After Cayden finished his duties, he made his way to the queen’s private bath and filled the makeshift tub using a bucket. Once he removed his cloth, he inched himself into the water, but only half his body fit. His limbs hung out the sides of the tub, but bloody hell…the moment the water touched his skin he hissed out a breath.
He reached for a cake of soap and the sickly, sweet scent of Lilith’s perfume filled the air. The vampire slithered to the tub. “My queen.” He bowed his head and did his best to cover his nakedness. Too late.
“No need to avert your gaze. The marks on your back prove you’re either very brave or very foolish. I’m determined to find out which.” When he glanced up, her eyes widened with unmistakable lust. She took another step closer and her fangs jutted out from her lips. “I see the way you look at the slave girl, demon. Your allegiance should only be for me. I want you to prove your loyalty to the crown.”
There was no mistaking her meaning. For fuck's sake, how was he supposed to get out of this with his balls intact? He swallowed hard. The moment she loosened the tie at her neck, he stopped her by holding up his hand. “Please don’t.”
Shock lit her features. “You refuse me?” She might be his queen, but there were some things he refused to do, and this was one of them. Even if his heart didn’t belong to Abigail, her proposition repulsed him to the core. This was a calculated move to enforce her will over his, to shame and disgrace him. This wasn’t about desire—it was about control.
“As you wish. Just remember, there’s always a consequence to the choices we make, and I believe you just made yours, demon.” And then in a blur, she was gone.
That was no veiled threat. She’d make him pay, which left him with only once choice, to escape with Abagail tonight.
“Cayden? What’s going on?” Abigail whispered. “Your message said it was urgent.” They stood in a clearing of ancient stones and barren trees lit by a sliver of pale moonlight.
He reached for her shoulders and drew her close. “We have to leave immediately. The queen’s going to send her guards after me. Frankly, I’m surprised I’m not already dead and rotting in the ground for spurring her wrath.”
Abigail’s eyes filled with tears. “Don’t say such things. What happened?”
“I disobeyed an order. It’s a long story. Do you trust me?” Cayden caressed her cheek, gazing into the face of his beloved. He’d find a way for them to be together, forever.
“Of course I trust you…with all my heart. But I can’t leave, not without saying goodbye to my family.”
“No,” he said in a gruff voice. “It’s too dangerous.”
“They’re my people, Cayden. Besides, I know the path better than anyone, even in the dark. No one will see me.”
“I’m coming with you—”
She pressed a finger to his lips to silence him. “It’s safer if you stay here if the guards are after you. Wait for me. I promise I’ll be right back.” She kissed his lips and disappeared into the night.
Cayden ran his hand through his hair and paced, his heart pounding in his throat with every step. After several agonizing minutes, when a cold chill filled the air and left him sick with dread, he knew something was wrong. Abigail had been gone too long. He should’ve never let her go alone.
Taking off at a sprint, he ran in the direction of the village. A deafening cry pierced the air. Abigail? Once he reached the slave huts, he found a trail of blood in the sand. His chest twisted with gut-wrenching pain when he came upon Abigail’s mangled body lying in a ditch. Blood dripped from the bite marks in her neck. Blood everywhere…so much blood. No!
He scooped her up in his arms and tore a piece of her kilt, pressing it to the wound to try and stop the bleeding. He cradled her to his chest, whispering soothing words. “Don’t leave me…don’t…don’t.” A wild sorrow gripped him and made his chest ache and his throat burn.
Her eyes welled with tears. “Cayden,” she said through ragged breaths. “I’m…so sorry.” Blood seeped from her lips. “I-I didn’t keep my promise. Tried to... get away.” She reached up and pressed a bloodied finger to his lips. “You…must go on. We will find each other on another plane. I…will love you…forever.”
When he pressed his face to her chest, it became wet with tears. At first, he thought they were Abigail’s, but then he realized as his heart broke and shattered, they were his own. One way or another, he vowed revenge.
THE END
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Sneak Peek of Tides of Time
Magic and family drama sucked Cami in the same as riptides. Sometimes, she could spot them coming on the horizon. Other mornings, like today, they swept her away without warning. Such was life in a legacy witch lineage with all its rules and expectations.
She pushed through the staff door of the emergency animal hospital and blinked against the blinding Southern California sun after another all-night shift. She scanned her surroundings as she’d done everywhere for the last year, balancing her backpack on her hip so she could fumble through it. Had she forgotten her sunglasses? She jumped at the approaching squeal of tires, her scattered nerves fraying. Her older sister’s Mini Cooper skidded to a halt less than three feet away from where she stood.
She scrubbed her hand over her face. Why was Delia here? Shouldn’t she be at work? Her courthouse was an hour away in Los Angeles traffic. So why was she here shoving open the passenger door?
“What the heck, Deals?”
Delia met her gaze. “Mina’s missing.”
Just like that–riptide.
Cami jumped into the car and dumped her bag on the floorboard.
“More like she’s temporarily lost.” Swinging her sleek blonde ponytail over her shoulder, Delia slammed the car in reverse and shot out of the parking lot. “She slipped unsupervised.”
Cami sucked in a breath. Their youngest sister’s power was slipping through time. Mina’s body would move in the location as it was today, but her mind traveled to see a different time through another person in the same geographic space. Scenery changes after the psychic impression made for perilous slips. “Where? When?”
“She toured a historical mansion last night courtesy of a USC alum.” Delia spat the last words.
“Focus.” They didn’t have time for sibling or college rivalries. “Mina’s slip?”
“Right.” Delia shifted gears and raced down side streets toward the ocean. “She followed a woman named Sunny Sol out of the mansion. I ran a search on the name. It came back to an actress from the 1920s and ’30s. Mina trailed Sol along the bluffs down to the beach.”
“The bluffs?” Panic shot through Cami, and her own powers thrummed in response to the strong emotion. Mina had chased an actress from old Hollywood along steep cliffs? Mudslides and falling rocks could’ve easily changed the landscape over the decades. Mina wouldn’t have been able to distinguish the past surroundings from her present ones.
“Don’t get me started.” Delia switched lanes. She barely squeezed between a bus and a truck.
Cami grabbed the handle above her head. “We can’t find Mina if you get us killed with your crazy driving.” Her older half-sister might be the ultimate protector, but Delia drove as though her little race car had its own force field.
“Mina sent a 911 text fifteen minutes ago. Luckily, I was already in Santa Monica interviewing a witness for a trial next week.” Delia slid a look her way. “I knew your ringer would be off so I called her back.”
Cami spent every hour either at the animal hospital, cramming for board certification, in the ocean, or sleeping. She’d graduated with honors from the top veterinary medicine program in the country last year. Her psychic affinity for communicating with animals helped, but she still had to put in the work. Her vet
residency didn’t leave much free time. As a deputy district attorney, Delia understood long hours.
“I figured I could catch you before you left work.” Delia streaked through a yellow light. “Mina’s phone died before she told me where she was. She forgot to charge it.”
Typical. Mina could be flighty handling the basics of life.
Delia swung a hard left onto the downhill ramp for the Pacific Coast Highway, locally known as the PCH. “You’ll have to use your call to find her.”
No. Cami’s chest tightened. She didn’t tap into her elemental magic, and there was no way she could tell her sisters why. She—the quintessential “good girl” Donovan sister—had broken the first rule of magic. There’d be no coming back if others discovered why she’d really walked away from her element.
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t the only way without spending hours driving up and down the coast hoping to find her.” Delia’s stone-faced glare gave nothing away, but her voice had softened. “You and I don’t know spell craft. There’s only one person who could whip up a locator spell in an instant, and I didn’t think you’d want me to call her.”
“Ama.” Cami sighed. She couldn’t call Ama. Her mother, a powerful spellcaster, would ask too many questions if she discovered Mina had chased a historical psychic vision alone. Mina didn’t need a one-way ticket to magical mommy guilt trips. It was bad enough Delia knew. “We’re not telling Ama.”
She fingered the pendant at her neck, similar to the one all four sisters wore. Ama had spelled the charms to warn them of danger. Hopefully, Mina had hers on.
“She called from the shore. I could hear waves and seagulls.” Delia swerved into the turning lane and pulled into a beachfront parking lot. She stopped the car. “I know you and your element had some kind of a falling out a year ago.”
Each of the four sisters had a call to an element. Cami’s was water. She could manipulate it, communicate with it, cause damage with it.
It hadn’t been a simple breakup with her element. She had nearly killed a man with her connection to water. So much for harm none with magic. While she’d gone to the beach daily since then and surrounded herself with its comfort, she hadn’t let herself give in to her power. Not when she’d abused and then refused it.
But her sister needed her. She swallowed back the fear of what might come if she tapped into that big source again.
She unbuckled the seatbelt and tugged her stained scrubs off, stripping down to a threadbare graphic T-shirt and undies. She wadded the work clothes into her backpack, slid a pair of shorts on, and switched Crocs for flip flops.
Delia opened her door.
Cami stopped her. “Why don’t you keep your couture, ‘dry clean only’ self in the car?” She didn’t want anyone witnessing her return to her element, because what if it all went wrong?
Delia paused with her hand on the door. “Want some privacy?”
She bobbed her head, checked her necklace, and climbed out. The ocean breeze snagged her short curls. “Give me five minutes.”
“Hey, Cams?”
She ducked into the open car window.
“If you can’t do this, it’s okay.” Delia unlocked her phone screen. “I’ll keep trying in case Mina finds a way to charge her phone.”
Cami took a deep breath. “I’ve got it.” If only her voice hadn’t wavered.
Stepping onto the sand, she slipped off her shoes and strode toward the water’s edge. She wouldn’t risk this but for her sisters.
While she longed for her elemental magic to soothe and guide her, the very same source could rebuke her for misusing her power. She feared its condemnation. It’d be too much, but Mina needed her help. She leaned down, sweeping her fingers into foam on the wet sand.
Fighting doubt and worry, she reached for her magic and sent a tentative call to her element. The ocean responded in warm welcome without judgment, and she forced back the urge to tap fully into her power.
Oh, how she’d missed this.
She wanted to walk into the waves and savor each precious lap against her skin, to let the water bathe away the fear and darkness she’d carried. The need to link to that tidal power pulled her in, promising absolution she didn’t deserve. She had to focus on Mina before she lost herself to the water’s beckoning homecoming.
She pushed past the water’s thrum of longing and expectation until her power conjured images of Mina waiting at the water’s edge further north. Cami breathed a sigh of relief and gratitude along the connection.
“Thank you,” she whispered and said a reluctant goodbye. With a single glance over her shoulder, she hurried back to the car and jumped inside. “Found her. Head north.”
Delia tore out of the lot and zipped across three lanes of traffic. She smacked the steering wheel with her palms when they got stuck at another red light at the busiest intersection on the PCH in Pacific Palisades.
Gas stations, grocery stores, and a restaurant jammed together in the precious real estate across the street from the shore. Cami craned her neck to check the signs as they passed through the intersection and accelerated. Corraza’s Restaurant.
“If Mina has slipped, she’ll be starving.” Each sister’s magic had a price. Mina’s had always been hunger. “We can head back here if they’re open.”
“I’ll check once we find her.”
They passed beneath a pedestrian bridge next to a steep set of stairs cut into the bluff.
“Here,” Cami said. “She’s close by, near the water’s edge.”
Delia flipped a U-turn in the parking area of a large Spanish-style building with arched entrances and windows below a hexagon-shaped center. “Go. I’ll catch up with you.”
Cami jumped out of the car and sprinted for the water. Her power called to her, directing her. She hopped the concrete barrier and raced across the sand, searching for her sister. Perched on a rock jetty, Mina stared over the waves.
Cami called out, relieved when her sister turned with clear eyes, not the dazed obsidian dilation of magic.
Mina ran a shaky hand through her hair. “You came for me.”
“Always.” Cami stooped to pick up her sister’s hooded sweatshirt and sandals tossed nearby. She studied the strain in Mina’s eyes, the dark smudges beneath. “Were you out here all night trailing Sunny Sol?”
Mina took her hoodie and gave a weak smile. “Hazards of slipping. I should’ve known better than to be curious.”
“When I think of what could’ve happened to you.” Cami slid her eyes closed.
“I couldn’t resist, and then I got pulled in too deep.”
She knew all about the overload when magic overwhelmed logic.
Mina’s lips twisted. “Do you ever want to be normal? No elemental powers? No psychic ability?”
Cami wanted a lot of things: to stop looking over her shoulder; to have a good man adore her without going crazy stalker abusive on her; to have her hard work correct the bad choices she’d made so she wouldn’t doubt every new one; to not have to worry about their family’s magic.
She nudged Mina. “Come on. Let’s go save Delia from ruining whatever designer shoes she’s wearing. We spotted a place to eat a mile back. Maybe they’ve got pancakes.”
Minutes later, Cami half-dragged her younger sister through the glass doors into Corraza’s Restaurant to find a table while Delia parked the car. The swift change from bright sunlight to the darker interior had Cami blinking behind sunglasses she’d borrowed from Delia.
If only the dimmed lighting and dark glasses could excuse her gawking at the man behind the front podium. All muscles and tanned skin, he looked up from his notes, and his gaze locked on her face.
The exhaustion of back-to-back shifts must have caught up to her. Or the cost of her magic decided to crash into her as it did for Delia, who’d black out from using too much.
Cami bit back a groan. She’d drawn so hard on her psychic ability to connect with animals last night and then her elemental magic this morning, she
should’ve expected her powers would demand replenishment. Her magic craved fulfillment from a hot guy. This hot guy. She’d probably leaked the desire all over him. She swallowed, shoving down the need as best she could with the powers calling for collection of a debt owed.
With one hand bracing her sister, Cami tugged her sunglasses into her tangle of curls and blew out a breath. Feeding Mina was top priority. No more sexy daydreams about a handsome guy.
The fleeting second she’d given in to the fluttering in her belly had been the best part of her week. Time to return to the reality of her witchy family.
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She had a very good reason for breaking the first rule of magic ... and the second one ...
Cami Donovan has secrets. Big ones that no one can ever know.
All she can do now is try to forget the past and focus on the future. But as it turns out, her future—her family’s future—might not be shiny and bright unless she can help her sister resolve the cold case murder that’s been plaguing her psychic visions.
Falling for the sexy history expert who holds the keys to it all? That was never part of the plan.
The last thing on Sam Corraza’s mind is romance. Emotional entanglements bring nothing but pain. His past certainly taught him that. But when he’s presented with an old Hollywood mystery to solve, he can’t stay away—from the case, or the enchanting witch who brought it to him.
As they unravel the evidence—and their feelings for each other—it becomes clear that the past is coming back to haunt them in a big way.
Midnight Temptation Page 30