His words sent warmth spiraling through her; her heart lifted with relief, and with yearning. The yearning was more than physical, but at that instant it was the physical commanding her full attention.

And then he was kissing her and rational thought slipped further away. His tongue plundered her mouth as his hands roamed over her arched back and raked the curve of her hips. His mouth crushed hers, consumed it, with lust, with tenderness. It was an intoxicating combination, one she’d never tasted before, one she never wanted to do without again. She couldn’t. She would die if he stopped and pulled away, die of thirst, and of hunger, all of it for him, Hazard, a man she barely knew and didn’t understand and who, through some dangerous magic that was his alone, had come to own a piece of her soul. Wrapped in his arms, surrounded and overwhelmed by him, she felt as though a part of her had always been his, and always would be. Now, she thought, now she understood the weakness of an addict who would do anything, say anything, sacrifice anything, for what he needed to stay alive.

She needed Hazard. And even with her senses saturated and her mind drowning in the overflow, she recognized the corresponding need in him; she tasted it on his tongue and felt it in the strokes of his sweet, rough hands. He kissed and touched her as though he were a dying man and the only key to salvation was buried deep inside her.

She lifted into him, willing to give everything, greedy for even more . . . more of the fierce, leashed strength in his caress . . . more of the bruising perfection of his mouth . . . more of everything that was him. He tasted like wine and dark, sweet pleasure, and smelled like nighttime, like midnight secrets, like the fearless wind that sweeps everything clean and makes a new day possible.

Their kiss wound on. The floor beneath her tilted, and the ring of starry lights danced all around her. It was a moment of bliss, of grace. Wanting to hold on to it, Eve let her eyelids flutter shut, and suddenly she was flying. She felt her legs give way, her knees like butter, her bones like feathers, and then she felt Hazard lift her and carry her to the daybed.

He lowered her gently and stretched out on his side next to her, all panther grace and pirate smile. Watching her face, he trailed a fingertip down the center of her body and back up, circling her breasts in a figure eight, barely touching, putting urgency aside, wreaking havoc. When he plucked at the first tiny button of the long row on her shirt, Eve’s impatience surged; she tried to help.

Hazard brushed her hands aside, chiding her in a tone pitched low. “No. No. Not this time.”

And then he went to work seducing her—as if there was any need—one nerve ending at a time.

She wasn’t accustomed to being cherished, or experienced at being treated like the rarest and most fascinating of treasures, as if it mattered that she was loved to perfection and there was all the time in the world to do it. Her instinct to fidget or, worse, giggle, was no match for his ruthlessly patient touch, however. In the end she sighed and surrendered to him complete control of pace and tone.

And so the release of each button became a ceremony, the crook of her elbow and dip of her waist places of worship. His hands drifted over her skin, followed by his adoring and clever mouth.

When he lowered the zipper on her jeans and drizzled kisses along her hip bone, Eve quivered. When he slid lower, dragging jeans and lace with him, her breath thickened and her mind blurred.

He bent her knees, drawing one long leg up to rest on his shoulder, and kissed his way from calf to thigh. He would not hurry or be rushed, not even when she whimpered softly and arched her back like a cat after cream.

He nuzzled and licked and nibbled, and Eve shimmered beneath him. He stroked her with his open mouth and whiskered jaw, and she clawed the bedcovering she was laying on.

He made her shiver and sweat. With a velvet glove he drove her to the edge of madness and held her there, for heartbeat after delicious, unbearable, exquisite heartbeat, until craving became need and need spilled over into something deeper, and older, something timeless.

She wanted him, and she wanted him with her, in her, one with her.

Panting from the climb, hovering near the peak, she reached down and tangled her fingers in the silky strands of his hair, tugging so he would lift his head and look at her.

Come with me. Please, come with me, is what she intended to say to him.

But when he did look up and his eyes met hers, she was silent. Speechless. Lost in him.

Lost in the mesmerizing tumble of dark hair across his forehead, the smoky gaze, and wide, beautiful mouth, the elegant arrangement of bones that formed a face like no other she had ever seen.

Her silence didn’t matter. As if he heard the words that dissolved on her tongue, Hazard planted a hand on either side of her, pulled himself up in one fluid motion so that he was on his knees, straddling her, and brushed the hair from her face.

He pulled his sweater off and tossed it aside, and as soon as he did, Eve’s gaze was drawn to the mark on the left side of his chest. She couldn’t look away. For a long string of heartbeats, she couldn’t breathe. He bore the same mark, in the same place as the mark she’d been born with. The difference was that the mark on Hazard’s chest was red and slightly raised, and the flesh around it was just the least bit puckered. And it had been put there years before she was born.

She didn’t need to ask how or when or why.

“He used the hourglass to burn you,” she said.

“To brand me. To seal the curse and remind me of that night in his garden. The night my life ended . . . and became endless at the same time.”

She lifted her left hand and lightly put her fingertips to the mark Pavane had seared into his flesh, and there was an immediate surge of heat along her arm. Hazard’s eyes widened. He felt it too. It wasn’t her imagination or a trick of her passion-glazed senses. It was a bond. A connection. The same one that had been there between them from the first moment their paths crossed, but it was different now. Stronger. Brighter. It was power, Eve realized, a steady stream of it flowing between their hearts, joining them in a way she didn’t quite understand, and couldn’t come close to explaining. But she was willing to trust it.

It was time. She was ready.

She opened her arms to Hazard and he came to her, and as he did the space around them faintly glowed, as if the air was filled with sparkling gold dust, a gleaming circle within the circle of light that encompassed them from above.

Her body was still humming with desire, and it took little for him to make her blood sing and her senses clamor all over again. Only it was better this time because he was with her, his strong arms wrapped around her, his long, powerful legs entwined with hers, their bodies fitting together as if by design.

With his hands and his mouth and the grinding pressure of his hips against her own, he took her to a place she’d never been before. A place no one had ever been before, she realized hazily. How could they, when it didn’t exist until now, until Hazard and she created it together. It was where her dreams and desires and passions intersected with his, a nameless, uncharted speck in the cosmos that belonged only to them.

When they were both clinging to the last thread of reason and control, he braced his weight on his hands, staring down at her, the visage of every dark erotic fantasy she’d ever had as he made the first glorious slide of his flesh into hers.

Eve threw her head back and lifted her hips to accommodate his thrusts as they became faster and deeper, finding a steady, pounding rhythm that suited them both. She clutched his back to pull him impossibly closer, and he made the impossible possible by pulling her legs wider and higher until they were wrapped around his hips.

There was no surrender now, no submission, no quarter given and none asked. There was only skin against sweat-slick skin, and hunger, and possession.

Hazard’s passion was the flip side of her own, a single white-hot coin spinning between them until need and demand and sensation and pleasure melded together in an unbroken chain, spiraling around them and lifting them higher, always higher, until they found the most far-flung, purest peak of all, the jewel at the top of the universe, beyond the sun and moon and stars, a place without reason or control or rules, a place of giving, and glory, and where everything else, everything less, is left behind.

They would both rather stay there, high in their fairy-lit turret, lost in the wonder and splendid newness of what they had found in each other, venturing forth only to fetch wine and cheese and bread and jam.

But they both knew that acting as if things were normal wouldn’t make it so. Hoping Pavane would just go away wouldn’t make it happen, and it was dangerous to pretend otherwise. Reclaiming the talisman had taken on a new urgency. Eve had known it was linked to the curse, but seeing the visible proof on Hazard’s chest drove the point home to her with heart-wrenching clarity. He’d told her he wanted to live, and she believed he meant it. For now. But life as he’d been cursed to live it had become so unbearable he’d devoted himself to finding a way to end it. How long would it be until the same frustrations and problems resurfaced and overshadowed whatever they had together? She refused to let that happen. There had to be a way help Hazard without killing him, and everything she knew about magic told her the talisman was the key to it.

When they’d finished dressing, she hung back and let him go downstairs without her. She wanted a few moments alone there, and he seemed to understand why without her having to explain. She’d been apprehensive earlier, wary of the changes she would find at the top of the stairs, unsure of how her heart would react being back there. Now, thanks to Hazard, she was very much relaxed, and she wanted another look, and a memory of this night to take away with her. It couldn’t wipe old memories away, but it might make them lighter.

She stood a moment in silence and then turned in a complete circle, realizing that the imprint of Hazard on that space was so vivid it left little room for anything else. All around her were Hazard’s books, Hazard’s treasures, Hazard’s scent.

At peace with that, she turned to go, and as she reached for the light switch, she caught the toe of her boot on something and stumbled. Catching hold of the door frame to steady herself, she glanced down to see what had tripped her and noticed a nail that had worked loose and was protruding from the threshold.

“It looks like they don’t build them like they used to,” she said to herself with a small measure of satisfaction. She made an attempt to stomp the nail down with her boot heel, thinking she’d never tripped over any nails in the old threshold. When stomping didn’t do the trick, she looked around for something to use as a hammer and spotted an old cast-iron doorstop shaped like an anvil. Grabbing it, she knelt down to get a better angle on the nail. If this didn’t work, she’d leave it for Hazard to take care of, but she’d done enough home repairs to at least give it a try.

Three solid whacks and the nail was almost flush with the wood. Adjusting her grip on the doorstop, she swung her arm back to get a little extra oomph, and slammed the point of the anvil into the door frame behind her.

Wincing, she turned to see the damage and found it was worse than she’d expected. The sharp edge of her “hammer” had made a deep gouge in the wood and caused the paint all around it to splinter. Already some chips had fallen, exposing the dark wood underneath, and a few others looked as though they were hanging by a prayer.

She puffed out a disgusted breath and ran her fingers over the area; even a light touch sent white flecks raining down.

Crappy paint job, she thought. She’d painted a few rooms in her time and learned the hard way how important it is to wash and sand the surface first. Otherwise the new paint doesn’t adhere properly and the teensiest little whack with an anvil will cause it to chip. Her guess was the painters had skipped the prep work on the door, which was surprising considering the great job they’d down elsewhere in the house. Now instead of helping, her little do-it-yourself effort had made more work.

Sighing, she brushed paint chips from her jeans and started to stand only to stop short when her attention was caught by what she saw at the very bottom of the area of chipped paint.

It might have been a natural imperfection in the wood, and most people wouldn’t have given it a second glance. But Eve knew exactly what it was: the top of the letter C.

“Hazard,” she shouted, shock driving the blood to her face. “Can you come back here?”

Too excited to wait for him, she grabbed the letter opener and started scraping. By the time he returned, she was almost done.

“Chloe was here,” he said slowly, reading over her shoulder as she uncovered the final E.

Intent on scraping, Eve hadn’t noticed him; now he hunkered down beside her.

“Chloe wrote this when she was eight,” she told him, her mind racing. “She did it with a wood-burning pen she got for her birthday.”

His dark brows lifted. “Isn’t eight a little young to be wielding something hot enough to char wood?”

“My father bought it for her,” Eve explained, shrugging one shoulder. “He wasn’t exactly a stickler for safety. The instructions said ‘Adult supervision required’; to him, supervision meant remaining within shouting distance. And it didn’t preclude plopping himself in front of the TV with a cigarette, a beer and whatever game was on.”

He nodded without comment.

“Grand supervised; that’s why Chloe wrote it up here. Grand never would have let her hurt herself. For all her . . . unorthodox tendencies, she was a wonderful grandmother. And trust me, when it comes to grandmothers, I know the difference between wonderful and . . . something else,” she finished on a sardonic note. She looked at the carving again. “I remember the day she did it. I was sitting right over there and . . . and that’s the point. Don’t you see? She wrote it. That means this is the same wood that was here when she was eight . . . before the fire. That doesn’t make sense.”

Hazard stood and ran his hand across the top of the door frame. Eyes narrowed appraisingly, he stepped back onto the landing and examined it from that angle. “This is definitely a weight-bearing wall,” he concluded. “So from a technical standpoint, it would make perfect sense to leave it in place if it wasn’t damaged and build around it.”

Incredulous, she stood facing him. “Wasn’t damaged? It wasn’t just damaged, it was gone.” She waved her arm around. “All of this was destroyed and had to be rebuilt. Most of the second floor went too. The damage wasn’t so bad on the first; that’s where our room was, Chloe’s and mine. Grand’s was on the second, but right at the top of the stairs.” She paused to breathe and clear her throat. “She ran down and got us out, but she couldn’t . . . that is, there wasn’t enough time . . .”

She stopped.

Hazard nodded without comment and rubbed the center of her back for just a few seconds. It was exactly what she needed. Too much sympathy and she would cave in and let it all come rushing back.

“Are you certain that’s how the fire happened?” he asked when she looked up, her emotions back in check.

She nodded vigorously. “Yes. I’m certain.”

“You saw it afterwards? You saw the extent of the damage for yourself?”

“Well, no,” she admitted, her expression clouding. “Not exactly. I couldn’t bear to come back here. I never even drove down the street again until the other night when I came here looking for Rory.”

“So you saw only photos and news footage?”

“Not exactly,” she said again, doubts appearing like uneasy shadows. “My grandparents—not Grand, my other grandparents, my father’s family—made sure all that was kept away from us. They thought it would make it harder for us to get over it and . . . and to be honest, I didn’t want to see it. I already had as much guilt as I could handle.” She picked up the letter opener, wiped it on her jeans and put it back where it belonged. “I did read a couple of the stories that were in the paper later; I found the newspaper in the school library. They were short on facts and long on aspersions about Grand, and by that time they’d stopped running photos. And then there were the rumors; not even a couple of world-class control artists like my grandparents could stop me from hearing the rumors.”

“So how did you find out how much damage there was to the house?”

“My grandparents,” she replied. “They described it to us the next day . . . Chloe kept crying and wanting to know when we could go home, and they made it clear we wouldn’t be going back . . . that there wasn’t enough left to go back to. And weeks later, when they got the report from the fire investigator’s office, they told us what was in it.”

“So in other words, everything you know about the fire came from your grandparents.” His mouth slanted in a cynical smile. “The world-class control artists.”

“What are you suggesting?” she asked, her mind already scurrying down dark, twisted paths that might lead to the answer.

“Nothing. Yet.” He paused, thinking, his expression troubled. “I had a hunch, so I checked it out. I didn’t plan on telling you about it until I knew more. And until Pavane was out of the way. I didn’t want anything to distract you.” He slanted a look at Chloe’s handiwork. “Obviously that plan is no longer viable.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Neither do I,” he admitted freely. “This raises questions and I don’t have the answers. But I know someone who does. I think you should meet him.”

Sitting in his comfortable living room, no one would guess it was once part of a watch factory. A big-screen TV anchored one end of the long room, and a classic upright piano the other. On top of the piano was an array of family photos. In one, three generations of Porter men stood shoulder to shoulder in the dress blues of the Providence Fire Department. A double frame held two pictures of Jim and his wife, one a wedding portrait, the other taken of the two of them on their fortieth anniversary.

“Annie’s off visiting her sister in Florida,” he explained as he showed them to the living room, picking up a stray newspaper and golf club along the way and shoving them out of sight.

A tall man, with a full head of white hair and steel-rimmed glasses, he was a spry sixty-something. It was easy to picture him swinging a nine iron.

“Can I offer you something to drink,” he asked before sitting. “A cup of coffee? Or a beer?”

“Thank you, no,” replied Hazard.

Eve shook her head. “Not for me, thanks.”

He took the chair across from the sofa where she and Hazard were sitting and sat leaning forward, rubbing his hands together. “To tell you the truth, I’m just as well pleased she’s not around for this. Not that we have secrets between us,” he hastened to add. “You don’t stay hitched for forty-four years by hiding things from each other. But she didn’t like the way I handled things back then, and she’ll like it less when she hears what your friend Hazard here told me.”

“I don’t want to cause problems for you,” Eve said.

“You’re not,” Porter assured her with an easy smile. “I’ll have to eat crow, but I’m used to that. I want to get this straightened out for you. I’m glad Hazard called me.”

Eve forced a polite smile, anxious to hurry him along and find out the reason for that call. Aside from revealing that he’d met Porter’s son, Jack, at the hospital that afternoon and that Jack had put him in touch with his father, Hazard had been closemouthed about the whole thing on the ride there. “I appreciate you letting us come to see you on such short notice, Captain Porter.”

“Happy to oblige. And call me Jim. We’re not crossing swords in front of the television cameras now.” He glanced at Hazard. “I recall a press conference or two down at headquarters when this lady’s questions had me dancing on coals. She’s a tough cookie when she has that mic in her hand.”

“You might have danced a little,” she countered, her smile genuine this time, “but you never backed away from telling the truth.”

“That was my way.” He looked her straight in the eye. “It still is.”

“Good. Only this time you have me at a disadvantage; I have no idea what questions to ask.” Restless, she slid forward on the sofa cushion. “Did Hazard tell you what I found upstairs in my grandmother’s house . . . his house now?”

“No. All I know is that something happened in the couple of hours between the first time he called me and the second that was urgent enough to make you want to get together with me right away. Why don’t you fill me in on the rest?”

Eve briefly explained finding Chloe’s handiwork in the turret and how it suggested that at least some of the framework up there predated the fire.

“But that’s not possible,” she concluded vehemently, and then, in a beseeching tone, “Is it?”

“It’s not only possible,” he replied, “it’s likely.”

“But. . . . how?”

“Now mind you, I wasn’t there while the renovations were going on, so I have no way of knowing how much of that framework survived or exactly which beams had to be replaced. But I put in two solid days at the burn site, that is, your grandmother’s house, and I can tell you that the door frame you’re talking about was still standing after the fire.”

“Are you sure?”

“One hundred percent. I remember being up there and seeing those words your sister wrote.” He pressed his lips together and shifted his gaze away from hers for a few seconds. “There are things you see afterwards, once the fire’s out and the trucks are gone, usually just some little thing, that brings you up short and stays with you. So, yeah, I’m real sure.”

Frowning, Eve struggled to make sense of what he had said. She tried not to sound as skeptical as she felt, but it wasn’t easy. “So you’re telling me the fire started in the turret, passed harmlessly through that doorway and then destroyed the second floor and a good chunk of the first?”

“No.” He picked up a manila envelope from the table beside him. “I’m telling you the fire didn’t start in the turret. It started in your parents’ bedroom.”