by Eden Butler
“Helping you.”
For a second I couldn’t read the expression on his face, the way he lifted his eyebrows, how his mouth tightened and the muscles around it thinned out his bottom lip. Then Bane licked his lips, looking down at my hands before he looped my pinky with his. “I want to help you, as much as I can. I want…” he dropped my pinky to thread our fingers together, “I want to see if this melding, if you and me, if there’s something there.”
“I’m sorry?” A small wrinkle worked between his eyebrows when I released his hand and took a step back. “That’s not going to happen.”
I’d seen Bane Iles angry. I’d seen him turned on, amused, utterly livid. I had never seen him completely stunned, incapable of forming words. He was just then, watching me, frown set, mouth tight. “Is it…are you laughing at me?” He tilted his head, his eyebrows set so stiff now wrinkles formed on his forehead. “You’re…you’re mocking me?”
“I would never,” I swore, lifting my chin.
“But…you don’t want…”
He couldn’t be serious, despite that expression, despite his shock, there was no way Bane could actually expect me to take him in. Not after those bells I heard. “I would never want another woman’s husband. No matter who he is.”
His mouth moved, opening, closing as though something unspeakable, shocking past from his mind but couldn’t quite make past his lips.
“Husband?” I nodded, stepping back when he moved forward. “Whose husband?”
“Um, Caridee’s?”
“Who told you I got married?”
He ignored the glare I gave him and the quick slap of my hand against his arm when he reached for me. “Was I not supposed to know?”
“Janiver Benoit, please shut it.”
“I will not, don’t you dare…” But he was already kissing me, taking, keeping my resisting fists from his shoulders as I swung at him until I was against the wall and Bane’s low whispered hex made my mouth stiff and motionless.
“Cut those eyes at me all you like, little witch. I don’t care.” He laughed when I glared at him, barely containing his amusement when a growl vibrated in my throat. “Hush now,” he said, moving my face up just inches from his mouth. “I am no one’s husband.” Another glare, this one I was certain full of doubt and Bane’s smile widened. “On my father’s grave, I’m not married.” He leaned close, moving his fingers over my face. “Trevor married Caridee. He’s the coven’s leader now.” When I only blinked at him, eyes round, looking amazed, I was sure, Bane released the hex from my mouth. “It’s your fault, you know? All of this.”
“Mine? Why me?”
Bane sighed, holding my face still. “Because you’re the only one I know that would point out how beautiful the sky is in the middle of a hurricane.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” I told him, moving my head away when he tried to kiss me.
But he would not be rebuffed, would not be delayed for very long, that much I could tell with how vigorously he held me, how those bright eyes moved over my face like he couldn’t get enough of the sight of me.
“My whole life, someone told me what was expected of me. I had to marry a Rivers. I had to lead the coven. I had to protect our folk from the curious mortals and the shit they do to the world. All those expectations, Jani and I thought you were the only one who didn’t level any at me. But then…” I couldn’t look at him, not even when he stood in front of me, challenging me with one of those stares, calling me a coward without uttering a word. Then, my gaze went up and I met his, chin a little higher. “But then,” he continued, “then you took away the only moment of my life where I didn’t have expectations, where all I had to do was touch and taste and take. What that did to me, gods above. Your mouth was pure freedom. Your touch set my skin on fire. All that hope and heat right between my fingers and then you ripped it away.”
“Bane, I’m sorry. I thought…” I looked down, still ashamed, before I exhaled. “I thought it was what you’d want.”
“Why in the name of all the gods would I want to forget something that made me feel so alive?”
He held me so tight, not letting me budge even the smallest degree. “And it still matters? After all this time?”
“It matters always, Jani. I don’t want expectations.”
“But your family…”
“Will have to learn what disappointment is. I don’t want a life with old wizards and witches comparing how many of their dead relatives were burned alive in Salem. I don’t want some life that doesn’t allow me to scream every once in a while.”
He was higher coven. He had money and power and strength I never would. We’d never fit into each other’s worlds. “You deserve a good mate. Someone…”
“I don’t want a good mate. I just want you.”
If I lived a thousand years, I’d never feel again what those four words meant to me. It was the first time I felt completely claimed. The first time I knew someone could want me, could say they did and truly mean it. We struggle and fight. We try to grab what small pieces of happiness we manage to glimpse in this life and sometimes, if we’re very, very lucky, some of those pieces land. Sometimes, they stick to us, become part of us.
Bane smiled at me, and I loved that expression, loved more the strong glint of the ley lines I sensed under his touch, the red energy that flirted against my skin.
“When you saw the memory, that day in the town square, Bane, I saw the look on your face. I…I never want to put that look on your face again.”
“You can’t make that promise, Jani. None of us can.” He moved the hair from my forehead, watching as the small strands fell into place as though he didn’t want to miss a detail about me, and right then I knew without any doubts that I loved Bane Iles. “I can’t promise that I won’t put the same look on your face one day.”
“So why would we bother if there’s a chance we’ll hurt each other?” Something shifted in Bane’s expression then, something real, something that had me forgetting what I’d asked. I only knew that I wanted to keep that smile on his face, that I’d kiss him again and again to make sure it never left his mouth.
“Because, little witch, out of everyone in the world that will hurt me, you’re the only one worth the pain.”
And with my smile came his kiss, that slow, long movement that I’d come to love, the one I’d missed and craved and needed for ten long years. And as Bane kissed me, as he took me to the floor, devoured me completely right among my tarps and paint cans and dried out brushes, I knew he was worth whatever the future might bring.
Acknowledgements
Everything I know about magic (and fantasy fiction), I learned from Neil Gaiman, JK Rowling and Bryan Camp. Only one of those folks is a good friend. He’s also one of my biggest cheerleaders and though I doubt he’ll ever read Crimson Cove, I hope he knows how much his talent and his encouragement of mine has meant to be over the past decade. Thank you, friend.
As always, I could not publish a single word without Sharon Browning and Karen Chapman’s impeccable editing and copy editing skills. Thank you so much for always telling me the truth and for holding my hand when I think I could not possibly finish another book. I love you both.
Thank you to Lila Felix and Chelle Bliss who are always there to listen to my wild ideas and make my plots make sense. To my work buddies, Marie, Sherry, Barbra B., Sarah and Kalpana, and my “Sweet” Team and betas: Naarah Scheffler, Lorain Domich, Melanie Brunsch, Michelle Horstman-Thompson, Allyson Lavigne Wilson, Emily Lamphear, Betsy Gehring, Heather Weston-Confer, Judy Lovely, Trish Finley Leger, Debi Barnes, Morgan Reeves, Zeia Jameson, Allison Coburn, Mae Wood, Lori Westhaver, Chanpreet Singh, Kayla Jagneaux, Carla Castro, Erika McLeod, Yaara Orha, Risie Preston-Llaneta, Leighanne Henegar Sisk, Megan Jane Farley, Jennifer L. Anderson, Jazmine Ayala, Heather McCorkle, Tina Jaworski, Joanna Holland, Laura Agra and Sammy Llewellyn, thank you all for your immense support and encouragement.
Thanks so much to the
Relentless Reviewers and the Vixen Writers Group for all your pre-publishing support and word of mouth pimping. I am immensely grateful to each of you! Thank you, as always to my bints, especially Judy, Aymes, Allison and Lisa for always reading and cheering me on and to my beautiful nieces Joy, Jenn, Kayla and Juli for your constant love and support.
Thank you to each of my readers who are on this journey with me. Thank you for your opinions and advice, for coming out to see us at signings and supporting every event we are involved in. Thank you also to the writing community and the wonderful friends I’ve made within it including Penelope Douglas, JD Hollyfield, Ing Cruz and CC Wood. You all mean the world to me.
Finally, thank you so much to my girls, Trin, Faith and Grace and to my Himself, Chris, for always believing in me and for helping me live such a blessed and beautiful life. None of it would matter at all if it weren’t for you.
About the Author
Eden Butler is an editor and writer of Romance, SciFi and Fantasy novels and the nine-time great-granddaughter of an honest-to-God English pirate. This could explain her affinity for rule breaking and rum.
Crimson Cove is her tenth novel.
When she’s not writing or wondering about her possibly Jack Sparrowesque ancestor, Eden writes, reads and spends too much time watching rugby, “Doctor Who” and New Orleans Saints football.
Currently, she is imprisoned under teenage rule alongside her husband in Southeastern Louisiana.
Please send help.
Twitter - twitter.com/EdenButler_ / Facebook - www.facebook.com/eden.butler.10
Subscribe to Eden’s newsletter http://eepurl.com/VXQXD for giveaways, sneak peeks and various goodies that might just give you a chuckle.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Crimson Cove Playlist
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Acknowledgements
About the Author