biting his lips, her own hands slipping under his jacket, pulling up his shirt, to find hot, smooth skin. His hard stomach jumped as she stroked his skin, her hand moving lower… . His fingers were on her throat, and his tongue surged against hers, thrusting deeper.
She felt her body melting into his, opening herself to the hardness of his sex and thighs as he pressed her against the closet wall and kissed her neck, licking the hollow of her throat. her breasts were full in his hands, her nipples taut against his palms, and she wrapped her leg around his, and he lifted her hips so she could feel him hard and wanting, moving against her…seeking, straining through the fabric of their clothing… .
Barrie was breathing shallowly, aching to have him inside her. He pulled down the zip of her hoodie and bent to tongue her nipples through the thin cloth of her tank top, and she breathed into his ear, “Please…please…” and she didn’t know if she was saying please yes or please no…
And then terror overcame lust and she managed to push him away and they stood panting in the darkness.
In silence.
“He’s gone,” she said in a small voice.
Mick stepped forward, his face taut with desire. “Come here,” he said roughly, and reached for her again. She gasped and ducked and fled through the dark bungalow and into the night.
Driving was a challenge; her whole body was vibrating from Mick’s kisses, his maddening touches, the feel of his body hard on hers… . She was so weak with thwarted desire she could barely concentrate on the road.
But even in her confused—and aroused—state, she couldn’t rest until she swung back by the morgue to see Brandt.
From the time she was young, Barrie had been instructed never to speak of Keeper business on the phone or in email or a text; you never knew what conversation might be picked up in these zero-privacy days. She and her cousins had developed their own language to use if they needed to use the phone, and they had a code word they changed every week that clued the others in to a Keeper-related message. There was a whole set of codes used by Keepers and Others. But she needed to see Brandt to ask him a question she didn’t dare ask on the phone, even in code.
Five minutes in and out, and she had her answer.
Tiger’s tox screen had showed the same lethal combination of heroin, cocaine and belladonna as Saul Mayo’s.
Chapter 4
Barrie finally made it back to the canyon about dawn. the hills were bathed with rose-gold light, and the traf-fic…well, okay, the traffic had started hours ago, in the predawn dark, but she turned up the road toward the House of the Rising Sun, the compound she shared with her cousins, before the real gridlock kicked in.
She’d managed to curb the obsessive random images of sex with Mick in every conceivable position…by getting angry.
I don’t even know him. He doesn’t know me. And, okay, that was probably just the desk clerk outside the closet door, checking up on the room because he saw the light. But what if it wasn’t? Of all the stupid, dangerous, inappropriate things to do…
Her inner rant was momentarily silenced by another full-body flashback of Mick kissing her while he slowly ground his hard and oh-so-enticing length between her thighs… .
Stop it.
She clenched her fingers on the steering wheel and stared hard out the windshield to focus…and realized she was home.
The House of the Rising Sun—really a set of three houses—was protected by a tall stone wall that encircled it on multiple levels. She buzzed open the massive electric gate with a remote, and it swung wide to allow entry to the haunting drive, revealing the beautiful stone facades of the houses. Each of the cousins had her own, all part of the estate that had been left to their grandfather by his friend Merlin the Great: magician extraordinaire, aka Ivan Schwartz. The senior Gryffalds had passed the houses on to their three Keeper sons; Barrie had grown up in the house called Gwydion’s Cave, after a mythological Welsh magician. And now that their fathers had been called to council, the international gathering of Keepers, the three houses belonged to the three cousins.
Barrie parked her car in the circle and walked through the pool area with its gazebo and jasmine-covered trellises toward the Cave, as she thought of it.
The pool brought on another very unwelcome flashback of the dark sensuality of the Chateau and the feeling of Mick’s hands on her skin, her breasts… .
Stop it.
Barrie ran the last steps to her door and flung it open. Inside, she slammed the door behind her and had at least a moment of peace as she let herself relax in the familiar luxury of home.
Gwydion’s Cave was decorated with old peacock fans, marble pieces, antique mirrors and rich remnants of decadence from the days of the speakeasies. There was even a Victrola with a collection of recordings of the bawdiest songs from the 1920s.
It was a period Barrie especially vibrated to, a time when women threw off their corsets, claimed the vote and danced their way into independence in society. But she also loved the twenties for their sheer style, one of the few traits she shared with her complicated mother, so being able to live in the Cave, in such old Hollywood splendor, was icing on the cake of her Keeper existence.
She started down the hall lined with antique mirrors and felt a wave of exhaustion that had her swaying on her feet. A double murder, an Otherworldly mystery, and a powerful unexpected attraction…and it was up to her to sort it all. …
Sleep. I need to sleep. This all won’t seem so…over-whelming…in the morning.
She barely had the energy to engage the elaborate security system behind her, then she stumbled off to bed.
But of course she couldn’t sleep. She lay in her bed, a carved canopied thing with satin sheets and pillows, and could think only of Mick Townsend.
God, she wanted him. Her whole body was on fire…the slightest move of her clothing or the sheets on her skin was making her crazy with desire.
She closed her eyes and stretched her arms out to her sides, imagining Mick holding her down, the whole delicious weight of him on top of her, his mouth on her breasts, his knee parting her thighs so his hot hard length could slide into her core… .
The fantasy was so strong, the memory of his touch so vivid, she could almost feel him on top of her, his hands on her wrists, the tip of him teasing her open…and then the thrust of him, the massive pleasure of his sex inside her, filling her, inflaming her… .
She moaned and writhed underneath him, and his thrusts deepened…quickened…driving her to the brink…it was so good…so real… .
Her eyes flew open and above her she saw—
Golden skin, blond hair, blue eyes…
She gasped aloud and sat straight up in shock and terror.
Daylight streamed through the cracks in the drapes.
She was alone.
Well, not completely alone. Her cat, Princess
