Free Heart of Perdition by Selah March Page A

cartload of rubbish.”
    “Not enough to reconsider his purchase of the artifact, but—”
    “Enough to choose to shift the curse to you.”
    Elspeth nodded. “He’d counted on a boy, you see, as men so often do. He never imagined I wouldn’t be a son, and in that case the curse wasn’t quite so severe. A man will love or not where he chooses, after all—”
    “But women are built to be loved.”
    “Precisely. Because I am female, the curse causes the death of anyone who…harbors warm feelings for me.” Elspeth cleared her throat. “I have no choice. I am merely the catalyst between the curse and its victims. My only power lies in avoiding contact with all mortal creatures.”
    “How appalling.”
    Elspeth shrugged. “Has it not been ever thus? We women have little power in matters of the heart. Not like men.”
    “But that sort of thinking is changing. Women have more power now, and more choices. Modern ways of thinking must prevail.”
    “And how much do modern ways of thinking matter to an ancient Sumerian demon, do you suppose?”
    He gazed at her another long moment. Then he rose from the bench, crossed to her, grasped her shoulders and lifted her from her chair. “It isn’t real. My good God in heaven, woman— it isn’t real! ”
    “I am sorry, James. I cannot afford to believe that. And neither, frankly, can you.”
    “You mean to say you truly believe that I’d die if I made love to you?”
    “No, I truly believe you’d die if you genuinely cared for me.”
    “But I do care for you. I’ve traveled by airship in the dead of winter to let you talk madness at me, woman—what more proof do you need?”
    He caught her hand in his and pressed his thumb against the underside of her wrist. She knew he felt her tremble. As she watched, resolve hardened his face. He drew her into his arms.
    “I will prove this curse of yours to be a figment of your very creative imagination.”
    He kissed her. He murmured filthy, scandalizing nonsense in her ear. His words left invisible trails along her skin. The harsh texture of his voice turned her inside out like an oyster ripped from its shell.
    She did not fight him.
    His hands were heavy on her, and Elspeth wanted them heavier still. When he took her, forcing her down to the floor and tearing her skirts and undergarments aside, she called out his name, heedless of any who might hear. The winding pull of pleasure and the sudden shock of pain…their breathing, point and counterpoint, growing quick and tangled and tight, and breaking, finally, as the surf broke against the cliffs on the far side of the island.
    As the bodies of seabirds break before they fall into the sea…
    She pushed the ugly thought away and lay quietly in his arms, her sharp edges sanded down to smoothness. James looked at her with hooded eyes, satisfaction in the flush of his cheeks and the pout of his lips. They dozed, and woke to the sunrise streaming in through the large bay window.
    In a drowsy voice James asked her, “How old were you when your father filled your head with this curse nonsense?”
    Elspeth quenched her instinctive urge to debate his definition of nonsense , and answered simply, “Thirteen.”
    “So young?”
    She propped herself on one elbow to face him. “I’d not yet put up my hair or let down my skirts.”
    “How unkind.”
    “There was a method to his cruelty. A child of thirteen, having known no man but her father—and most especially a child like me, for whom my father had been my entire world—was not likely to question such a tale.”
    “And if he’d left it for later?”
    “Not even Aurelius Shaw could alter my romantic nature. If he’d left it for later, I might have encountered an attractive young man and been reluctant to believe my father’s story.”
    “He knew you well.”
    “As he was my world, I was his.”
    “Yet you insist he did not love you.”
    “If he did, he hid it well. I have never known what it is to feel the affection of