The Kinsmen Universe Page 4

  “I think you might be a raving lunatic.”

  He smiled. “But you aren’t afraid of me.”

  She sat in her chair. “No. You don’t strike me as a man who would rape.”

  “Despite me being dark and menacing.”

  “You like to win.” She took a sip from her glass. “And forcing yourself on me would mean you failed in your conquest.”

  In two sentences she deftly dissected his soul. “I’m Celino Carvanna. Name your dream and I’ll make it happen. And then, if you’re so inclined, perhaps you could fulfill mine.”

  “A rather melodramatic declaration, don’t you think?” She smiled. Her mouth was soft, her lips pink like the sweet wine they drank.

  “Women usually respond well to drama and decisive declarations of lust.”

  “I’m not that sort of woman. Unfortunately for you, I’m not for sale.” She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “So far you failed to terrify me and failed to buy me. I’m terribly curious what path you will attempt next.”

  In his mind he lunged across the table and crushed her mouth with his. “Perhaps I will praise your cooking.”

  “Ah. Flattery. A bit predictable, but it often works.”

  “Do you find me attractive?”

  She looked him over. Her gaze touched his chest, hidden by black doublet, slid up to caress his shoulders, then his thick neck, lingered on his cheekbones and finally rose to meet his stare. Her eyes were liquid chocolate and he felt a thrilling tension run through him.

  “Yes,” she said, slightly surprised. “I do.”

  “Will you let me kiss you?”

  “Probably not. But I will share my soup with you, since you’re in my kitchen and I’m starved. You seem to be comfortable with rudeness, but I can’t let go of my manners and eat in front of you while you stare at me with your iceberg eyes.”

  “Iceberg eyes?”

  “Glacial. The bowls are behind you.”

  Celino rose. The wall was dotted with standard hidden shelf covers. He tapped the closest one. A shelf slid out of the wall, offering a row of neatly placed bowls. He plucked two and pushed the shelf back into the wall.

  She ladled the soup into the bowls. “Would you like to eat in the garden?”

  She led him through the house into the garden. Flowers greeted him in every shade and shape imaginable. Dahlias. In his youth, he had spent countless evenings on the balcony of Carvanna house, sitting in a chair, puzzling over a financial riddle, and when he would look up to clear his head, the riot of dahlias blooming in the garden greeted him just like this.

  “Take a chair,” she offered.

  He sat and drank his soup from the bowl. It was delicious, spicy and tart, with an undercurrent of fiery peppers that nipped on his tongue.

  They sat together, saying nothing even when they both finished their meal. A feeling of profound calm descended upon Celino. He let the peculiar refreshing serenity sweep through him, bringing him a deeply rooted happiness at simply being alive.

  The audio piece piped into his ear for the third time. He was catastrophically late. He rose, bowed to her, and left without a word.

  And there it was, Meli reflected. He found her. Less than twenty-four hours. She expected nothing less from Celino Carvanna.

  He fantasized about dripping honey on her breasts. A small, satisfied smile curved her lips. It took almost eighteen years, from the skinny ten-year-old girl to the twenty-eight-year-old woman, but Mother proved right. She hit him like a brick.

  And she managed to hide that a single glance from him made her entire body hum like a tightly wound string under the hand of a virtuoso guitar player. Celino Carvanna was honeyed poison in her wine. The same delicious fear she had experienced in his presence as an adolescent returned full force, only she was no longer an inexperienced child. She used this fear now, turning it into seductive tension, letting him sense just enough to spur him into open pursuit. Celino was a predator and every predator responded to prey who seemed to run. And when she finally let him catch her, their battle would drive him out of his mind.

  She supposed she should be ashamed for still wanting him. Her father would certainly be ashamed if he knew. But her mother would not.

  Love was a rebellious emotion, Meli decided. It defied constraints of reason. She no longer cared about the twenty-two year old who, in his rush to freedom, trampled her. She discarded him long ago, except as fuel for revenge. His temple lay in ruin, his statue shattered, his hymnals burned. She would never again worship him or any other.

  But the man he had become stirred a deep longing in her. He was darkness. His eyes were ice. He didn’t walk, he prowled, confident, powerful, dangerous. He had learned patience and achieved his dreams. And yet, hidden beneath the layers of menace and terrifying competence he remained deeply alone. Just like she did.

  He was seductive and it was beyond her not to respond.

  A small calculating part of her was glad of it. Celino would sense any insincerity. Luckily for her, when she finally kissed him, she would be perfectly honest in her want. There would be nothing false in her, not in the way she would shiver under the touch of his hands, not in the way she would part her legs for him, letting him drive himself inside her. She would revel in him, drink him in, and every moment of her pleasure would be genuine.

  And when he belonged to her, she would finally repay a decade worth of pain in a single brutal dose of reality.

  Meli smiled.

  Celino lasted two days.

  Shrouded in the comfortable gloom of the evening, her reader on the pillow before her, Meli sensed him at her doorstep before his hand touched the handle and shivered in anticipation. “Lamp,” she whispered and a small light ignited in the corner, diluting twilight with soft yellow glow.

  A moment later he pushed her door open and loomed in the doorway, a shadow woven of night.

  “Don’t you ever lock your door?”

  “If I did, how would you get in?”

  She had no idea how fast he could move. Before the door had a chance to swing shut, slapped by his powerful hand, he knelt before her in the pile of her floor pillows. She raised her hand and drew her fingertips down his cheek. The warmth of his skin sent a tingling pulse into her hand. It fanned the hungry fire in the depth of her. Her insides tightened. She imagined him claiming her, sliding into her, hard and hot, and she kissed him.

  The taste of his mouth intoxicated her. He sealed her lips with his. His tongue slid into her mouth, stroking hers in the liquid rapid rhythm. The fire within her burst into an inferno. Her head swam. He released her, and she slid her arms about his neck, molding herself against his iron chest. “Just like that,” she whispered into his ear. “Take me just like that.”

  She licked the corner of his jaw and saw that the ice in his eyes had melted into radiant hungry heat. His hands grasped her tunic and effortlessly ripped the tear-proof fabric. Her soft breasts swung free. She rose to her knees and arched herself against him. His mouth trailed a path of heat from her neck, over her clavicle and down. His hand cupped her right breast, stroking it, squeezing, guiding her erect swollen nipple up. His mouth closed over it. He licked her, painting searing heat across her nipple. She dug her fingers into his back. “More. More.”

  He licked her again and she purred for him. She was wet and hot and pliant, dying a little with each stroke of his tongue. His hands slid down her back inside her light pants and the thin shimmer of her underwear to cup her butt. He squeezed her and pushed her back gently onto the pillows. She fell for him.

  Celino growled like a hungry animal and pulled her clothes off her. She lay before him, in the cushions, her chest rising, her thighs spread. He stared, as if unable to believe that all of her was his.

  She lifted herself up enough to grasp his black shirt. “Off,” she breathed. “Every last thread.”

  He pulled off his shirt. His chest was carved by a savage sculptor, each line hardened to perfection by years
of martial practice. His skin was bare of hair and in the soft light his torso was golden like a block of amber, and just as amber, when she drew her hand across it, it sent a spark through her. She kissed the shield of ridged muscles on his stomach, reached for his trousers, unfastened them, and slid her hand inside, down the hard shaft of his erection. He growled, thrusting, and she dipped her head and drew her tongue across the top of him, sucking gently.

  Celino jerked back from her, shedding his boots and pulling off his trousers in a violent frenzy. She laughed happily, thrilled that he wanted her, and then he grasped her, still laughing, knocked her back onto the pillows, pinning her down with his weight, and kissed her on the mouth, turning her laughter into a low throaty moan. She locked her hands on his muscular back, feeling every inch of his enormous body pressed against her, rigid with need. He kissed her again and again, on the mouth, on the neck, caressing her until everything faded except him. She wanted him, needed him, and yet he teased her with his mouth and his hands, until she could stand it no longer. Finally his iron thigh edged her legs open. He clasped her hands with his and thrust inside, into her moist heat.

  A jolt of nearly unbearable pleasure ripped through her. She gasped, but he gave her no time to come to terms with it. He thrust into her again and again, deep, smooth, hard, each push propelling her higher and higher until at last she burst with pleasure. She laughed, unable to contain rapture, opened her eyes, and saw him come with her first squeeze, his eyes filled with ecstasy of her climax and his release.

  He eased himself from her and she curled next to him, her head on his chest. His arm trailed down her back and pushed her closer to him. For a long time they lay intertwined and she listened to his heartbeat until she finally fell asleep.

  She awoke in the night because he wanted her again. And then again. Some time in the early hours of the morning she called him a savage, but he laughed and seduced her once more with ridiculous ease.

  In the morning he discovered he was late, but he stayed for breakfast. Meli served him shockingly sweet coffee in tiny cups, with a side of red arna berries still on the vine and spicy sweet bread.

  He barely touched any of it. His grey eyes looked at her with warmth. He took her hand into his and kissed it.

  His tenderness caught her unprepared. She was prepared for a brisk dismissal, but he didn’t seem to want to let her go. In making her strategy, she never counted on his affection or on the stirrings of absurd pleasure that affection made her feel.

  “You’re making me feel self-conscious,” Meli said. “Did I finally cook something you hate?”

  “Come with me.”

  Meli shook her head. “I have my world. You have yours.”

  A shadow of former hardness iced over his eyes. “Am I dismissed then?”

  She kissed him on the lips, surprising herself with her tenderness. “I wouldn’t do well in your ivory financial tower. I will wait for you here instead. Come to me tonight.”

  He pulled her in his lap. “I could persuade you to come with me.”

  She smiled. “Ah, the power of sex. Perhaps you could. But why would you, knowing I don’t want to go?”

  “So I can have you to myself.”

  “You can have me anyway. Tonight.”

  He kissed her neck and she shivered.

  “Promise me you will lock your door while I’m gone.”

  “I promise.” She whispered the combination into his ear.

  “At least tell me your name.”

  “Meli.”

  Celino knew someone had entered his aerial the moment he closed the front door of Meli’s house. He waited until the vehicle’s door slid open and Marcus’s pale features greeted him.

  “I came close to sending out a search party, my lord,” the Anglican said softly when Celino slid into the driver seat.

  “You would have rescued me from one of the best nights of my life and then I would have had to kill you. I’m a savage, you know.” He guided the aerial straight up, eased it into the flow of traffic and let the autopilot take over. “What have you found out?”

  “A lot and nothing. The house is registered to Meli Asole Grey.”

  “It’s a false name,” Celino said. Asole and Grey were two characters from Scarlet Sails by Alexander Green. It was a ridiculously obscure old planet book. The only reason anyone would know of it would be by studying the works of the Seventh Romantic Revivalists, who considered Scarlet Sails the purest expression of romanticism. He recalled suffering through Seventh Romantic Revival somewhere between twelve and thirteen. He deeply hated it. “She has an excellent education.”

  Marcus nodded. “A trace of the name produced nothing. She simply appeared out of thin air about eight years ago. She doesn’t own an aerial. She has no health card. Her bank balance is modest, never over three thousand a month. She receives regular deposits from a closed fund held at Colonial Bank. The account is rated B. Hacking their security grid to see who put it there will be long, dangerous, and expensive.”

  “Do it. Does she own the house?”

  “No. It’s owned by Colonial. She makes standard rate payments.”

  “Buy it. Do it through Fontaine, Inc.”

  Marcus hesitated. “Most likely, she is kin. She is either on the run and doesn’t want to be found or she has excised herself from her family.”

  Celino frowned. The excision was rare. An excised kinsman severed all ties with their family, sometimes of his own free will, sometimes because his family judged him to be harmful to their wellbeing. An excise lost all claim to his inheritance, family profits, and protection. It was a drastic step, never taken lightly. He had threatened excision years ago to free himself and assert his dominion over the family, and he had given the matter a great deal of thought before taking the plunge.

  Meli was a mystery. An enchanting mystery. He had never before had a woman who laughed in joy when he brought her to an orgasm. He wanted to do it again.

  Occasionally excision was done to provide the family with deniability. Great thieves and assassins had been excised, so they could act as a shadowy arm of their families. The family reaped the rewards, while the excises alone shouldered all of the consequences. He considered that possibility, turning it over in his mind.

  She could’ve killed him last night. He’d gone to her confident in his ability to defend himself, but he hadn’t counted on how absorbing she could be. She occupied his attention completely. He had fallen asleep holding her. He slept well too, what little of it he had done last night.

  It was highly unlikely that an assassin would possess none of the enhancements customary to her profession.

  “Keep digging,” he said. He would do some research himself. Tonight.

  Celino spent the next night with her. And the next.

  On the third morning he surrendered to his fate and cleared his schedule for the rest of the week. He hadn’t taken a vacation in five years.

  They spent a lazy day together. He snooped through her reader. He thought she had excellent taste until, predictably, he found Scarlet Sails.

  “It’s an abominable book,” he told her.

  She smiled. “I like it.”

  He opened his mouth to argue but she put her fingers on his lips. “I don’t require you to like it. Only to accept that I’m different from you.”

  Later, after they made love in her bed, and she lay next to him, her head resting on his biceps, she said, “Tell me about your lovers.”

  “They were many and unremarkable,” he said. “None of them were like you.”

  “How am I different?”

  “If I lie, will you know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps that’s your answer.”

  Her knuckles punched his ribs and he laughed.

  “Cheater.”

  “Men don’t speak of things like this.”

  She turned on her elbow and put her head on his chest. “Tell me.”

  “You set me on fire,” he told her. “While you
poured me that soup in the kitchen, I had to fight not to lunge across the table and kiss your mouth. But I’ve felt that way before, sometimes with women who were merely passing acquaintances. I feel comfortable with you. I know it sounds pedestrian, yet it makes you priceless to me. Being with you is effortless.”

  “Is that so?” she asked softly.

  “You’re so like me. Sharp, smart, and practical. And so unlike me. I’m a cold ruthless bastard and you are warm and happy. And soft.” He trailed his hands down the curve of her breast. “And lovely.” He teased her nipple. “Enchanting. Alluring…”

  “You don’t say…”

  He kissed her and whispered into her ear. “And all mine.”

  “Not all,” she told him and left the bed.

  “What of your lovers?” he asked her later when they sat in the garden sipping pink wine he had brought. “How many did you have before me?”

  “I’ve had a few.”

  “Too many.”

  “How do you know?”

  “More than zero is too many.”

  She laughed.

  “Tell me about them.”

  “There were two. The first was a much older man. I was twenty-one and he was almost forty. I had chosen him very carefully. He was very kind and he was going off planet in a few days. I wanted my first time to be special and worry free.”

  “Was it?”

  “It was pleasant. He was skilled, but I was self-conscious and we lacked passion.”

  “What about the other man?”

  “He was a wanted criminal. I thought he was a dashing rogue.” She sipped her wine. “We were together for almost a year. You know a part of me. He also knew a part of me, the part I no longer want to be.”

  A sharp spike of jealousy pierced Celino’s chest.

  “Your eyes are frosting over,” she noted.

  “What part of you did he know that I don’t?”

  “The part I will keep to myself for now. You don’t need to worry, Celino. The man is dead. He proved himself to be just what I thought he was—a rogue—and his greed got him killed.”