Shadow Kissed: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Witch's Rebels Book 1)

by Sarah Piper

  “Seven years.” She folded her arms across her chest and leaned her chair back on two legs, her smile smug and adorable. “Nearly a quarter of my life.”

  I shoved in a forkful of chicken stuff. With a full mouth, I said, “Well, I’ve known him for a hundred and eighty, and you don’t see me blushing every time someone says his name.”

  Not that I minded that sweet little blush. Not at all.

  “I’m not blushing,” she said, dropping her chair back to the floor. But now she was biting her lip, too, trying to hold in a smile.

  Damn, she had it just as bad for him as he had it for her.

  This can’t possibly end well…

  “So,” I said.

  “So.”

  I glanced around the kitchen, taking in the girly decor. Yellow walls, cutesy little bird knick-knacks on the window sill, fox clock on the wall, a bowl of stones in the middle of the table with flowers and little sayings.

  You can never really know love until you know yourself, one of them said.

  Next to the basket, I spotted a deck of tarot cards, but that was the only thing that screamed witch about the place.

  Last time I’d been here with Ronan, I hadn’t really given it much thought, but now I realized something seemed off about Gray’s house.

  No witchy shit.

  “Not very mystical in here,” I said.

  “How do you mean?”

  I shoved in another bite of food. “You know, little statues, incense, pentacles. I thought all you witches were into that woo-woo shit.”

  Gray shrugged and lowered her eyes, running her thumbnail along a crack in the table. “I don’t practice magic anymore.”

  “Since when?”

  She stopped messing with the table and looked up, lasering me with an icy glare that damn near made my dick shrivel. “Since hunters butchered my mother right in front of me.”

  I dropped my fork, and she flinched. Total accident, but damn.

  I’m such an asshole. Son of a bitch, Ronan. Why the fuck didn’t you say something?

  I’d met Gray the same night the rest of them did—her first night in the Bay. Ronan, though… he’d known her longer. Knew she came with baggage. Couldn’t talk about it though—all part of the gig for a demon like him.

  “I need your help on this one,” he’d said back then. “She’s important.”

  And we’d all agreed, no questions asked. Blood or not, that’s what real brothers did. All I’d known about her at the time was she was one of Ronan’s contracts. A witch. Powerful as hell. And eighteen years old.

  That she’d suffered some kind of fucked up tragedy was obvious; kids like her didn’t just show up in the Bay in raggedy-ass clothes, half-starved and half-beaten if they had money and a nice, cozy family somewhere.

  But hell if I’d ever asked for the details.

  He’d asked us to look out for her. Said that one day he might need more than that. It was good enough for me.

  Barely a week in her life again, and I was already hurting her.

  “Alright, Cupcake,” I said, more than ready to see her smile again. “Here’s the plan. I’ll set up the shots. You shuffle up your little deck of magic cards there and tell Asher his future.”

  I grabbed the bottle of tequila and poured two, but Gray bristled.

  “I don’t read Tarot for people who refer to themselves in the third person. And I don’t read when I’m drinking, either. It interferes with my intuition.”

  Ooookay…

  I downed both shots myself, then grinned. “Gray. Will you please give me a reading? Me, as in, first-person me?”

  She rolled her eyes at me, but she was already reaching for the deck.

  “So this card represents your past.” She turned over the first card—a tormented creature crammed into a wooden box, ten swords shoved right through it. Right through him.

  “Damn, girl. Tell me how you really feel.”

  “This has nothing to do with how I feel and everything to do with the energy and events in your life.”

  “So what’s this energy saying?” I picked up the card for a closer look. Thing gave me the creeps.

  “With the Ten of Swords in the past position, it’s likely something you haven’t dealt with. Whatever it is, it’s major, and it’s been haunting you a long time. But this card is all about endings. Whatever it is, it’s done. You need to let it go, or it’s going to destroy you.”

  Guilt rippled in my gut, and I dropped the card.

  Gray was a little too good at this Tarot shit, and I hadn’t really meant for her to dig that deep.

  “Let’s, ah, leave the past in the past. Shall we?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me, but thankfully didn’t push it.

  She laid down another card in the present position, a smile lighting up her face. “Knight of Swords,” she said, pointing at the image of an armored knight on a creepy demonic horse, brandishing a big sword. “He’s very mercurial. Talks before he thinks. Quick to rush into everything and make a big ol’ mess. Does that strike a chord with you?”

  “I don’t rush into everything, Cupcake.” I glanced down at her mouth. “Some things are worth taking a very long, very deliberate time.”

  She squirmed in her chair, and I’m not gonna lie, that new blush on her cheeks made me hard as fuck.

  What was it about this girl? It’s not like I’d never been around attractive women before, but something about Gray was quickly taking hold.

  I wasn’t sure if I liked it. I wasn’t sure I should even think about liking it.

  “So, moving on. Let’s look at what lies beneath,” she said. “The essence of the matter, you might say.”

  She set down another card, this one showing a naked man and woman standing on the beach, doing exactly what naked people ought to do together. But standing up like that? Facing each other? These two made that position look a hell of a lot easier than it was in reality, believe me.

  Thing was, a serpent had just sunk its fangs into the guy’s leg. Dude didn’t even seem to realize it.

  “The Lovers card,” she said, quickly flipping the next one and laying it crosswise over the sex card. “Crossed by The Devil.”

  I stared at the new card—a winged demon that looked a lot like a guy I used to know, actually, dancing on scorched earth. “That… can’t be good.”

  She studied the cards a minute longer, brow furrowed in concentration, and then she gasped.

  My heart kicked me in the ribs. “What’s that gasp all about? Am I totally fucked here?”

  She looked up at me, her pretty blue eyes wide with shock. “You’re an incubus?”

  I bit back a smile. “Cards told you that?”

  “Not specifically, no. But it’s the message I’m picking up on, loud and clear. And you're not denying it, so…” She reached for the bottle of tequila, pouring a healthy shot and slamming it down in a swift gulp.

  “Thought you didn’t drink and read?”

  “New policy.” She stared at the cards as if they might come back to her with some other outcome.

  When she finally looked up at me again, her eyes were full of a hundred questions she wasn’t asking.

  I gestured for her to spit it out. “Go ahead. Ask.”

  Her cheeks pinked up again, but to her credit, she didn’t shy away. “So you survive on… How do you… I mean, how does it work? You’re sitting here eating fajitas. That doesn’t do the job?”

  “It’s not much different from vampires,” I explained. “I eat and drink regular stuff, but I need to take in a certain kind of… let’s call it energy… to survive.”

  “So basically you need to have sex constantly or you drop dead?”

  I downed another shot to keep from laughing.

  Yeah, sex definitely kept the spring in my step, but I could get by for long stretches without it. In fact, it’d been a few months since I’d had the time to pursue that kind of sustenance—a partner who wasn’t prepared for the energy exchange could
get seriously fucked up. But as long as people were getting down and dirty in the vicinity, my body could absorb that excess energy without hurting anyone.

  Not that I’d be sharing those special little details with her.

  Raising a brow, I said, “If I told you yes, would that change your plans for the evening?”

  The woman didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, absolutely. I’d make you sleep outside so I wouldn’t have to get the dead body stink out of my couch.”

  I full on cracked up at that. Cupcake had a way of throwing me off balance, I’d give her that.

  I picked up the bottle, tipped it toward her. “You want another one?”

  Gray shook her head, the teasing smile fading from her lips. The moment between us seemed to be passing. I tried not to let it get to me.

  “Do you know when Ronan’s coming back?” she asked.

  The question was like an ice bucket dumped on our momentary fun.

  I really, really didn’t want to get into this with her. Ronan was her demon guardian—I got it. But he was already in way too deep.

  And she seemed perfectly happy to let him fall.

  “If you’re so concerned about Ronan’s whereabouts all the time,” I said, “maybe you should learn how to fight your own battles.”

  “Right. Have you met Ronan?”

  She had a point, but of course she couldn’t just let it go at that.

  “He fights for me because he cares about me, Asher. Because he’s my friend. Maybe you’ve heard of the concept?”

  Heard of the concept?

  Ronan and I had gotten into—and out of—more shit together, had traversed more levels of Hell together, had fought in more demonic battles together and saved each other’s lives more times than this fluffy bunny could ever hope to imagine in her short, human, blink-of-an-eye lifespan.

  And she wanted to know if I’d heard of friendship?

  “Sorry, Cupcake.” I shook my head. “He fights because you let him. He fights because he’s too hung up on you to know he’s in serious fucking danger. And unfortunately for him, you’re too damn selfish to notice, and too damn weak to do anything about it even if the truth jumped up and bit you right on that perky little ass.”

  Hurt flickered in her eyes. I’d hit the soft underbelly with that little barb.

  I sat back in my chair and waited for her to punch back. To tell me off. To put me in my fucking place, just like she’d been doing all along.

  But Gray had gone silent. She wouldn’t even look at me. Just swept up her Tarot cards, stacked them all back up in a neat little pile on the table, and bailed, leaving me alone with my booze and a big-ass pile of steaming hot guilt.

  My gaze landed on the basket of stones again.

  You can never really know love until you know yourself.

  Yeah. More like, you can never really know love until you stop acting like a flaming bag of dicks.

  Thirty-Eight

  Gray

  As much as I would’ve loved to slam my door, Ronan had torn it half off the hinges in his mad rush to save me from my nightmare with claws.

  So I did the next best thing and changed into my PJs, turned off all the lights, climbed under my blankets, and pulled them up over my head, blotting out the rest of the world.

  But even tucked away like that, I could still feel Asher’s damn presence in my house. His heat. It hovered around me like a fine mist coating my skin, making me hot and sticky and completely wound up.

  It wasn’t even his incubus vibe, or whatever they called it. He’d given me a taste of that the first time we’d met, and it’d felt like a physical pull, like an elastic band snapping back together.

  No, this was all me and my stupid Benedict Arnold sex drive.

  I didn’t know what the hell was up with me lately—why after coasting for the past seven years on cruise control, my libido had suddenly kicked into hyper-drive, right along with my magic—but it was becoming a serious nuisance.

  Now was not the time for indulging in fantasies. Certainly not about that cocky, infuriating, crazy-making, asshole excuse for a demon—excuse me, incubus—snoring away in my living room.

  Yet half an hour later, when my hand drifted lazily down my belly and slipped inside the front of my sweats, the name on my lips wasn’t Ronan or Darius, and the eyes I imagined glazing with lust as they watched me trace slow circles over my clit weren’t hazel or honey.

  They were the fathomless, hypnotic blue of the deepest part of the ocean.

  Thirty-Nine

  Gray

  I was still awake when I felt it—the magic tingling across my palms. My heart rate spiked, sweat breaking out across my forehead, but I didn’t resist this time, didn’t allow the fear to take hold.

  Not even when the oily black smoke swirled around the end of my bed, slithering up my sheets in the moonlight, dragging me down, down, down…

  Just breathe…

  When I opened my eyes, I found myself in the meadow, lying in the grass beside the stone pedestal. A shadow crossed my face, and I sat up fast.

  “Shall I assume this means you’re ready to accept your true nature?” Death stood before me, his dark, shadowy presence blotting out the stars in the sky.

  Again, I refused to let the fear take hold.

  After all, why should I fear him? He wasn’t my enemy. He was a force of nature. The force. As much as we were taught to cower in his presence, to believe we might outrun our inevitable end, Death himself was not that ending. He was the great transformer, the renewer. Just like the Death card in Sophie’s deck, the child sought to crawl back into its mother’s womb, but it couldn’t. It had already changed, and she was already pregnant with new life.

  In that way, maybe nothing ever truly ended. It just transformed.

  For the first time since our acquaintance, I looked up at him and grinned. “Hi there.”

  Death said nothing. Did nothing. Showed no signs of acknowledgment. Just stared down at me with those eery glowing blue eyes.

  I rose from the ground, dusting off my palms. The whole cloak-and-dagger bit was getting a little old. “So, Death. Listen. No offense, but…” I reached out and touched the edge of his robe. It was more substantial than a shadow, but not quite as solid as real fabric. It felt almost like a spiderweb. “Do you ever wear anything… normal?”

  He looked down at my fingers, still visible through the sheer blackness of his garb. “Normal?”

  “As in, less creepy?”

  “I am Death. Showing up in khaki pants and a white polo shirt might, shall we say, lessen the impact.”

  Okay, that was kind of funny, picturing him like that. I laughed, and I thought he might too, but then he just… vanished.

  Great. I offended Death.

  “I’m sorry!” I called out, my voice echoing across the black forest. Night creatures skittered through the underbrush, but otherwise, I heard nothing. Saw nothing. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Is this better?”

  I whirled around at the question, shocked at the sight before me—a man wearing dark jeans and a long sleeve red Henley pushed up to his elbows, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, and perfectly messy blond hair that fell in front of his eyes.

  It was Death. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did.

  “You… You're, like, a normal new guy,” I said.

  “I thought you might be more comfortable this way.” He ran a hand through his hair, revealing electric blue eyes that reminded me of Arctic ice. A little uncanny, maybe—not to mention the most ancient-looking eyes I had ever seen—but at least they’d stopped glowing. “Yes?”

  “Yeah. I mean, yes. Definitely.”

  “Good. Because if we’re going to work together, I’d prefer you not think me creepy.”

  I couldn’t hide my smile. “I don't suppose this normal, non-creepy guy has an actual name?”

  “Liam James Colebrook,” he said plainly.

  I laughed. “Been saving that one up, have you?”

&nbs
p; Death—rather, Liam—shrugged. “That was his name.”

  “Whose—oh.” I clamped my mouth shut as the realization hit. Normal new guy wasn’t just a glamour Death had invented for my comfort. He was a vessel, a human whose body Death now inhabited.

  “I didn’t kill him,” he explained. “It was his time.”

  “So you’re… hijacking his body?”

  “I prefer the term borrowing.” He ran a hand through his hair again. It wasn’t just blond, I noticed now, but copper too, streaked lighter in places by the sun. His skin was tanned as well, and I wondered where Liam had lived. California, maybe.

  And then I wondered how he died. I hoped it wasn’t painful.

  “If you prefer someone different,” Liam said, “I can—”

  “No, Liam’s fine.” One presto-change-o was about all the excitement I could handle. Besides, Liam Colebrook wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes. If the goal was to make me more comfortable, Death could’ve done a lot worse in his vessel choice.

  He was quiet for a long moment, taking in his surroundings as if he’d never seen them before. The change to solid form—to Liam—seemed to unsettle him a bit. I wondered if he’d ever done it before.

  “Can you do—” I gestured from his head to his feet, indicating his newly solid form. “—on the physical plane?”

  “Yes, but only for short bursts of time. A few hours. A day, perhaps.”

  “So you never just drop in for a few weeks? Spy on us mere mortals?”

  “I can’t.” He slid his hands into his back pockets, rounding out his shoulders. The gesture was so human, so unlike the Death I’d experienced. “Rather, I could, but doing so would… complicate things.”

  I nodded, not sure I was ready for a deep dive into that particular can of worms. I was having enough trouble figuring out how my own magical realm worked, let alone the metaphysical mindfuck of Death manifesting on Earth.

  Magical realms. Magic power. Demons. Vampires. Witches. Hunters. It was my world, my universe, but sometimes it seemed like a crazy dream—the kind where you’re just the observer, watching someone else’s life play out on screen.