Xia rasped, “Why do you think I hate your father so much?”
“My father is dead,” she replied. “My real father is the man who raised me, and he wasn’t a mage.”
“Kessler is still your daddy. And the apple don’t fall far from the tree, if you get what I’m saying, witch.”
“No,” she whispered.
“Let’s get clear, Alexandrine Marit. If you woke up feeling like something was going to happen, I need to know about it. Because I don’t believe you don’t have any magic on tap. You’re a witch.” He bent his head to her ear and whispered, “Now, Alexandrine.” Damn, his voice was gold dripping with honey. “I need to know right now. Did you wake up thinking you needed to call for help?”
“I didn’t think it.” She lifted her chin to stare into his eyes. “I knew it.”
He let go of her. “Fuck.” But he wasn’t cursing at her so much as expressing a general observation on the state of the world right now. If there was even the slightest possibility that real-deal magehelds were coming after her, she agreed with him.
The lights went out. Only, the lights in her apartment were already off. The glow from the streetlights disappeared without a sound, none of that electric buzz that sounded in the split-second before an outage. The room was darker than it ought to be. None of the electronic gadget lights in her apartment were glowing. The difference between closing her eyes and opening them became minuscule, which was disorienting to say the least. She was sick to her stomach, and her legs were jittery.
“Listen up, witch.” She shifted in the direction of Xia’s words. Did his voice sound like it was coming from higher above her head because he’d straightened up? “I’ve proofed the place against shit-head mages like Christophe or Rasmus, but it would take longer than I’ve had to make it solid. What I did isn’t going to keep magehelds out for long.”
“You heard something, didn’t you?” she said.
“I didn’t hear shit. But it’s my job to make sure nothing gets in here.”
“I think they’re trying to get in now.”
“Give me your mobile.”
She obeyed without hesitation. He opened her phone. In the screen’s glow she saw his determined face. The light made his eyes look white. He punched in a number and handed it back to her. “If you see me go down, or if you feel like you need to call for help, get into the bathroom and lock the door. Then call that number.”
“Why not 911?”
Without the glow of her phone, they were enveloped in darkness. “Because,” he said after a pause, “that’s not the kind of help you’re going to need. Whoever answers, you tell him you’re Harsh’s sister and you need help, now.”
“Okay.” Swear to God, Alexandrine thought she saw a neon blue glow in the place where his eyes ought to be. And then there was nothing. Either he’d blinked or looked away, or she was just seeing things.
Get out. Get out. Get out!
“Xia,” she said. Her legs did not want to hold her up right now.
“Shh.”
If anything, the darkness got deeper. The temperature dropped to an icy chill. Her skin crawled and the muscles in her legs twitched. “We have to get out of here,” she said. “Right now.”
Glass shattered somewhere in the building, in the direction of the kitchen, where a back door led to the apartment house’s laundry room, garbage area, and garage. She jumped, but Xia clamped a hand over her mouth. His other arm snaked around her waist and held her tight, face-to-face with him. His body was unyielding. Her head clamored, spinning out of whack. A solid block of ice.
Xia put his mouth by her ear. “Quiet. You got that, witch? Not a word unless I ask you something.” She nodded, and he slid his hand off her mouth. His lips were right by her ear. “Feel anything?”
She turned her head to use the same soft voice. “Like what?”
“Concentrate.” He said the word like he meant fuck off and die.
“I don’t know.” Her head was pounding, and everything wavered in front of her, going in and out of focus.
He was still holding her tight. Her shirt had flapped open at the bottom when he grabbed her, and her bare belly was pressed hard against his, the amulet between them. His arm tightened around her, and her head spun. “How many?”
Wood broke this time. The sound came from the rear stairs that led from her kitchen to the laundry room. Whoever or whatever was here wasn’t in her apartment yet, but they would be soon. They were going to get in. She pushed at his chest. Oh, dear God. Naked skin. Hard-body naked skin. “I don’t know!”
“Guess.”
She guessed. She was good at guessing. “Four.”
“That’s all?” Xia laughed. “Piece of cake. Here.” He let go of her and handed her his knife, hilt first. “Take this. Watch the blade; it’s sharp enough to take off your head. Something bad happens, you make the call first. But use this if you need to.”
The knife was much heavier than she expected. And it made her fingers prickle with numbness. “I don’t want it.”
“Use it,” he said.
And then Xia headed for the kitchen to face whatever was creeping up the back stairs in order to get into her apartment and kill her. Alexandrine stayed in the hallway, chill air pressing against her. Her knees shook. She tightened her fingers around the hilt of Xia’s knife. She felt a little better. Very little. Having a weapon was good.
More wood broke. They were here. Inside. Right now.
In the kitchen, something screamed.
Chapter 5
Xia came back into Alexandrine’s kitchen from the rear stairs where he’d kicked the little freak who broke the door. His buddies were farther down the stairs, waiting. They’d gotten in where there were lots of shadows to hide them from vision-poor humans. Windows to climb through. A narrow staircase to sneak up. Whatever mage was responsible for this attempt—and Xia still had his money on Rasmus even though he hadn’t recognized any of the attackers—he’d let his magehelds do the dirty work. No surprise there. That’s what mages did, right? They sent their enslaved fiends to kill or be killed. He figured one or two other magehelds had likely died breaking through his proofing outside the building, leaving four survivors to smash the laundry room window once the way was clear. Poor fucks. They hadn’t gotten far. At least their deaths had been less painful than the ones who’d died outside.
He didn’t think there’d be more right away. He knew the drill. The ones he hadn’t killed would slink off and talk about what went wrong and why, and either wait for further orders from their mage or bring on reinforcements. And if that was the case, they’d be in already. Which meant they were waiting for Rasmus to tell them what to do next. He figured he had twenty or thirty minutes of peace and quiet.
Xia rolled his shoulders and stopped at the sink to wash his hands and face. It felt good to fight with complete freedom. Without the aching, bone-deep pain of compulsion. Without hatred burning through him. The difference unsettled him. Until now, he’d not realized, not completely, how alien his freedom was to him. Talk about messed up. He’d done nothing but dream about freedom, and now that he had it, he didn’t know how to live. In a sick way, he was grateful to be babysitting Harsh’s sister, because it gave him something to think about besides what he was supposed to do with his freedom now that it belonged to him again.
The lights were back to normal, but he didn’t turn any on. He liked the dark, and besides, he didn’t have any problem seeing. He ran the water extra long, waiting until well past the time when it was hot. Extra soap for him. The smell of copper echoed in his mouth, a sweet tang of blood on his tongue.
While he waited for the sink to clear of blood, he found a glass and got a drink of water from a bottle in the fridge. Cool and wet down the back of his throat. Whenever he was coming down from high alert, he was hyper-aware of his surroundings. His proofing was back in place and felt good and solid, given the time he’d had in which to work. First-class proofing took days, and he’d had less
than an hour to redo what he’d managed to put in place in the time he’d been here. Not to mention the limitation of having to wait until the witch was asleep before he got to work.
He returned to the sink and let his senses expand. None of the free kin were around besides him. Carson and Nikodemus were tucked away in the back of his head, and it was comforting to feel them. If he cared to, he could reach out to Kynan or Iskander. He could even touch Harsh, who sometimes stank of magekind.
He’d always been sensitive to the magekind, witches in particular. If Alexandrine Marit’s place was full of vanilla humans, he’d still know exactly where she was. Right now, she was in the living room, about a yard from that sissy couch of hers. She made his skin itch. But there was something else here, too. Besides the stink of witch. He concentrated. Given his current sensitive state, which he expected would last another hour at least, he could make out more than before.
For sure Harsh’s sister was coming into some power from the talisman, but she was still a lot more human than witch. Not that it mattered to him. Practicing or not, she was a witch, and he felt the power in her whether she could use it or not. The Marit woman wasn’t stable. Not anymore. The talisman was fucking her up but good. She deserved what she was getting.
For a while, he listened to Alexandrine breathe. She was a good-looking woman, and it wasn’t long before his thoughts wandered off in inappropriate directions. His body reacted predictably to the stimulus of thinking about her without her clothes. Man, he could smell her blood from here. Pulsing. Sweet with magic. She backed away from the couch and went back to her bedroom. Yeah. Run, baby, run, because he was feeling a bit frisky. Totally not down from his high. A little oneon-one with the delectable Alexandrine Marit would be a nice topper for the best evening he’d had since Carson cut him free.
He rubbed his rib cage, but his bruises were already fading. The magehelds hadn’t put up much of a fight. Pity. Harsh’s sister was coming back. He smiled to himself. Nikodemus did the nasty with a witch. Why not him? Physically, Alexandrine Marit was his type. At this point, he thought he could put aside his feelings about witches long enough to get laid. Hell, it’d been weeks since the last time he’d done it. Didn’t want to get out of practice, did he?
Yeah. Right. He laughed to himself. Like that would ever happen. His hatred of witches was the stuff of legend. Hell, it predated his association with Rasmus. Which was why Nikodemus let Harsh pick him for this job over Kynan or Iskander. None of them figured he’d so much as breathe near a witch unless he was planning to kill her.
Now Alexandrine was heading this way. Given what she was, she probably knew she was safe for the present, but he flipped on the kitchen light just in case. The switch by the sink turned on a shitty fluorescent above the stove. The rest of the room stayed nice and dim. “S’okay,” he called out.
He listened to her walk—now, why she did go back to her room, he wondered?—but stayed facing the sink in order to keep his back to the door, both hands gripping the counter because he was hyped up from the change and the fight, and he wasn’t sure what that might be doing to his eyes, let alone the rest of him. Freaking out the witch was against his instructions. He stood there at the sink while two competing instincts went to war. Kill the witch or get laid. Harsh would eviscerate him if he put so much as a pinky on her with sexual intent. Same if he killed her. Only slower and more painfully. He could handle the first. Not so much the other.
He could smell her. Woman. Witch. Warm-blooded. And totally his type.
This was going to be interesting.
“Are you all right?” Alexandrine Marit asked from the doorway.
Only the one mageheld had made it into the kitchen. And he’d cleaned up the mess downstairs. He hadn’t left any bloody footprints or anything disturbing on her clean kitchen floor. “Yeah. I’m all right.”
She crossed to him and set his knife on the counter. “Here.”
“Thanks.” He picked up his glass of water and turned on the tap so he’d have an excuse not to look at her.
“Ahem.”
“What?” Did he dare look at her? Slowly, he turned his head. He braced himself for a reaction. But she didn’t freak. Nah. She wasn’t the type, anyway. Must be his eyes were okay. She was holding out a bath towel. A fluffy pink one.
“I don’t have a robe that will fit you.”
“So?”
To his surprise, she reached out and brushed his hair over his ear. He gripped the counter hard, because, man, having her touch him was giving him urges he shouldn’t be having. Her hair glinted silver in the light, and she smiled at him like she cared about his condition. “Beautiful as you are, Xia of the fantastic”—her gaze swept down and then back to his face—“eyes, we just don’t know each other well enough for you to be naked in my kitchen.”
Just like a human to be hung up over nudity. He took the towel from her. He wasn’t hard or anything, but hey, he wasn’t that far from a boner, and there wasn’t anyone controlling his responses anymore. If he wanted to act on his impulses, he could. So, she was right. The towel was a good thing. He concentrated on her face even though he would have preferred to concentrate on those two lonely buttons holding together her shirt.
“Thanks,” he said. He hadn’t had consensual sex with a witch in too many years to count, so there was no telling what he’d do if he got a hard-on for her. In the process of wrapping the towel around his waist, he increased the distance between them. No way was he back in control. And it was up to him to keep what control he had. Freedom could be a bitch.
“You’re welcome.” She headed for the door that led to the back stairs, but she turned around before she got there. “You know, you’re not so bad when you try to be nice.”
“It’s not easy.” He looked down as he brought the end of the towel around his hip. “Damn thing’s pink.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “You’re man enough to carry it off. Or are you afraid you aren’t pretty in pink?”
“Baby, I’m so pretty in pink, I’m worried you won’t be able to help yourself.” He tucked in the top of the towel and stood with his hands on his hips. “I don’t mind not wearing it.” He waited a beat. Sure enough, she was looking at him again, but he couldn’t tell if she was pissed off or trying not to laugh. When she didn’t come back with a smart-ass put-down—mages and witches didn’t tolerate much shit from his kind—he said softly, “For you, baby, I’ll take it off.” He braced himself for the smack-down that was coming for sure.
“But my clothes stay on, Xia, so where does that leave you?”
“Same place as ever, I guess.” He shrugged. “All alone with your pink towels.”
“Don’t go making me actually like you.”
He walked over to her and didn’t even care that he was feeling her and the talisman both or that it was cranking him something fierce. She was standing near the door that led downstairs—the kitchen was so small, just about anywhere was near the door—and Xia put his hands on either side of the frame. He leaned in until she practically had her back to the wooden surface. “You did good tonight. Kept your head on straight.”
“Thanks.”
“You get any more of those feelings, you let me know.”
Slowly, she tilted her head back until it rested against the door, and then she smiled and his blood about boiled. “What feelings would those be?”
His stomach did a little flip. “The ones where you’re okay with me not wearing this towel.” To his amped-up vision, the shadow panther on her belly glowed a soft gray. And, uh-oh, she did not have on a bra. What would she do if he reached over and undid those buttons? His head was so full of the fantasy of reaching in and unfastening her shirt that well, hell, he reached in and—she went completely stiff. “What?”
“Something’s coming.” She spoke at the same time he heard the kitchen window crack.
He lunged for his knife on the counter where Alexandrine had set it down. He had a grip on the hilt when the proof
ing around the back staircase door gave way. The magic tearing away scraped like sandpaper over his heart. A split second before the door burst open, Alexandrine threw herself to the floor. Her evasive action was why the mageheld who came through didn’t kill her with his first strike. But she was on her back when the fiend jumped her. Her knee in his crotch barely slowed him. She gave him a damn hard strike, too.
With the window rattling like a train, Xia launched himself at the mageheld and grabbed the thing by his chin. He had one clawed hand on the leather thong around her neck and was tugging, but Alexandrine went wild. Fucking wild. Hell, she practically threw the mageheld off her. Magic burned in his bones, and as Xia crouched down and drove his knife into the fiend’s lumbar spine, he recognized a mix of magekind and demon in what she was pulling, and all of it was focused on the thing on top of her.
The mageheld went down hard on the kitchen floor, and Xia wasn’t at all sure if he’d killed him or if Alexandrine had. The window stopped rattling. Silence fell.
She scrambled out from under the body, eyes big, breathing hard. There wasn’t a mark on her, but her shirt was completely shredded. No need to wonder anymore what she looked like without her shirt. “You okay?” he asked.
His towel was on the floor, and he stooped for it so she could cover herself. But she just stood there, taking deep shuddering breaths and staring at the dead mageheld like she thought it would get up and try for seconds.
“Alexandrine,” he said.
No reaction from her.
He went to her and awkwardly draped the towel around her as he tried not to look or touch. He wasn’t exactly having pure thoughts. She wasn’t aware of much, and she continued to radiate that weird mix of power. He didn’t think that could be doing anything but getting her even more tightly wound up with the talisman. A similar process had nearly killed Carson Philips when she got on the wrong side of an unstable talisman. “Baby,” he said, keeping a hand on her shoulder so the towel wouldn’t fall completely off her. “Sit down, okay?”
My Forbidden Desire Page 5