The Taking (Seven Deadly Sins #3)(11)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Miss, I don’t think that you should go alone.”

But she ignored him, vaulting down with no assistance, and set off at a quick pace along the street, her linen gown swirling around her legs, her skin dewy from the humidity. She had chosen to wear dancing slippers instead of boots so that she could remove them in front of Mr. Tradd’s, and she did just that as she approached the lawn in front of his residence. The street had gaslights, which allowed her to see, yet weren’t strong enough to alert any neighbors to her presence should they glance outside.

The door of his Greek Revival home was red, which made her laugh. It was the color said to ward off evil spirits, but it would not prevent her from infusing his household with her magic. Of course, she knew she wasn’t evil, just determined. But perhaps the magic was evil. It was of no importance to her as long as her goal was achieved. She would fling the very flames of Hell at his house if it would rid her of his presence. She padded across the dry lawn, slippers in hand, toes unaccustomed to the feel of the hard ground. Since the rainstorms of early July, when the fevers had come, the summer had been dry, which would suit her purposes.

Throwing her arms out, she tipped her head back and did a slow pirouette, resting all her weight on her left foot as she completed a full rotation.

Nine, eight. She stared up at the wide-open sky, thick, dark clouds rolling in as she chanted softly, “Mr. Tradd, Mr. Tradd.”

Seven, six. Warm air rushed over her face as she spun faster, commanding, “Be gone, be gone.”

Five, four. “Stay away, stay away.” Dizziness enveloped her, but she focused on the sky, on her desire.

Three, two. “From me, from me.”

One. “Or die.”

She ground to a halt, her head swimming, body listing to the left, off balance from spinning, and she smiled at the sensation as she righted her head and black spots danced in front of her eyes. Reaching down, she yanked up a piece of the foliage and the dirt beneath it.

Taking aim, she hurled the handful as hard as she could at his front door When it made contact with a satisfying thwack, Camille let out a triumphant cheer. She had never, never in her entire life of being the perfect daughter, the perfect lady, thrown anything, and it was exhilarating.

And she’d made her mark.

Laughing, she grabbed her slippers, picked up her skirts, and raced off down the street as fast as her legs could carry her. Moisture dripped down her back and her corset shifted on her breast. Pins fell out of her hair from the jostling, allowing the long tresses to tumble loose, and her hand was covered in dirt and grass.

She had never felt so free or powerful, bare feet scraping and tearing as she ran over the stones. When she arrived at her waiting carriage, she was not in control of her speed, and when she tried to jump up onto the step, she slipped and smacked down onto the stones.

Her coachman gasped and was getting down to assist, but she paused on the stones, hands and knees on the ground, head staring at the muddy step, the sting of pain in her palms and beneath her skirts. Her lungs burned from the exertion and she’d lost a slipper, but at that moment, the acute sharpness of pain merged with the exhilaration of breaking all the rules, and she had never felt so alive in her entire life.

It was crystalline, heady, the wild thrill of freedom, and she didn’t want it to go away, to recede and leave her floundering in grief and loneliness.

The coachman lifted her, and she let him, but once settled in her seat, she bunched up the front of her gown, the volume of the fabric still covering her legs, but allowing her access to her inner thighs. Stroking herself as the carriage lurched forward, she felt the surge of desire, the perfect way to continue the thrill of her adventure.

As she buried a finger deep into her slick heat, Camille didn’t bother to prevent a small moan from escaping her mouth. The coachman turned, eyes widening, hands almost dropping the reins. She stared him straight in the eye and smiled, her hand moving faster.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” he murmured.

But Mary and her son had abandoned Camille as surely as her parents and sisters had.

She closed her eyes and disappeared in the frenetic burn of physical pleasure.

Chapter Three

Regan woke up in her hotel room with a start. Glancing at the clock glowing on the nightstand, she tried to quiet her racing heart, her inner thighs throbbing with unsatisfied desire. 6 A.M. She had been dreaming.

It had been the most vivid one she’d ever had, placing her in the point of view of someone else, which was odd. In her dreams, she was usually still Regan, sometimes in her body, sometimes watching herself, but invariably herself.In this dream it wasn’t that she was Camille, in the truest sense, but she had been watching her, privy to all her thoughts. She had felt every emotion, every physical sensation, including Camille’s desire.

Regan shifted her hand off of the front of her damp panties, evidence of her unmistakable arousal. Strange. Though not surprising, considering it had been months since she’d had sex. Maybe it was just a very imaginative sex dream. Pushing a sweaty clump of hair off her forehead, she felt under the pillow next to her for the journal she and Chris had found in the chest of drawers. It was still there, safe.

She had checked into a hotel right around the corner from her house the day before. She’d had no intention of staying in her new place without a bed to sleep on. Chris had offered her a couch to crash on for the night, but he lived Uptown and she wanted to be close to her house so she could meet the movers at eight in the morning. When she and Chris had called it a night and parted ways at one in the morning, both more than a little drunk, she had grabbed the journal before catching a cab, not wanting anything to happen to the one-hundred-plus-year-old book.

Maybe she should have stayed with Chris, because alone in the dark hotel room she was disturbed at the tenor of the dream, the manic desperation of it still clinging to her. She wasn’t sure what it said about her psyche that she could take the scraps of what she’d read in that journal and spin them into such a clear scene of the event, that she had made the woman even a little more nutso than she had appeared in the later journal entries they had read.

And that she would masturbate along with her dream. That was a first.

Where the name Camille had been plucked from in her subconscious, she had no idea either. She’d never known anyone by that name, and while the author of the journal had the initial C, she had never written her name in any of the entries Regan had read, so she had no explanation as to why her brain would ascribe that name to the dream figure.