Masters of Seduction: Books 1-4: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 2

  “Heaven save us, if it is.”

  “You know what they call him, don’t you?”

  “Devil Gravori.”

  He was nearly to the front of the Chamber now. As captain, it was up to Nahiri to meet this oncoming threat and stop it. If need be, she would call every Blade in the room to attack.

  She stepped directly into his path. “Come no farther.”

  To her relief, her warning sounded steady, unrushed. She felt the weight of more than one pair of Blade eyes on her as she alone moved in to confront the menace that had taken over the room.

  The Incubus paused, but those ageless, golden eyes were fixed on her in question.

  In piqued challenge.

  Nahiri didn’t like the wicked gleam she saw in his gaze. It did strange things to her breathing. Made her already racing heartbeat lunge into a harder tempo.

  That unsettling citrine stare made her feel examined from the inside out. She felt exposed, vulnerable. As if her every fear and doubt and sinful thought were being laid out for his perusal.

  Worse, it took all her focus to keep from losing herself in his eyes, and the wicked promise that seemed to burn in their depths.

  She didn’t want to imagine what his kind could do to a woman, but it seemed that as soon as she thought it, pictures were already forming vividly—profanely—in her mind. She and this man, this demon, twined around each other under the heat of a summer sky.

  She could practically smell the sun warming his naked, tawny skin. She could almost feel the erotic warmth of him under her fingertips, in her grasp, on her tongue…against every fevered inch of her body.

  And then it was his fingers roaming over her bare skin. His lips tasting every inch of her.

  His mouth devouring her with a carnal hunger that threatened to consume her…

  Enough.

  Nahiri cleared her throat and struggled to rein in her wandering mind.

  Was he doing that to her deliberately?

  Did an Incubus Master like him even have to try?

  He moved to step around her. Nahiri moved too. Chin lifting to meet his arrogant gaze, she closed her fingers around the hilts of her weapons.

  “Unannounced visitors are not permitted in the temple.”

  She could have the twin, ten-inch daggers in her grip and poised for combat in a mere instant.

  Although she had never used the special blades to inflict harm on anyone, she wouldn’t hesitate to use them now.

  She wouldn’t hesitate to kill, if it meant protecting the Three. They were her family—as close to family as she’d ever known, that is.

  Those golden eyes seared her. “I’m not a visitor,” he growled, his voice dark and deep and powerful. She felt the vibration of it all the way into her bones. “And since I’m already standing here, consider my presence all the announcement anyone needs.”

  A gasp went up from many of the other Blades.

  No one had ever dared such a flagrant show of disrespect for the temple. Nor, more importantly, for the Three.

  Nahiri bristled. She drew one of her long daggers. “You must leave. Now.”

  He glanced at the razor-sharp length of honed obsidian in her hand. One black brow quirked, nearly imperceptibly. Then his face hardened, and the dangerous twist of his mouth turned even more terrifying.

  He took another step, not so much toward the stairs now, but toward her. Into her personal space, until there was hardly a hand’s width between them.

  “You think you can tangle with me, little Blade? I won’t go down as easily as my brother, I promise you that,” he snarled.

  She didn’t know what he was talking about.

  She didn’t know anything in that moment, except the mesmerizing spell of his penetrating gaze and the answering rush of arousal that ran up and down her limbs, making her skin feel too tight, utterly too hot, to bear.

  All of the carnal images and wildly erotic sensations she’d felt a moment ago under his stare intensified now. She saw things—felt things—that her virgin mind struggled to comprehend, even though her untried body seemed eager for the education.

  Her heart raced. Her breath accelerated into soft, shallow pants as a keen ache began to bloom deep inside her. She moaned at the feeling, powerless to bite back her reaction to this intense need. She couldn’t break free of his hold on her. All the worse, she couldn’t even summon the will to want to break free.

  It was unbearable, both the yearning of her body and the humiliation of how effortlessly the Incubus would be able to make her his Thrall, if he wanted.

  Her fingers began to go lax around her blade, almost to the point of dropping it.

  No. She wouldn’t go down so easily, either.

  Gathering what inner strength she could, Nahiri mentally pushed back at him with all her will.

  No!

  The ache eased up at once. She was still breathless, her nerve endings still smoldering, but at least she had some control of herself again.

  As for the demon—Devil Gravori—he cocked his head at her, studying her with more interest than she cared to acknowledge. The look was there and gone in an instant, then he swung his head away from her and addressed the Three directly.

  He stalked toward the stairs before Nahiri could stop him.

  No one stopped him.

  No one seemed inclined to move against him, not even Valina.

  Every female face in the room was transfixed on him, not in terror or horror now, but in some small measure of the same boneless compliance that he had inflicted on her.

  He had enthralled every Blade in the room.

  And now his fury was fixed entirely on the trio of priestesses at the top of the stairs.

  “I’ve come here to demand an explanation from the three of you,” he said, his voice booming in the heavy silence of the room. “I’ve come to demand justice for the offense that’s been dealt to my family and my House.”

  The silence of the Three was staggering. Nahiri waited to hear one of them, any of them, react to the accusation in some way.

  Had he enthralled the powerful Nephilim priestesses as handily as he owned the rest of the High Chamber?

  Finally, a voice filtered down from behind the tall screen.

  “This is an overstep even for you, Devlin Gravori.”

  Devlin, Nahiri silently acknowledged, not Devil. Although she was getting a very good taste for how he might have earned the nickname.

  “You’ve been Master of your House for many centuries,” another of the Three said. “Long enough to know that this temple is not a place for violence or accusations. This is a place of peace and mercy. Of wisdom and counsel. And we Three are merely the balance—”

  “Fuck the three of you,” he growled, more savage than ever. “And fuck your precious balance. My brother was killed last night, along with his human Thrall. I’m not leaving until I have an answer as to why.”

  He stalked for the stairs leading up to the Three, and started taking them two at a time.

  Panic sent Nahiri into motion. She sped up beside him to head him off midway. Her obsidian blade was gripped lightly, but lethally, in her right hand; the second was not even a moment out of reach of her other hand.

  “Stop,” she commanded the powerful Incubus Master. “You have no right—”

  His teeth flashed white behind the furious curl of his lips. “Don’t I, little Blade?”

  He slipped his hand into the inside of his suit jacket. Nahiri thought for certain he was about to retrieve a weapon of his own.

  And in a way, that’s exactly what he did.

  “I found this under my brother’s body today.” He held out his hand, a length of gleaming black volcanic glass lying across his palm. His tone seethed with barely restrained rage. “Whoever killed him left it behind.”

  It was a broken length of blade.

  An obsidian blade.

  The kind of weapon only a Nephilim warrior like Nahiri would carry.

  CHAPTER THREE


  Dev watched the Temple Blade’s expression turn to shock as she looked at the broken length of obsidian in his hand. Smoky dark eyes widened in confusion. In total disbelief.

  Was she stunned by the killing, or by the idea that he held evidence of it?

  Dev couldn’t be sure.

  “No,” she murmured. A shake of her head sent the rope of her silky black braid swinging like a pendulum behind her lithe body. “No, that’s impossible. No one carries a weapon like this. Only a—”

  “Only a Nephilim Blade,” Dev agreed. “And no Blade would raise her weapon against anyone without the approval of this High Chamber.” He swiveled a hard look in the direction of the Three. “Or on its direct command.”

  He heard her sharp inhalation, felt her tension ratchet up tighter at his inflammatory charge. “You cannot speak to them that way. It’s not done. It’s not right—”

  “It’s not right that my brother is dead, damn it.” His sharp words echoed in the silence of the temple. He glared down at her. “It’s not right that the coward sliced open Marius’s throat and left him to bleed out while his lover was stabbed through the heart.”

  The Nephilim warrior stared at him then, mute, hardly breathing under the blast of his rage.

  And despite the boiling fury and grief he felt over his brother’s murder by one of her kind, he couldn’t deny that this Blade intrigued him.

  She was beautiful. Sable-dark hair, fathomless brown eyes that seemed both innocent and ageless in the creamy, soft oval of her delicate face.

  But beauty alone meant nothing to Dev. He’d had the pleasure of a lifetime of beautiful women. Several lifetimes.

  This Nephilim pricked his interest for her courage, even more than her heavenly face and tempting body, which he noted with far too much interest was hardly disguised by the loose-fitting clothes of the temple.

  She had been the only Blade in the temple who’d made a move to stop him. Impressive, though not completely surprising, given that she stood at the right of the stairs as the highest guard.

  Looking into her sober, determined face now, Dev would bet that she’d have been the first to step up no matter her rank among the other Blades.

  This female was brave, stubbornly so.

  She was also strong-willed, the only Nephilim warrior in the temple to push back against his allure.

  He’d turned it on hardest for her, and yet she’d managed to hold on to her will. Barely.

  That stubbornness made the Incubus in him rankle with a wicked urge. How far would he have to go to seduce her?

  How long would it take for him to make the pretty Blade his Thrall?

  Dev shoved the thought aside with a growl. His unholy nature—and the carnal needs that came with it—would have to wait for another time.

  Another woman.

  Refocusing on his purpose for being in the temple, Dev curled his fingers around the cold obsidian in his palm. He had come for answers. For an explanation of why Marius had been singled out for such savage attack, and which of the Nephilim warriors had dealt it.

  Dev had come for an admission of guilt from the Three. For an apology.

  For vengeance, if he didn’t find any satisfaction in this chamber.

  He swung around to address the Three on a snarl. “I demand the truth. Did you send a Blade to kill my brother?”

  Quiet filled the vaulted cavern of the High Chamber, and for a moment Dev doubted he would get any reply. Then, at last, a whisper of movement from behind the screen at the top of the stairs.

  A low murmur of voices from the Three, before one spoke for them all. “No such order was given. Nor have we ever called for an Incubus’s execution.”

  Dev scowled, doubt tasting like bile on his tongue. It was true; he couldn’t think of a single instance when an Incubus had been sought out and killed on the orders of the priestesses during their three-hundred-year tenure. Banishment to the Oubliette was more their style. And yet he sniffed a lie in their response.

  He held the proof of the lie in his hand. The sharp length of honed obsidian felt like ice in his grip.

  “You’re telling me the Blade who took this weapon to my brother’s neck did so of her own volition? Or, more incredibly, against the edict of this Chamber?”

  It would be unheard of. Neither likely nor even possible, given the Nephilim warriors’ devotion to the Three.

  A slow exhalation sounded from the priestesses hiding behind their flimsy shield. There was a wealth of disapproval in the heavy sigh. Scorn in the brief silence that followed.

  “This intrusion is unwelcome, Master Gravori. Though no more than your accusations.”

  Dev grunted, unfazed that they’d taken offense. “Tell me why my brother was killed.”

  “If you feel a wrong has been unjustly dealt your House, we suggest you take it up with the Sovereign—”

  “The Sovereign,” Dev scoffed. Anger flooded him at their attempt to dismiss him. “You know damned well my request will never be granted. How many years has it been since anyone’s even seen him?”

  “You have our answer.” Short words, sharp with irritation. “We are finished here.”

  “Like hell we are.” Dev seethed with outrage.

  He couldn’t hold back the roar that erupted from his throat. He pulled his arm back, then let the broken obsidian dagger fly at the screen at the top of the stairs. It shattered against the wall of pierced, painted sandalwood that stood between him and the Three.

  They scrambled behind the screen, a chaos of panic.

  Dev relished their fear. Although he’d never laid eyes on them, he pictured three faces blanched with alarm, sandaled feet scuffing over the polished marble as the priestesses leapt for cover.

  “Blades!” one of them shrieked. “Nahiri, seize him!”

  Slender, strong hands clamped down around Dev’s arm in that instant. A razor-sharp edge of cold obsidian rested in warning under his chin.

  He met the dark eyes that glinted with unswerving determination in the lovely face of the temple’s highest guard. If he so much as flinched with harmful intent toward the Three, this exotic beauty—Nahiri—would cut him open right where he stood.

  He didn’t want to admire that about her, but damn if he didn’t find her even more attractive when her doe-brown eyes were narrowed, her entire body vibrating with readiness to fight.

  She was levelheaded, stealthy.

  Lethal, Dev had no doubt.

  She didn’t have to worry. As furious as he was, Dev wasn’t going to assault the Three.

  It was one thing to storm into the High Chamber and demand answers. Quite another to strike against the Nephilim’s most sacred beings.

  The Incubi and the Nephilim realms had already come through one savage war centuries ago; he wouldn’t be the one to start a new clash between their races here and now.

  But he wasn’t leaving without some kind of satisfaction.

  “This is far from over,” he warned them. “I will find out who killed my brother, and why. I won’t rest until I have those answers. And I promise you, the guilty will not be able to hide for long…no matter who they are.”

  Dev glanced into Nahiri’s determined, doe-eyed gaze. She was struggling to keep her dagger on him, fighting a desperate inner battle against the blast of sexual compulsion he trained on her now with ruthless intent. He gave her more than he had the first time. Her full, pink lips parted on a moan as he flooded her mind and senses with arousal. With raking need.

  She was strong, but he was stronger.

  And he had no mercy in him.

  Only fury.

  Only grief and a need to make someone pay.

  Until the Three were ready to admit their part in Marius’s murder, Dev wanted them to feel some measure of loss too.

  Dev wrapped his hand around Nahiri’s wrist, guiding the weapon away from his throat with only the slightest effort. As he held her in his grasp, a dark thought took root. A wicked thought that caught fire in his blood, faster than he
could rein it in.

  “Since this temple values its damnable balance so much,” he growled, “it only seems fitting that I take something precious from you.”

  One of the Three sputtered in outrage. “You would not dare—”

  But he already had.

  With Nahiri held tight in his grasp and deep in his thrall, Dev dematerialized, taking the Nephilim priestesses’ most valued Blade along with him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nahiri awoke in the middle of a large bed in a strange room.

  She shot upright the instant consciousness dawned, her hands reaching automatically for her weapons.

  They were gone.

  The leather sheaths that crossed her torso were empty.

  No. That meant her nightmare hadn’t been just a dream. It was reality.

  The Incubus in the temple…Devlin Gravori.

  He really had taken her.

  Nahiri’s eyelids snapped open in panic. Sunlight poured in from an open window across the room, blasting her vision.

  Momentarily blinded, she squinted through her lashes, struggling to take quick stock of her new surroundings.

  Creamy stucco walls. Dark hardwood floors and masculine-looking furnishings. Thick timber beams high above her head.

  And beneath her, a massive bed. The mattress was as cushiony as a cloud, the cotton sheets and silken coverlet calling to mind all manner of sins.

  All around her was the scent of intriguingly exotic spices and something even more enticing.

  Him.

  She sensed his presence even before she swung her head in his direction and found him seated in an upholstered chair beside the bed. No, not seated in it, exactly. Dominating it. The same way he seemed to dominate every space he occupied.

  His big body lounged negligently where he sat, his powerful thighs spread, one arm draped over the side of the chair, the other propping his head up, fist curled loosely under the square line of his jaw.

  He’d shed his suit jacket at some point, and now wore just his gray tailored pants and white business shirt. The collar was opened even farther than she recalled, just one more button loosened, but exposing enough of his tawny skin to make her mouth water with a sudden, unholy urge to taste him.