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Bram finally answers his phone, sounding impatient. “Marrok? How’s Olivia? Are you calling to break your mate bond?”
The bloody cur. “Nay. I will not.”
“Is she still alive?”
I bristle at his insinuation that I’m incapable of caring for her. “Aye.”
In fact, my “wife” looks quite fetching. She still wears naught but her bra and knickers held together by a thread and a safety pin. They conceal very little of the womanly flesh I burn to suckle, fuck, and command all night.
’Tis true I found cataclysmic release a mere hour past. She is new to sex, and I should avoid all but essential contact with her. But my need to have her again scalds my veins. My skin feels too tight as I slow-walk my gaze down her cleavage before I visually devour her sleek thighs and juicy cunt. Olivia has the softest skin, and she makes the most enticing moans when she—
“She’s alive, really?” Bram demands. “You were finally able to—”
“None of your bloody business.”
“You know, if you’re calling me for a favor, you could be a tad more polite.”
“I do not seek your assistance; I ask it for Olivia. She is one of your kind. Help her.”
“We’re magical, not Martians. The way you talk about us, it’s as if you think there’s little difference.”
I bother not to confirm his suspicions. “We have located a nineteenth-century painting of a man named Richard Gray. Know you if the rendering is of Olivia’s father?”
“Is the man in the painting violet-eyed and wearing Regency dress with a lapel pin that matches the symbol on the front of the Book of Doomsday?”
Tricky bastard. If Bram knew of the man’s painting, why did he never mention thus to Olivia? “I have not the first clue about the symbol on the book, but the rest sounds accurate.”
“Right,” Bram drawls. “I spoke with Richard Gray once. He called me, inquiring about the Doomsday Diary, in fact. At the time, I knew nothing, and I told him so. Since our only interaction was both brief and over the phone, I can’t speak to his lineage or anything else about him. It’s possible he’s her father. If he is, he’ll know something about that symbol.”
Indeed.
“Since I met Olivia, I’ve tried reaching out to Gray again,” Bram adds. “But I haven’t told her.”
“Why not?”
“It would be dangerous. Richard Gray is hunted by the Anarki.” He lowers his voice. “He was once one of them.”
“Fuck.”
“What?” Olivia mouths.
I shake my head, then turn my back to her, my mind racing. “’Tis certain you are?”
“Quite. That was another reason I shared nothing about the Doomsday Diary with him.”
“Was? Something changed?”
“Apparently, Gray turned traitor. His defection was a huge shock since he was Mathias’s second-in-command.”
I grip the phone with white knuckles and try not to recoil. Olivia cannot be near Richard Gray.
Later, I will learn more. Best to get the facts, then plan a strategy to keep Olivia from rushing into a search that could endanger her. Besides, I have shocked her enough for one day.
“Thank you. Should you hear more, advise me. Also, Olivia needs someone to run her shop while she recovers.”
“I’ll ask my sister. Sabelle would be perfect. She’s very knowledgeable about art. Tomorrow soon enough?”
A witch? Somebody is better than nobody. “Aye.”
