Returned

by Samantha Stone

  It was before they said they loved each other, before she thought he was dead and gone…before she knew what, exactly, he was. What he was capable of.

  Even with all those heart-ripping facts looming over them, there was but one real change for Leila: now, she was scared. Back then she hadn’t considered him leaving her, ever. She’d seen his devotion to her just as she’d seen that in Raphael for Mary. Alex wasn’t going anywhere.

  Wrong.

  Since coming back into her life, he hadn’t left her side, protecting and supporting her exactly as he would have BAFD—Before Alex Fake Died. Could he desert her again, taking another, larger piece of her heart with him this time?

  There was no way to tell, so she didn’t try.

  Rather than dwell on what she couldn’t change, she finished her dinner with an apple and the rest of her almost gallon-sized water bottle. Alex polished off his fourth beef and cheese sandwich, and she wondered if he could read her well enough to see where her thoughts had gone. She tried to push back the sadness that welled from the notion of his leaving, but it came anyway.

  So she did the one thing she could think of to lift her spirits. Using a running start, she attached herself to his back once he brought the used plates to his sink. She snaked her arms around his neck and lifted her legs up to his hips exactly as she’d done hundreds of times in contemporary pieces. He hissed in a breath and the dishes fell from his hands with a deafening clatter. Hoisting her legs in his hands, Alex bore her weight and turned around to face her, keeping her high enough for them to be eye-to-eye.

  She tightened her grip the moment he kissed her, wrapping her entire body around him as best she could.

  “Leila.” He murmured her name over and over again into her neck and hair, pulled pins until the mass fell around them, tangling in his fingers. The reverence with which he spoke blossomed hope in her heart, making her both dizzy and elated all at once.

  His mouth was hot, burning her as his tongue swept against hers, exploring, pressing almost too hard to be comfortable. There was nothing soft or gentle about him. One hand snaked up to press down hard against her sternum, pushing her back even as his mouth pulled her back in. There was no music, but it was a dance all the same, giving and taking, balancing each other with perfect stability.

  It wasn’t clear how she got from his black-tiled kitchen to the couch in his living room. Maybe the leather beneath them protested or Beau barked; she didn’t know or care. All she knew was she straddled him, pulling his shirt over his head so she could feel his burning skin against her palms. Why were they wearing clothes anyway? She needed contact.

  “God, you’re gorgeous,” she moaned, trailing a hand over the muscles of his arms to his defined pecks and abs. Bronzed, tawny skin marred with little pink scars stretched taut, a few shades darker than his curly hair. He was a work of art, with his electric blue eyes boring into hers, so different from the rest of his coloring.

  Her leotard made a ripping sound before it fell in two pieces around her, exposing her skin to the air. That very air swept against her breasts like a caress, causing the tips to harden, instantly drawing Alex’s seeking hands. Correction: hand.

  Because he was touching her elsewhere, cupping her center and pressing against her tights, using the heel of his hand to create a delicious friction she’d never felt before. She rocked back and forth, habitually on count.

  Most dancers didn’t wear anything underneath their tights, and Leila was no exception. Alex held her at the apex of her thighs, running a finger over spandex cradling her with hunger filling his eyes.

  Before she could so much as gasp, his fingers slid under the two waistbands until they were flush against her sensitive skin. Leila released an involuntary yelp at the pressure and cringed, afraid her voice had hurt him.

  Alex shook his head, his grin lazy, and leaned in to kiss her softly, the strokes of his tongue as slow as those of his fingers. She writhed in his hand, unwilling to leave the heat of his mouth, until he speared her with one finger. It was a gentle but firm movement that brought a slight bit of pain that was washed away by a rush of pleasure.

  Patiently, murmuring quiet affections into her ear, Alex continued his ministrations until Leila threw her head back and shouted, feeling herself shatter from the inside out. No wonder the French called it a small death.

  She also heard the tinkling sound of glass shattering.

  Pulling herself from the moment of bliss, she took Alex’s head in her hands and pushed it back so she could inspect his eyes, nose, and the veins of his forehead.

  “I’m not hurt.” He pressed another kiss to her lips and frowned at his hand. There was a small amount of blood from the now-broken barrier to her entrance. She’d expected as much after late-night girl talks with her roommates, but it was apparent he hadn’t.

  “I’m so sorry I caused you pain,” Alex whispered brokenly. She could see him retreating within himself. His gaze lowered to the floor rather than span over her almost-naked body, and the way he leaned forward had nothing to do with any intentions for continued pleasure.

  “That felt amazing.” The words were nothing compared to the way she felt, tingles of nerves still reverberating down her legs and up her arms thanks to Alex’s skilled hands. She made him meet her gaze. This time she kissed him until he relaxed, opening his mouth and releasing a small groan.

  Better.

  “You just gave me something no one ever has,” she said against his mouth. “You made me feel…” Leila trailed off, unable to put it into words. Loved? Cared for? Happy? Those things were accurate, but there was something else. Something more. The truth came to her, hitting her hard enough to take her breath away. He makes me feel like I’m not alone.

  Feeling particularly vulnerable, she regrouped. “There was pain for a moment, but you did a wonderful job of making my body forget about it.”

  The gleam came back into his eyes, and he kissed her in earnest. “Thank God.” His voice broke on the words, and he finally let her see the torment inside him. “I couldn’t bear to do anything else, ever, that brings you harm.”

  “You haven’t,” she told him in a tart tone. She let her hands stray to his most private place, but he stopped her. His growl sounded like an animal in pain. Beau glanced up at the sound, his ears moving to stand vertically.

  “You need rest.” His voice was a rumble from his chest, moving between gritted teeth. His arms tightened around her, and he placed a row of kisses between her collarbone and ear, leading right back to her mouth.

  “If I let you go there tonight, there will be no resting for either of us.”

  Leila warmed despite the goose bumps moving over her. She wanted to make him feel what he’d brought to her, but he was right; tomorrow would be a long day. With Mindy out of commission today, chances were the fittings would happen at the crack of dawn before last-minute rehearsals.

  “Soon,” she whispered against his ear. Despite his moving her hand away, she could feel him rising, aching for her as she did him.

  Alex actually groaned and stood, pulling her up with him. “I wasn’t kidding when I said you’d kill me,” he grumbled.

  She laughed, stepped out of her tights and flounced to his shower, her smile growing as he called “Saucy,” after her in a teasing voice.

  Even when she lay in bed some time later, cradled tightly against his chest, she didn’t think of the dangers lying in wait for them. The warlocks, the senator—they all paled in comparison to the overwhelming love Alex unleashed inside of her.

  No matter what the future brought them, she did love him, so much it roared inside her, tearing down all the dangers and doubts in its path. For Leila, nothing kept her from falling into a restful sleep.

  Not even the notion that, tomorrow, someone else’s fury, its strength rival to her own, might be unleashed upon her.

  Chapter 17

  THE next morning, Alex wondered how Leila ever woke up on time. For anyt
hing. During her fall semester she’d attended more than one class that met at eight in the morning—they’d meet for breakfast after, going to that vegan bakery on Oak Street or the Camellia Grill—but the question was, how?

  Her silent yet blinding alarm went off this morning earlier than it had in the previous days. It was six. It was almost summertime, and the sun had risen wearily and dimly, as if it, too, wasn’t ready for the day to begin.

  After contemplating using her passcode to Shut. Off. The. Damn. Alarm, he glimpsed the text messages from Derik and realized he had no choice. He had to wake her up, meaning he’d be forced to uncurl his legs from hers and take her head off of his chest. To disentangle them would be to lose a physical piece of himself.

  Only to gain it back tonight. That thought cheering him more than he was willing to admit to himself, he called Beau and let the beast do the honors. The dog—if he wasn’t part horse, or something else—needed no further convincing. Tongue lolling to the side, he bounded up on the bed, first to greet Alex and then to nudge Leila with his nose. When she didn’t immediately pet him like Alex had, Beau snorted in her ear and licked her face eagerly, pressing his nose against her face and neck until she rolled over, threw her hand over her face, and, upon understanding who was nuzzling her, laughed and threw her arms around the enormous creature.

  Never had Alex been more jealous of an animal. But she made up for it a moment later by pulling him into their group hug, pressing him flush against Beau’s now-struggling face as she rained kisses upon him. And they were a hell of a lot better than Beau’s.

  With one last lingering kiss and a pat to Beau’s head, she practically flew to the bathroom with a grace Alex wasn’t altogether sure was human. But then, banshees weren’t the winged sect of the Fey. Were they?

  He thought on that in the kitchen, using his earth abilities to bring in a few fruits for Leila, which he stored in an oversized azure bowl. At Beau’s pointed grunt, he fed the dog and then turned on the coffeepot. Sometime between the moment the warm drink began to drip and Leila resurfaced from the bathroom, he remembered his dream from last night.

  Not a dream, a nightmare.

  Even when Alex had been a witch and not of the warlock category, he hadn’t had the power of visions. It was rare enough to begin with, born into the lines of High Witches, something his family decidedly had no part of. They were middle-of-the-road types, never in the running for higher positions but more than able to cast a good spell.

  It meant that, while they didn’t have the ability for clearly defined visions bearing definite possibilities of the future, they could find meanings in dreams. Some human psychologists believed dreams were the meaningless result of the mind decompressing, finally going into sleep mode after a day’s worth of tireless work. In Alex’s opinion, those scientists were right.

  Witches and warlocks were similar to humans in way of dreaming except for one thing: they had magic within them. That magic didn’t need to sleep. So something happened in the parts of the night where the darkness was at its deepest, something even immortal scientists didn’t yet understand—that magic found the most likely path for the future, and communicated as much as it feasibly could.

  Last night, Alex’s magic, the stuff he was born with, not the acquired bits he kept in books, had sent him one single image over and over again.

  Humans, some in tears, some whose faces were blank with shock. Many were covered in blood, either theirs or from someone around them. On the stage, Leila kneeled with her fists at her sides, her head hanging down with blood dying her hair dark.

  She wasn’t dead in the image, but there was a high chance she wouldn’t survive the massive hole in her chest, stark against the pale pink material her leotard was made of.

  Alex staggered and Beau leapt to his side, the dog’s weight actually helping until he got it together enough to carry himself. The picture in his mind became more and more vivid, one or more of the humans in the foreground blinking, and he knew what he had to do.

  The attack was on his turf, in a place he’d been hundreds of times before, and planned to be thousands of times to come: the concert hall at Full Moon Brewery, where the night’s dress rehearsal for the ballet would be.

  He managed to make a call before Leila strode into the kitchen, her packed dance bag thrown over her shoulder and a smile on her face. It was only a possibility, not the definite future. As it stood at the moment the image entered his dreams, it was the most likely outcome.

  That would change. Oh how that will change.

  It was rare that Alex went out for any one person’s blood. He liked to think he was fairly even tempered, despite using tantrums-in-waiting like Cael and Raphael for his comparison. But tonight, he was itching for blood to run—and it wouldn’t belong to a human, and it sure as hell wouldn’t come from his Leila.

  He’d known she was his far before he began the path to physically taking her. Not doing so last night had been a level of torture that would’ve delighted much of his float. Then, she’d made him so hard he almost couldn’t think for his drive to push himself inside her and move until they both collapsed in ecstasy.

  A bare thread of sanity was what kept him from having her there in his living room. And eventually, they would complete the act on that couch.

  But it wouldn’t be her first time with a man, and it wouldn’t be immediately before her first dress rehearsal as a professional ballerina. After seeing the hours she and her classmates had put into perfecting their dances to impress scouts, tearing themselves apart with anxiety and the physical demands of the art, he’d never do that to her. She had something he wished he’d found long ago, maybe even before he’d become immortal: a passion.

  “It’s going to be so hard to rehearse in the brewery without having a beer.” Leila walked across the kitchen, stopped next to him and bumped him with her hip. Loose sweatpants covered her tights, and a large cotton Full Moon shirt she’d taken from his closet hung on her.

  She looked utterly beautiful.

  “I’ll drink an extra one and think of you,” he offered.

  In answer, Leila threw a peach at him. He was so distracted by the cream-colored curve of her neck as she rifled through the bowl of fruit that he didn’t catch the fuzz-covered sphere until it had already hit his chest with a dull thunk. She stuffed two bananas, an apple and an orange into her bag but kept a cluster of white grapes in her hand while she headed for the door.

  Beau accompanied them to Full Moon. Alex wanted anyone or anything that was protective of Leila to be there, lying in wait. That, and the brewery had a lax policy on dogs. As werewolves, they could hardly ban other canines, could they? He wasn’t sure how Derik or the other dancers would feel about a large mutt roaming around while they rehearsed, but it didn’t matter. Leila’s life, however, did, and he would take any edge he could find.

  They reached the brewery minutes before seven, Leila having eaten all the grapes, a pastry and drank coffee that Alex picked up on the way. With the gruesome image haunting him, his appetite wasn’t what it usually was. Still, he gave in when she noticed he wasn’t eating. His breakfast biscuit tasted like sand in his mouth, but it had erased the concern dawning across her features.

  Worrying her now might make the dreaded outcome that much more likely. He’d seen it too many times to count when a part of a vision was revealed to whomever it affected. They somehow always ran head first into the exact ending they wanted to avoid so desperately. This was exactly why full visions, like the one Briony had had about the warlocks—learned in a less-than-comfortable conversation he didn’t wish to relive—were much more helpful. They gave details needed for preventative measures that his meager image lacked.

  Even so, when Sebastian had answered his phone, Briony agreed to come to the brewery to help him sort this evening out. Everyone else in the pack would be there, and a number of other allies and weres sent by the Elders.

  Lost in his thoughts, Leila’s mouth la
nding on his jolted him into the present like a spark of electricity.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

  Mindy approached from down the hall, the real designer this time with a measuring tape draped around her shoulders and a velvet pincushion clutched in her hand.

  Alex couldn’t lie to her. “It will be dealt with. Focus on the ballet—this is your day. The pack will handle the rest.”

  Her mouth set and her arms crossed over her chest defensively. “I’m perfectly capable of—”

  “You are, and no one denies it. But this isn’t the time or place for you to prove that, not with your company depending on you. We would do the same thing for Sebastian before the launch of a new brew, or for Mary before an art gallery opening.”

  That calmed her. “I trust you,” she murmured quietly, so Mindy wouldn’t hear. And before he knew it, she was swept away in a flurry of excited whispers and gestures, the designer obviously excited to be outfitting Leila for the upcoming performances.

  Beau whined at her departure, sending Alex a sorrowful glance, but seemed to know he wasn’t welcome where she was going.

  Minutes later, music sang through the brewery, accompanied by the tapping of dancing feet and the occasional yell from Derik. Alex made his way to Sebastian’s office, not expecting the brewery’s owner to be there just yet. Sebastian was, with the promised reinforcements crowding the small space so that someone glancing through the large bay window that overlooked the brewhouse would only see a line of creatures speaking with one another.

  With a loud sniff, Beau trotted off, uninterested in the goings-on inside the office. Alex let him go, silently willing the animal to eat the trachea of any man who entered the brewery with ill will toward Leila, Mary, or anyone else gathered in the room a few feet away from him.