thrusting his tongue inside her, and she cried out and trembled. Over and over, he brought her to climax. And all the while, she sucked at him, bands of fiery sensation radiating outward through his body.

Yet it still was not enough. He wanted all of her.

“More,” he demanded, pulling away. He moved quickly, flipping her onto her back. He knelt between her legs, hands gripping her taut thighs, gazing down at her. She looked up at him, eyes dark as mystery, skin flushed and lightly glistening with sweat, her arms stretched overhead to grip the edge of the couch. She was so vividly alive his eyes burned and his throat ached.

“Everything, Bram,” she said with her siren’s voice. “I’ve been without for over a thousand years. Give me everything.”

He lifted her hips, raising them up from the cushion. Then, in one stroke, sank into her.

He sounded like a beast, like an animal, the wordless growls he made, but he didn’t care and he couldn’t stop.

Her hands clasped the edge of the couch, the sleek muscles of her arms tight as she pushed herself closer. Lamplight touched the rounds and hollows of her body. Her eyes closed. She threw back her head, exposing the curve of her throat, and cried out.

Much as he wanted to move and lose himself in the primal demands of his body, he held still, reveling in the sensation of her all around him, of him as deep within her as he could be. They had shared thoughts, and while that connection had been severed, they could share this profound closeness, their bodies joined so intimately.

He drew back his hips, then slid forward. His thrusts were deliberate, measured, for all that he wanted to simply pound into her. But this slow drag and plunge gave such boundless pleasure he refused to go any faster. This had to last forever. He would make their sex into the whole of the world.

“Yes, Bram, yes, you are so . . . yes . . .” Her words ran together, and he adored her, this cunning, ruthless woman who gave herself and took from him immoderately.

His thrusts grew stronger, deeper. Her breasts shook with the force of their bodies moving together.

“This is what you wanted,” he growled. “What we needed.”

Her only response was to moan and urge her hips closer to his.

With one hand on her hip, he brought the other between her legs. He stroked and rubbed at her pearl, feeling its readiness beneath his fingers. She arched up with a cry, contracting around him.

Seeing her in the throes of her climax, he could not stop his own response. His release poured forth, incendiary. He lost himself in the pleasure, in her, as it surged on and on. His body shook, his heart opened, he was ablaze with sensation. Only when the very last tremors wracked him did he sink down, spent and devastated and vast as the sun, to lay beside her.

They were quiet together, bodies slick with sweat, the only sounds their breath slowly returning to normal. He ran his hand along the length of her thigh and discovered goose bumps, and only then did he realize how chilled it was within the warehouse. He found a woven blanket draped at the other end of the couch, and drew it over them both.

She wrapped her body around him. Here was another sensation he’d never known—not merely the fulfillment of his own needs, nor the smug acknowledgment that he’d given his lover pleasure, but that they had created ecstasy together, a selfless giving and taking.

“A thousand years is a small price to pay.” Her voice was a sleepy murmur, gratifyingly satisfied. Her fingers traced shapes on his chest.

“Not if you know what you’re missing.” He waited for the sense of restlessness that usually arrived after he’d concluded his bedsport. It never materialized. There was nowhere he wanted to be more than here, in this drafty warehouse by the river, the gloom barely held back by the lantern, the scent of sluggish water and layers of dust heavy in the air. These were not a voluptuary’s ideal conditions. But having Livia nestled in his arms, both slack and languorous from what surely was the most intense lovemaking he had ever experienced—he could think of nothing finer.

He felt none of the clinging darkness within himself, the shadowed thoughts that invariably crept in. From bed to bed he had leapt, finding relief from that pall during moments of base pleasure. The darkness always quickly returned, however.

For once, his demons were silent.

The actual demons were still a danger, the war with them and the forces of the underworld looming like a storm. Success was uncertain. Yet for now, here were beasts he could defeat.

He felt Livia’s limbs relax against him, and he indulged himself by stroking her shoulder, her arm, and the curve of her waist.

“You should have been a priestess of Venus,” he murmured.

She made a soft scoffing noise. “I’d no interest in advancing the cause of love. That was for girls with no ambition. Choosing the path of magic brought us here.”

“All roads lead to this moment.”

Her shoulders rose and fell. “The other priestesses, they said that everyone’s fates were already inscribed. The three deathless sisters spun, measured and cut the threads of our life. What could any mortal do but let their thread be severed? Myself, I believe the gods merely watch, and do nothing. The thread is ours to spin. Whether it is to be knotted or straight, short or long, that’s for us to decide.”

“Not a very priestess-like stance.”

“When it came to the devotional aspects of my duties, I did not excel.” Yet she smiled as she said this, and he smiled with her.

His smile faded as he stared up at the shadow-shrouded beams. “A baron’s son, well-favored, rich. Obliged to no one, as a second son. The world bent to my will. So I thought. The Colonies taught me otherwise. Nothing but chaos and destruction there. A good man or a sinner, scrupulous plans or adrift on the current—none of it mattered. Everything resulted in death.”

Her arms tightened around him, and he realized how bleak his voice sounded.

“Only one end to this journey of life,” he said. “None of us can avoid it.”

“You did,” she noted. “Only today.”

He needed no reminder. That shade would chill him the rest of his days. “I’ll have to make that voyage again, with no coming back. It’s inevitable. However,” he added, seeing her solemn expression, “what we do with the intervening years, that is our decision, and the measure of our consequence.”

She levered herself up, leaning on his chest. Cupping his face with her hands, she bent forward and kissed him, a kiss of unexpected sweetness. She pulled back enough to look into his eyes.

“We aren’t paragons, you and I,” she whispered. “The way of goodness does not come easily to us. Perhaps therein lies the secret. To see the more difficult course, and to choose it, anyway.”

“Sage counsel.” He brushed back a few clinging strands of hair from her forehead.

Her smile was wry. “I had over a thousand years to reflect on my shortcomings. Given enough time, and with a proper amount of boredom, anyone can become a philosopher.”

He pulled her back for another kiss. Her mouth was supple and eager against his, and he felt himself stirring again, wanting her.

The kiss ended in sensuous increments, until they broke apart and she settled against him with a sigh. He loved the feel of her hands on him, her breath soft against his flesh as she fell asleep.

Gathering her close, he continued to stare into the darkness. He’d no knowledge what the following day would bring. More revelations. More danger. The hazard of death all over again. Worse, the possibility of literal hell on earth.

As she slept in his embrace, he remained awake, in vigil, refusing to grant himself slumber’s oblivion.

He’d died today. And his single thought, as he lay dying on the floor of his father’s deserted house, had not been for the Hellraisers, nor the fight against the Devil. He’d only thought of Livia. This same thought came to him now.

I’m lost without her.


Livia started awake. She had heard something, the faintest noise, yet it had penetrated the depths of her sleep. Sitting up, she felt Bram’s arm warm and heavy across her waist. It surprised her that, with his keen senses, he continued to slumber. There it was again, that sound. As if someone walked back and forth, sandals rasping against the stone floor.

The room in which she had awakened was not the warehouse. Glancing around, she saw elegant marble columns, frescoes of pastoral scenes, and mosaics inlaid upon the floor. Light from oil lamps painted the chamber in flickering gold. Platters of apricots, almonds, and spiced cake sat atop a low table. Someone in another chamber played upon a flute, the notes low and coaxing.

A bronze silk tunic lay across the end of the couch, and Livia slipped it on as she rose to investigate. Bram did not stir.

She walked from the chamber, down a corridor lined with burning torches. This was no warehouse, but a villa, precisely the sort she had known in Rome, and Londinium. Everything she passed sparked pained recognition, from the braziers perfuming the air to the pots of rosemary placed between supporting columns. Through the narrow windows, the night sky sparkled, free of coal smoke and choking fog. It had been an age since she had seen a truly clean sky.

The villa stretched on, and she followed the sound of footsteps. Yet as she walked, she passed no one. No other inhabitants, no servants, no slaves. Wariness marked her steps, but she did not stop. She needed to know who was pacing back and forth, and what they wanted.

Turning a corner, she found herself in an open courtyard. Here grew carefully trimmed Cyprus trees, and a fountain trickled in the center of the courtyard, a bronze sculpture of a nymph bearing an amphora standing atop the fountain. More torches burned here, and a feast had been set up, with roasted partridge, oranges, and goblets of wine.

She stepped into the courtyard. The footsteps grew louder, and she bit down an oath when a man emerged from the shadows beneath the arcade. He wore a nobleman’s silk tunic and robe, a large ruby-studded pin fastening the robe at his shoulder, and more gold and rubies adorned his fingers. His snow-white hair was short but brushed forward in the popular fashion. The irises of his eyes were also the color of ice, and just as cold.