Magic In The Storm (35 page)

“Ah, this is my new friend, Mr. Morgan
Vallentyn,” Kean said with a sly smile on his face and broad wink
to Morgan.

Sarah’s eyes widened, showing their deep blue
depths, her perfect pink mouth opened to form a perfect O.

“Mr. Vallentyn, Miss Sarah Jordan,” Mr. Kean
said, finishing the introduction.

Morgan bowed to the woman and she executed a
graceful curtsy for him.

She then gave Morgan a most dazzling smile.
“Mr. Vallentyn, it is indeed an honor to meet you. I’ve always
wanted to meet a truly powerful Vallen,” she said, slowly moving
forward so that by the time she finished speaking, she was gently
laying her hand on Morgan’s chest in the most intimate manner.

Morgan couldn’t tear his eyes away from the
blond beauty, nor did he think he would ever want to. Oddly enough,
he wasn’t certain that his mind was working quite the way it
normally did. He felt thick and slow—as opposed to another part of
his anatomy, which had certainly thickened and was growing harder
with each passing moment he was in the presence of this incredibly
beautiful woman.

“That, that is very kind of you, Miss,
er...”

“Jordan, but please, call me Sarah,” she
said, her voice becoming just the tiniest bit raspy as if there was
a great passion within her she was desperately trying to
control.

Morgan nodded. “Sarah. It is a beautiful
name. You are Vallen too?” he asked, just beginning to grasp that
she knew that he was one.

“Oh, yes. But alas, I am not very powerful at
all. I wish I were. I want to be a great actress and have the
ability to enthrall my audience the way Mr. Kean does.”

“I’m sure if you keep working at it, you’ll
be able to do very well,” Morgan said, encouragingly. He was
immediately glad he did, for Sarah, in her pleasure at his words,
pressed herself against him and gave him a warm hug.

“
Thank you, Mr.
Vallentyn. You are so kind to say so—oh!”

This last exclamation, Morgan was certain,
came from the fact that she had pressed herself right up against
his manhood, which was now straining against the flap of his
breeches.

Morgan felt his face burn. “I beg your
pardon!” he said, and quickly extracted himself from her
embrace.

Her cheeks also turned a pretty shade of pink
and her eyes slipped downwards. “That’s perfectly all right,” she
giggled. “I do sometimes have that effect on men.”

“Sometimes?” Mr. Kean said, laughing. “Try
all the time. You have to be very careful, Mr. Vallentyn. Our
Sarah, here, is quite, er...”

“Intoxicating,” Lord Byron finished for
him.

“Excellent word! Yes, intoxicating.” He gave
Morgan a knowing smile.

Morgan looked back at Sarah, but she didn’t
seem to mind the turn in conversation at all—she seemed to revel in
it.

“Well, if you’d like to taste some more, Mr.
Vallentyn, you need only to come knock on my door. I live just
around the corner. It is the house with blue shutters, number 64.”
She gave him a broad smile and a wink, before gracefully flowing
from the room.

“I’m terribly sorry about that, Mr.
Vallentyn,” Mr. Kean said. “I certainly did not inform Sarah you
would be here, nor did I intend for you to meet... well, Miss
Hayden is a lovely young lady,” he finished weakly, which was very
unusual for him. It caught Morgan’s attention.

He was still staring at the closed door, but
he quickly called himself to order, especially upon hearing
Adriana’s name. “Er, thank you, but she and I, well, we aren’t...
It was very nice to meet Miss, er, Sarah.”

“Oh? I do apologize, I had thought...”

“No apology necessary. Your assumption would
have been correct, except that Adriana informed me a few days ago
that she no longer wished to see me,” he said, finding it didn’t
hurt quite as much now as it had even earlier that evening.

“I am terribly sorry,” Mr. Kean said, looking
concerned.

“Well, I am not going to continue to brood
over it,” Morgan said forcefully, for himself as much as his new
found friends.

“Certainly not,” Mr. Kean said.

“Perhaps you should take Sarah up on her
offer, in that case. You will not regret it, I assure you,” Lord
Byron said, with a small smile playing on his lips.

Morgan frowned, wondering just how well Lord
Byron knew the young lady. The heat of anger began to build up
within him when Kean put a calming hand on his arm.

“Here, now, Mr. Vallentyn, you are still
under Sarah’s enthrall. Just calm yourself down.”

He pulled his eyes away from Lord Byron with
some difficulty, and turned towards Mr. Kean. “Sarah’s
enthrall?”

“Why, yes, didn’t you realize? That’s how her
magic works—she enthralls men. Gets them all riled up, hot and
aching for her. I can’t tell you how many men have fought duels
over the girl. But it is her magic, that is all.”

Morgan shook his head. He couldn’t believe he
hadn’t been aware that Sarah had used magic on him. He hadn’t
sensed it at all. He’d only felt... as Mr. Kean said, all riled
up.

“That is why I hadn’t intended for you to
meet, but now I suppose there was no harm done. And there is
certainly nothing wrong with a little, er, riling every so often,
now is there?” Mr. Kean said, laughing. “But for now, what say you
to a nice dinner and a bottle of wine?” he continued, quickly
moving toward finishing dressing.

“Ah, yes,” Lord Byron said, “I’ve just the
place in mind.”

V
ery well done,
Mary,” Tatiana said, impressed. “I almost despaired of your ability
to handle this, but you have done very well, my dear, very
well.”

Mary frowned, and said in a testy tone, “Of
course I was able to handle this. It was not so very difficult
after all.”

“Oh, no? Tell me all,” Tatiana said, settling
herself on her sofa.

“Well, I followed him, as we agreed I
should,” Mary began. “He sat in Lord Byron’s box, which is very
close to my own, so it was not so easy to see him during the show.
But during the intermission and afterwards, I waited for him just
outside. He didn’t leave the box during the intermission, as some
people came to visit with Lord Byron, but after the show, they went
backstage, just as you thought they would.”

Tatiana handed Mary a cup of tea.

She stirred it quietly for a moment, then
continued, “The rest was very easy. I simply found Miss Jordan in
her dressing room and gave her your note. She had no problem going
into Mr. Kean’s dressing room and when she came out she gave me a
smile and a wink, so I knew that everything was all set.”

“Very good. Very good!” Tatiana helped
herself to a cream cake. “No man can resist Sarah. She is a
talented Vallen,” she laughed.

Mary gave her a little smile. “What is it
that Miss Jordan does? What is her power?”

Tatiana smiled at her daughter. “She is a
seductress. No man can say no to her, whatever she asks of
them.”

Mary’s eyes grew wide. “That’s quite a skill
to have.”

“It is a very useful one,” Tatiana
agreed.

Mary sipped at her tea. “So what have you
asked her to do to Morgan?”

Tatiana scowled at her thick headed daughter.
“I told her to do whatever is necessary to turn his eyes away from
Adriana. What did you think, fool?”

Mary flinched at the careless insult that
whipped from Tatiana’s tongue. Someday, Tatiana prayed, someday she
wished just one of her children would show some semblance of
intelligence.

“So when will Vallentyn wed? Do you already
have everything arranged?” Mary asked, rubbing at her arm.

The remnants of Tatiana’s rage began to burn
once more. “No,” she hissed. “Your brother was unable to convince
Adriana to marry him. Even that imbecile Devaux couldn’t force the
chit to the altar.”

She stood up and walked to the fireplace.
With a careless wave of her hand, she made a blazing fire appear.
“I am surrounded by incompetent men!”

Mary was watching the fire with wide eyes
that she then turned to Tatiana. “So what are you going to do? How
will you get Morgan back to the forest?”

Tatiana picked up the poker and tapped it
against her hand, thinking. “Sarah will use her delicious wiles on
our dear boy. There is no way he cannot be entranced by her. So all
we need to do...” Tatiana could feel the heat of her anger turn
into a warmth of satisfaction, “...is make certain that Adriana is
kept informed of her lover’s whereabouts. Who he has seen, and
exactly what he was doing.”

“How will that help?” Mary asked, looking
completely baffled.

Tatiana sighed and explained it all in
painstaking detail for her daughter, and then wondered how she’d
managed to have seven children without one of them inheriting her
intelligence.

<><><>

“Mr. Vallentyn! What a very pleasant
surprise,” Sarah said, moving from the pale pink sofa to greet
him.

“Good evening. I hope I’m not disturbing
you,” he said, suddenly feeling a little shy.

“Oh, no, not at all. In fact, I was hoping
you would come,” she said, taking his hand, and gently pulling him
further into her flower–scented drawing room. It was all very pink
and feminine, Morgan thought, feeling overly large and ungainly
amidst her delicate furniture. Everything was built on spindly legs
that looked as if they might break if he did so much as look at
them too hard.

Surprisingly, the sofa took both his and
Sarah’s weight.

“It was quite thrilling to have met you
yesterday evening,” Sarah began in her soft, slightly husky voice.
“As I said then, I’ve never met a Vallen as powerful as you. I
still can hardly imagine all that magic dwelling inside one person,
even such a large, strong, handsome man like you.” She ran her
fingers up Morgan’s arm, sending chills chasing through his
body.

He swallowed and tried to control his heart,
which was suddenly pounding in his chest. “Well, I, er, I
understand you are a seductress,” he said, and then cringed with
embarrassment.

But Sarah only laughed. “Ah, did Mr. Kean
tell you, then? Yes, that is my meager little power.” She then sat
back to look at him, meeting his eyes with her own eyes. “You don’t
mind, do you?” she asked, fluttering her thick, black eyelashes at
him.

“No,” Morgan tried to say, but somehow his
voice didn’t seem to be working so well. He cleared his throat and
tried again. “No, I don’t mind at all. It is why... well, I
thought...”

“You thought you might like to learn about my
powers for yourself? To, shall we say, experience them first
hand?”

“Er, yes.” A trickle of sweat rolled down
Morgan’s back. “If you don’t mind,” he added hastily.

“How could I possibly mind? Even if you
weren’t so incredibly handsome,” she said, looking into his eyes,
“and powerfully built. My goodness, look at the size of you,” she
whispered pushing his coat back, off of his shoulders. “Oh, Mr.
Vallentyn, just looking at you, just being with you...” She pulled
back as he shrugged out of his coat, and ran her hands suggestively
down her bosom, which was spilling out from her very low cut dress.
“You give me the tingles.”

And indeed, Morgan could see the points of
her nipples straining against the material of her dress. Oddly
enough, he couldn’t seem to pull his eyes away from her breasts. He
knew that he shouldn’t stare, but something, her magic perhaps,
kept him focused right there. His mouth watered at the sight of
them—so full and beautiful. He wanted to taste them, and explore
them.

“It’s all right, Mr. Vallentyn, go ahead,”
she whispered, pulling her bodice down to reveal her beautiful
body.

He did not need to be told twice, but
immediately buried his face in between them, caressing them with
his hands and his lips. His tongue swirled over and around the
luscious tips of rose. But there was an odd taste to her.

He vividly remembered tasting Adriana and
thinking there couldn’t be a sweeter wine in all the heavens. But
Sarah, although soft, and much more round and generously
proportioned than Adriana, didn’t elicit the same feelings Adriana
had.

He closed his eyes, remembering the most
wonderful afternoon of his life when he and Adriana had spent that
all too brief thunderstorm in his cottage. He groaned with the
taste and feel of Adriana in his mind.

He could feel his breeches, which had become
unbearably tight, loosen as if they were being unbuttoned. And then
he realized that they were. Sarah was smiling at him wickedly as
she released his manhood.

She looked down at him for only a moment and
then back up into his eyes. “Oh, Mr. Vallentyn, I should have known
you would be so big and thick,” she purred, stroking him and
sending the most delicious sensations through his body. It was all
Morgan could do to keep from exploding right then and there.

Sarah slipped down onto her knees in front of
him as he sat back on the sofa. With a smile as sweet as an
angel’s, she gave the tip of him a lick with a quick flick of her
tongue, nearly making him scream with delight as she took him into
her hot, wet mouth.

Never in his life had he felt such a
sensation! My God, he was in ecstasy. He could barely think because
of all of the sensations running through his body and the blood
which was pounding in his ears as Sarah moved her mouth up and down
his shaft. Faster and faster she went, bringing him ever closer to
the brink. But even as he teetered at the edge he knew that
something wasn’t right.

He opened his eyes to see not Adriana’s
auburn hair, but Sarah’s pale yellow tresses.

He couldn’t do this. Not to himself, and not
to Adriana.

“No!” The word tore at him. It was literally
painful, but he pushed her away. “No, this isn’t right. You must
not.” She sat back, looking up at him with an expression of
absolute shock on her face.