Page 17 of The Rogue's Curse

The other man broke away, eyes brilliant red. “This is no place for this,” he said. “Come with me.” He tugged on Misha’s hand, and lightning struck.

When the blinding light faded, they sat on an ornately carved stone bench in an overgrown rose garden. Ruby red blooms dripped from towering bushes, pulsing faintly as if a heart beat within the garden. The night sky was not speckled with diamond stars, but woven of a thousand shifting blue-black strands of silk.

His skin was clean and unmarked, his body no longer aching. “Where are we?” he murmured.

“Where we should be,” Paris said. He raked one hand through that thick, gleaming hair. “You know that you belong to me now, don’t you?”

He nodded. How else could he answer?

At that, Paris grinned, shifting to his knees in front of Misha. “I will treasure you,” he said. “Let me show you how I adore you.”

Slowly, he unzipped Misha’s trousers and unleashed his cock. Before he could protest, he saw that his skin was pristine, clean and unscarred, healed from his imprisonment. Red tendrils of light shimmered over his thighs, along Paris’s fingers, before fading away.

A throbbing ache pulsed in his groin, and he nearly let out a whine of desperation as Paris kissed his bare skin, across his belly, then his thigh, and finally, brushing a kiss across his crown. His tongue traced a slow, lazy circle around him before he took Misha into his lips.

Red flashed across his vision; soft silken rose petal red, the first drops of a tentative bite, so perfect and searing and lovely. In and in he went, with the lovely vibration of Paris’s voice around him. A soft moan of satisfaction erupted from him.

A firm hand grasped his left wrist, guiding his hand to Paris’s head. He stared in wonder as the other man worked him, his tongue working a wicked magic. “Yes,” he groaned.

From his knees, Paris withdrew and flashed a wicked grin at him. “You’re mine.”

“Yours,” Misha agreed. He had done nothing to deserve this, and still he had it. Wet heat engulfed him, while Paris’s graceful fingers pressed into his thighs, stroking and teasing until his entire body was under the other man’s spell.

There was no more conversation, just heated tension that grew and grew, then a desperation as he fought to keep his composure, fingers curling into that thick bronze hair. His spine tensed, and he thrust forward as he came. Paris’s hands dug into his hips and held him close, throat working around him as he finished, drinking him down, as if to say, You are entirely mine. Every bit of you.

Slowly, languorously, Paris withdrew and licked his flushed lips. Still kneeling, he grasped Misha’s wrist and brushed a kiss on the back of his left hand. Sharp pain bit through his hand, though it faded to a strange, prickling heat.

Brilliant red bloomed on the back of his hand, spreading tendrils over his skin. Crimson vines twisted up and around his fingers, twisted together, and snaked up his forearm. “What is this?”

“You’re mine,” Paris said again. “Now and always. And I will—”

Misha sat bolt upright with a gasp. His phone lay on his chest, buzzing with text messages from Ophelia Klein. It was midday, and faint hints of sunlight seeped into the room along the bottom of the blackout curtains. A stubborn ache pulsed in his groin, as if to say, Don’t forget.

“Fucking hell,” he muttered. Was he a bloody teenaged boy again? And what was all this romantic you’re mine nonsense?

It was nothing more than stress, and the fact that he had functioning eyeballs with which to notice that Paris Rossignol was gorgeous.

And that was all, dammit.

5

Laughing skulls with flickering scarlet eyes grinned at him as he ran down the winding, claustrophobic tunnel. Dancing flames in empty sockets cast strange, shifting light over the crumbled bone dust beneath his feet.

“Where is he?” he blurted. “Il est où?”

Only distorted laughter came as a response. Endless catacombs blurred by him, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was running out of time, that some unseen horror was going to devour him when it caught him.

The twisting, narrow tunnel opened onto a chamber with branching tunnels on all sides. Water dripped from jagged stalactites and pooled on the ground. With the flickering light passing over the shallow puddles, Paris realized it was not water, but blood that oozed from the ceiling and stained the teeth of the endless skeletal faces staring at him.

From across the chamber, a familiar face emerged from the dark. Beautiful blue-green eyes he’d admired for years looked his way.

“Allie!” he exclaimed. Thank all the gods, a friendly face.

But Alistair turned away from him without speaking and disappeared into the shadows. When Paris followed, he barreled into a stone wall, catching the faintest hint of Alistair’s scent. Blue-green light ignited in one of the skulls. He recoiled and ran.

With desperation spurring him on, he turned and ran down the next tunnel. The tunnels seemed to narrow. In the shadows nearby, something snarled. He could have sworn he felt the hot breath puff against his neck.

He bolted and soon ran into another intersection. There, a familiar blonde man waited with a torch in one hand. In his other he held the hand of a human woman, her brown eyes following him. Their expressions were solemn and unflinching.

---