by Cassi Carver
Abbey set the can on the counter. “Looks like we have enough food for a month, but regardless of what Kara said about it not being safe at the apartment, I’m ready to head back. It’s not just my car or the renovations. I have a bad feeling about this place.”
Jaxon had to agree, but when he thought of flashing, just the initial stir of his will, that same feeling descended on him as when he’d had trouble flashing from the car. He peeled off his T-shirt and flexed the trapezius muscles along his upper back. Nothing happened. “I feel the pull of witch magic, like a very strong safeguard, perhaps. It began when I tried to carry you from the car. I didn’t want to frighten you, but I almost wasn’t able to transport us.”
The implications of what he was saying washed the color from her cheeks. “Are you serious? You could have gone down with the car?”
“We could have gone down with the car. You’re leaving out the most important part…” You, he wanted to say.
“Your wings aren’t working at all?”
“No. I can’t flash, and my wings don’t seem to be responding to my will. I’m…grounded, Abbey.” Admitting he didn’t have use of his wings felt like declaring he had a two-inch penis—to the woman he most wanted to prove otherwise. “Is it possible the mountain has a larger ward at work?”
When he contracted his shoulders and biceps, trying for the sensation that usually accompanied expanding his wings, Abbey’s eyes darted from his face to his feet…everywhere but his bare chest. Considering he never wore a shirt to bed, it was odd for her to be embarrassed now.
“I’ve heard of sacred places being warded like that,” she answered, clearing her throat, “but Witch Mountain isn’t exactly sacred.”
“Perhaps not, but the ward that kept me from entering this house isn’t the same one binding my wings.”
“Why don’t you put your shirt on so we can check the rest of the house? It sounds like we could be here for a couple of days until Grammy D wonders why she hasn’t heard from us, or I get the no-fly zone figured out.”
He slipped the T-shirt over his head, then followed Abbey up the stairs to a long hallway. One by one they opened the doors to find fully furnished bedrooms, seven in all, with the eighth being the master room. “I’m assuming we’ll take the largest of the rooms?”
Abbey froze at the door of the larger suite. “We?”
Jaxon rocked back on his heels. “You don’t want me to share your bed?”
Abbey had wanted him by her side since the night he’d brought her home from the attack…the night Brakken’s sadistic son had tied her up and carved that hideous symbol into the tender flesh of her abdomen.
Why wouldn’t she want him beside her now?
Yes, he’d tried to kiss her last night, but he never imagined she would hold that damn kiss against him like this. “Are you still angry with me?”
She stepped into the room and turned on the light. “Why would I be angry? I just thought now that we aren’t stuck in such a small place, you’d want your own room.”
The idea of leaving her alone all night in a strange house was as appealing as drinking curdled goat’s milk. After countless nights side by side, why in the name of hell’s sweet fury should he and Abbey sleep alone?
He turned. “I’m going to see what I can salvage from the car.”
“I thought you were going when the sun came up. I don’t even have a flashlight.”
“I’ll be fine.” He tried to relax his fists and allow the tension in his shoulders to ease. He couldn’t guilt Abbey into wanting him, and she had enough to worry about without him adding to her burden.
“Do you want me to go with you? I can help carry stuff.”
Jaxon forced a smile. “No. I won’t be gone long. Why don’t you use your time to get settled here. Perhaps there’s a phone somewhere.”
When Jaxon turned on his heel, Abbey shook her head. Why was he so sensitive about sharing a flippin’ room? Because truth be told, no matter how much she needed him to hold her right now, she was sick of being his friendly foot warmer.
She watched him stride down the hall toward the stairs. The dim light coming from the ceiling lamps accented his sturdy, muscular build, taunting her with every step he took, every shift of his hips and shoulders.
When he disappeared around the corner, she stepped back into the big, foreign bedroom and sighed. The old Abbey would have shown him there was more to her. She would have pursued and she would have conquered. But then, the old Abbey didn’t have a festering wound covering the entire expanse of her stomach. When she’d realized he was kissing her out of pity last night, she’d thought she was going to puke. It had felt so right…and then Kara and Tray walked in and it suddenly went so wrong.
The interruption was all the excuse Jaxon had needed. After Kara towed Tray out the door, Abbey waited, wondering what Jaxon would do next. She’d crossed her arms over her chest, overwhelmed by everything going on around her and he’d stood across the room from her, staring, probably wracking his brain on how to let her down easy.
And sure enough, not more than a minute later, he started the apologies. Sorry for this. Sorry for that. When what he really meant was that he was sorry he wasn’t attracted to her.
So why was she doing this to herself? Why was she even allowing herself to want him? Life was messy enough without mixing friendship and sex with an immortal man who was as perfect as she was damaged.
She walked to the beveled mirror mounted above the chest of drawers and hiked her dress up around her breasts. After hours in the car and the chaos of the crash, the bandages around her flat belly were worse for the wear. Enough clear pink fluid had seeped out to stain her dress.
The first bandage was simply layer after layer of stretchy, damp cloth wrapped around her stomach and lower back. But after she peeled that away, it revealed the sterile gauze beneath it. It was a sticky, souring mess.
She held a hand over the gauze and found the bathroom, then fumbled at the panel of switches until she located the one that controlled the lights over the double sinks.
When the last of the gauze had been peeled away and discarded, Abbey stood back and looked at herself—really looked—as she’d avoided doing for weeks now. And what she saw broke her heart.
Brakken’s sign ran from her pubic bone to her navel—a rudimentary snake twining around the outline of a dagger, and surrounding that, the symbol of the sun with etched rays radiating out on every side. The deep incisions of Gable’s blade were as stark and ugly now as the day he’d cut her. Instead of the wound closing, as every wound should over time, it was as though Demiáre magic held the skin apart, gaping and oozing.
At her grandmother’s urging, Abbey had tried having a doctor from the coven stitch her up—once. The resulting infection had been so bad, the skin had rotted along the sutures, leaving the furrows of the symbol even wider in its wake.
Abbey wasn’t unattractive—she was hideous. Of course Jaxon didn’t want to be intimate with her. He might think she smelled nice, but that clearly wasn’t enough. And could she blame him? Simply staring at herself in the mirror was enough to turn her stomach.
“Screw this,” she said, using a small piece of tissue paper to dab at her eyes before measuring out long swaths and pressing them to her skin. They would stick, of course, but she didn’t have any other options at the moment.
Deciding to make better use of her time than standing here feeling sorry for herself, Abbey rewrapped the bandage and then searched the house top to bottom for a phone.
Exploring the new house was just the distraction she needed. In her condition, she had no business contemplating taking a reluctant lover anyway.
Jaxon made the three-mile hike quickly, jogging to the spot where the Neon had careened over the railing. He hated leaving Abbey alone, even for a short while, but he needed space to think. As a matter of fact, space was exactly what he was thinking of—whether he should allow Abbey to continue constructing that protective hedge around her heart
to keep him at a distance or whether he should take a chance and plow through it.
He assessed the cliffs, deciding the best route to take, then began making his way down the rocky hillside. It was a nuisance for a silver-wing not to be able to glide down on extended wings. Instead, he had to move foot by foot down the embankment, dirt and pebbles raining down on him as he clung to the stones like a damn spider.
When he finally made it to the bottom and took in the crumpled metal, he ground his teeth. He could have lost Abbey in that mangle of steel. The Neon was on its side, every window was shattered, and the hood and trunk were decidedly shorter than they’d been before.
When he couldn’t get the passenger door open, he ripped it from its hinges and tossed it aside. Without a flashlight, it was hard to see much. But miraculously, he found Abbey’s purse wedged beneath the seat. He strapped the purse over his shoulder, then grabbed their bags from the trunk. Abbey’s perfume, which he enjoyed in small quantities, had smashed in her bag, drenching her clothing. Something white and sticky, shampoo perhaps, covered his.
With a sigh, he sifted through the broken glass of a jar of spaghetti sauce and salvaged what food he could from the mess. The vegetables were battered, but if he could get the broken eggshells from the leaves of lettuce and ensure the carrots didn’t harbor bits of glass, he might be able to make Abbey a salad from it.
When he returned a short time later, he found Abbey in the kitchen, sitting at the table, nursing her soup. “Are our bags bleeding?” she asked.
Given his mood when he’d last seen her, his laughter surprised him. “The jar of sauce broke. I told you we should have purchased the can instead.”
“That’s because it cost less, not because you knew the jar was going to end up at the bottom of a cliff in what was left of my car.”
“I can’t debate with such an intelligent woman,” he conceded. “But I have good news for you. I found your purse.” He placed the pewter-colored purse on the table. “The bad news is, the phone didn’t survive the crash.”
“Crap.”
“But this might brighten your night.” He produced the vegetables from behind his back like a bouquet of flowers and presented them to her.
She smiled and rose from her chair, taking the items from his hand and immediately carrying them to the sink to begin washing the fragments of eggshell and grime from them. “Well, I can’t make a call from this carrot, but at least we’ll be eating something that didn’t come from a can.”
“You didn’t find a phone?”
“No. No landlines, and I’m not sure my cell would have worked here anyhow. Service was already getting spotty halfway up the mountain range.”
“Should we try the neighbors?”
“Absolutely—if we had neighbors to try. One of the reasons my dad loved this place was because no one else lived around here.”
“Yet you have electricity…”
“From a special generator. It’s powered by the energy of the mountain, and I’m glad it’s still running. My dad never taught me the spell to work it.”
“They use a similar generator on Mercury Island, but that isn’t my area of expertise.” He took the carrots and began washing them beside her. When his knuckles grazed hers, she froze.
His heart squeezed when he felt her pull away, but then she must have realized what she’d done, because she smiled and patted his hand. “I hope you didn’t misunderstand me earlier about the whole sharing-a-bedroom thing.”
His gaze met hers. He knew her so well, she didn’t need to speak for him to read the discomfort there. Still, he needed to hear the words. “Oh? In what way?”
“You thinking I’m trying to get rid of you or something. It’s just that I thought you might like to stretch out for once.”
He finished with the bunch of carrots and set them aside. “Don’t, Abbey. I deserve better than your trying to placate me. If I could take back what happened last night…” He stopped short of saying he would, because that would have been a lie.
“So…we kissed. Big deal. It happened, and it won’t happen again. Can we please just let it go and move on?”
“Move on…” He was a fool, but he’d expected more compassion from her. It wasn’t as if he’d planned it.
No, he’d been a flaming saint right up until they’d returned home to an empty apartment and sat on the couch, like they’d done so many times before. A playful argument over the remote had led to grappling, and grappling had led to a heated look, and the heated look had led to the most amazing kiss of his life. He wasn’t sure what made him do it, but when he’d kissed her, there was no doubt Abbey had kissed him back.
Her body had been so incredibly responsive as she’d straddled his lap and wrapped her small hands behind his head. He still wondered where it would have led if their roommate, Kara, and Abbey’s ex, Tray, hadn’t walked in on them and blown it all to hell. With her arms wrapped tightly around her ribs and a look of distrust in her eyes, Abbey had come crashing to her senses…and Jaxon wasn’t sure his body would survive the impact.
She filled her lungs and blew out a deep breath. “See? Easy. Moving on. Now where are the bowls?”
He wasn’t going to argue with her. She didn’t want more from him, no matter what her kisses said. “I would never pressure you into something you weren’t ready for.”
“Oh, right. Like you’ve ever pressured me.”
Her strange look and fluttery fingers confused him. He settled his hand over hers to calm her. “Think nothing more about it. It’s been a long night, and I’ll sleep well enough in the room across from yours.”
He proved himself a liar.
They ate dinner and changed for bed. Abbey took one of his shirts to wear as a nightgown until she could wash the overwhelming fragrance from her own clothing.
And now he lay in the large, empty bed, staring across the hall at Abbey’s open door for what felt like hours, pondering whether or not it was even safe to leave her unguarded…
No, he finally decided. Absolutely not.
Jaxon walked into the master bedroom on silent feet. He would prove to her that he could control himself—that he wasn’t a rutting bull she needed to fear. Abbey was the most important thing to him in this realm, and he wouldn’t lose her over a kiss.
He went around to the other side of the bed and slipped under the covers. She shifted and let out a quiet moan, rolling toward him and tucking her fingers into the crook of his arm as she liked to do. Jaxon cursed himself when that small gesture made him go as hard as stone.
Having Abbey near him made his skin feel tight and his lungs struggle to draw a full breath. How could she possibly believe they would be better as friends when he needed her so desperately?
She stirred, and her eyes opened a fraction of an inch. “What’s the matter, Jaxy? Are you all right?”
“I couldn’t sleep without knowing you were safe.” He ran his hand over her hair and brought her closer. “Shh. I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”
He pressed his eyes together when her cheek nestled against his chest. His flat nipples drew tight and his skin broke out in gooseflesh. His rod was so stiff, the covers peaked over his groin. He was a fool if he thought to show her he could control himself after last night. In truth, his cock burned with unspent desire, and the only way to extinguish it would be to plunge inside Abbey’s wet heat.
Jaxon let out a long breath, angry he was being such a lecherous bastard and allowing his wicked thoughts to get the best of him. He reached down to adjust himself, not wanting to take a chance she’d open her eyes and witness his reaction to her. But when he felt Abbey’s throat swallow against his arm, he knew it was too late. He glanced down to see her mouth parted and her small pink tongue dart out to lick her lips.
“That’s not fair,” she said.
“What isn’t fair?”
She glanced to the bulge under the blanket. “You know how long it’s been for me. It’s not fair to wave that thing under
my nose, knowing that I’m not going to do anything with it.”
“I’d let you do anything with it you like.” His smile let her know he was teasing, but his cock throbbed in anticipation.
“I might be flattered if I didn’t know it’d been just as long for you.”
“Do you truly believe my desire is from going too long without a woman?”
Her gaze shifted back to his groin. “Well, the evidence is hard to deny.”
When he took her small hand under the covers and ran it the length of him over his silky shorts, Abbey sucked in a breath. “You may not be willing to take me,” he said, “but never doubt that every inch is for you alone.”
Abbey yanked her hand back, her green eyes blazing with righteous indignation. “You dog! Don’t you dare hit on me! You need to purge the pump, go in the bathroom and do it yourself! Honestly, Jaxon. What the hell?”
With a humph, she turned away from him, rolling to her side, her rump pressing against his thigh. If his restrained desire had been a sound, it would have been a thousand wings smashing against the rocks as the Maker’s angels plummeted from the sky.
He’d wanted his first mistress, Lace—had been made to go crazy from wanting her—but that couldn’t compare to how he felt in this moment, lying next to Abbey, feeling her ass pressed up against him, knowing that the only things separating him from heaven were two thin pieces of fabric, and one woman too stubborn for her own good.
Perhaps it was true that he’d gone too long without a woman. But if he had anything to say about it, he wouldn’t be going without her much longer.
Chapter Three
When Jaxon woke in the morning, his shaft hurt like it’d been bitten by frost. He looked around the room, but Abbey was nowhere in sight. His nostrils flared, taking in a faint and unfamiliar odor, something akin to burning flesh. Clothed only in his boxers, he sprang from the bed and ran down the hall, throwing open door after door. “Abbey!”