In the Company of Witches

She kept her eyes open, staring at him. Just like that. I’ll protect you. “You weren’t like this with Ruby.”

Bracing his hands on either side of her hips, he put his mouth to her throat. Raina’s pulse tripped, but she gripped his shoulders, pushed at him. He held where he was but spoke against her skin. “No, I wasn’t. Because that was different. There was a purpose to what I was doing with Ruby.”

“And there’s no purpose to this?” Her nails curled into his firm skin.

Lifting his head, he gave her his no-bullshit stare. “Is there a reason you want to talk about your best friend, the one I’ve fucked? What are you fishing for, Raina?”

“Nothing.” She told herself to shut up. When he departed, he would be one more link on a chain, the same way she was for him. To make it more than that was the act of a woman with an unguarded heart, demonstrating the naïveté of a moonstruck teenager. Him affecting her that way, responding the way he did now, as if she’d lost her mind, made her pissed off at herself. But also at him.

Sliding from the counter, she tossed her hair back and caressed his chest, teasing a nipple as her fingers came to rest on his rib cage. “As lovely as this has been, I need to start getting ready for tonight. I’ll see you after.”

He caught her wrist, held her there. “I told you not to play that shit with me.”

Then stop playing with me as if I’m something special. She only thought it, though, wasn’t stupid enough to say it, to expose herself that much. She didn’t blame others for her own shortcomings, and he wasn’t at fault for this. That magnetism, the attentiveness that made a woman feel as if she were the center of his world, of course raised long-dead wistful yearnings. She merely needed to detach herself to manage those feelings, but he wasn’t willing to let her do that.

Tough. He wasn’t calling all the shots here. “I’m not pulling anything on you. If you change your mind and don’t want to take me to town, fine. You can go slither under a rock somewhere.”

Yanking her hand away, she made it three steps before he caught her, his hands closing on her shoulders. That coldness unfurled within her. “Please, don’t,” she said. “Give me room to breathe.”

“No.” His fingers flexed on her, and even that simple touch made her body react. She’d never responded to a male the way she responded to him. No, she couldn’t trust that thought. Unleashing her nature during sex was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for her. It was no wonder her emotions were getting involved. He’d be gone in a day or two, and that would be that. Until then, he wanted her stripped bare, laid out to him with no shields. That was his price. He demanded a woman’s soul, and she wondered how many he’d collected. She’d no doubt every one of them had handed it over without a fight.

When he turned her around, she struck at him, an arc of power that sizzled between them, close enough to burn them both. She felt the pain of it; then it was gone with a breath of frost across her skin, the same frost he brought to her lips, the cool kiss of snowflakes that became moisture from the heat of their mouths. She made a noise of violent protest, but her fingers clutched his arms, his holding her hard around the waist.

“If you need to breathe, Raina,” he said against her mouth, “I’ll give you breath.”

She closed her eyes as he cradled her face in his hands. She’d met him a blink ago. No one could become the breath in your lungs in that short a time. She would figure out how to handle this. After he’d gone away, never to come back.

He didn’t kiss her. He just stayed that close to her mouth, teasing them both. She muttered an oath and closed the distance. When she would have made the kiss rough, insistent, his hands on her face gentled it. His lips eased onto hers, stroking and caressing instead of plundering, until the embrace offered the dreamy delight of the rare Southern snowstorm, the cocooning of the world in hushed winter stillness.

When they finally drew back, she wasn’t sure who’d broken the kiss. She opened her eyes, stared into his.

“Let me take you to town tomorrow, Raina. We can go shopping. Get ice cream. See a movie.”

She blinked, not sure if he was teasing her or not. But the man dressed well, so he obviously could shop. A Dark Guardian…shopping. Eating ice cream.

“When a Southern gentleman was courting a lady, he used to bring his horse and carriage around to take her to town,” she said, buying time.

“Actually, the carriage was more for family outings. He brought a two-seater if there was no chaperone. More intimate. Like a Ferrari versus a minivan.”

“I’d like to see someone your size get intimate in a Ferrari.” Then she brightened. “Can we fly there? Using your wings?”

“No.” He gave her an amused look. “I don’t reveal my wings to humans. They react badly.”

“Oh, all right, then. I suppose we could take the fabulous sports car. Though that seems kind of boring.”

His eyes warmed. “Let me see if I can impress you with some other means of transportation, then.”

She lifted a shoulder, turned away. This time he let her go, and she took a deep breath as she moved into the hallway, headed for the staircase. Time to face the reality of her day. Reality, period. But she found herself pausing on the steps, looking back at him. He was leaning in the dining room entranceway, watching her, thoughtfully chewing on a strip of bacon. Shirtless, in jeans and bare feet, hair tousled. Her libido didn’t have a prayer.

She shoved it down with a ramrod. “A horse and carriage probably wouldn’t have worked out, anyway,” she said casually. “Horses get too nervous around those with demon blood. Which is a shame. I’ve always wanted to try riding a horse.”

“I expect the broom does get a little uncomfortable. Though you have some nice padding on your ass to protect you.”

“You—”

He was gone, retreating back to the kitchen before she could inflict boils on him. Or oozing sores. Instead, he left her standing on the stairs with a smile struggling on her face. But the laughter didn’t dispel the worry in her heart. He kept her spinning, unable to find a sure footing. She’d never been in that position with a man, and it was unsettling, exhilarating…terrifying. She kept telling herself he was a roller coaster, one that would come back full circle, leaving her with some pleasant memories. But these feelings, this intensity, this fast? It was also possible she might get launched off an unfinished track, leaving her tumbling through empty space, with the promise of only a hard crash and pain.

What she needed was a safety net. But with every touch, every kiss, he kept taking it away.

11

BEING MONDAY, SHE WAS ABLE TO HEAD TO BED CLOSE to two thirty A.M., an early night. The evening lineup had been regulars for her staff, and she’d played hostess in the parlor as she usually did. She never saw Mikhael, though she thought she felt his regard once or twice as she flirted and reassured, making sure tonight’s all-male guest list had their needs met. She supposed he was checking the perimeter, keeping an eye on Isaac, or doing whatever Dark Guardians did. Watching the latest Real Housewives of Orange County, for all she knew.

As she shed her clothes, she noticed his shirt still hanging on her dresser where she’d left it. After a pause and a frisson of amusement with herself, she put it on over bare skin. She liked the way it felt, brushing against her that way. Cathair was gone, probably in the boys’ rooms, because they fed him Cheetos while they rehashed their evening and fell asleep in front of the TV. She’d find the dust on his feathers in the morning, or shaken on her curtains when he preened, despite her scolding.

Males. Incorrigible, the whole lot of them.

Curling into her quilts, she shut her eyes. Even without her special chamomile mix that Gina kindly left steaming by her bedside, she was asleep in five minutes.

She knew better than to go to sleep without drinking it, but it had been a good evening. No reason to worry about monsters from the past, but that was when they struck, right?

The dream started out wonderfully enough. Mikhael was there, his magnificent body, his scent—probably filtering to her from his shirt—those intense eyes. He was in her bed, pushing her back into the quilts, his hands on her thighs. When he shifted his grip to her wrists, she saw a set of black manacles hanging above her. Manacles wet with her blood, from her struggles when she went mad from the confinement. They were suspended from the top of the narrow metal box in which Elceus hung her like meat when he wanted to prove a point. That he could do whatever the hell he wanted to do to her.

She was a witch. She didn’t let her dreams take control of her. “No,” she snarled, ripping her hands free. The agony was an echo of what it had been. “You’re gone. Dead. You can’t keep me trapped here anymore.”

She bolted out of the dream. The wind of her agitation swept through her room, dousing the candles, plunging her into full darkness. The French doors to the balcony slammed back, making her leap away from the bed, spinning into a corner to fight whatever came at her.

“Easy.”

A flame struck, and she whirled toward it, fists raised. Mikhael relit one of the candles with that brief spark, sat it back down in its holder. He’d been out on the property. She could smell the salt of the marsh on him, the night air, and there were some pale oleander petals on his shoulders, looking like tiny teardrops from the moon.

“You all right?” he asked quietly.

She nodded. Rubbed her forehead, then wrapped her arms around herself, taking comfort in that shirt, the one part of the dream that had stuck. He took a step toward her.

“I rescued myself,” she said. “I don’t need to be rescued.”

“Do I look like the first number on the damsel-in-distress speed dial?”

She saw a lot of things when she looked at him. “You stir things up,” she said. It wasn’t an accusation. Her mind was just as responsible for resurrecting the bastard in her dreams.

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