VirtualDesire Read Online Free Page B

stifled a moan as the pain in his head rose with the crashing sounds that
pulsed through the chamber, drums and cymbals. They came from nowhere and
everywhere at once.
    Vad forced himself to concentrate on where the immediate
danger lay, the dark-haired man. He gripped the hilt of his knife. The
double-edged blade was sharp enough to sever a man’s arm from his body—even snake-protected
arms. The man might be a slave without arm rings, but he wore a symbol of evil
and temptation about his upper arm. What significance the symbol carried here,
in the lands beyond the ice fields, he did not know. But in Tolemac, the snake
was feared. It struck swiftly, its poison deadly. His blurry vision settled on
the symbol on the dark one’s shirt. A death’s-head, wielding a strange weapon.
    The little female jerked him from his thoughts. “Vad, meet
Neil. Neil, meet Vad. Vad’s a little under the weather.” The woman touched the
snake man on the shoulder. “Do you mind getting the shop ready while I take him
upstairs?”
    Unbelievably, the snake man nodded and silently went to
stand behind a long table. The woman gave orders to the man? Vad watched warily,
but the man made no threatening moves.
    “Yo, bud. Are you going with Mrs. Marlowe or not?” The snake
on the young man’s arm writhed as he leaned surprisingly strong-looking hands
on the table. “The shop will be opening in a few minutes.”
    “Sh-shop? Msssmrlow?” He glanced around, bewildered by the
man’s words.
    “Make up your mind.”
    Make up his mind. Vad felt as if his mind had slipped into
madness. He found nothing familiar on which to anchor his senses.
    He closed his eyes and groaned. A sharp blade of pain
twisted through his skull. He could not let it gain control of him. He opened
his eyes and sought the only familiar thing in his sight—the woman.
    She stood in a rear doorway, held out her hand, and beckoned
him to the strange gray world outside—a world with the comforting scent of the
sea.
    She had beckoned before, called him to her. His bone-deep
fatigue warred with the hot pulse of desire that surged through him. The ice
woman had invaded his dreams—and his reality. The image of her seemed burned
into his mind. The woman before him could not be her. He raked the boyish
female with his gaze from gold-capped head to blue-clad legs.
    The wind pressed her men’s garments against her body. How
could he have ever doubted she was a woman? In his mind, her garments dissolved
into white gossamer robes draping lush, female curves.
    Vad concentrated on the pain behind his eyes and followed
her. He had no time to study his surroundings. The woman held open another door
but a step from her shop. He had no strength to do more than follow her up a
narrow set of stairs.
    It took most of his remaining concentration to ignore the
woman’s buttocks in the tight breeches as she climbed the stairs before him.
His thigh muscles ached with fatigue from the endless time of trekking across
the ice.
    At the top of the stairs she opened another door and stood
back so he could enter. Her master must be poor, he thought, to live in such a
place. The chamber was long and narrow. A thin rug covered the center of a
wooden floor. The only furniture was a tall wooden cupboard, a padded bench
with a high back, and several straight-backed chairs about a round table. All
looked old. Dishes and bright fabrics were piled on every surface. Didn’t her
master require her to keep his chambers clean?
    “Where is your master?” he asked her, edging slowly from the
doorway, one ear cocked for male footsteps.
    “Sit down. Relax.”
    He ignored her invitation and paced the long room. The
ceiling was low. It would be hard to fight in such a space. Two other doors led
from the chamber. One, amazingly made of glass, faced a small balcony and the
gray world outside. He rubbed his eyes. Even the roiling waves were gray. They
should be dark purple in a storm such as this one. Staring at the