Reflected Desire
Kendra Leigh Castle

www.millsandboon.co.uk

After escaping from an abusive relationship, the last thing Neve Logan wants another man. Then fate brings her a magic looking glass containing a mirror slave who is compelled to satisfy Neve’s deepest desires….

Adrian Dulac has spent centuries doing the bidding of cruel masters, and is wary of the beautiful woman who craves nothing more than his touch—and their mutual pleasure. He knows Neve will be a delightfully wanton lover if she can manage to let go of her fears. She is the first mistress Adrian wants to please, but will past hurt derail the possibility of a future together?

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

The panic attacks were sneaky things.

One moment, Neve Logan would be fine, browsing in a store or walking to get her morning coffee. The next, she would be nearly frantic from the crushing fear that made her desperate to run somewhere—anywhere—to get away.

Like now.

Neve felt the familiar bands clamp around her chest, tightening, squeezing all the air from her lungs. Her breath hitched, and the hand that held her water bottle quivered when her hand clenched convulsively, making the plastic crunch. Suddenly it seemed like every eye in the small park where she often stopped on her way home was on her, the light was too bright, the noise painfully loud. And all the while, there was the sense of impending doom, of some violent disaster creeping up on her that she could neither avoid nor escape.

It took everything she had to rise stiffly from the bench where she’d been sitting and walk in deliberate, measured steps away from the park, never even breaking stride when she tossed the bottle in the trash. By the time she hit the sidewalk, her steps were staccato clicking on concrete. All it took was the sound of a male voice, sharp and raised, to send her into flight. The fears, carefully boxed up since the last attack, all came tumbling out at once. What if it was Jamie? What if they’d let him out of jail early and he’d come to find her, to finish what he’d started? What if he’d been watching her again, learning what her routine was, where she liked to spend her time alone….

Neve’s heels clicked against the sidewalk as she raced blindly away from the park, ever faster, twisting and turning down streets that quickly became unfamiliar. By the time the fear ebbed enough for her to get a handle on it, she had no idea where she was. Her daily trek to and from work was a comfortable, well-worn path for her. But this hadn’t been her city for very long…and she hadn’t made much effort to explore. Now, it looked like she was going to pay for it.

Neve forced herself to stop, resting a hand against the brick wall of the building beside her and feeling vaguely ashamed, as she always did, that she’d let him get the better of her again. Even now, when she’d done everything she could do to pick herself up and start over, when he was rotting in a cell like he deserved, he was winning.

Pushing aside the self-defeating little voice that nagged at her, Neve looked around while she locked down the fear again, let her heartbeat slow. She’d run into a street that was little more than an alley—narrow, one-way and perfectly quiet. It was a little…eerie.

“Honestly,” she grumbled, hitching her messenger bag higher up on her shoulder and walking slowly forward. “At this rate, I’m going to end up a complete freak show.”

Knowing that she wasn’t, that she was far more than what a violent stalker had tried to make her, brought her fully back to herself. She was no victim. She’d survived thanks to a neighbor who’d heard her and called the cops before Jamie had gotten the gag in her mouth. She would get through this. Somehow.

When she passed the window of the little shop, stuffed with odd objects in a fascinating and somehow stylish jumble of colorful clutter, her feet stopped. Just…stopped. Neve blinked, frowned. She hadn’t even really been aware of the store, and she certainly hadn’t intended to stick her nose to the window. Panic attacks didn’t really put her in a shopping kind of mood. Except she found herself compelled to look in, almost as though someone had called her name.

One hand lifted to touch the glass, upon which was painted what Neve assumed was the shop’s name: Wicked Little Things. The kind of name that put her in mind of a place that might sell, say, bondage wear, she thought with a sudden grin. Except what she saw, beckoning, were more like antiques. Jewelry, much of it very ornate and undoubtedly expensive. A painted box. An intricately carved walking stick. A mask that could have been from a nineteenth-century masquerade.

Money was tight, as usual, but it had been too long since she’d treated herself. Maybe she’d take a peek and see if she could afford something pretty, even if it was only a little thing.

A small silver bell announced her entrance, but there was no sign of another soul as Neve stepped inside. Immediately she was struck by the warmth, the faint scent of sandalwood and the pervasive silence that was less threatening than simply… waiting. Which seemed like a foolish thing to think, but she couldn’t shake it.

She walked slowly around the shop, taking in the dark wood that gleamed in the dim light, the shelves that climbed the walls to the high ceiling. Lower shelves and display cases were scattered about the room, interspersed with the larger pieces for sale. Neve let her fingers brush over a massive stone gargoyle, then sucked in a breath and jerked her hand away. What looked like cold stone had felt strangely warm, almost alive beneath her hand. And it hadn’t felt friendly.

“You don’t want that,” a voice said beside her.

Neve jumped with a sharp yelp and stumbled back a few steps before realizing how badly she’d overreacted. She felt the blood rush to her cheeks. Were her nerves ever going to be right again?

“Sorry,” Neve stammered. “Sorry, I just…it was so quiet in here, you startled me.”

“It’s not a problem,” replied the woman who was watching her with a small, knowing smile. She was, Neve thought as she looked back at her, the most gorgeous woman she’d ever seen. Hair the color of flame tumbled down her back in a riot of curls, and jade-green eyes, almost catlike, dominated a face that managed to be both sharply featured and stunning. She was dressed simply, in a plum-colored velvet dress that went from neck to ankle and still managed to convey the beauty of the form beneath.

“Do you need a moment?” the woman asked, arching a slim red brow. “A drink of water, a place to sit?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Neve blurted out, embarrassed that she was so obviously rattled. “Thank you, though. I was just admiring the things you have in here. It’s really…unusual, what you’re selling.”

“Unusual, yes. Dangerous, some would say. But things worth having are often worth bleeding a little for, don’t you think?”

A smile, both inviting and knife-like. Neve had to fight back a shiver. That smile held the promise of as much cruelty as compassion.

“Um, I prefer to avoid blood if at all possible,” Neve said.

“A wise decision.” The woman’s laugh was warm and genuine, but Neve still felt nerves flutter deep in the pit of her stomach when a slim hand was extended. She took it, and felt the hum of power ripple right up her arm.

And yet, she had no interest in pulling away. A sense of peace and calm enveloped her almost immediately, a pleasant fog that made her feel as though she’d just been wrapped in a lovely dream.

“I’m Morgan. Morgan le Fay,” the woman said, in a voice as rich as the velvet she wore. “Welcome to Wicked Little Things, home of the maligned, the misunderstood and, of course, the magical.”

“Neve Logan,” Neve heard herself saying, though she felt oddly detached from her body. “Did you say magical?” This didn’t seem like one of those little Wiccan shops she and her friends occasionally liked to visit. Then again, there was something really odd about this place…and Morgan, who seemed to have named herself after the most famous witch of all. Couldn’t be her real name. No way.

Morgan shrugged, a dainty lift of the shoulders. “Someone has to take care of them. They’re all hopeless on their own. And we can’t all be knights on white chargers.” Those amazing eyes narrowed. “Or brats who yank swords out of stones. But I digress.”

Neve lifted her eyebrows, feeling lost as well as foggy. “I’m sorry…take care of who?”

Morgan shook her head, an inviting smile replacing the irritation of a moment before. “Never mind.” She tilted her head to regard Neve, her eyes piercing. “Hmm. Let me see. Battered, but not broken. Brave and strong beneath the wounds. A good heart—that’ll be a switch for him. And of course, lovely. You’ll be just his type, not that I’ll get any thanks for it. No wonder you were drawn here. The Fates always know, meddling old biddies that they are.”

Neve swayed on her feet, beginning to drift into sleep. “What?”

“Oh, pardon me,” Morgan said, quickly withdrawing her hand. “I haven’t had a customer in a bit. Not one who I’d sell to, at least. I sometimes forget that a little goes a long way.” She turned her head, glanced toward the shadowy back corner of the shop.

“Come with me, Neve Logan. I’ve got just the thing for you.”

And despite the fog enveloping her thoughts, Neve was strangely certain that Morgan did.

Chapter Two

Adrian did not know how long he’d slept, but he knew the moment he awakened that he had a new master. Shifting his naked body in the tangle of silken sheets, he opened his eyes and looked drowsily, resentfully, at the glow now emanating from the floor-length mirror on the wall opposite. The magic mirror, bane of his very long existence.

Adrian groaned low in his throat and sat up, looking around the tower room he’d been confined to for more than a thousand years. He’d stopped keeping track at three hundred. At that point, it had been too depressing to continue counting.

The slide of silk against his newly awakened body had his cock stirring in wasted arousal. Adrian gritted his teeth and tried to ignore it, the rush of need he’d never fully been able to get rid of. After so long alone, he’d thought he might simply lose all interest in sex, in the thought of pumping into a willing woman’s softness until he spent himself. But if anything, his need had only grown keener. And it was dangerous, so dangerous for a slave to allow himself to want.

It had nearly been his downfall once already. He’d sworn never to let that happen again. He couldn’t, or he would become nothing but a shattered mind trapped in this miserable glass.

He got to his feet, glancing at the flickering candles that never went out, and were never spent. Adrian let his gaze wander over the familiar trappings of his long life, feeling deep in his bones that he had slept much longer than usual this time even though nothing had changed here. That was no measure: nothing ever changed here. Books were stacked haphazardly in a bookcase, gifts from various masters and all read hundreds of times. A comfortable chair, a table covered in various implements useful to a mage like himself—or rather, useful in keeping him in the good graces of those he was forced to serve. A small table with a single chair, where he could dine on anything he liked with nothing more than a spoken request. A massive tub. A darkened fireplace. And tall, thin windows barely more than slits in the stone through which he could look out on the illusion of an endless night in a world that had once been his.

And of course, there was the bed: massive, sumptuous…and something his first mistress had enjoyed making use of. She had used him so much, and so poorly, that he had appeared to every master since as nothing more than an inhuman spirit at the glass. It had, at least, allowed him some measure of peace in this wretched, enchanted place. The few women he had served since had simply used his power to draw other unfortunates to their beds. But he had known that eventually, one would ask to breach the glass barrier again. And he would be forced to let her in.

To be a slave in every sense, to serve her physically whether he wished to or not.

Pushing aside the dark thoughts, Adrian padded across the rug to the glowing glass, pausing only to draw on a simple robe that he’d draped over the back of his reading chair. He didn’t want to look: he’d served so many masters and mistresses, and all had been greedy, violent creatures, consumed with gathering more power and crushing others beneath it. For a long time, he’d watched in fascinated horror, able to see out, though they could not see in. Eventually, he’d had to turn away.

Nothing good ever came of those he served. Fitting, as he was so very cursed himself.

With a feeling of dread deep in his stomach, Adrian touched the glass, and the curling mist beyond cleared. What would he be doing this time, he wondered? Murdering enemies? Corrupting innocents? He expected to look out and see nothing more than the human embodiment of more cruelty, which was all he had known for ages.

But what he saw stopped him cold.

Hair of raven black. Lips as red as the rose. Skin as white as snow.

Adrian watched, fascinated, as a woman whose beauty could only be called exquisite examined the other side of the glass, seemingly without a single clue he was within. She was dressed strangely to him, though he had come to expect such things. He liked these clothes, the breeches that hugged slim curves, the fitted shirt that clung to a generous pair of breasts and a long, slender waist. Loose waves of midnight hair tumbled over her shoulders, and she shoved it back with one hand while she examined something, some carving in the frame beyond. Big, thickly lashed eyes of deep sapphire-blue looked at the glass, looked through him.

Still, in the brief moment her gaze touched his, Adrian felt heat suffuse his body in one dizzying rush. What fresh torment was this to be? She was bound to be as bad as the rest. An enchantress, probably, like Melisande, his first mistress. The one who had bound him to this accursed place. But Melisande was nothing but a pale shadow of this woman, a cruel and artificial beauty who had gone to extreme and bloody lengths to keep her looks.

No, he had only seen this woman’s equal once, long ago. That one had never known he even existed, which was just as well…considering his power had been used to attempt her murder.

As he watched her look over the mirror, frowning lightly, he noted that she looked…confused. Displeased. And still, she made no attempt to call him. Biding her time, he supposed. Making him wait.

Finally, she settled her hands on her hips, shook her head and turned away.

When she began to take her clothes off, Adrian’s mouth went dry.

She doesn’t know I’m here, he thought, then shook off the forgiving notion. Of course she knew. She was playing with him. And though it shamed him, angered him, he was ripe to be played in such a way.

Adrian watched her pull the shirt over her head, the thin material sliding up to reveal more porcelain skin marred only by a thin black strap across her back. The strap was quickly hidden by that mass of shining hair. Her shirt was tossed onto the bed beyond, a simple piece of furniture not at all suited to the sorts of things he found himself wanting to do to this woman. For the first time in centuries, his thoughts drifted to the chest at the foot of the bed, to the silken ties and velvet whips…and the sharper things. The heavy chains. The cat-o’-nine-tails.

His blood went cold, even as his cock rose to full attention, throbbing insistently. His body had betrayed him at first with Melisande, too, he remembered. But not for long. Not once her pleasure could only be achieved through his pain.

Gods, he was a fool.

His new mistress slid the pants she wore down shapely legs, leaving an intriguing scrap of black silk that covered…very little. Adrian braced one hand against the wall, gritting his teeth. He had to look. He had to master this temptation before it got out of hand. In all his years as the mirror slave, only Melisande had tried to use his body to destroy his soul. It would not happen again. He would feel nothing when he looked at this wench. Nothing.

Then she turned back, and he forgot to breathe. The blood pounded in his ears. One hand fisted at his side. Seemingly unaware, she turned this way and that, examining her perfect form with a critical eye. Then she skimmed her hands up her waist, beneath breasts pushed up by the fascinating, lacy undergarment that he wanted to remove with his teeth.

Adrian hitched in a single breath. Enchantress. She had to be. Desire nearly took him to his knees, a position he had sworn never to be in again. Adrian swallowed back a soft moan, hating that anyone was still capable of making him feel like this, want like this. Knowing she would walk away while he spent himself, alone in the dark.

Then her ruby-red lips moved, and the words he both wanted and dreaded echoed from her world into his.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”

Chapter Three

“This mirror looks like something out of the Wicked Queen’s castle,” Neve muttered, then smirked to herself. It had to be the ugliest mirror she had ever seen with the freakish woodland creatures frolicking around the ornate silver frame. The way it dwarfed everything else in her bedroom in both size and sheer, unabashed hideousness. And there was also something creepy about looking in the glass, even though it was just her looking back out at herself. And now, because of a series of events that seemed to grow hazier the more she tried to remember them, the mirror was hers. Had, in fact, been chosen for her by the aptly named Morgan le Fay.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Neve repeated.

The line seemed appropriate. The response, however, had her yelping and stumbling backward.

“You are, of course, mistress fair,” came the disembodied voice, echoing, it seemed, from the glass itself.

Her heart thudded in her chest as she raced from the room on a short, sharp scream, ice in her veins. She nearly fell face first onto the carpet in the living area, just managing to stay upright as she fumbled around the coffee table. Then she was standing in the middle of the room, hand over her mouth, blood pounding in her head. The mirror. The freaking mirror had…

No. No way. You’re finally losing it.

Her heart beat against her rib cage like a trapped butterfly as she stood there, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. An auditory hallucination? A haunting? Some kind of sick joke?

Terror turned quickly to embarrassment as she realized what had probably just happened. Her heart slowed, the adrenaline rush fading.

“A trick mirror. Has to be,” she breathed. This was some kind of piece-of-crap haunted-house mirror, rigged to talk back when you said the right words. She’d pegged the Wicked Queen’s castle thing just right. This monstrosity was going in the trash at first light, because her nerves were bad enough without living with an ugly talking mirror with hidden batteries and no discernible off-switch. Morgan had probably been just waiting for the right person to unload this “gift” on.

But she wasn’t going to be forced out of her room by some cheap trick. And she wasn’t sleeping on the couch in her underwear.

Steeling herself, Neve stepped back into the bedroom, talking out loud to calm the jitters that wouldn’t quite go away.

“I’ll just put a blanket over it,” she said. “A really big, really thick blanket. And if it talks again, I am sleeping on the couch.”

This time, when the mirror spoke, it gave her a jolt but didn’t send her running.

“What is your command, mistress?”

Neve managed not to jump this time. And it was, once again, a pretty generic response. Still, she gave the mirror a wide berth as she went to the dresser to get out her pajamas. The mirror fell silent, the glass still reflecting nothing but the room. Neve shook her head and wondered where on earth the so-called Morgan had found this thing.

If only she could remember why she’d wanted it! Or…even if she’d wanted it. It made her worry that the panic attacks were doing more than just messing up her social life.

“I am waiting, mistress.”

This time the voice—deep, male and cultured—sounded slightly peevish. Neve turned and looked again at the mirror, frowning. Maybe there was a verbal command to turn it off.

“Off,” she said, feeling slightly foolish. “End. Done. Deactivate.”

It was quiet for a few minutes, long enough for her to slip into a simple cotton tank and a pair of sleep shorts, and quite long enough for her to decide she’d figured out how to shut it off. Neve had just started to relax when it spoke again, the voice sounding unmistakably strained now.

“I’m not clear on what you wish ended, mistress.”

Goose bumps rose up on Neve’s skin at the reply that was, this time, unmistakably for her alone. That voice…it was incredible. The accent sounded British to her, but with a hint of something a little more exotic thrown in that she couldn’t place. A dark, beautiful voice.

She walked slowly toward the mirror, seeing nothing but her own pale reflection, shaken and wide-eyed, looking back.

“Are you…are you talking to me?” she asked softly. It was ridiculous, insane. But the growing certainty that the mirror was talking to her, specifically, refused to abate.

At least no one else was here to watch her lose her mind.

“Who else would I be talking to? You called me. I am at your service.” The words were bitten out, with a hard edge that made Neve shiver. Dozens of possibilities raced through her head, each less plausible than the last, until finally she just relented and decided to go with the crazy and have a conversation with the damned mirror.

“I don’t believe you,” she finally said. As though arguing with it was going to make the mirror shut up.

“That I am yours to command?” the voice asked, and a shiver ran down her spine. It was the kind of question that made her wish, just for one wild instant, that this could be true, that she really had stumbled onto something right out of a fairy tale. Impossible, longed-for things.

“No, that you’re real,” she replied. Then she lifted her hands to push them back through her hair, her voice catching as she spoke to herself. “I’m finally losing it. This is a psychotic break or something.”

“You think you’ve gone mad?”

Neve stared into the glass, at her own reflection. “I think that’s pretty obvious,” she said with a shaky laugh. “I’m talking to inanimate objects and hearing voices.”

“Those things are not signs of madness where I’m from. But…it has been a long time.”

Neve looked away and wrapped her arms around herself, unable to shake the chill that settled deep into her bones. “Well, here that sort of thing only happens in fairy tales. When you start talking to mirrors and think they talk back, they lock you up and throw away the key.”

“Here. I will prove myself, then.” The voice had gone gentle, soft, surprising her into looking up.

The glass shimmered before her, Neve’s reflection vanishing into a glittering mist. The mist roiled and shifted before her, catching light from some unseen source and reflecting every color in the spectrum. It was beautiful. The most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

“Impossible,” she whispered.

“This is what you now command,” the voice replied. “I can show you the future, the past…the weaknesses of your enemies, or the private moments of your lovers. I am your servant.” And then, with a harder edge, the voice added, “I am very real.”

“Who are you?” she asked hoarsely, wishing she could believe what she was hearing even though it made no sense. A possessed mirror was better than cracking up. Most things were. But she knew she was grasping at straws, no matter what her senses were telling her.

“I am the Mirror Slave. Or just Slave, if you prefer. I answer to either.”

Neve shook her head, trying to hang on to some shred of her sanity even as she watched that beautiful swirling mist, listened to that decadent, echoing voice. “That’s not a name. Don’t you have a given name? Or were you not ever human?”

“I was…I am.” Now the voice sounded defensive. “I’m bound to the mirror, but I still have my form.”

“Then let’s hear it,” Neve said. “I command you. Or…whatever.”

“You learn your role quickly, for someone who professes not to believe this,” the voice said blandly. She felt a prickle of guilt, but her curiosity was piqued.

“Your name,” Neve repeated.

There was the slightest hesitation, but after a moment, the voice responded.

“I was…am…Adrian.”

“Adrian,” Neve repeated, her heart pounding like a drum in her ears. “You can show me anything?”

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