Samhain Publishing

It had been two hours since she’d stepped into a limousine outside her college dorm and willingly costumed herself in the corset, garter belt and other erotic accoutrements left for her. As soon as she’d slipped on the blindfold, she’d had to rely on her other senses to comprehend her journey. For a long while she had heard only the muffled purr of passing traffic. She’d smiled to herself, imagining the reaction of the other drivers if they could see into the dark-tinted windows. What would they think if they could see her, a blindfolded, twenty-year-old college student, her long, blonde hair not quite concealing the nipples poking over her corset? Would they think she was a sex slave? A kinky young heiress?

One thing was for sure, they would never believe her story if she told them.

Eventually the sounds of traffic had faded, signaling the limo’s departure from town. She had traveled the rest of the way in silence. At last the engine had stopped and, a few moments later, her door had opened to a gust of cold February air that made her shiver. An anonymous hand assisted her from the limo. The sharp clean scent of snow and forest trees told her that she was in the country, far from her university.

A moment later a collar was snapped roughly around her neck and attached to a leash. She was yanked forward and led into some sort of building as she stumbled on her heels to keep up. She was kept waiting in a cold room to wait for what seemed like ages, her nipples aching in the chill, until the fatal command was uttered and her escort picked up her leash and began to lead her down this hall.

Now the time for fantasy was over. It was time to confront her destiny.

Chelsea knew the moment she entered the room. Her spiked heels sank into the cushiony surface of a carpet, and a much warmer air danced over her décolletage. The commingled scents of wine, expensive perfume and heated skin drifted to her nose. As the expectant hush of the room settled on her ears, she heard a vigorous crackle. Somewhere a cheerful fire was burning.

“Lovely.”

The sultry female voice was one she knew well. A week ago, she would have called this woman her mentor; now she considered her an enemy. Chelsea stiffened involuntarily as the click of high heels drew near. Two fingers lightly touched the stiff tips of her breasts. “You are excited. As you should be.”

Chelsea’s heart began to race with panic. They were going to untie her, right? Surely they weren’t going to leave her bound and blindfolded as strangers took liberties with her body. If that was the case, her quest was doomed indeed.

A sharp snap sounded near her ear and her escort tugged on her collar again, leading her through the room. Though the surrounding guests were silent, Chelsea could sense many hungry eyes drinking in the exposed curves of her flesh. At last a hand pressed back on her chest, stopping her. Obediently, she stood still, the back of her bare thighs warm from the nearby dancing flames.

“It is time to take your vows of secrecy to the Society,” her mentor said.

She felt a cold blade rest between her breasts.

“Do you, Chelsea Becker, swear to offer your loyalty, devotion and generosity to those in this room tonight?” the female voice asked.

Her voice shook as she answered, “I do.”

“Do you swear to keep secret all that you see, learn and experience here?”

“I do.” Oh, please let this be the extent of her initiation rite. If it only involved this degrading costume and a couple of worthless vows, she would consider herself getting off light indeed.

“Do you understand that any revelation of the Society will incur great punishment?”

She swallowed nervously. “I do.”

Unexpected hands grasped her from behind, fumbling with her corset. She stifled a cry of outrage as she realized she was being stripped nude.

“You must come to us naked, for tonight is a symbolic rebirth,” intoned the female voice.

Chelsea longed to smack her, but knew she had no right to complain. She had agreed to this. Still, it was hard to swallow her gall as even her panties were slid down her thighs. Finally she stood before the crowd in nothing but her heels, her collar, her bonds and her blindfold. Her cheeks burned hot with outrage and humiliation.

Someone tugged her leash forward with rough impatience. She stumbled, inspiring a few muffled titters from the other guests, as she was jerked into the center of the room, and then pushed down until she knelt on the carpet. Suddenly the collar was removed. “Extend your hands,” a deep male voice ordered.

She obeyed as best she could, extending her bound hands behind her back. With a swift whistle of descent, a sharp blade cut through her bonds, freeing her hands. A moment later the same blade severed her blindfold as well.

She gasped as the black fabric fell away from her eyes, releasing with it her cascade of blonde hair. The first light to enter her retinas made her blink. As her vision became less blurry, she saw she was kneeling in a massive, torch-lit room of deep red walls and high, molded ceilings. Dozens of people lined the walls. All of them were staring at her, the naked gift of this twisted Valentine’s party. But she no longer cared about her exposure. She was searching for one face, the face that meant everything to her, the face that promised the gratification of her heart as well as her body. The only problem was that it was a face she had never seen before.

Arden came to herself in a flash of awareness—not for her the long, slow awakening, the muzzy-headed confusion that often accompanied other people’s returns to consciousness. Her eyes opened and she took stock.

What had changed? Everything. She was naked and tied to a cold metal chair in a windowless room. A bare fluorescent bulb flickered somewhere behind her, casting a wan, wavering shadow of her bound body onto the chipped tile floor in front of her. She looked up. The ceiling was low, dusty, girded with rusty pipes that dripped water and leaked steam at their ill-fitting joints. The walls were brick, covered with cheap plaster that had crumbled like a forgotten ruin and built up little dunes of plaster dust in the corners.

A basement.

She leaned forward in the chair. Her body strained against the nylon ropes tied taut around each of her wrists as well as her midsection, thighs and ankles. Her body moved—barely—but the chair stayed in place. It must have been bolted to the floor. Her captor knew how to tie a good knot, and he hadn’t been foolish enough to bind her hands together or to secure her to a free-standing chair.

“Hello, Arden.”

For the second time that night, Aniketos’ voice startled her. He was standing in the darkness behind her chair. She liked the way he’d said her name—so much so that it took her a moment to realize he’d used her given name, not her cover. Arden had a passport, a driver’s license, and an entire life’s worth of perfectly forged paperwork to prove she was Chen Jie, a twenty-five year old Shanghai-born photographer. No one but her handlers and her fellow assassins knew the name she’d been given when she became a killer. No one but him.

“Arden,” he said her name again. His voice was as haunting as the memory of warmth in winter. It was less raw now, but still raspy. He had an odd, halting pattern of speech, as though he’d learned English late in life and still did his thinking in another, more ancient tongue. She couldn’t place his accent, but she’d had only a few sentences to guess by. Best to get him talking—she’d find no answers in silence.

“Hello, Sevastien.”

“Call me Aniketos. You did not ask how I knew your name.”

“You’ll tell me. Nice day, isn’t it?”

“It is evening, and not a nice one.” He came to stand in front of her. He didn’t make a sound when he moved, not a footstep, not a breath.

He was dressed now—black pants and a gray, long-sleeved pullover shirt that caressed the muscles of his torso and arms. His face was as beautiful as she’d remembered it—more so. Dark bronze skin, sensuous lips, and a profile that looked like it belonged on the wall of some ancient temple alongside jackal-headed gods or bare-breasted sphinxes. His black hair, by contrast, was cut in a short, modern style that looked like he had combed it with his fingers. How devious of the man to know that looking like he had just rolled out of bed would prompt a girl to imagine him in bed.

And how screwed up was she to check out the man who had stripped her naked and tied her to a chair in his basement? The answer to that question was all too obvious. She killed people for a living; she was a very sick girl. She would just have to add this newfound taste for high-stakes bondage to her already long list of kinks.

Aniketos held up his right hand and unfurled her inky-black stealthsuit from his clenched fist. It ate up the light around it like a black hole spun into cloth.

“Hard to see and harder to hold. I hope you will forgive me for your current state of undress. Your previous attire made you a little too difficult to handle.”

She strained her shoulders against the ropes. “You must have something else I can wear.”

He smiled, a flash of white teeth against smooth bronze skin, and pulled up a chair. “I think not. I rather like the view.”

Sense memory lit up her synapses—the taste of his blood on his lips when she’d kissed him, the weight of his body when he’d trapped her. She flushed hot, and then hotter still when she met his steady gaze.

His pale eyes surveyed her, lingering on her pebbled pink nipples.

“It’s cold in here,” she complained, hoping to explain away her body’s reaction.

“And yet, you do not have goose bumps.”

“Don’t you have questions for me?”

“Of course.” He skimmed her body with another head-to-toe glance. “I spent two months watching you before I set this trap. I must say, you are a woman of fascinating tastes. How do you like captivity?”

She spat at him. He leaned aside in a smooth motion that would have appeared casual if not for his speed. Quick reflexes, she noted. But she was faster.

He drew her garrote from his pocket. “Interesting choice of weapon. Why not choose a laserblade, a pulsegun, or some other piece of modern weaponry? They work faster.”

She tried to shrug. “Garrote is clean, classic, reliable. It won’t be shut down by a target with an electromagnetic-pulse panic button.”

“You don’t mind being so…close to your victims?”

She met his eyes. “I like it. I don’t shoot and run. My targets are always dead when I leave because I watch them die.”

He gave her a rude, toothy grin.

She returned it. “I haven’t left yet, have I? Did you bring me down here just to pick my brain for pointers on the simple art of murder?”

He looked up. “Pardon me, that line of inquiry was for my own edification. Curiosity is ever my strength and my weakness.”

“Then we’ve that in common, because right now I’m curious as hell how you managed to play dead so well. I felt your heart stop.”

He smiled, but didn’t show his teeth. “Magic.”

“Do I look like the kind of girl who falls for fairytales?”

“You look like the kind of woman who has been trained not to ask questions.”

“I ask for what I want to know.”

“Really. Do you even know who sent you after me, or why?”

“I don’t need to know the specifics, but I can guess the general information. You live in a glass penthouse stuffed chock-full of stolen art. It’s easy to make enemies when you take what doesn’t belong to you. Maybe one of the thieves you hired to ill-get those fancy gains sold you out to an angry victim. I’m told we criminals are an untrustworthy lot.”

He smiled, a strange twinkle in his eyes. “We are, indeed.”

“We?”

“I get my own ill-gotten gains.”

Arden knit her brows and he flashed his teeth in a wolfish grin. “I am a thief, Arden—the best there is. And you are my latest acquisition.”

“The Valentine effect,” she reminded him. “This afternoon I was thinking I didn’t want to spend the holiday alone, and then you walked in. I got swept up in the moment. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I did. It’s been a wonderful night. Unbelievable.”

“But just one night. I understand.”

Wait a minute. How did we get here? That’s not what I meant to say. Carrie tried to backpedal, to take the sting from the ill-planned words. “No. It could be… There could be more. I mean, if you wanted. Another date. See where it leads.”

He set his mug on the counter and turned to look at her.

“Dating a guy with a kid, that could be a very big leap. Are you up for it?”

She met his gaze. “Honestly? I’m not sure yet.”

Nodding, he crossed the space between them and put his hands on her waist.

“That’s all right. Let’s not worry about what comes next, okay?”

He suddenly lifted her up on the counter and moved in between her legs, a hand on each of her thighs, pushing the long tails of the shirt up out of the way.

“Right now, let’s just do this.” Leaning into her, he pressed a kiss to her neck.

Her arms went around his back, holding him close. “This is good,” she murmured, threading her hands in his soft, soft hair. His neck, corded with muscles, was warm beneath her palm as she cupped her hand around it.

He pushed the shirt off both her shoulders and kissed his way over the rounded curves. “Man, I love the way you look in this.”

Just hearing his appreciation made her feel sexy. She imagined how she appeared to him, soft womanly curves framed against his big, masculine shirt. His lips nuzzled at the upper swell of her left breast and she wondered if he could feel her pulse pounding against his mouth.

“Mmm.” He lifted his head and gazed at her with hungry, lust-filled eyes. “Can’t get enough of you, baby. But we’re supposed to be having tea, and how about some of that cake, too?”

“Sounds good,” she murmured, barely comprehending the words. Her brain was all lust-addled again.

Ric kissed her cleavage once more, then released her waist and stepped away from between her spread legs, leaving a cold, empty spot. He picked up her abandoned tea, fished the teabag out with a spoon and handed her the mug.

Crossing to the refrigerator, he brought out the white Styrofoam box from the restaurant and got a fork from a drawer.

Carrie sipped her still-steaming tea. “I don’t know how you can eat any more. I’m still stuffed from dinner.”

“Burned off a lot of calories.” He forked up a bite of cake and offered it to her with a smile. She couldn’t refuse and opened her mouth to accept the dessert on her tongue, where it melted in sinful sweetness.

“Mm. Fantastic. Is this made at the restaurant?”

Shaking his head, Ric took a bite of the cake. “There’s an old woman who bakes all the desserts for the restaurant in her home.”

“She needs to find someone to distribute and market for her. This stuff could make her a fortune.”

“You can’t mass produce something like this. It loses something. Besides, these old ladies guard their recipes like gold. She’d never reveal her secrets.”

He gave her another bite then leaned in to lick any residual frosting from her lips. His tongue slipped between her lips, touching hers, and savoring the chocolate with her. Sweet and hot, the kiss was a confection in itself.

Carrie felt his hand at the front of her shirt. He unbuttoned the top button, revealing both her breasts when he pushed the material aside. Pulling away from her mouth, he forked up a bit of the soft, gooey icing from the top of the cake. A quick glance at his focused gaze let her know exactly what he intended to do with it.

Depositing a dollop carefully on her right nipple, he leaned to suck it into his mouth. God, it was hot, the way her breast looked decorated in chocolate, his pink tongue darting out to taste her and his thick lips wrapping around her tit.

“Shit!” Carrie realized she still held her cup of tea clutched in one hand when the hot liquid hit her thigh. She set the mug on the counter and brushed the water from her leg.

Ric released her wet nipple with a pop and retrieved a dishtowel from the oven door handle to pat her dry. The tea wasn’t scalding and the pain alleviated almost immediately. He leaned to press a kiss to the slightly pinkened flesh. “Okay?”