Brenda Joyce - Dark Lover

Moray had once told him that he was Satan.

Ian believed it.

Moray had said, laughing, “Haven’t you grasped the truth yet? I am Satan.”

His heart had exploded with fear and disbelief. He choked, hugging the bars of the cage he’d been put in—his current punishment. “Ye canna be Satan. Satan is the father of all evil.”

Moray had reached for the door, smiling cruelly. “But I have so many faces, my son. Now will you do as I command?”

Ian reached for his drink and realized it was empty. He cursed. Satan had imbued Moray’s very existence and all that he had done. Satan surely had a thousand faces. Moray had been one.

How else would Moray have survived for over a thousand years? The Brotherhood and other great men had hunted him across time. They’d all failed, until Aidan and Brie had destroyed him.

And now his father, who had left him alone with evil for so long, had gone down in history as a great Master. Ian laughed. He knew the sound was bitter. He didn’t care. Hooray for the great Wolf of Awe, he thought caustically.

He had almost all the powers his father had, and a few he didn’t have. But Ian knew they’d never ask him to join the Brotherhood. The gods knew the truth about the years of captivity. They knew how defiled he was, how deficient, how insane. Not that he cared. If they were ever crazy enough to ask him to join, he’d refuse, because he was too different to ever be one of them. How could he ever be trusted to protect Innocence?

Hanging in the cage, the Innocent sobbed in fear .

“Do it.”

He held the knife, starting to cry .

“Do it, Ian, or suffer as they will suffer.”

He knew what he had to do. But he couldn’t do it, not to the little girl and not to her mother. He looked up at the monk, who stood beside him with his grandfather .

“Punish him,” Moray snarled .

Suddenly Ian grunted in pain. He realized that he had been holding his glass so tightly he had broken it. His hand was bleeding now. He cursed and let the cracked glass fall.

Sometimes he hated everyone—the gods, his father, the world.

At the end, when they knew he’d never try to escape—when he knew he’d never be freed—Moray had tried to turn him. It was another ploy meant to destroy his father. But in spite of his fear of them, and his fear of what the punishment for refusal would be, he hadn’t ever been able to hurt anyone innocent. The boy had been heroic, but the man flirted with pain. Sometimes he had such an intense urge to hurt others, even the women he slept with. But it was nothing like the urge he so often had to hurt himself.

When he’d been on that garage rooftop earlier, he’d looked over the edge, and wondered if he’d finally die. When that day came, he’d embrace death as he’d never welcomed anything else. Others might fear death. Ian knew death was peace.

Now, he tested his shoulder. He’d suffered a few bumps and bruises in the car chase.

Sam Rose’s striking image filled his mind. He hadn’t expected her to keep up with him today, just like he hadn’t expected her to stick around last night. But she had. That woman was a cool character. And she could drive like she fought—which was probably how she fucked.

His intention had always been to get her fighting and clawing into his bed. He wanted a savage sexual contest. But suddenly he imagined her smiling warmly, stroking him softly, gentle and tender beneath him.

And he laughed out loud at himself. If she made love to him like a pussycat, he’d be bored out of his mind. What was wrong with him? Where had that fantasy come from?

He shook his head. She was very powerful, very smart and maybe as sexually driven as he was…and so beautiful, she made it hard to breathe. He smiled. She would hold her own with him in bed. She’d be tireless, insatiable, and very demanding.

He realized he was sort of glad that she wasn’t hurt.

That notion surprised him as he rang for Gerard, deciding he was hungry. His one and only interest was himself. There was no way he would care that she was unhurt, unless it was because he wanted her whole for their next encounter.

He was getting impatient for her.

He hadn’t lied when he’d told her he’d moved to New York so he could screw her. Hunting her from Scotland had required more patience than even he had.

He looked forward to their next encounter. He was enjoying the opening salvo in their little war. And then he recalled last night.

He began to pace. He had banished what had happened with John from his mind. He’d gotten his revenge, even if Sam had seen him at his weakest. There wouldn’t be any explanations. He owed her nothing—other than a night or two of extreme sexual pleasure. His secrets were going to stay secrets. He’d lose whatever sanity he had left, if the truth about his captivity ever came out.

The intercom buzzed, interrupting that worrisome thought. He crossed the drawing room of his master suite. “Gerard?”

“Sir, Mr. Hemmer has arrived. Should I wait to bring your supper?”

“Please do. And thank you, Gerard.” He released the button, pleased. It hadn’t taken his old pal very long to add two plus two.

In no particular hurry, he walked into his large walk-in closet and shed his clothes. He slipped on worn jeans and a paper-thin blue cashmere sweater. Although it was midsummer, he kept the town house cool. Then he glanced at his eighteen-carat gold Cartier watch. It was a quarter to eight. He went downstairs to greet his guest.

Gerard had served Hemmer a ten-year-old Philips Insignia cabernet wine, which he hadn’t touched. Instead, Rupert was staring at his recently acquired Motherwell. It wasn’t all that valuable—it had originally been sold for fortyfive thousand dollars—but he happened to like the bold red and black strokes which the artist had used on the starkly white canvas. For him, Motherwell symbolized the life-and-death struggle of good and evil. He’d actually paid for the acrylic painting.

Hemmer turned, scowling and flushed.

“Having a bad day?” Ian asked, trying not to sound too happy about it. He kept his gaze as innocent as possible. He truly disliked Hemmer. Although technically human, he was evil to the core. Stealing the van Gogh for him had purely been business and he relished sticking it to him. “Ye might want to watch yer blood pressure.”

“I know exactly one person who could disable my security system and get away with the Duisean page without triggering a single alarm,” Hemmer snapped.

Ian grinned. “Surely there are other thieves as skilled as me in the world.”

“I invited you into my home as a friend.”

Ian dropped his smile. “We were never friends. Ye asked me to get ye the van Gogh and ye paid me handsomely to do so.”

“That made us business partners, Maclean.”

“Aye…an’ possession is ten-tenths of the law, now isn’t it? Ye’d know that better than anyone.” Ian walked over to a seventeenth-century cupboard to pour himself a glass of the fine wine.

Hemmer followed. “So it was you! You bastard! You came to my party only to steal from me.”

He was calm. “It takes a thief to know one.” He sipped and was impressed.

Hemmer was shaking. “Have you bothered to consider that I am one man you do not want to cross?”

Ian shrugged. “I’m trembling.”

Hemmer grimaced, eyes ablaze. “How much? How much will you extort from me? How much will it cost me to get the page back?”

Ian tried to slip into his mind, but the power eluded him. All he felt was Hemmer’s fury and a sense that Hemmer meant to make him suffer for what he’d done, but he hadn’t needed telepathy to comprehend that. Hemmer had to know that the page had god-given powers. Ian didn’t think he’d pay over two hundred million dollars for it, otherwise. The man wasn’t even Irish.