Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (35 page)

But who the hell cared?

Not her. Not while his tongue dove deep into her mouth, his erection pressed temptingly between her legs, and every nerve in her body jumped with wicked impatience.

She wanted Mac’s hands upon her body, his lips
plundering her mouth. She needed him moving inside her, slow and deep until the sweeping, thundering rush of ecstasy shattered her. She wanted to feel all these things. Time for weeping later.

As if they raced against fate, pulse-pounding urgency drove them onward. Hands fumbled with buttons and ribbons as they unwrapped each other, breath coming in quick gasps, her hair tumbling loose down her shivering spine. No whispered endearments. No playful banter. Just a powerful urge to lose themselves in the pleasure of the moment in case a moment was all they had.

He backed her against the bed, the two of them falling onto it, skin meeting skin. His body curving over hers as she caressed the scarred muscles of his back, his mouth making its delicious way down over her neck to her breasts. His tongue teased her nipples erect, his teeth grazing them until she arched into his tantalizing fingers.

Questions were driven away as they took comfort in the sinful need to escape. Fear and heartbreak pushed aside as he thrust hard into her, her hips lifting to welcome him. The tempo rapid as he pounded into her, flesh sweat-slicked and salty on her tongue, legs locked around his waist in a savage need to escape fate and a future apart.

Pressure claimed her as every muscle twisted tighter and tighter, friction drawing her satisfaction closer with every thrust. She opened her eyes, wanting to see his face, wanting to memorize every line and angle, the curve of his brow and the shadow on his jaw. His gaze met hers as if he strove to do the same, his eyes like twin embers, raging with lust and fire and
sinful greed. His face tightened, his jaw jumping, and with a cry he found his release. She tilted her hips to take him deeper, feeling her own desire peak, bliss spasming through her in a dazzling haze of sweet, arcing explosions. Tears stung her cheeks.

As he rolled her over onto his chest, his hands skimmed the line of her back, his touch once more gentle, his eyes no longer alive with a dangerous light but warm with mischief. “Pink and gold are my new favorite colors,
mi am’ryath
.”

Mac’s deep voice vibrated along her bones, his incredible heat keeping her warm despite the chill of the room. And yet, she was deaf and blind to it all. The answer bursting into her head like the spark of a kindled lamp in a dark room.

Am’ryath
.

The language of the Imnada.

Of course!

*   *   *

The second golden strand of hair shriveled and curled into dust upon her open palm, the endless sea of billowing smoke and exploding cinder fading into the crackle of her sitting room fire.

Close. Too close. The Imnada had almost recognized her intrusion. She’d felt him seeking her out, the questing touch of his mind invading the void where she lurked like a wraith. Only the ancient graybeard’s interruption had saved her from discovery. For that, perhaps she would spare him his life. She could afford to be generous now that her quarry had been cornered.

She leaned back in her chair, enjoying the silence of
her widow’s solitude. Alonzo would be here soon, his demands on her body no less fervid, though far more enjoyable, than poor dead Émile’s. But until then, she could bask in the full appreciation of her coming success, for with the knowledge gathered this afternoon she would reel Bianca Parrino in like a fish.

Bait the trap.

Catch an even greater prize.

Her quiet laughter shattered the stillness like a bomb blast, and tilting her hand, the line of gray ash drifted onto the floor, where a maid would sweep it away.

22

“How could we be so blind? It was staring us in the face all along and we never saw it.
I
never saw it.”

Bianca had donned a dressing gown as she rummaged among her books, but she could be wrapped in a coat of chain mail and still Mac would smell the spice and sex coming off her skin like the headiest of perfumes, taste her luscious core on his tongue. His cock hardened anew at thoughts of pearly flesh and tight, wet heat, and he fought back the urge to sling her across his shoulders and carry her back up to her bedchamber, where he’d peel off the silken slip of fabric with his teeth and stake his claim once and for all.

So much for keeping silent until he dealt with Renata Froissart.

Fangs extended, he felt the feral ruthlessness of his aspect like lava in his veins.

Bianca Parrino would bear his mark. She would carry his scent.

He would rip the throat out of anyone who dared harm her.

She belonged to him—now and forever.

Victory dancing in her eyes, she looked up from her book. “We can’t find
Aquameniustis
because there is no such plant. It doesn’t exist.”

From cock-hardening arousal to being doubled over as if he’d had the breath kicked out of him. “Are you saying Adam didn’t break the curse? There’s no way to stop the Fey-blood’s magic?”

“No. I’m not saying that at all.” Caught up in her discovery, she seemed completely unaware of the horrible despair closing over his head until he couldn’t breathe. “I’m saying between Adam’s poor handwriting and my own ignorance, I transcribed the notes incorrectly.” She slammed the book closed, snapping him free of his panic like a fist to the jaw. “Where’s the journal now?”

A throbbing pain lanced his temples; he wanted to be sick. “In my office at the Horse Guards.”

“Good. It doesn’t matter yet, but we might have to be certain when it comes down to it.” Her head remained buried in the book she held; she barely even glanced up to toss him a quick, reassuring smile.

Where was the bewitching siren who’d lured him onto his knees, her whimpers as she came around him sparking his answering release? He grabbed her, dragging her into a chair. “Bianca, please. Speak slowly and calmly. Is there or is there not a way for me to break the Fey-blood’s spell?”

She nodded. “I think so, yes.” A slim crease appeared on her forehead. “No, I don’t think. I know. I’m absolutely sure of it.”

Exhaustion rushed in to replace his earlier panic. “Explain.”

She pushed her hair back over her shoulder and
clasped her hands in her lap, her face aglow with a new strength. Not the showy dazzle of the actress or even the opalescent shine of the passionate lover, but a deep, calming light that turned her blue eyes to stars. “Adam wrote down the name of the plant, but in his haste and excitement he wrote it not in English or even Latin. He wrote it in the language of the Imnada. That’s how the plant was originally known to him, so that’s how he wrote it down. Like the
am’ryath
.”

“Then we learn what plant he meant and—”

“And we have the answer. Yes. The rest falls into place like links in a chain. The draught. The end of the curse. The lifting of your exile. You can go home, Mac. It will be over.” She swallowed, her hands tightening on the book she held, the light in her gaze dimming as if someone had shuttered a flame. “It will finally be over.”

He leaned in, cupping her face between his hands. “And if I’ve decided I don’t want it to be over just yet?”

“You don’t mean that.” Bianca gulped back a quick breath. “Not really. All you’ve wanted, all you’ve fought for, has been to break the curse and rejoin the clans. What if you give that up for me and then come to regret it?”

Here, then, was his choice. The vow he’d not been able to say because to do so would set him upon an irrevocable course—a course taking him away from his safeguarded clan holding. Away from the open moors and misted vales of home.

“It won’t happen, Bianca.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“I’m more certain of what I feel for you than of anything since I turned my back on my father’s suffocating grief and left Concullum to join the army.”

“How can you give up your dream?”

He leaned in to kiss her, feeling the rightness of his choice sing in every cell in his body as their lips met. “By taking on a new one,
alanna
.”

*   *   *

“Well? You know the language. What do you think?” Bianca pushed Adam’s journal across to Mac.

Upon their arrival at Deane House, Bianca had hustled Mac through the halls to the library, praying she’d not run into Sarah. The woman had a knack for sniffing out scandal, and it wouldn’t take more than a tilt of her nose to smell the delicious contentment curling off Bianca like smoke.

No, she would face the questions when they came, accept every I-told-you-so her friend uttered, but not yet.

She wanted time alone with Mac. Time to discover the habit he had of running a hand through his hair when he read and to recognize the single-minded intensity he maintained even at rest. She needed to commit to memory the male scent of him and the way his lashes swept down over his high cheekbones like shadows. And finally, she sought to remember the tingling, bubbling happiness that tugged at her lips and sent butterflies fluttering through her stomach whenever their eyes met in a moment of shared desire.

All these moments she would lock away in her heart so that if the worst happened, she would not forget. Ever.

“It could be”—he turned the journal sideways, squinted at the slash and loop of every letter—“it looks like ‘Og’mnithris.’ ”

She observed his long fingers, the sprinkling of hairs upon the back of his hand, the silver-white scars on his wrist from the Frenchman’s ropes, and an ache pressed against her chest and under her ribs with the power of this new emotion. “Never heard of it.”

“Nay, it’s as you said. It’s a word in the language of the Imnada. A language hardly spoken anymore.”

“But Adam spoke it.”

“Aye, he did.”

“So, what does it mean? What’s Og’mnithris?”

Mac rubbed his chin, his cat-slanted green eyes locked on the word, his gaze distant. “It’s a small shrub. Grows in river basins and near streambeds, anywhere swift water moves. In English, it would be . . . it would be called death-bringer.”

“What kind of a name is that for a healing herb?”

He touched the aromatic sprig of rosemary that lay pressed between the pages of the book. “It isn’t used by healers, Bianca. The Ossine burn the leaves and inhale the smoke. They say it carries them beyond their bodies and through the Gateway, where they’re reunited with the ancestors.”

“So it’s a narcotic or an opiate. A substance that makes one see illusions.”

“No, Bianca. There’s nothing of illusion about it. To inhale the smoke is to indeed tear free of the body and walk into death. But it’s temporary. The body remains alive to welcome the wandering soul back. To actually ingest death-bringer would be fatal. The rift would be irrevocable. The body would die, the soul left as naught more than a shade with no anchoring form to return to.”

A chill swept over her as if a window had been
thrown open, the air suddenly dank and cold like the must of a newly opened crypt. She shook off the sensation with effort, though the prickles of gooseflesh running up and down her spine remained. “Then you must have read it wrong. It can’t be the plant you know.”

His face grew solemn, his gaze distant as if he saw something invisible to her. “No, this is the final key, the solution we’ve been searching for. I feel it as if Adam whispers it in my ear.”

She cast a swift glance around, half prepared to catch a glimpse of an apparition. “But Adam didn’t die. He broke the curse. I saw him at night. He was himself, not a ghost or a . . . or a hallucination.”

He focused on her again with a shrug of his shoulders. “I can’t explain how he did it. Only what I know. Death-bringer is powerful magic and, in the hands of anyone but the Ossine, poison.”

“Then it’s as you said: there is no answer. No way to break the curse.”

“No, Bianca. You’ve found it. Don’t you see? Without your help, I never would have known what to look for. I never would have come as far as I have. It’s just as you said, Adam broke the curse. He used the death-bringer. And so must I if I’m to finally be rid of the Fey-blood’s magics.”

“What if something goes wrong?” She pinched her lips together in a rush of exhaled breath. “What if the poison kills you?”

Another shrug, as if death were as trivial as a missed meal. “Then I die, Bianca. But I die knowing I made the attempt.”

“I don’t want to lose you. Not now. Not when I’ve only just found you.”

“You’ll not lose me.” He tipped her face to his, his mouth curled into a heartbreaking smile, though sorrow touched the corners of his eyes. “Trust me.”

She blinked away tears. “How did I know you were going to say that?”

*   *   *

Descending the front steps, Mac met Lord Deane coming from the mews, his face drawn, his gaze grim. “Come to grovel an apology at her feet?”

Mac collared him, nerves raw, emotions running like a river in spate. “Look, Fey-blood. I’ve no choice but to tolerate you, but don’t push it.”

Deane’s eyes flicked to the hand on his lapel, gold flashing in his somber eyes. “Gray warned me you were the perfect soldier. Question nothing. Toe the line. Do as you’re ordered. No matter the cost to you or others. Does he paint an accurate picture?”