Brimstone Seduction Read Free Page A

she still refused to join forces with Reynard against him.
    â€œWe need more time to negotiate,” he said as if they sat at a boardroom table. “I can arrange that.”
    She’d seen Reynard fight before, but when the energy she’d sensed in Severne erupted, the ferocity of his clash with her lifelong tormentor took her by surprise.
    Reynard was in trouble.
    Severne used only his body—fists, feet, arms and legs—but he used them in a graceful dance of martial arts moves meant to be deadly. The tuxedo he wore was revealed inch by inch as his coat was shredded away by Reynard’s blade.
    John Severne was in trouble, too.
    When a particularly vicious slice cut the fabric away from his muscled chest to reveal a hard, sculpted body, she blinked the sight away, but not before she cringed at the dark rivers of his blood.
    After Reynard, there was always the desperate flight and the need to hide again. This time she’d flee for two. For the first time, she imagined what it must have been like for her mother to protect them from the obsessed monk. It had been a lost cause. But she had never stopped trying.
    â€œWe have to go,” she said to the boy. The fight was the diversion they needed to get away. She pulled him up into her arms again and ran. He clung to her this time, wrapping his legs around her waist and his arms around her neck, subdued by all he’d seen.
    * * *
    The absence of her cello made her ache. It wasn’t a missing limb. It was a missing chamber of her heart. There was nothing to be done. She couldn’t go back for it. She had gone to her apartment for a few necessities, but had sought shelter in the house of a friend who was out of town rather than risk Reynard knowing her current address. She moved often. It never mattered.
    He always found her eventually.
    While the boy slept, she looked up driving directions to Baton Rouge. She couldn’t ignore her concern for Victoria any longer. They’d been out of touch too long, and Reynard’s appearance only confirmed her fear. Urgency pounded in her temples to no avail. She couldn’t fly because she had no papers for the child. He wouldn’t even give her his name. If Reynard defeated the daemon, he would hunt her down. She didn’t have much time to save the daemon boy and find her sister. She’d called Victoria’s phone again and again. The cheery voice mail greeting became more ominous with every repeat. And what of John Severne? Had he ended up with his throat slashed and Brimstone-burned back to wherever he’d come from, or did she need to fear him as well as Reynard?
    â€œLet me take the boy,” he’d said.
    But every fiber in her body had resisted. It was her fault Reynard had found the boy’s mother. It was her responsibility to protect him.
    The boy had refused to talk, but he’d seemed to understand everything she’d said. He’d also refused to let her out of his sight until he finally fell asleep. His dark lashes against his chubby cheeks gave him an angelic mien against his borrowed pillow. She’d smoothed his soft hair back from his forehead to kiss it, finding the extra warmth beneath his skin pleasant instead of frightening.
    After that, the loss of her cello didn’t matter.
    She’d curled her legs under her in a nearby armchair, determined to watch over the boy through the night.
    But a noise outside interrupted the tea she’d made to calm herself. It had been cooling untouched anyway. She’d been replaying every word Severne had spoken. She’d even closed her eyes to remember the song of his voice, to gauge what was the truth about the daemon—his drawl or the deadly way he’d used his whole body as a weapon. His anger or the way he’d restrained his impatience with her resistance.
    At the sound of a step on the front porch, she rose from the chair beside the boy’s bed.
    She didn’t know whom she most