Sinner's Heart (Hellraisers) by Archer Zoe

Author:Archer, Zoe [Archer, Zoe]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Zebra
Published: 2013-04-01T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

From his vantage at the window, Bram watched the street. Christ Church’s bell chimed the nine o’clock hour. The hour of business and industry—or so he’d been told, possessing neither the need to do business nor the impulse to industry. Good people walked the streets of London during the daylight hours. Silk weavers concentrated their shops here in Spitalfields, and, as the price of imported silk was exorbitant, the weavers were never idle. After all, England needed its finery.

But this morning, almost no one was on the street, walking to or from their workshops. A few men hurried past, gazes fixed on the ground, and one woman darted between two buildings, her shawl pulled over her head. Bram couldn’t hear the clicking of looms. A child cried and was quickly stifled.

Bracing his hands on either side of the cracked casement, he stared down at the avenue and felt the frown shaping a pleat between his brows.

“Something’s wrong,” he muttered.

“It often is,” answered Livia behind him.

A corner of his mouth turned up. Her mordant wit remained unchanged—yet he expected no less. A night’s pleasure would not alter the heart of her, no matter how searing that pleasure had been.

If anyone would have told him that his most intense sexual experience would involve a woman he couldn’t touch and who could not touch him, he would have laughed in disbelief and told his informant to keep drinking.

But last night . . . Nothing in the whole of his wicked, wayward life had ever equaled what he and Livia had shared. Even the thought of it now turned him molten. Sex had always been a purely physical action. With Livia, it had transformed into something far beyond himself, beyond the needs of the body, or the temporary cessation of sorrow.

Yet that pleasure couldn’t hold back the evil he could sense growing.

“It’s getting worse,” he said.

“John and the Dark One know you are no longer their ally.” Livia came to hover beside him, her radiance pale in the cold gray morning. “Of a certain, the balance continues to tip.”

His stomach growled. Smirking, he laid a hand atop his empty stomach. “The doom of the world may hang in the balance, but I need breakfast.”

She rolled her eyes. “Mortals and your appetites.” “You enjoyed those appetites last night.”

“Most assuredly.”

“There will be more.” Moving away from the window, he stepped close to her. If she had been flesh, at this nearness he would have felt the heat of her body, smelled the fragrance of her skin. “I will give you pleasure to rival the gods.”

“An audacious boast,” she said, tipping up her chin. Yet her eyes darkened further and she ran her tongue over her bottom lip.

He’d happily burn down half of London just to kiss her.

“Not a boast, but the truth,” he answered. “Whatever you experienced in your mortal life, any other lovers you may have had—I’ll make you forget them all. You’ll know only me.”

She stared at him for a moment, her lips parted.

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