My Immortal

“In
My Immortal
, Erin McCarthy weaves past and present together in a tale of shocking sins and stunning sensuality…[a] richly conceived story.”

—
USA Today
bestselling author Rebecca York

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

MY IMMORTAL

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2007 by Erin McCarthy.
Cover design by Rita Frangie.

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
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375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN: 1-4295-4640-9

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For my sisters,
Kelly and Tracy

I would like to give a special thank-you to Barbara Satow, who kindly read the beginning of this book five years ago when I was a brand new NEORWA member, and who then spent hours last year helping me plot this new version after I threw out everything but the prologue. Thanks for the friendship and the great ideas.

Also, a huge thanks to both my agent, Karen Solem, and my editor, Cindy Hwang, for being so encouraging when I said I wanted to explore a darker story. Your support is invaluable to me.

Rosa Francis was a demon.

She was a spirit, a chaotic blending of French restlessness, Spanish mores, and the pride of the
gens de couleur
. She was the fortitude of a mixed people heedlessly building a city in a tropical swamp at the mouth of the Mississippi, as well as the foolishness.

The father had told her she was the spirit of greed, the result of a ludicrous lifestyle reminiscent of the French Court that had no business among the cypress and the mosquito. It lived inside her, this desire for more, for extravagance, for rich and delicious foods.

For the lusty, erotic company of human men.

Some believed in her, feared her, particularly the slaves who lived in their squat wood houses on the plantations that were cropping up along River Road with increasing regularity. They understood the need to placate her, keep her ravenous appetite satisfied, and catered to her desires by leaving out their best food for her to steal and by offering her their bold men as a sacrifice to her complacency.

The Creole plantation owners, as well, believed in her, though with no fear. Their wealth, their breeding, the arrogance in their own worth, led them to view her as entertainment. Some had seen her when she’d felt the urge to show herself, had widened their eyes in amazement, then laughingly run off to tell their friends. She had on occasion flooded a field or burned a crop to let them know that, while amusing, she could still be dangerous.

Their
joie de vivre
aside, they understood, and faithfully followed, the slaves’ example of leaving out food and clothing, though they reserved this generosity for only one day per year. On the summer solstice, they created a feast for her and let her roam through their yards taking all she wished.

Tonight was that night, so long anticipated that she shivered in expectation, her sister Marguerite padding softly along beside her. Rosa preferred to glide, hovering slightly above the wet swamp as they passed through the Bayou St. John. The swamp was never silent, particularly at night. It was alive with the voices of thousands of living creatures humming in harmony—insects, snakes, and gators weaving in and out of the reeds and living under the protection of the mighty cypress watching paternally from the shore.

“Slow down,” Marguerite complained, “I can’t keep up with you.”

“Then fly.” Rosa was too excited to let Marguerite sour her mood. She knew her sister resented Rosa’s slim body with long limbs, having been given a round and stout figure. Father had said Marguerite was the spirit of gluttony, the embodiment of the Creole love of money and objects, food and wine. Marguerite said her body was nothing more than the love of cake.

“I won’t.” Her sister’s feet slowed even further.

Rosa laughed. “Fine. I’ll go without you.
Au revoir
.”

She couldn’t slow down for Marguerite or for anyone. She could practically smell the salmon, the roasted duck, the wild peas and rice, the café au lait penetrating through the moist hot air, enveloping her and urging her on. The hunger burned inside her and had to be satisfied.

She was stopping first at Rosa de Montana, a thriving plantation belonging to the equally thriving du Bourg family, for the simple reason that she felt it brought her good luck to begin her feast in a place of the same name as herself.

Phillipe du Bourg had been a generous man—with his money, his food, his favors—and as such had been wildly popular in the exclusive circle of planters in New Orleans. He threw lavish parties, had guests living with him for years at a time, and was known to have fathered a good dozen or so children on his slave women. He laughed, he danced, he gambled, he drank, and he lived a full and privileged life that had suddenly ended when he’d ridden off on his horse, wildly drunk, and had hit his head on the low-hanging branch of an oak.

His son, Damien, was not nearly so admired. He had returned from France upon his father’s death, a vicious, pampered man of twenty-four, with a pasty-faced smidge of a wife who stood four foot nine and weighed eighty-five pounds in her skirts. Damien had been quite the favorite at court and as such had been given Marie, with the blessing of her titled family, who thought nothing of her health in the disease-infested wilderness compared to the one-million-livre fortune the du Bourgs possessed.

Rumor had that Damien had been making enemies left and right, was penurious with his money, and thought no boudoir beyond his reach, including that of the mayor’s wife.

Rosa left Marguerite completely behind and sailed furiously, the wind rushing through her black hair, her wispy red sheath neither gown nor shift but more an extension of her long narrow body. She could see the gas lamps illuminating the house, the doors of its upper galleries open to allow the breeze entrance. Its white pillars stood in the shadows, racing right and left, wooden balustrades in between, an impressive structure in defiance of the soft ground on which it was built.

There was nothing in the yard. Fury ripped through her exuberant mood with the force of a cyclone. There were no lamps lit along the drive, no food, no clothes, no giggling partygoers watching from the front porch. There was nothing.

Hitting the ground with more force than was required, she sank three feet into the soft soil and stepped out in a haze of anger. The rumors were true. Damien du Bourg was not the man his father had been.

He was also standing in front of her.

Leaning on a pillar at the top of the stairs, he watched her as he smoked a cigar, pulling on it tightly before blowing out a wreath of pungent smoke. He was attractive in a way few men could claim. Rosa studied the strength of his jaw, the long cheekbones, and the haughty tilt of his head. His sandy blond hair was pulled back in a short queue, white loose shirt open at the chest, revealing a breadth of shoulders that caused her to shiver in feminine excitement. He wore no jacket, but had tight-fitting suede breeches that showed his thighs were as muscular as his arms, and his fawn-colored top boots were expensive, though well worn.

He held a flask in his other hand, which he put to his lips and drank deeply from. His expression was arrogant, rich green eyes drinking her in as his lips did the liquor.

“Do you know who I am?” Her anger returned tenfold at his bold, sweeping assessment of her.

“Since you have just stepped out of a three-foot hole, I imagine I do.”

His nonchalance was creating a maelstrom inside her, pushing and bubbling and popping. “Where is my food then?”

“I don’t have any for you.”

Her anger boiled over, and before she could stop herself her fingers had spasmed, causing a crack of lightning to flash above their heads and a torrential rain to pour down, flattening her hair to her head and soaking into her dress.

“That wasn’t very smart.” He stood dryly under his porch roof, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. “All you did was make yourself wet.”

Rosa blinked to clear the water from her eyes and frowned at him. “I want some venison or duck before I’ll leave.”

His foot propped up the column and he took another swig. “You come here and eat my food, and what do I get in return?”

He was missing the point entirely. He’d been in France too long, where the mysteries of the bayou held no sway. She quickly sailed through the ten feet between them, up the steps, and stopped inches from his face. “I don’t ruin your crops, your plantation, your life.”

As she brought the rain to a slowing, misting stop, he didn’t blink, nor try to move away from her. She could see there was no fear in his eyes. His gaze dropped to her lips. “No one told me you were so beautiful.”

Her other vice, her womanly desires, surfaced with the rapidity of the storm she’d created. It was a painful throb deep inside her, this need to feel a man’s body wrapped around her own, an all-encompassing and voracious appetite that she indulged less than she did her need for food. The roasted duck was forgotten, as were his arrogance and overbearing manners. She decided that while Damien had set out no food, he was offering to feed her other ache.

Confident of her charms, she smiled slowly, floating above the porch step, while mosquitoes buzzed around the lamplight. The starkness of his statement caused a sheen of feminine pride to set her skin aglow. She was beautiful, with the exotic look of a Spaniard, and she could have whatever she wanted. She wanted him now.

Rosa laughed deep in her throat, a sensual promise. “Yes, I am.”

His answer was to close the inches remaining between them and press his hard lips to hers, the taste of the whiskey droplets on his mouth sinking her into a spiral of pleasure. The wetness of his tongue pushing urgently into her mouth filled her with the masculine tastes of cigar smoke and whiskey, hot passion and urgent need.

Her hands gripped his head as she tasted thoroughly, enjoying his hard grip on her arms, the quick mating of his tongue with hers, his lustful willingness to succumb to sexual attraction. Beyond them on the porch she sensed movement. A small, pale woman was clutching her hands to her chest in horror, her brown hair unbound, her white nightgown prim and demure.

She belonged to the delicate French-designed house, with its long louvered windows and sweeping galleries, and its wide front steps leading from the swampy jungle to the civilization of the drawing room. But her delicateness, her fragile bloom, did not belong with this virile man whose appetites were as urgent and questing as Rosa’s own.

“Your wife is watching,” Rosa whispered in his ear now, sucking gently on the lobe.

“Is she?” He turned, still clutching her, and smiled. “Good evening, Marie. Care to join us?”

When the woman turned with a gasp and ran into the house, he laughed an emotionless laugh. “Poor Marie, she doesn’t know how to have fun.”

“And you do?”

“I do.” He turned back with a ferocity that stole Rosa’s breath, pulling her into him and molding her body to the length of his, her wet dress clinging to her small, rounded breasts.

His kisses trailed down her neck to her shoulder, worshipful hot presses that caused her to moan, her body aching with want. As his thumb brushed across her breast, teasing her nipple, she urged him, “Yes. More.”

“More,” he agreed, lifting her dress past her waist with demanding hands, stroking her thighs possessively. With sure and greedy movements he went to the straps of her sheath dress, pushing them off her shoulders to expose her breasts. With a groan of his own, he took her into his mouth, sucking and pulling gently with his teeth, cupping her bare, eager flesh with his soft hands.

Working open his pants, she pulled the hot length of him into her hands as her desire swirled and churned inside her, pushing out everything but the need to be possessed by a strong, reckless, mortal man. The storm brewed inside her, hot and tight, her infrequently indulged desires sparking like kindling, and she felt rather than saw that her thoughts had actually ignited the shrubbery on either side of the front steps.

He barely glanced over, murmuring, “The bushes are on fire.”

“Shh, I know.” She turned the rain back on with a tilt of her head, keeping her greedy hands on him, laboring over the smooth feel of his hard shaft until his panting breath hitched and he forcibly pushed her away.

“No more.”

His ragged groan was her triumph, her glory in bringing a man to the edge of his control.

The gentle drops of water spattered across her arms, rolling down to her fingertips, and a fine swirling mist rose around them as she delicately poised herself over him. His back was flush against the solid column for support and he urged her body downward with his hands, spreading her thighs and easing her toward him until she hovered in breathtaking anticipation.

“I would ask you for something.” His muscular arms held her hips tightly, keeping her still, his hardness teasing her softness as he denied her.

“What’s that?” She let her eyes flutter shut, not caring in the least what he wanted. There was only her need, her rolling, throbbing desires seeking to burst forth out of her in a cascade of gloriously delicious sin.

It wouldn’t be difficult to take control, drop herself down onto him and force the hot joining they both wanted, but he was whispering in her ear, distracting her, asking…

Her eyes flew open in surprise. She’d had humans make requests of her, beg for mercy, for more, for release. But this human, this Damien du Bourg, was asking boldly what no one had requested of her before. He looked serious, his eyes filled with lust, yes, but also a cold, calculated determination. She shivered under the onslaught of raindrops, her body just far enough out that the porch roof offered no protection. “How do you know I can give you what you ask for?”

“I know who you are. You can do this.” His face shined from the rivulets running down his cheeks, the lamplight reflecting off of his empty, joyless face.

She tossed her sodden hair back over her shoulder, pressing her bare breasts against the softness of his damp linen shirt. It was a foolish request, one he would live to regret, but Rosa thought Damien was deserving of regret. He had a black heart, cold and arrogant, and she was attracted to the idea of him being indebted to her.

This wasn’t the normal way of things, but she was young and impulsive. She thought it would be satisfying to see this proud man forced to serve her and the father, as he would have to if she granted him the escape from death he requested.

She hesitated long enough to warn, “If I do this, I can’t undo it. Do you understand?”

Though his eyes darkened, he nodded. “Yes, I understand. Do it for me.”

With a shrug, she told him, “It’s done.”

And with a soft groan, he moved, slamming her onto him, pumping up and down, exploding her mind and body with a thousand little gunshots of pleasure as she threw back her head in utter abandon.

“Thank you,” he murmured into her mouth as he kissed her hotly, the porch steps creaking beneath his boots as they rocked. “You won’t regret it.”

Though regret was the furthest thing from her mind at the moment, she knew, with the clarity of one who can sense without seeing, that there was going to be hell to pay for this one.