Sebastian sat on a bed surrounded by vibrant blue-colored walls that were decorated with wildlife art. Steven was in the corner sitting in a sleek modern chair watching television. He looked like he’d been there for a while. The recovery rooms looked nothing like what I’d seen in hospitals.
Sebastian’s alluring amber eyes shone with the same strength and assurance as they always had, his satin mocha skin as vibrant as before. He was shirtless, and there wasn’t any evidence that silver-infused bullets had punctured through the muscle that covered his body. He was our Alpha, and he seemed as good as new. But I kept studying Ethan as he looked at Sebastian.
“How do you feel?” Ethan asked.
He shrugged and stood: he didn’t move the same. The lithe predacious movement had been lost to something more lumbering and purposeful. “I may need a couple of days, but I understand,” he said.
What exactly does he understand? Dammit, they’re talking about this challenge foolishness again. “No,” I said.
“Sky,” Ethan said through gritted teeth.
He could grit them until they were ground to nubs, I didn’t care. They weren’t going to do this. I wouldn’t let it happen. “No.”
They had both dismissed me. I was white noise to them—they had been reduced to predators assessing the weakness of the other. Examining whether or not one was more capable than the other to lead. And every second, every moment of it made me despise the pack and them for being nothing more than primal beasts.
I waited for them to speak, and in the silence I heard my heart beating and violence that had become a significant part of my life echoing in my ears, overtaking my thoughts, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I started to leave. I didn’t need to be there while they decided which one of them was going to die. I’d reached the door when Ethan said, “I feel very comfortable with you as my Alpha.”
It wasn’t until I exhaled that I realized I’d been holding my breath. A weight that I didn’t know was even there seemed to be lifted. Winter nearly knocked me over when she entered the room. She stood several feet away from Sebastian, her eyes wide, arms fixed at her side as though she didn’t know what to do with them. What took her so long to get here? I suspected she was afraid of what she might see. Like me she couldn’t bear to see him as a fragment of his former self, bloodied and wounded as he was the other day.
His lips kinked up into a smirk. “Hi.”
She swallowed but didn’t say anything for a long time. Instead she just looked at him, her eyes glistening under the harsh lights, and she made several efforts to speak but was unable to find the words. Sebastian approached her, a relaxed reassuring smile brightening his features. He touched her shoulders, and she let a light sob escape. “I’d like to be alone,” he said as he looked over the room. Winter started to back away. “No, you stay.”
As the door closed behind us I got a glimpse of him drawing Winter to him.
Two days later, and the incident with Anderson wasn’t any less vivid in my thoughts. The feelings overtook me, the intoxicating feeling of power and the immense control I had over magic that for weeks Josh and I couldn’t manage to control. It wasn’t that I had more control than I had before; it was the diablerie. I didn’t care that it was dark and wrong. In fact, I welcomed it as a way to wreak more havoc.
Josh was less focused on me than he was on Ethan, who was sitting next to me, perusing the book in front of him. Josh watched him with a suspicious glint, his gaze narrowing on his brother. Ethan pushed the book away and crossed his arms over his chest. “I think getting rid of Ethos is what we need to focus on rather than getting rid of Maya. She was fine until a couple of months ago. It’s likely his resurfacing has awakened something in her. Get rid of him and things may go back to the way they were.”
“And if it doesn’t?” I asked.
“Then we worry about it then. Ethos is the immediate threat, and Claudia hasn’t been able to meet with Samuel. For all we know Ethos has all three books.”
Josh listened but his attention wavered between me and Ethan, jumping back and forth between us.
“Find out how we can draw Ethos out of hiding,” Ethan commanded, coming to his feet and leaving. Unless he could put the books in a chokehold he wasn’t really interested in them. I was surprised he lasted the two hours he had.
The empty space where Ethan had stood still commanded a great deal of Josh’s attention, and when he looked in my direction, he forced a smile.
“Come with me.” He scooped up the Aufero and grabbed me by the wrist. I hated being near it, and I damn sure wasn’t interested in anything Josh was considering. I followed him downstairs to what had become our “practice room.” Set up like the sparring room, the walls were padded as we had crashed into them one too many times causing damage. The open space allowed us freedom to practice without the threat of injury.
I took up a place in the middle of the room, still considering how the Aufero responded to Josh as opposed to how it did to his brother. It protected itself from Ethan, as though it sensed danger.
Josh’s light assuring smile always made me feel emboldened, as though magic was simple. Just an extension of my natural movements to be directed and controlled with the same ease I did my arms. And as usual, I held his gaze as the knife slid across the palm of his hands and we connected as the spell that would bind us fell from his lips. Surrounded by the coarse, draconian magic of the Aufero, his was a welcome feeling. Despite being darker than it was when I first met him, there was still something soothing about it. There was still a hint of “old Josh” in the magic. Perhaps he was suppressing it because he knew I needed to feel his familiar magic. It felt cleansing as it spiraled through me, the gentle but powerful breeze that rekindling my love for magic. It wasn’t ominous, deadly, and harsh. Josh moved closer and I was enveloped by the comfort of the first magic I had ever experienced. “Now use it,” he said.
A protective field billowed around us, its diaphanous covering shimmering a light lilac. The air inside wasn’t toxic, we could breathe. Taking my free hand, I placed in on his chest. Nothing. I smiled. Slowly I dropped the field. With a whirl of my fingers a towel danced across the room. Josh’s keys performed a clunky bounce as I sent them across the room. I had relaxed into the magic.
Josh took several steps from me. His keys soared toward me, and with a twist of my hands they went in a different direction. Flicks of my finger nudged him back. I pushed a little harder, too hard. He slammed back into the padded wall, his head bouncing a little against it. “It’s still a head, padding or not, it doesn’t like to be slammed against things,” he teased. I released him from the wall. The stress and worry over the past two days seemed nonexistent.
“Make a field,” he instructed. This was how we assessed how weak the magic that I borrowed from him was getting. I barely created a shimmer. I needed more. Before he connected again he brought the Aufero close, and I sucked in a ragged breath. I closed my eyes, feeling his familiar and comforting touch as his fingers interlinked with mine, hands pressed palm to palm.
“Again,” he told me. The tranquil soothing covering of his magic washed over me. Snaking around my body, I pulled from the magic in Aufero, it crept alongside Josh’s magic mirroring its movements making every effort to overshadow it. Josh’s fingers gripped tighter around mine; as the space became stifled he gasped.
Making more choking noises, he managed to speak. “Skylar, you need to change it.”
Yeah, better said than done. Concentrating, I could feel the beads of perspiration forming along my brow. Josh’s breath beat lightly against my lips, and I felt my control of his magic waver. He was no longer assisting me. Dark magic crept along the side of his magic, wrapping around it. I forced it to mirror Josh’s magic, entwining with it so that they were indistinguishable from each other. The air cleared, and the smell of fresh linen, jasmine, earthy spice, and a hint of the metallic odor of blood inundated the shell that formed around us.
Josh released my hand but
stayed close enough that his lips brushed mine as he spoke. “See, I knew you could do it,”
Well, at least one of us thinks I could. There was a happy dance promised to celebrate this moment but I was too tired to give the much-needed enthusiasm it called for. I didn’t tell him that there was a part of me that liked the magic a little too much, a part that thirsted for the darker side, but the feelings didn’t matter—they were just that. I controlled the end results, and that’s all that mattered. At the moment, next to Josh, with dark necro-magic interlaced with natural magic, I had learned to control it without giving into the lust I had just two days ago. My eyes had been closed the whole time and when I opened them, the first thing I saw was Ethan leaning against the wall.
The pretty colors of the protective field exploded into the air, fragments of it drifting for just a moment.
“I got this Ethan, you can go,” Josh said as his focus remained on me. I started to step back, but he placed his hand around my waist. “No,” he whispered. “We need to finish.”
“It’s okay with me if he stays.”
“He’s a distraction.”
“For who, you or Sky?” Ethan’s hard voice asked from his position from across the room.
Josh wasn’t looking at me anymore but was focused on the wall behind me, his face drawn into a tight glower. “Both,” he finally said.
Ethan hesitated, looking at the Aufero, whose previous smoky orange coloring was a little lighter and more translucent.
In silence Ethan went upstairs.
Five long grueling hours later, I lay on the ground next to Josh, my hair damp with sweat, my head pounding, and my mind fatigued from controlling all the thoughts that invaded it, even the one that briefly considered how wonderful it would be to have access to his magic at all times. So I laid next to Josh, so close our arms were touching, holding back the confession that for a few seconds, I had considered taking his magic. Nothing like telling the person that helped you, “Hey for a brief moment, I thought about stealing your magic. My bad.”
When he sat up, I did, too. I was ready to go home, eat, shower and—
“How long have you been screwing Ethan?”
Yeah and that. I planned on doing that—a lot—when I got home.
I blinked several times. Not because it was on my list of things I planned on doing when I got home, but because it surprised me again that they didn’t just talk to each other. Life would be so much easier if they did.
The deep, inquiring cerulean eyes waited for an answer. An answer that seemed to be stuck in the pit of my chest. Why did admitting it feel like a betrayal? If admitting it to someone was so hard, should I really be doing it?
“I don’t want to talk about my personal life, Josh—it’s weird.”
“So, recently,” he said, coming to his feet. He was halfway up the stairs when he turned to me. “Whatever happens between you two, don’t let things change between us, okay?”
I nodded, reading the meaning between his veiled words. Ethan’s reputation was something I was aware of. I like to think I was going into whatever existed between us with my eyes wide open. But it didn’t mean I couldn’t be knocked on my butt, even if I prepared for the worst. I would just see it coming, be a little more expecting when it did, but still totally unable to deal with it.
From behind, I watched as Josh passed his brother. Their eyes fixed on each other in the way they often did, when words were never exchanged but I was sure some form of communication took place. They both denied they could communicate other than verbally with each other, but I was still finding that hard to believe. One look between them seemed to have more information than most people could express in a minutes-long exchange.
CHAPTER 9
The decorative pillow was pinned against the wall, a small vase moved slowly around me, and I held the protective field around me and Ethan while he pressed against my jaw, then his tongue licked at the pulse of my neck. “Will you stop?” I snapped.
After we left the retreat, we ate and I showered but not until after I convinced Ethan bathing wasn’t a group project and we didn’t get around to having sex. Josh was in my head and I just couldn’t do it.
The feeling of having total control of dark magic was exhilarating, and subduing the taste for power and violence that had overtaken me so often in the past few days left me feeling weak. I didn’t like that. I still wanted Maya out of me, because she had shown who she was, and being in a protective state, trying to make sure I could control her and keep her from taking over wasn’t how I wanted to live.
He kissed me, and his fingers slipped under my shirt, rolling languidly over my skin. A light touch that made my skin tingle even moments after fingers left the spot. “You have to be able to perform with distractions,” he teased.
“If this is the distraction they employ, then I’m pretty sure things are just going to get weird fast,” I said, keeping the objects levitating around me.
He touched my hand. “Drop it.” Ethan stepped back, the field separating as he slid out from it. My eyes narrowed with curiosity. Okay, that’s different.
He simply returned a crooked grin, standing outside the field watching. Slowly the field slipped away, the objects around me eased to the ground, and the Aufero pulsed at its same rhythmic beat.
Closing the distance between us Ethan said, “Very good,”
“Very good? Did you see that? I just made magic my bitch.”
“That you did,” he said in a low rumble, the warmth of his words breezing against my lips before his pressed against mine.
He drew me closer to him, pulling me into the kiss, and for a few minutes I forgot about Josh’s words; but it didn’t take long for them to reassert themselves.
I pulled back, taking several steps away, and when there was adequate distance between us, I asked, “What is going on between us?”
The deep gunmetal eyes held mine with lascivious intent and the little lilt of his smile seem to mock me. “It was just a kiss, Sky.”
Nothing was “just” with Ethan. Displays of affection were a salacious prelude to more. A simple hand hold led to me pressed against the wall, with us clawing at each other’s clothes like we were in heat. I’d seen the carnal side of him that enjoyed violence, but I now experienced that side of him that approached sex in the same manner. Unfettered, primal lust coursed through him. His sexuality was raw and carnal, and being with him was absolutely sinful. Each time we were together it was as beseeching and overwhelming as our first kiss. His sensuality was every part of my body, a masculinity that inundated my senses. He had quickly become a craving, an addiction, a necessity. This is bad.... So bad!
“No, it’s not just a kiss. What happens next?” I looked away from the miscreant smile.
“Whatever you want to happen.”
There was a long silence and I waited for the words to come. For me to spout out that I wanted things to go back to the way they were. But I couldn’t even let that lie pass. The words just didn’t come out, and any that came to my mind weren’t what I wanted to say.
“What happens when you get tired of me?” I asked.
There weren’t any truer words. He was the king of one-night stands and fleeting relationships and the only lengthy one he’d ever had was so dysfunctional people had bets on who would kill who first.
He smiled. “What happens when I get tired of you? How about when you get tired of me?
I didn’t answer his question because I wasn’t the one with the questionable past. “Don’t play games with me. Answer the question.”
“It’s not very hard. We move on” was the simple response he gave me.
I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Why did I make this more than what it was—sex. Pleasure. Fun.
When he stepped closer, I kept moving back, trying to keep the distance between us, but quickly ran out of space, my back pressed firmly against the wall. Tracing his fingers down my arm, he waited until I lifted my eyes to meet his. “Where is thi
s coming from?”
I shrugged, but it wasn’t enough of an answer. “I just don’t want to be a throwaway.” I wish I was cooler than this. “Someone you quickly lose interest in.”
His voice like velvet spoke into my cheek, warm kisses melted against my skin. “How could I lose interest in you?”
It was a line that I willingly accepted. And I let myself fall into returning his kiss.
I was wide awake lying next to Ethan; my overactive mind had decided that sleep wasn’t necessary and pondered over everything. Maya, Moura, dark magic, Logan’s information about the Faeries, and even Ethan. Logan’s avid curiosity with Ethan hadn’t diminished despite us removing the elven magic. And Ethan’s effortless movement from the protective field weighed on me.
“What is it Sky?” Ethan said in the pillow before rolling over to look at me, watching me through slits in his eyes.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Seventy-seven heartrate and your respiration is twelve, you want to try again?”
“No, I just want to know why you are such a freak.”
He chuckled and sat up. “What’s wrong?”
“Why did Logan react to you the way he did?”
He shrugged. “Who knows why Logan does any of the things he does. I’m not going to waste time trying to figure it out.” But the nagging feeling persisted. Something was off. Ethan never just skated around an issue, he performed a full-on dance ensemble around it.
“You just walk out of the protective field as though it wasn’t there,” I offered, my curiosity at full bloom.
“Sky, you were using magic all day, it was a weak field. Anyone could have broken it. but it will get better with practice.”
It took a while for me to take me eyes off him, waiting for something to falter to confirm my suspicions. The more I found out about Ethan, the more there seemed to be to discover. His mother was a witch, and he possessed magic that he rarely used but I believed was stronger that he let on. “Okay.” My suspicion permeated the words.
Lunar Marked (Sky Brooks Series Book 4) Page 19