Silken Rapture: Princes of the Underground, Book 2

  Dedication

  My thanks to my husband for his consistent support and my editor, for having faith in the project.

  Prologue

  Human beings live in ignorance of the fact that they are dependent on the earth’s energies to nourish and sustain their spirit. But the planet’s soul is affected by the spiritual cataclysm of powerful living beings as well.

  At the same moment that Chicago’s underground tunnels shook with the final battle of the Iniskium warriors and the bloodthirsty Scourge revenants, the earth also heaved beneath the city of London. The earth exposed a vein in offering—an ancient, powerful crystal obelisk thrust through the dark world of underground London.

  In the moment Saint Sevliss earned his soul, he won that same potential for one of his brothers as well.

  Blaise Sevliss—Lord Delraven—has been given the chance to claim his humanity if he possesses the strength to win the one woman who can grant him a soul.

  Chapter One

  Morshiel’s eyes remained glued to the mortal woman as the ghost fellated him. It was a little like staring at the brilliant, blazing sun while the moon made love to you. He lay on the plush carpet gazing fixedly at the captive female.

  Life, he thought greedily. For Morshiel, life and the woman were one and same.

  The ghost who pleasured his cock was named Shirian, and she was the conduit between life and death. Her lithe, golden-brown body stretched between the woman and him, the sole of her foot pressed to the captive’s ankle, her belly flush against the carpet the human drudge had laid on the platform. Shirian’s mouth kissed him to life. Unimaginable energy surged into his cock and up his spine. His flesh sang like a harp plucked by an archangel.

  Shirian was a petulant Princess of Egypt who was doomed to wander underground London as a shade after her coffin had been jarred loose in a defunct Tube tunnel near the British Museum. Morshiel had long admired her, but until tonight, she’d only been beautifully shaped vapor to him.

  He’d always approved of Shirian’s keen intelligence and ruthless ambition. He’d been doubtful about her plan to kidnap the psychic who was touring English universities. But then Morshiel had caught sight of the stunning human female and he’d become obsessed with Shirian’s plan.

  Isabel Lanscourt.

  Unfortunately, Shirian was not pleased that he focused all his attention on Isabel, and not her.

  “Stop staring at her,” Shirian snapped.

  Morshiel dragged his eyes off the frozen essence of beauty. When two of his human drudges had forced Isabel into contact with the gigantic crystal obelisk, the psychic’s body had jerked and then frozen into immobility. She’d begun to vibrate subtly, unable to move while vast amounts of energy poured through her. A low, melodious hum—an amplified version of the earth’s song—filled the underground chamber.

  It was the most sublime sound Morshiel had ever heard in his centuries of existence.

  Isabel had begun to glow, emanating massive amounts of vitessence, the energy that surrounded and resonated from all living beings, the energy Morshiel lacked and must steal from humans in order to live. He typically absorbed the energy first through the sex juices and later through their blood as he drained them of life. Humans were merely put on this earth to serve him, after all—cattle to satiate his hunger.

  But Isabel Lanscourt was no typical human. Most would have been killed by the shock of massive energy the crystal obelisk provided. Isabel’s body channeled it, amplified it exponentially. She would be Morshiel’s personal, private generator of vitessence. He bathed in the life force, became drunk on its potency.

  “Do you want me to stop?” Shirian asked, irritation spiking her richly accented voice. When he didn’t respond, but merely continued to stare at Isabel, enraptured, Shirian moved her naked foot off Isabel’s ankle.

  One second, he bathed in glorious vitessence. The next, he was left empty and hollow as a tomb. It was a pain unlike anything he’d ever known.

  “Put it back, bitch.”

  He saw Shirian blink, even though she’d altered from flesh to a bluish mist in a second. He could barely make out her misty features, but he knew Shirian had been surprised—and yes, intimidated—by the strength of his anger. How dare a weak, ephemeral little phantom deprive him of his legacy?

  A second later, Shirian’s foot came back into contact with Isabel’s leg. His head fell back on the carpeted floor as energy jolted through him, the nirvana of it making him want to forget everything else but Isabel.

  But he couldn’t be so foolish. Not when Shirian threatened a pout.

  He lifted his head and met the sloe-eyed beauty’s gaze. Her lips appeared puffy and red from sucking his cock so vigorously. Her cheeks had grown pink from arousal. He touched her flawless face and felt heat.

  “Blood flows through your veins, Shirian?”

  “I know not,” she whispered, her throat roughened from taking his cock deep. “I only know that I have not felt so alive for four thousand years and more.”

  He ran his fingers through coal-black hair and palmed her skull, urging her back to her task.

  “Then you will take the word of a bloodsucker that vitessence runs through your veins, Princess. I will taste it on my tongue.”

  Her smile was a flirt and a snarl. “Not before I taste your come on mine.”

  He returned her smile and pressed on her head, watching her steadily as she spread her lips and vacuumed him into her humid heat. He managed—with effort—to keep his eyes glued to Shirian’s increasingly enthusiastic maneuverings instead of the hypnotic vision of Isabel Lanscourt. It was arousing to watch an unparalleled beauty suck his cock like a waif tasting strawberry soda through a straw for the first time. But Morshiel could have almost any sexual pleasure he desired. He had experienced almost every sexual pleasure imaginable. He’d grown as weary of his gluttony on sex as an obese man grows tired of the chains that tie him to food.

  But this experience…this was singular.

  His body shimmered with energy, the last stopping place of a conduit running from the earth’s mighty soul to the strange crystal obelisk that had erupted from nowhere after a minor earthquake several weeks ago. It traveled like a current from the crystal to Isabel’s body, to Shirian’s foot which touched Isabel. It ran like electricity from Shirian’s sucking, pistoning mouth, to his straining cock, up his spine and straight into Morshiel’s pulsing brain.

  He would crush his clone, Blaise, with this newfound power.

  Shirian strove to push her lips farther down the column of his cock, but her throat had taken on all the sensitivities of human flesh and refused him entry. She gagged and bobbed her head rapidly over the first half of his length, as though in apology for her shortcoming.

  Morshiel tightened his hold on the thick, lustrous hair at her nape.

  “Come now. My most hideous Scourge revenant, Roberto, gives head better than that. Egyptian princess,” he hissed scathingly. “Show me the filthy little whore who resides in your royal flesh.”

  Her eyes flashed up at him defiantly. He chuckled when he saw her fury, knowing she would accept the dare because it was in her nature. He knew she was aroused, as well. He was typically so contained, so noble in his manner when he interacted with his servants. Each and every one of them loved it when they were chosen to give him pleasure, but few ever witnessed him acting without perfect manners.

  If they did, it was the last thing they saw before Morshiel took off their head.

  Shirian stilled her gag reflex this time and slid him into her throat, her nostrils flaring as she gasped for air. He moaned in pleasure as her throat tightened around his co
ckhead and energy poured up his spine and quickened his flesh.

  “Yes. That’s how you please your master,” he muttered between clenched teeth before he began to erupt into her throat. He held her down on him, even when she balked and tried to eject his convulsing cock so that she could breathe. After an ecstatic moment, he released his grip, allowing her to jerk off him while she caught her breath.

  Her head fell to his belly as she gasped wildly for air.

  “You bloody bastard,” Shirian rasped after a moment. “I thought you prided yourself on being such a gentleman.”

  He laughed, feeling wonderful. Better than he’d ever felt in his life. In fact, it was quite possible he’d never felt anything in his life until he’d experienced the soul-energy of the woman. “You don’t want a gentleman, ghost. If you do, better haunt my clone, not me.”

  “Blaise is a beast,” Shirian replied. “Everyone says so. Lord Delraven is a glorious beast.”

  Morshiel’s smile faded when Shirian mentioned his clone’s name in a tone of longing. He—Morshiel—who was so deserving of a title, had never been conferred that honor despite throwing away vast amounts of money on philanthropic efforts that might gain royal notice. Instead, it was his insufferable clone who had won the title centuries ago for saving that royal Italian bitch. Why did Blaise always garner all the attention?

  “I am his twin in looks,” he told Shirian, made jealous by the gleam of longing in the beauty’s eyes. She studied him with a sharp gaze.

  “Technically, yes. Your appearance is much more…urbane, shall we say? Why do you shave your head, when you could have Delraven’s equal in hair?”

  He caressed his smooth skull and shrugged with forced casualness. “If your twin was also your enemy, would you not want to differentiate your appearance?”

  It was his secret that his hair—when long—seemed to possess nerve-endings. Stroking it could send him to shivering in mindless pleasure. He did not relish the idea of another being potentially holding such control over him. He had grabbed his clone’s hair in battle many times, and was dismayed to realize Blaise didn’t seem to have the particular sensitivity.

  In what other ways had Usan created Blaise and him differently? It made him uneasy to consider that question.

  “What do you mean when you say Lord Delraven is a gentleman when it comes to this,” she dropped her gaze to his satiated cock significantly.

  “Blaise is nauseatingly careful when he takes a lover. I hear from his one-time meals that he even refuses to fuck them, although he assures their pleasure, many times over. It’s ludicrous. He allows his lovers to live. You have never haunted Blaise while he feeds, apparently,” Morshiel said with a sneer.

  “Not for lack of trying,” Shirian whispered.

  Morshiel grunted in irritation, knowing what she meant. “Yes, Usan guards Sanctuary with powerful wards,” he said, referring to the Magian overlord who cared for Blaise like a favorite pet while he largely left Morshiel to suffer his fate. Sanctuary was Blaise’s protected territory, an inverted skyscraper that burrowed sixty stories beneath London’s busy streets.

  How he despised his bloody clone for all the favoritism Usan showed him.

  Hatred rose like a hissing snake rearing in his chest. To calm himself, Morshiel transferred his gaze to the miraculous sight of Isabel touching the magical crystal. It hadn’t taken him long to understand that he couldn’t touch the strange crystal himself. It hadn’t killed him to touch it, as it had the Scourge revenants—the creatures he’d made near-immortal over the centuries. He’d forced two revenants to touch it, and then watched dispassionately as they writhed in horror and putrid blisters rose and popped, tearing their skin to shreds. It had wounded his flesh for Morshiel to come into direct contact with the crystal, but he was more powerful than the Scourge, and he had survived.

  In the end, he’d used one of his human drudges to manipulate the crystal—a mortal man who fell in with his band in return for drugs. That, and the opportunity to keep his worthless life.

  It pained both him and the revenants to touch Isabel. That simple fact dismayed him. The purpose of his existence had quickly altered within hours, within minutes of casting his gaze upon her. His sole reason for living would be to possess Isabel Lanscourt. Not in the way he did now. He would not rest until he found a way to touch her, to claim her.

  Anything. He would do anything to make that happen.

  As a ghost, Shirian could channel Isabel’s energy into him. It was not enough, but even this watered-down version of vitessence was an ecstasy he’d never imagined. He longed to feel Isabel’s vitessence flow into him skin to skin, to bury himself in heaven…

  He distractedly placed his hands on the satiny skin of Shirian’s shoulders and slid his body down beneath hers until they lay belly to belly, his eyes never leaving the brilliant image of Isabel.

  “If you don’t look at me this instant, you soulless bastard, I believe I’ll have to scratch the itch on my foot…”

  His gaze zoomed to Shirian’s face. She regarded him with triumph.

  If he hadn’t already cast eyes on Isabel, he’d think he gazed upon the loveliest creature in existence. Shirian was also one of the most deadly. She had once confessed to him during a late-night chat that she had conspired during her life to have more than three hundred people murdered. Sixteen of that number she’d killed with her own ruby-studded dagger.

  One of the sixteen had been her newborn son.

  And that didn’t begin to take into account the number of people she’d murdered by way of madness since she’d been freed from a curse that bound her spirit within her sarcophagus. The director of the museum had ordered that countless relics be relocated to the unused British Museum station tube-tunnels for safety during the Nazi blitz of London during World War II. A clumsy employee had liberated Shirian’s spirit from an Egyptian priest’s curse by tripping as he carried her sarcophagus down some stairs, dropping Shirian’s coffin and jolting the ancient, magical seal that protected the living from her virulent spirit.

  Shirian had taken her share of human lives since that time.

  She sulked too much, granted, but there was no doubt in Morshiel’s mind that she was Shirian the Magnificent.

  Her skin glowed as luminously as her dark eyes. Her breasts heaved as she tried to catch her breath. Morshiel plucked at an erect nipple, spying a blue vein beneath golden-brown skin.

  “I see your vitessence glow around you like subtle moonlight,” he crooned to her. “I smell your blood.”

  Her pulse leapt at her throat, making his mouth water.

  “It is true? I live?” she asked.

  “We both live. I have a soul and you have a body—as long as we have the woman and crystal to sustain us.”

  He had shivered at the hollow, ghostly sound of Shirian’s laughter in the past. Now it sounded low and sultry as it vibrated through blood-warmed flesh. He joined her in her mirth as he bared his fangs and pushed a tender breast toward his mouth.

  “Yes, taste life on your tongue, my beautiful prince,” Shirian murmured huskily as she arched her back. She palmed her breast from below, freely offering the miracle of her reborn flesh and blood. He leaned forward, greedy to taste the paradox of ghost’s blood, hungry for her vitessence.

  Her triumphant moment was interrupted by a fierce cold wind, the tramping paws and pants of wolves, and the furious howl of an attacking beast.

  Blaise gave the signal for attack. Aubrey Cane leapt in human form and transformed to a wolf in midair. Most of his faithful followers, the Literati, also shifted into wolves, but he himself remained as a man, his heartluster gripped tightly in his hand. He rarely fought as his wolf-self when his clone was near, and Morshiel was definitely in the vicinity. He sensed his clone’s location behind six Scourge revenants—three canids, two bloodboars and a prowler that guarded the unused portion of tunnel near the British Museum platform. The Scourge were only capable of shapeshifting into these three types of foul, deadly c
reatures, while their master—Morshiel—could transform into many forms of demon animals.

  Blaise sensed something else besides his clone, an energy that stunned him and left him wary…disbelieving. The low, melodious hum of the earth singing thrilled his flesh.

  Nothing could create that much power. What in hell’s farthest reaches had Morshiel done?

  He grasped the handle of his heartluster—the magical short-sword was the only thing that could weaken and subdue his clone—and charged through the melee of snarling wolf-Literati and Scourge revenants. From the periphery of his vision, he noticed that David Kwan had also chosen to fight in his human form. A bloodboar opened its slimy maw from behind David, about to sink its razor-sharp teeth into his shoulder as David fought a canid with a scimitar. Blaise slashed with his heartluster in a sideways motion, never pausing to see the effect of his action because he knew he’d just decapitated the bloodboar as sure as he knew the foul scent of revenant blood and decaying flesh in his nose.

  “Thanks,” David called before he slashed with his scimitar and the canid howled in fury and pain.

  “Don’t thank me. Fight,” Blaise shouted, not looking back. He broke through the crumbling revenant defenses and strode onto the tube platform. What he saw there confused him. A crystal protruded between the rails of the unused train track, the pointed end of it thrusting up next to the concrete platform. It was enormous, the exposed portion sixteen feet long and three feet wide at the bottom.

  What truly shocked him was the vision of the woman touching the crystal. She glowed like a captured star. He had a fleeting image of another woman, this one naked. She gave him a quick glance—both haughty and curious at once—before she disappeared. Had she been a ghost? For a split second she’d looked so real.

  Morshiel sprang up from the platform, his fangs protruding between a snarl. He grasped for his pants, which had been shoved halfway down his thighs, and extracted his heartluster in one fluid motion.