Offering it, she said, “Take this. Get off the street for a night.”
He saw the money and a delighted smile curved his mouth. He then turned those rheumy blue eyes to her, and his smile withered and died.
“No,” he muttered, shaking his head as he staggered to his feet.
“What?” Kellyn watched, astonished, as he hurriedly pushed his sign into the mess inside the cart.
Someone bumped into her in their hurry to cross the street. She hardly noticed.
“No, no, won’t see,” he whined in a singsong voice, shaking his head until his long gray hair floated like snakes in water about his head.
“What are you talking about? I’m offering you help,” she said, in case he’d missed the whole point of this exercise.
He actually flinched, hunching his shoulders until he looked like an elderly turtle. “Won’t see the dark inside her,” he sang to himself. “Won’t see it, not there.”
What the hell?
Kellyn glanced around, to see if anyone was listening to the old man, but naturally, no one was. What was it he saw when he looked at her? From somewhere deep inside her mind, a voice cried out, demanding to be heard, but Kellyn shut it down. Just as she dismissed this one old man.
She crumpled the hundred-dollar bill in her fist and squeezed. Someone else crashed into her and this time Kellyn whipped her head around, prepared to fight.
“Jeez, sorry, lady,” the kid in baggy jeans and a faded T-shirt said. “Power down, huh?”
Power down? Not likely. Her power was rising, filling her, nearly choking her with the urge to burst free and obliterate her surroundings. Even Kellyn was shaken and nearly breathless from the eagerness writhing inside her.
The kid stared at her until his skin paled and his eyes were wide and horrified. Kellyn saw his fear and drank it in as ambrosia. This was what she thrived on. Fear. Horror. The old man was no more than a blip. Everyone else looked at her and saw only what she wanted them to see. She smiled, and the teenager grabbed up his skateboard and darted into the crowd, dissolving into anonymity.
Kellyn stared after him, fighting for control, holding on to the reins of the power within her even as her skin tingled.
A whimper caught her attention and she swung back around to see the old man shuffling away from her as fast as he could. The broken wheel on his cart sounded out a quick whappeta-whappeta as he went, his shoulders hunched as if expecting a blow, and still he threw a look at her over his shoulder.
“Won’t see,” he chimed again, “pretty lady with the dark inside. Won’t see it. Not there, not there at all.”
People stepped away from him as if he were somehow contagious. The crowd pushed into the street as the light changed, and Kellyn was still standing, rooted to the spot, watching that crazy old man run from her.
It was as if he’d somehow sensed what was crouched inside her. Was he so much more attuned than the rest of these ignorant humans?
Interesting. She watched him go and thought about following. Killing him. Watching the light drain from his already ruined eyes. But what would be the point? Even if he tried to tell someone what he’d glimpsed of her true nature, who would believe him? Hell, who would listen to him? She’d bring more attention to him with his death than he would ever draw alive.
“No,” she whispered. “Leave him to his misery.”
Shaking her head, she dismissed the old goat and walked down the street, feeling a hot breeze ruffle her spiky hair. She had things to do and no time to waste on unimportant details.
Pausing at a newsstand, she let her gaze scan the headlines quickly.
ESCAPED WITCH! DOZENS DIE IN BOTCHED MAGIC PLOT. WITCH ON THE
LOOSE.
She smiled to herself.
“More than one,” she murmured.
Chapter 25
Torin heard the shower running and tried to pull his mind away from the image of a naked Shea standing beneath the hot, steaming water, soap bubbles clinging to her skin…
“You said you called Odell,” Rune prompted, shattering Torin’s thoughts. “Did he know of this Kellyn?”
“He did,” Torin said, stalking to the front window and staring out into the night. The mountain was quiet, the sky black with stardust spread across its width like pinpricks of light through a sheet of velvet. The wind rattled the window glass and whispered across the top of the chimney.
Satisfied that they were still alone in the dark, he focused again on his friend. Before calling Rune to check in, Torin had placed a call to Odell, an Eternal based near his witch in London.
Odell was still watching, waiting for his witch to enter the Awakening. Meanwhile, he was spending most of his time breaking witches out of internment camps in the English countryside. He was running his own private underground railroad, spiriting witches and hunted humans to safety.
“Odell says Kellyn’s Eternal is Egan.”
“Egan.” Rune muttered something unintelligible and then admitted,“I haven’t seen him in a couple of hundred years. After his witch’s last incarnation, he disappeared.”
“It’s not good to be too alone,” Torin muttered, though he could appreciate why Egan had felt compelled to find solitude. Watching your witch live and die again and again took a toll on even the most stalwart Eternal. Unless, of course, like Odell, you found something else to keep you occupied.
But even if he were thousands of miles from Kellyn, Egan should have felt her Awakening. Maybe this Kellyn had been lying, he thought. But why? What would she gain?
And if she was an Awakened witch, why hadn’t Egan been called to her?
“Alone is what we do best,” Rune reminded him.
“That was true for too long. But not anymore,” Torin said. “Find Egan.”
“A little busy here. Getting these women to Sanctuary, remember?”
“Right. Yes.” Torin turned to look toward the bathroom when he heard the shower turn to the massage head, water pounding in regular rhythm. He muffled a groan at the image that filled his mind. Shea, thighs spread beneath those pulsing jets of water, trembling, gasping, helpless to stop her own pleasure from crashing over her.
His body hardened like rock. His breath caught in his chest and the flames that made up his soul threatened to engulf him, burn him to ash.
“We could get Cort to look for him,” Rune was saying. “They were friends back in the day.”
Torin forced his mind to the task at hand. “Yes. Good. Call him, then.” A moment passed. “Where are you and the women?”
Rune laughed shortly. “Vegas, of all places.”
Torin bit back an oath. “Are you insane? With all those people-”
“What better way to get lost than in a crowd?” Rune interrupted. “We’re halfway to Sanctuary. I’ll have them there by tomorrow. But I spent most of my reserve energies flashing them all here. Didn’t want to risk getting in a car down in the L.A. area. Too many people looking for us to be safe on a damn freeway.”
Torin remembered the sound of a gunshot and Shea’s body crumpling at his feet.
“Good point.” Since he knew Rune couldn’t have transported more than one of the females at a time, he realized that the Eternal had made dozens of trips. Ferrying first one, then the next of the women and their belongings along a long, dangerous trek. “Can you get a car easily enough?”
With word of the prison break hitting every news channel and paper, they both knew the authorities would be watching everyone more closely.
“I keep a car here in a garage. It’s safe enough. I’ll have the females to Sanctuary by tomorrow night.”
“You got rid of the tracker on Terri?”
“Yeah,” Rune said. “Trust me when I say she didn’t like it much. That woman’s got a hard right jab. But it’s out and we should be clear. Meanwhile, I’ll call Cort. Get him moving on the Egan situation.”
“Good.” Torin listened as the shower massage changed gears, the pulses coming faster. He took a breath and let it out
slowly. “I’ll stay in touch. Don’t know where we’ll be by tomorrow.”
“As long as you get the job done. The clock’s ticking, Torin, and we can’t lose.”
That statement didn’t deserve an answer, so Torin didn’t give him one. He flipped the phone closed and tossed it onto a nearby table.
Then he turned and headed to the bathroom as if he were being pulled by an invisible cord.
The shower was incredible. A walk-in, with no door or curtain separating it from the room, it was constructed of sandy-colored tiles that were smooth as glass on the walls and the wide, built in bench, yet felt rough beneath her feet. Four faucets jutted from the walls at different angles and the air was filled with steam.
Shea stood under the pulsing streams of hot water, turning her back to the jets, letting the rhythmic blasts of heat pound against her shoulders, her neck. She’d been running for years. From the feds. From herself. Her destiny.
Now, there was no more running. There was only this moment and the next and the next. She wasn’t alone anymore, either. There was Torin. And though a part of her still held back from him, unwilling to trust, to share completely… another part of her welcomed him.
And that side of Shea wanted him desperately.
She burned for him. Her body turned to liquid heat with just the thought of him. Knowing he was in the next room made her yearn to call out to him, to draw him to her. Yet she resisted. Once she’d opened that door, there would be no going back. Ever. She would be fundamentally changed and that scared her. She felt the power inside her, bubbling, churning, frantic to be free.
But what happened when it was released?
Would she become what she’d seen in her vision? Would she once again be the woman who could call on the dark and damn everything and everyone else around her?
The door opened and her head snapped up. Her gaze met Torin’s as he stepped into the bathroom. His long, dark hair was swept back from his face and his pale gray eyes swirled with banked emotions. His jaw was tight as he approached her.
Naked, Shea stood tall and straight, facing him. She trembled as his gaze moved over her in a quick, thorough sweep.
“I’ve waited for this,” he said. “For you.”
“I know.”
“No more waiting.”
“I know,” she repeated and lifted her arms in welcome.
Chapter 26
In a flash of magic, his clothes were gone and she looked her fill of his tall, muscular body. His erection was thick and hard and everything in her wept to feel that strength inside her. She needed him to fill her as she needed her next breath.
He was on her in an instant.
Body to body, flesh to flesh. She inhaled sharply at the slide of his wet skin against hers. His hands moved over her, exploring, delving, finding every curve, every crevice. As if it was essential to him that he touch all of her.
And she wanted that. Everywhere his hands went, flames followed. The magic fire that lived inside him pulsed out and into her, filling her with a swamping heat that sent her blood boiling and her mind dissolving.
He kissed her, his mouth forcing hers open, his tongue sliding inside, tangling with hers until breathing became an issue. Then that moment passed and Shea didn’t care if she never drew another full breath. As long as he kept touching her.
He reached down and lifted one of her legs, hooking it across his hip. She swayed into him. Her body was taut with expectation, with need. She held her breath and waited, knowing that his first intimate touch would send her over the edge. His hand cupped her core, his fingers dipped into her heat and stroked her body.
“Torin!” She rocked unsteadily on one foot, locking her other leg around him to keep her balance in a world gone suddenly crazed.
“Come for me now,” he murmured, while he stroked, caressed, teased. His fingers dove higher inside her, demanding she give him just what he needed. “Come for me now, Shea. And again and again.”
Her entire body was one raw nerve. She moaned his name, heard the desperation in her tone, but she didn’t care. She trembled from head to foot. And through it all, the hot water continued to pulse, slapping at his back, pounding against hers. Steam filled her lungs and he filled everything else.
His thumb caressed the sensitive spot at the apex of her thighs until she splintered, shuddering in his arms, riding the cresting wave of a sensation like she’d never known before. Her body pulsed in time with the water jets and Torin held her steadily, safely as she went limp in his grasp.
When she could hear again, he set her on her feet and held on to her waist, his big hands nearly encircling her completely. She looked up at him through dazzled eyes and knew that when he was inside her, his body locked with hers, the orgasm would be even more earthshaking than the one she’d just experienced. She didn’t know if she’d survive.
“And now the mating begins.”
Shea laughed a little and rested her forehead against his chest. “You mean that wasn’t the beginning?”
“No,” he said softly, running his hands up and down her spine, cupping her behind, squeezing. “That was merely to ease your first need. The rest is so much more.”
Her heartbeat was crashing in her chest and she quieted to listen to his, to see if their hearts were beating in tandem. But she heard. .. nothing.
Startled, she lifted her head to stare into his beautiful gray eyes. “You don’t have-”
“A heartbeat? No.”
“What? How?”
He turned her in his arms until she was pressed against him, her back to his front. She felt the thick length of him and she wiggled her hips to feel more even as she listened to what he was saying.
“I am an Eternal. Immortal. But I am not human.”
That should stagger her, Shea thought, yet at the moment it didn’t matter. All that mattered were his arms around her, his hands at her breasts, his fingers at her hard, sensitive nipples.
“Fire is my element. Eternals were created by the sun god, Belen. He tore the fire from the sun and molded it into our souls. Brought us to life from the eternal flames. It is what makes me,” he was saying, dipping his head to lick at the side of her neck.
She shivered.
“The sun god? You’re saying actual gods exist?”
“Belen is not the God, but he is one of many in the pantheon.”
Her whole body trembled as he blew gently on her damp skin.
“Through the mating, you will become immortal and I will receive a heartbeat. We will be one, Shea.” His fingers tugged and tweaked at her nipples until she felt the drawing sensation in the pit of her stomach. “As we were meant from the beginning. Two halves. One whole.”
“I’ll be immortal?” Her voice was breathless and who could blame her for it? The things he was telling her-and doing to her-were incredible. She widened her stance, allowing his thickness to slide between her legs, rubbing against already sensitized flesh until she had to fight to remain on her feet.
He chuckled, a soft, dark sound that was nearly lost in the rush of the water surrounding them. “Eventually. Immortality isn’t a gift-it is something to be earned.”
“As you’ll earn a heartbeat.”
“Yes.”
“Then why haven’t we done this before?”
He reached down, grabbed her thighs and lifted her off her feet as easily as if she weighed nothing at all.
“Torin!” She snaked her arms backward, linking them around his neck to hold on even as her back arched.
“You resisted,” he told her, turning her so that the closest water jet was aimed directly at her. “You didn’t want the mating, only the sex.”
“Sex is pretty good,” she admitted and steeled herself for what was to come. She knew what he was going to do and wanted it as much as he did.
“The mating is better,” he whispered and held her so that the water pumped and pounded directly on her exposed center.
Shea shrieked as the first of the jets hit he
r clitoris. An incredible, overpowering sensation roared through her like a runaway train. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. She was held in place by his strong arms so that she couldn’t even twist in his grasp. She was helpless to do anything but leave herself open to the pulsing, pounding, hot water jets. It took only seconds to have her body exploding once again, hips rocking helplessly as she rode one wave after another of a pleasure so deep, so shattering, she thought she just might not make it through.
And when, finally, he released her, allowed her body to slide away from the incessant pulses of water, she knew her legs were too weak to hold her.
He set her down onto the bench seat and through the steamy air she struggled for breath. Then she looked into his eyes and whispered, “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”
A slow smile curved his mouth and something inside Shea shifted, becoming more than a deep-seated yearning, more personal. More intimate than sex or desire.
Memories stirred at the back of her brain and though she knew she had to remember all she could, at the moment she didn’t want the distraction. Right now, all she wanted was him. Her gaze briefly dropped to his erection and before she could think twice about it, she reached out and wrapped her fingers around him.
He hissed in a breath, pushed himself into her hand, and Shea felt a surge of power that had nothing to do with magic course through her.
“Tell me about the mating,” she whispered.
He took her hand from him and threaded his fingers through hers. Voice tight, eyes churning with shadows and light, he said, “The mating connects us. Our souls. Our hearts. Our bodies. We become stronger together than we are apart. We unite to do what must be done. Every time we come together, the bonds between us will strengthen. At the end of thirty days-should we complete our task-the mating will be complete.”
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