Barbara Hancock - Brimstone Seduction

It was the end of the day. Whatever he did in his Victorian offices, he’d literally rolled up his sleeves. The hair on his arm brushed hers. The tattoos she’d seen before peeked from beneath his white sleeve. This was his leisure—overseeing rehearsals, pondering damnation and torturing her.

He sat back from returning the opera glasses to her chair, but the scent of smoky sandalwood still teased her nose. She wouldn’t meet his penetrating gaze. He hadn’t looked back at the dancers since she’d arrived. While she avoided his eyes, she noticed the longish black waves of his hair were slightly damp and curled against the open collar of his shirt.

She was familiar with temptation and resistance. Surrender was a new possibility. She was afraid if she spent too long in John Severne’s company, her limits might be tested. He was a daemon, but he had taken the guise of a very attractive man. She was drawn to the burn beneath his control. She was drawn to what he might hide beneath the hardness he cultivated for the world. His penchant for sugary kisses and his reaction to her cello music gave her a glimpse at what vulnerabilities he might hide.

He wasn’t a forthright man, but a daemon. His every move screamed those truths to her even though his words and demeanor were enigmatic.

“Your music will make this dance impossible to resist. The audience will be captivated,” he said.

And yet he also made raw confessions at every turn.

She lifted her gaze from the dancers below to Severne’s eyes. The shadows were too deep to see any green, but he tilted toward her as if to accommodate her search, and a shaft of stage light fell over his eyes. The rest of his face was still shadowed, but his eyes were fully illuminated and as green as she’d seen them before.

His eyes and his shadowed mouth drew her.

But she quickly rose before she fell further under his daemon spell. Or his masculine spell. Or both.

She wasn’t here to be seduced. Surrender wasn’t an option.

“I enjoy the music. I appreciate the dance. I don’t want to captivate. I just want to find my sister,” she said.

She mumbled to excuse herself as she tried to navigate gracefully past his long, lean legs. He stood, but he didn’t try to stop her. She pushed through the heavy curtains behind their seats, but as she did she heard him reply.

“As do I, Katherine. As do I.”

He said he wanted to help her find her sister, but she wasn’t certain what he wanted most. He was a bottomless pit of wants and needs she couldn’t quite ascertain.

Chapter 6

The sun was only a pink hint at the edges of the city’s dark silhouette against the sky as he ran the Thames path away from Central London. One of the benefits of damnation and a hellhound for a constant companion was that he wasn’t limited to mortal means of transportation. He rarely had to use more than a word or a glance before he materialized where he wished to be with Grim’s help.

He’d always run in the dark even before it was a common sight, nothing to note, a man with a drive to beat the cheeseburger and beer he’d consumed last Sunday. It was nothing now to pass other runners in the fog and shadows, them with reflective strips on their shoes or blinking LED bands around their elbows.

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