Silken Rapture (Princes of the Underground 2)

He became distracted from his thoughts by the vision of Margaret standing and briskly tucking the blanket around the slender woman. She made a shooing motion, as if he were an annoying flea instead of a six-foot-five-inch, nearly two-hundred-pound male.

“You hang about a great deal for someone who says he wants to be left alone. Be gone with you. Let her rest in peace. She’ll have enough to deal with upon awakening.”

Isabel shifted her limbs as she arose from her dreams and found herself swimming in silk. Her lips curved in pleasure. As the daughter of a Pennsylvania coal miner, she had only recently tasted luxury. And this was a delicious luxury—something even her newly born fame hadn’t afforded her as of yet. Funny, she recalled seeing her room at the Ritz before she attended the demonstration at King’s College, but she didn’t recall such decadent sheets on the bed.

Her eyelids popped open.

For a full ten seconds, she lay there immobile, only her eyes moving around in a wary reconnaissance.

She was dreaming.

She was definitely dreaming.

She lay in the middle of a chamber that was so exquisite, so decadently grand, she might have awakened in one of the Medici’s Renaissance palazzos. She couldn’t tell if it was night or day, the chocolate-brown velvet draperies and amber silk panels were so luxurious and thick. Her gaze skimmed across the hand-painted frescoes on the domed ceiling—the artistry unlike anything she’d ever seen. The eye could get lost in the elaborate details of the plaster moldings.

It would be like awakening in a Medici Renaissance palazzo if it weren’t for the modern conveniences, she thought to herself when she saw the enormous carved wood entertainment center and the fully stocked, granite-topped wet bar.

I can just imagine what a Snickers would put me back in this hotel.

The thought steadied her, made it possible for her to whisk back the amber silk sheets and sit up. She refused to acknowledge the other thought that slunk like a black shadow in the background.

This is no hotel you ever checked into.

It was difficult to banish that frightening thought when she realized she was naked, save for her black velvet gloves. She’d bought the gloves, along with a sophisticated evening dress, for the reception at King’s College. At least whoever had removed her clothes had the common sense to leave her the protection of her gloves.

The car wreck a year and a half ago had marked a turning point in her life in more ways than one. She’d been in a coma for six months before she awakened, but when she did, everything was different. Not only could she sense other people’s auras and sometimes read minds—abilities she’d possessed for as long as she had memory—she’d somehow acquired a terrifying new power.

With just a touch of her hands and fingertips, Isabel would learn an object’s history through flashes of the identity and feelings of those who had handled the item. Unfortunately, what often came through with the most clarity were violent and traumatic events associated with the object.

Touching other people could be worse. Far worse. She had never known the amount of pain, loneliness, lust, hatred, fury and sadness a human being could possibly harbor beneath skin and bone until she’d awakened from that coma. The knowledge had tipped Isabel’s known, familiar world off its axis.

Lester Dee, a professor from New York University, had sought her out a year after she’d left the hospital. He’d read an article about her abilities as a psychometrist and tried to locate her for six months. When he found her, she’d been living in a halfway house, malnourished, depressed and straddling the threshold between life and death.

Who wanted to live when touching objects, and especially fellow human beings, could be pure agony? She was destined to die alone.

Lester had lifted her out of the abyss, helped her find ways to cope with her new ability even as he studied it and shared his findings with her. Lester had been the reason she was making a tour of universities in the United Kingdom. His research articles on her abilities had gained great interest as well as controversy in the academic community. She’d always wanted to see England, so she’d been more than happy to accompany Lester so that he could validate his claims.

One thing Isabel had learned when it came to anything paranormal—scholars never believed without seeing proof firsthand, and they rarely believed even then.

Was Lester in this grand establishment as well?

She squinted, trying to locate memories in her brain. It was a little like grasping for a feather in an unfamiliar, pitch-black room. Fear rose in her, causing a bitter taste at the back of her throat. She stood, pausing a moment while she steadied herself with a hand on the mattress. It wasn’t a normal dizziness. Strangely, she felt overly energized, not drained, as if she’d just drunk a potent stimulant.

The room spun and then resolved into magnificent grandeur once again. She spied a carved door and staggered toward it. Inside, she discovered a closet that was larger than her apartment bedroom. The closet led to a bathroom, she observed, peering through the door. Only two garments hung on the empty clothes rack in the closet—her purple dress and a soft microfiber robe. She grabbed her dress and hurriedly donned it, eager for even that flimsy bit of armor when she felt so vulnerable. Her heart began to pound uncomfortably in her chest. Now that her dazed disorientation was lifting, panic was quickly rushing in to take its place.

Had Lester brought her here? The memory of her mentor’s tatty tweed blazers and generous heart, yet emaciated pocketbook, didn’t make the possibility seem likely.

She rushed back into the bedroom. The wet-bar was well-stocked with premium liquor and wine. She flipped open drawer after draw and finally found what she wanted.

The small, sharp knife in her hand didn’t make her feel any safer, but it steadied her.

She opened the bedroom door and stepped warily onto an open landing. Her feet struck cold, hard marble. She rushed down the remainder of the hallway into a vast foyer with a domed ceiling. The ornate balustrade she passed was so white it might have been carved from snow crystals. She didn’t draw a breath as she flew down the grand staircase, her bare feet making her descent eerily silent.

She reached the bottom and found herself standing in a circular gallery with multiple doorways leading off it and magnificent tapestries and paintings adorning the walls.

She purposely pricked one of her fingertips with the small knife. Pain flashed through her, sharp but quickly gone. No. She wasn’t dreaming.

Isabel had grown up in Lettering, Pennsylvania—a gray, meager, mean little town. She’d never seen colors, textures and riches as she did in that moment, let alone dreamed them. Yes, she’d seen true wonders since arriving in England six weeks ago, and her visions while touching objects often revealed wondrous places. But those were other people’s memories, other people’s lives…