My Reaper's Daughter (12 page)

deeply, so thoroughly, that she imagined her very soul was bleeding. It was a craving

that consumed her and she wanted to throw back her head and scream her defiance to

the gods who were so indifferent to her existence.

Sobs shook her slender shoulders and she had to press her mouth deeply into the

musty pillow so her daughter would not hear. Her heart breaking, her body on fire with

unfulfilled desire, she finally fell asleep with the Reaper’s smiling face before her and

his name upon her lips.

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“Let me touch you,” she said.

He turned, his eyes as hot as the embers glowing in the hearth. “Do what you will with me,

wench,” he offered, and spread his arms wide.

For a moment she just looked at him as he stood there barefoot in his uniform. The top

buttons of his shirt were opened, the long sleeves rolled halfway up his powerful forearms. He

looked so handsome, so accessible, and she wanted to devour him.

She walked to him and laid her palms upon his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall of his

chest behind the black silk of his shirt. She ran her hands up and down the hard plane. The silk

whispered as her flesh smoothed over it.

The room in which they stood was breathtakingly beautiful and decorated with expensive

furniture, elegant draperies and fabrics and the richest carpet underfoot. Crystal lamps filled the

room with a soft golden glow and overhead, an elaborate chandelier gleamed with multifaceted

prisms that caught the light and sparked it upon the damask papered walls.

“Your flesh is so solid,” she said, looking demurely up at him through her lashes.

“It is flesh that yearns for yours,” he replied in a husky voice that made her knees weak.

“May I?” she asked as she moved her fingers to the top unopened button of his shirt.

He nodded but did not speak. His eyes were locked on her face, the steady rise and fall of his

broad chest reassuring and oh-so sensuous.

One by one she slipped the black buttons from their holes and when her knuckles touched the

waistband of his leather uniform pants, she stilled and raised her head to fuse her gaze with his.

She arched a brow in question.

“Do with me what you will,” he repeated.

A soft, teasing smile tugged at her lips and she began to ease the tail of his shirt from his

pants. When it was out, she spread the shirt’s front apart and took in the width of his powerful

chest.

“You are a very powerful man, milord,” she said, sliding her arms around his lean waist.

“I am what you will make me, milady,” he said gently.

Mystery smiled and laid her cheek on that broad expanse of hairy chest. Beneath her ear, she

was reassured by the steady, comforting beat of his heart. She held him to her—unwilling to ever

let him go—and when he encircled her within the span of his muscular arms, she was at peace for

the first time since childhood.

“Where shall we live?” she asked.

He nestled her against him and put his chin atop her head. “Pameny or Michinoh,” he

answered. “Whichever would suit you. I have a small lodge on Erie Lake near Sandusky in the

Michinoh Territory. It’s small but we could add on.”

“I’ve always wanted a place by a large lake.”

“Then that’s where we’ll live,” he told her. He put a crooked finger under her chin and lifted

her face. “Whatever will make you happy.”

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His lips came down on hers in a soft, gentle blending of flesh that had her bare toes tingling.

The kiss was searing and when he nibbled at her bottom lip—commanding her to open to him—

he slipped his tongue between her lips so smoothly, so authoritatively, she felt it all the way to

her womb. He took possession of her mouth and staked claim to it, going deep and tasting her,

swirling over her teeth and along the roof of her mouth until she was grinding herself against

him. She heard the low chuckle deep in his throat a moment before his lips released hers and he

smiled down at her.

“Tonight I will make you mine,” he said.

His arms swept her up and he carried her to the blanket spread before a roaring fire. Going

to one knee, he eased her to the floor then knelt there beside her.

“I want to touch you all over,” she said.

He shrugged out of his shirt and lay down, flinging his arms wide. “Do with me what you

will,” he said once again.

She came to her knees and bent over him, reaching for the black belt at his waist. Removing

it, she tossed it aside and made quick work of the buttons at his fly. She began to ease the pants

down his hips but when his cock sprang free—jutting and demanding with a tiny pearl drop

clinging to the broad head—she stopped, giving him an arched brow in question.

“Oops,” he said, grin wide and infectiousness.

“Oops indeed,” she countered, and continued dragging the pants down his long legs.

“You could give him a tongue lashing for being so presumptuous, you know,” he told her.

Mystery pursed her lips as she tugged the pants from his feet and lay them aside. “You are a

bad man, Glyn Kullen.”

“I’m a hard man, Mystery Butler,” he corrected, and his shaft pulsed upward.

“That too,” she agreed.

He was completely naked—lying there like a living sacrifice—and she could not look away

from the sheer male beauty of him. From the thick, dark hair to the tips of his straight toes, from

the wide breadth of his powerful shoulders to the hard expanse of his thighs—he was all man and

he was hers.

She stared at the shimmering drop that clung to the slit of his shaft.

Odell had thought such things as she was doing were sinful and would have no part in it.

Though he had seemed to enjoy taking her during his once-weekly lapse into lust, he had made no

real effort to ensure she had enjoyed the act and certainly would never have countenanced

experimentation on her part. The poor man would have been shocked to his foundation and most

likely worn a hair shirt for the remainder of his days had she knelt over him and taken his cock

into her mouth.

As she did the Reaper’s.

“Ah, wench,” she heard Glyn whisper and he buried his hand in her hair, threading his

fingers through the black silk strands.

His juice was warm upon her tongue and his flesh was hot within her mouth but beyond

that, all she felt was intense pleasure that she was giving him enjoyment.

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“Suckle him, dearling,” he instructed, and arched his hips upward as she took him deep into

her mouth. “Run your tongue under his head.”

She drew hard upon his shaft and he groaned again, his fingers tensing in her hair. Her

hand was wrapped at the base of him and when he began urging her to raise and lower her mouth

upon him, she accommodated, mimicking the sex act as it had been performed so sparingly on her

by her late husband.

“Aye,” he sighed, the cadence of his breathing coming faster as he rocked his hips up to meet

her downward slides.

She felt powerful as she knelt there controlling this dangerous man, rendering him helpless

beneath her ministrations. She possessed him at that moment and knew she would for as long as

he drew breath.

“I belong to you,” he whispered.

She pulled her lips from his hard, swollen flesh. “As I belong to you,” she replied.

He moved with a speed that made her gasp and she was flat upon her back, his hands rough

and demanding as he drew her skirt up.

“Mine,” he said, and it was a growl of primal male authority. He was poised above her, his

eyes as hot as the fires of hell as he stared down into her face. “Mine!”

His hand cupped her between the legs and one finger slid unerringly into her hot channel.

He probed deep.

“Glyn!” she cried out, and began shattering into a thousand pieces, her body jerking.

Mystery found herself sitting bolt upright on the bed as the last spasms of delight

reverberated through her body. She writhed, feeling her rapidly beating heart pounding

in her chest, the rush of her blood thundering through her ears. She shuddered,

becoming aware of the wetness between her legs and felt her face burn. Squeezing her

legs tightly together, slamming her cupped hands over that part of her that seemed

alive and was tingling as it never had before. She bit down hard on her bottom lip to

keep from groaning.

It took her a long time to calm her breathing, her racing heart. When she had some

semblance of control over her runaway emotions, she lay down again, curled into a ball

and cried, heart breaking with hopelessness.

“Glyn,” she sobbed, and dragged her lumpy pillow to her, holding it as she wished

with all her heart she could hold him.

But he had walked away without a backward glance. He was out of her life, but she

knew he had found a home in her aching heart and she also knew she would allow him

to stay.

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Chapter Five

John Dirk hunkered down inside the circle and stared at the image of Leilani he had

painstakingly drawn. The portrait stared back at him from the golden plate on which it

lay. Beside the plate burned two black candles upon which the young woman’s name

had been inscribed over and over again. Above the plate, a golden, empty, widemouthed urn sat. His head high, the tall man stood and with athamé—his ceremonial

dagger—in his left hand, he lifted his arm high and faced west.

“I entreat you, Lords of Darkness!” he chanted, silently speaking the name of the

First Malevolence and fashioning an inverted pentagram in the air. “I call ye forth, Lord

of Discord.”

Turning counterclockwise, he faced south. “I call ye forth, Lord of Disease!” Once

more he mouthed the secret name of the Second Malevolence and drew another upside

down pentagram before him.

He pivoted to the east, bidding come to the circle the Third Malevolence. “I call ye

forth, Lord of Destruction!”

Around him dark shadows began to form at the three directions. Glowing green

eyes pierced the blackness of the room but no creature came near the precisely drawn

circle in which John Dirk stood.

At last he faced the north and the black robe he wore over his nakedness billowed

as a cold, sharp wind blasted his body.

“I call ye forth, Lord of Death!”

Above him, the ceiling swirled with thick black clouds and the noxious odor of

sulfur filled the air.

John Dirk went to his knees and bowed his head. “I am honored you have come

and I am here to serve Your needs.” He lifted his right arm and drew the thin blade of

the athamé across his forearm. Blood gushed and fell into the urn above the drawing of

Leilani Shoad. “My life essence, Dark Ones, and a pledge to do your bidding from now

until the end of my days!” he swore. “Ask whatever you desire of me and it shall be

done!”

The practitioner of the dark arts could not have imagined in his wildest, most

depraved dreams what happened next. One moment he was standing in his cabin and

the next he shot up through the air—screaming as his earthly body encountered some

kind of stinging, burning, agonizing barrier then plunged through into a cold so intense

he could not draw breath. His eyes bulged, he clawed at his constricting throat and then

he was dropping—down through layers of heat as intense as the cold had been. He felt

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as if the flesh on his body were being crisped, his blood boiling, and when he slammed

onto a rocky plain, he lay crumpled there, sobbing with terror.

“Arise, John Dirk, and face your Master!”

The terrible voice thundered across the plain and sizzled like the sound of a million

insects crawling over one another. It slithered into John Dirk’s brain to scald him—an

excruciating torment that made him slap his hands to his ears and scream in agony.

“Arise, I command you!”

Jerked to his feet by unseen hands that tore at his flesh, John Dirk stood trembling

so violently his teeth clicked together. He stared wide-eyed around him at the desolate,

barren plain upon which he’d been thrust and felt such keen evil around him, his flesh

had leached of coloring.

“For what you seek, thirteen sacrifices of flesh and blood must be made,”
the sickening

voice demanded
. “Four per night until the full moon has come and the final at the cresting of

the moon.”

John Dirk shuddered, unable to speak, so frightened all he could do was whimper.

He knew in Whose presence he had been brought and terror oozed through every fiber

in his quaking body.

“Four each,”
the demon continued
. “Four males in their prime. Four females of