by Anya Bast
Mira felt overwhelmed by everything he'd said, but focused on one thing, even if it was a lie. "Who hurt my parents?”
"His name is William Crane. He heads a faction of witches ... warlocks, really, called the Duskoff Cabal, who betrayed the Coven. Their cover is a multinational, diversified company called Duskoff International. Non-witches need not apply for the executive positions.”
"Warlocks?”
"Warlocks are witches who have betrayed their coven, male or female. The Duskoff is an old group. Their history stretches back to the Dark Ages. They don't care who they hurt, and they hurt your parents. Crane sent those men to your apartment, the ones who broke your door down.”
She gave him a look of pure skepticism. "So, you're telling me warlocks killed my parents," she said in a dry tone.
He nodded.
Oh, fine. Might as well get the whole fake story. "So what do they want with me?”
"You're a powerful witch who can command the element of air. They need you to close a circle. It's what they used your parents for. A circle is comprised of—”
"Earth, fire, water, and air. I get it.”
He nodded. "There aren't many witches like you. You're sought after. I'm here to protect you for my boss, the man who heads the Coven. His name is Thomas Monahan.”
Interesting. Monahan had been her mother's maiden name. "So, I'm like ... what? An endangered species?”
He smiled. "I guess.”
She bit her lower lip. "What's Crane's element?”
Jack glanced away as he answered. "Fire, like me.”
"What's the circle for?”
“To call a demon. The members of the Duskoff hold high positions of power in the business community and politics. They didn't get where they are without help. Crane forced your parents to close two circles for him. Your father closed one. Your mother closed a second." He paused. "It rapes a witch of his or her magick. A witch can't live without magick. It's akin to a major organ.”
Mira laughed. "Okay. Great imagination you have, Jack. How do you explain the fact that I've seen the newspaper clippings of my parent's accident? If you expect me to believe any of this—”
“The car accident was staged. It wasn't your parents they found in the wreckage. The Duskoff doesn't leave loose ends. They don't leave mysteries that non-magickal authorities might trace back to them.”
She looked away, a sob gathering in her throat. Mira could barely remember her parents. They were just hazy images in her mind that she saw through deep emotion. Her whole life there'd been an empty place where her parents had been.
All she'd ever wanted was to have them in her life. All she'd ever wanted was her father to cheer her on when she'd played soccer in junior high, for her mother to give her advice when she'd gone on her first date. Annie had done a great job of filling both parental roles, but that hadn't taken away the longing Mira felt for her parents.
"You're a bastard to be playing this way with me," she said in a low voice. "You think I don't still grieve for my parents?" She managed to choke back the sob, but a tear rolled down her cheek. "Damn you.”
"I'm sorry, Mira." Jack brushed her tear away with his thumb, and she jerked her head away from his touch and stared at him. He actually did look like he regretted his words. He looked miserable. Wouldn't someone wanting to cause her pain appear triumphant?
This whole situation was so confusing. Why play with her this way? What was the point?
He sighed and took the cordless phone from its cradle on the nightstand. Jack punched in a number and held the phone to her ear. She frowned at him while it rang.
"Hello?" It was her godmother. She sounded groggy, as if the call had woken her up.
"Annie?" Mira said. "Annie, you have to help me! I've been kidnapped by some crazy guy named Jack—”
"Honey? Mira?" her godmother answered, coming more awake. "That means they went after you. I'm so sorry this is happening." Annie's voice broke on a sob. "I'd hoped I was wrong.”
Mira went silent for a moment. "What do you mean?”
"I wasn't sure if the person who called was related to Crane, so I asked the Coven to keep watch over you and intervene if anything happened. This man, Jack McAllister, he's protecting you, Mira. Do what he says.”
Speechless, she sat for a moment processing her godmother's words. "But what this man is telling me can't be true," she replied slowly. "It simply can't be.”
"I'm sorry I never told you any of this before, sweetheart. I was complying with your parents' wishes. Yes, what Jack is telling you is true. I know it seems unbelievable." She let out a soft sob. "I should've prepared you. Please forgive me. I hoped the Duskoff wouldn't come after you and your life could've remained undisturbed.”
A tear rolled down Mira's cheek as everything that had happened overwhelmed her. She fell silent, not knowing what else to say. Jack took the phone from her ear and put it to his own. Mira stared straight ahead as Jack and Annie talked. Something close to catatonia stole over her.
Jack glanced at her with a concerned expression on his face. "I'll take care of her, Ms. Weber, I promise. I won't let any harm come to her. You have my word." He paused, listening to something Annie was saying. "Yes. I'll tell her." He turned the phone off and set it back in the cradle.
It could be another trick, maybe. Maybe somehow he'd been able to fake Annie's voice?
Her head hurt.
Jack looked down at her. "She said to think back to the time when you were a child and you walked into the backyard and saw a storm cloud over the garden patch. There had been a drought, and she took the chance no one would see her watering her tomatoes with magick. Annie's a witch, too. Her element is—”
"Water," Mira finished. "I thought I dreamed that.”
He turned away. "You have enough to think about for one night. I'm going to sleep.”
"Jack?”
He turned back to her.
"Did you kill those men outside my apartment?”
His stony silence was answer enough.
She blew out a hard breath and glanced away. "Did you have to kill them?”
"My job is to protect you. If they'd lived, they would have known I'd taken you and led your enemies here. If Crane gets you, he'll use you to close a circle, and you will die. Their deaths were warranted. It was you or them." He paused. "I chose you.”
Their deaths were warranted. He said it without any emotion.
"It's taken care of. Their bodies are gone. Quick and efficient. They won't be missed by anyone but Crane, and there won't be any trail to lead non-magickal officials to your front door.”
How did you manage that? The question was poised on her tongue, but she swallowed it, deciding she really didn't want to know the answer. She licked her lips and glanced away from him. "So, there are good witches and bad witches, then? Crane is bad. Annie is good.”
"No. It's not black and white. There's the mostly good, the mostly bad, and there’s some gray.”
"What are you?”
He held her gaze and answered steadily. "Gray.”
A wisp of uneasiness curled through her stomach. There was a world of weariness in his eyes when he said that word and she wondered why. "I have questions.”
He turned away and drew his shirt over his head. Muscles rippled along his back and chest, and scars marked him here and there. The sight of him shirtless made her throat go dry. She looked away.
"And you'll get answers ... tomorrow," he replied. "I'm tired. I'm going to sleep.”
"Aren't you going to untie me?”
"I don't trust you won't sneak into the kitchen, grab a knife, and finish what you started in your apartment." He turned to fix her with his smoldering blue eyes. His voice dropped to something in the sinfully seductive range. "Anyway, I like the way you look tied to my bed. Maybe one day you'll be bound there willingly.”
"In your dreams, psycho.”
He chuckled, kicked off his shoes, and pulled his socks and pants off. Jack stood there
in his blue boxer briefs while he arranged his clothing over a chair. She let her gaze travel over his strong, hairy legs, his extremely fine ass, and the bulge in front that looked really, really bulgy.
"Hey!" she objected.
He laughed. "That was a delayed reaction.”
"It was not!”
"Be happy," he said as he went toward the other side of the bed. "Normally, I sleep naked.”
Oh, sweet Lady.
He got into bed and turned the light off. Immediately, he turned over on his side, his back to her, leaving her to the darkness and her jumbled thoughts. She hated that she was so attracted to him. She hated it even more that Jack probably knew she was attracted to him.
Mira tried to move away from him a little. Jack seemed to emanate body heat, an interesting trait considering the magickal ability he claimed. He groaned as he relaxed into a comfortable sleeping position, and the sexy sound shot awareness through her.
She tried not to enjoy the warmth of him and the sound of his breathing in the quiet air. She tried hard not to imagine what his hands would feel like cupping her breasts, rubbing her nipples into hard peaks. What would his mouth taste like on hers? How would his cock feel pressed against the entrance of her sex?
Mira shivered and shut her eyes, driving the thoughts from her mind. It was perverse to be considering any of that in her situation. To the dark room, she grumbled, "You could at least untie me.”
"And let you take advantage of me?" he answered in a false, demure voice. "No way. Sweet dreams.”
"What if I have to go to the bathroom?”
"Then I'll let you. I'm not a monster, Mira.”
"That's open for debate.”
He chuckled. "Everything will become clear soon enough. I tied you loose, but if you're really uncomfortable or you have to go to the bathroom, wake me up.”
She listened as Jack's breathing went from normal to deep and even, signaling he'd fallen asleep. He'd left enough slack in the rope that she could rest her hands on her chest. She spent some time using her teeth to worry at the knot, but he'd tied it so well she couldn't figure out how to free herself. Knowing she couldn't get out of the apartment anyway, she gave up and drummed her fingers on her collarbone as the events of the day assaulted her mind.
Mira would bet anything that one of the abilities of a witch with skill in the element of water was the ability to read emotion. Annie had always been empathic to the point of having preternatural ability. Mira had never been able to keep anything from her as she'd been growing up.
Then there were those unexplained incidents in Mira's life. Times when Mira had been very emotional, angry or grieving, when it had seemed like a breeze had swirled around her even when she'd been within buildings on windless days. There had been times she'd felt a warm burst of power in the center of her chest when she drew a lungful of air on a spring day. There were other things too, all so mild that she'd been able to find rational explanations for them.
Could it be that these occurrences had been her magick manifesting independently? Maybe because she'd never trained her power, it had whispered out of her on its own at random moments?
She shook her head. Silly. Stupid. Jack was really getting to her.
She leaned back against the pillows, searching for a comfortable place to lie. All of it was almost enough to make her believe, but not quite. Her rational mind wasn't ready to give up its stranglehold on the reality she'd always known. In that reality her parents had died in a car crash. There had been no foul play.
And there was no such thing as magick.
v
FOUR
MIRA AWOKE LYING ON HER SIDE WITH ONE FIST curled against her mouth. The scent of breakfast teased her from sleep, and she opened her eyes blearily to an empty bed and morning sunlight streaming in through the window. Jack had untied her at some point during the night. The rope hadn't impeded her sleep, really. Her mind had done that. She rubbed her wrists. The rope hadn't even left marks on her skin. The man had talent.
Groaning, she rolled over and ended up with her nose in Jack's pillow. She groaned again, this time from the scent of him. The light woody and spicy scent made all her nerve endings shoot to attention.
The man was a menace, pure and simple.
She'd never met a man as attractive as Jack. Since she had such good taste in men, it figured he'd turn out to be a raving lunatic.
Maybe.
She sat up, her mind replaying her godmother's voice on the phone last night. If Jack had somehow faked that, he was damned good. But why would he go to such great lengths to concoct this strange story and then do everything possible to make her believe it? None of it made sense, but the alternative was too bizarre to contemplate.
What about the fire? How could someone fake something like that? Unless Jack was a crazy magician with a penchant for elaborate pranks. She rubbed the bridge of her nose. No. That just didn't fit.
And even if he had faked the call to Annie, how could he know about the garden incident? No one knew about that except her. Mira hadn't even known Annie had realized she'd walked back there and seen that tiny rain burst over the garden patch.
Not to mention the men laying in her entranceway when she'd regained consciousness the night before, the men who had meant her harm. The ones Jack had ... she swallowed hard ... taken care of. What about them? She'd intuitively felt those men had meant to hurt her. Mira didn't have that feeling about Jack.
Nothing added up; her logical mind denied any of it could be true. The whole thing made her head hurt even more than it already did.
She blew out a hard breath and slid over to the edge of the bed. Jack banged pots and pans in the kitchen, clearly invested in making breakfast. Curious, she opened the drawer of his nightstand and peered within. Inside laid more rope—no surprise there—and a handful of foil-wrapped condoms.
Her eyes widened and she slammed the drawer closed. The noise made pain flare through her head, but Jack seemed not to have heard it. He was still banging around in the kitchen while he cooked something that smelled delicious.
Mira wondered if he made breakfast for the women the rope and condoms were meant for. Probably, she decided. Right after he twisted their worlds on end by declaring magick existed.
She stood up and walked into the bathroom. Catching sight of herself in the mirror that hung over the white marble countertop, she leaned in and examined her bruise. It was a hideous thing, covering the whole right part of her forehead. Lovely. She supposed she should be happy her skin hadn't been broken, or that she hadn't received a more serious head injury.
Looking more closely and frowning, she traced it with her index finger. The color seemed wrong. Mira scowled at her reflection. She was no nurse, but she'd had her share of bruises, and this one looked older than it was. Definitely not pretty, but on its way to gone.
How could that be?
She shrugged. She was probably mistaken. It's not like she ever went to med school.
A towel, washcloth, packaged toothbrush, and fresh bar of soap lay on the small porcelain table near the shower, correction, huge, custom shower. A pair of jeans and a silky soft blue sweater rested on the marble counter. More castoffs from his friend, maybe? She was unaccountably annoyed that she was being forced to wear clothing left behind by Jack's fuck buddies.
Mira wondered if he'd tied them to the eyebolt.
She shuddered, imagining herself tied to it for a moment. The images came without coaxing. Jack's big body covering hers, skin sliding against skin, slick with their combined perspiration. Her wrists bound above her head. Jack between her thighs. Herself, at his mercy and completely possessed by him.
Mira groaned, the sound magnified by the large room. How was she supposed to get through this while she was so attracted to her captor?
Could Stockholm syndrome set in this early?
She turned, locked the door, and checked it twice before she stripped off her clothes. She needed a shower. The smell of the diner still c
lung faintly to her.
The custom shower could probably fit about four people and had jets that shot water from three different directions. After regulating the temperature controls to her liking, she stepped inside and closed the door. The warm water sluiced down her body, drawing a ragged groan of pleasure from her throat.
Carefully keeping her bruise out of the path of the water's spray, she soaped her hands and rubbed them over her arms and chest. Her body felt sensitized, sexually aware. It had been a long time since she'd felt that way. Her nipples went hard as she passed her hands over them, peeking from the white soap bubbles.
Tipping her head back with a sigh, she ran her palms over her abdomen, passed her fingers through the coarse dark hair covering her mound, and then delved between her thighs. She brushed her sensitive clit. It had been a long time since she'd made herself come.
She stood for a moment with her hand between her thighs, feeling the heat of her sex radiate into her palm. She was a healthy woman with needs that had gone unfulfilled. That had to explain her intense attraction to Jack. She was willing to accept that explanation, anyway, since the alternative was so scary. Did she have some dangerous, secret abduction fantasies she should seek counseling for?
Mira finished bathing, then got out and dressed in the cast-off clothing.
The jeans were uncomfortably too small for her and she ended up annoyed again as she stepped out of the bathroom, running a comb she'd found in a drawer through her towel-dried hair. Her annoyance was probably a result of her inexplicable sexual frustration just as much as having to wear the too-small castoffs from one of Jack's lovers.
Jack stood shirtless and shoeless in the middle of the bedroom. The sight of him there in the morning sunlight with his hair mussed from sleep was enough to drop her IQ about fifty points. She stopped and stared for a moment, slack-jawed, before recovering.
He dangled her pentagram from one long finger. "I found this on the carpet in the living room.”