by L. E. Wilson
“Do it,” he told me in a husky voice.
Gods, I wanted to. Just a little taste…
“Go on, Kenya. It’s okay. Do it.”
With a helpless sound I couldn’t control, I stepped into him, his strong arms coming around me as he lowered his head to mine, his jaw rough against my cheek. My hands fisted in his coat and I did what I’d wanted to do for so long, flicking my tongue out quickly, tasting the salt of his tan skin before I ran it slowly along his pulse. It beat strong and steady, unlike my own, which was racing like I’d just outrun a pack of werewolves. Unable to resist, I scraped one fang over his skin, feeling his heartbeat with the sensitive tip but not breaking the skin.
Alex sucked in a breath and moaned as a shudder ran through his big body, and I felt an answering need low in my groin.
I’d never fed from a warlock before, and the thought frightened me. What would happen? Was the magic there in his blood? How would it affect me?
The thought sobered me instantly and I pulled away from the temptation of his throat before I did something I would regret. Witches were strictly forbidden to us. Well, at least they were before Killian mated with Lizzy. However, I had no idea what that meant for the rest of us; if it changed anything within our agreement with them or not. Without knowing for sure, I couldn’t take the chance. And besides, it wasn’t like I could feed from him and then wipe his memory like we did to the humans that came into the club. Witches weren’t so easily manipulated.
But before I could step completely out of his embrace, he caught me by the back of my neck and pulled my mouth to his.
His kiss was hard. Hungry. Like he wanted to devour me the only way he could. And he knew exactly how to do it, teasing my fangs with his tongue and nipping at my lips. My response was just as urgent, the lust for his blood swiftly changing to a starving hunger for his body. He tasted like whiskey and smelled like dark, honeyed wine, and I wanted him inside of me in every possible way.
Shoving his coat off his broad shoulders and down his arms, I let it fall to the floor and shoved him into the wall behind him. He grunted when he hit, and I was worried I’d been too rough in my haste to feel him closer to me. His hands and mouth never stopped though, yanking my shirt out from my pants and sliding beneath it, his palms warm and rough on the bare skin of my back.
Oh gods.
His mouth left mine and I cried out in protest, only to moan a second later when I felt him kissing the side of my neck, his mouth hot and wet against my skin. He continued down, sinking his teeth into the muscle between my neck and shoulder before soothing the bite with more kisses.
I gripped his shoulders, my legs like Jell-O and my head thrown back to allow him access, my fangs on full display. One of his hands slid down to my ass, lifting my hips into his until I felt his hard length pressing into me.
“Kenya…”
My name was little more than a ragged gasp. And then his lips were back on mine, one hand gripping my neck and the other my ass, his hips rolling against mine. I forgot to be careful with my fangs. I forgot everything but the things this man was making me feel.
I wanted more.
The world spun around me and I felt the wall against my back, Alex now pressing into me, pulling one of my legs up around his hip until I could feel his hardness between my thighs. His other hand was back under my blouse, burning my skin, squeezing my breast, then pinching the nipple through my bra.
And through all of that, he was kissing me like his life depended on it, and all I could do was hold on for dear life as he consumed me. He was all I could see. All I could hear. All I could feel. The rush of blood—both his and mine—filled my ears and his scent filled my nose. It was a disconcerting feeling for one who was used to being the predator, not the prey.
But it wasn’t just his physical form possessing me. His shields were down completely. I heard his desperate need and felt his power swirling around me, holding me to him tighter than his strong arms.
The scents, the sounds, the magic…it was too much. I pressed my hands against his hard chest. “Alex, stop,” I whispered against his mouth. “Stop.”
Immediately, he stilled, kissing my bruised lips softly a few times before pressing his forehead to mine. We stayed like that for quite a while, our heaving breaths mingling as our pulses slowed. “I’m sorry,” I began.
“No. No. Don’t apologize. You don’t have to apologize,” he insisted. His voice was rough. Raw. “I should be the one doing that. I got carried away.” He exhaled and removed his hand from beneath my shirt as I lowered my leg. Then he stepped back just enough to put some space between us.
I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself, the air cold and impersonal against my skin as we stared at one another. I already missed his heat, and my throat burned with thirst. But I couldn’t go there. We couldn’t go there. Desperate for one last memory, I reached out to him with my mind, but his shields were back in place. That loss of connection froze me out more than the physical space between us, and I mourned its loss even as I knew he was right to do it. “We can’t do this,” I reminded myself aloud. “It’s against the rules. You shouldn’t even be here.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
I met the challenge in his eyes and told him the truth. “No. But you have to. And we can’t tell anyone about what just happened.”
“What about Jamal?”
“What about him?”
“Won’t he smell me on you?”
Shit. He was right. “I have a change of clothes in the back. I’ll wash up and change.”
I saw the question in his eyes.
“Sometimes things get a little messy in the private room.”
Understanding dawned across his face, followed swiftly by the angry set of his jaw.
“Really?” I asked him when I noticed his expression. “You know what I am, Alex. What we do here. As a matter of fact, I believe it was your aunt who insisted we keep things contained within The Quarter and specifically this club. So, don’t look at me like that when I’m up front with you about why we need to keep a change of clothes here. No one dies. Everyone has a good time. Me and mine are fed. No harm done.”
“It’s not that,” he told me.
“Then what is it?”
But he just shook his head. However, he still stared at me, his fists clenched at his sides.
“What?” I insisted.
I didn’t think he was going to answer me at first, and I was about to walk away when he said, “I don’t like the idea of you being that…intimate with someone.”
Well, well, color me surprised. That’s not what I was expecting. “I have to feed, Alex.” I didn’t bother telling him that I only did so when the thirst was near unbearable. That I didn’t take advantage of what I was now.
He looked away, scrubbing his face with his hands. When he met my eyes again, his were still not happy, but they were resigned. “I know.”
There was more he wanted to say, I could tell by the look on his face, but he held himself back. Even his power was held tightly, wrapped around him like a second skin and no longer holding me in its grasp.
My anger melted away, replaced once again by the loneliness that had assaulted me since the first night he came to see me. And he hadn’t even left yet. I dropped my eyes, not wanting him to notice the longing I felt for him. Clearing my throat, I made to move past him, and after a brief pause, he stepped away and let me pass. I tried to remember everything from our earlier conversation before we’d gotten…sidetracked. “Is there anything else I need to know about the djinn?” I asked him as I got my coat and bag from behind the bar.
“No.”
Slinging the strap of my bag over my shoulder and folding my coat over my arms, I stared at him from a safer distance. “Is there anything else I need to know about you?”
He stayed where he was, but I felt his essence touch me, timidly at first, and then with slightly more force before it retracted again. “Only that you don’t need to be frig
htened of me, Kenya. I would never, ever, hurt you.”
Why did I have the feeling he was talking about more than the fact that he was part djinn?
He was waiting for a response, but I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just gave him a nod. “I need to go home and figure out how I’m going to let Killian know you told us tonight without actually telling him you were the one who told us.”
“Don’t you need to change your clothes first?”
Shit. “Yes. Thank you.” I laid my bag and my coat on top of the bar, then made my way back out to the floor, stopping near the door. “Um…”
Saving me from my awkwardness, he grabbed his coat from the floor, pausing when he reached me. “Lock the door behind me.”
I trembled when he brushed my cheek with the back of his knuckles, then gently pushed my glasses back into place.
“I’m leaving, but I won’t be gone. If you need me for anything, I’ll be here.” Ducking his head, he dropped a quick kiss on my lips and walked out the door.
Sorrow mixed with relief as I locked the door behind him. Knowing what he was, I doubted I would ever feel safe around him. Aroused? Hell, yes. But safe?
My instincts told me I was right to fear him.
And my instincts were never wrong.
Chapter 11
Alex
When I stepped outside, I saw Jamal leaning against a streetlight just down the block. He didn’t move. Didn’t wave. He just stared at me.
Pulling my coat up to protect the back of my neck from the chill, I turned my back to him and headed in the opposite direction. I didn’t rush, knowing he’d stay there to watch me go, and giving Kenya time to get changed. Plus, it would piss him off.
And that was just fun for me.
I licked my bottom lip. I could still taste Kenya on my mouth. Could still smell her on my clothes. Jamal was upwind from me, which was a stroke of luck on my part. Something told me he would’ve been on me by now if he’d caught the slightest whiff of what we’d been up to in there.
And thank the gods for the wonderful people of The Quarter who kept the party going until the wee hours of the morning. With all of the jazz and the chatter of tourists, I doubted even he could’ve heard us from that far away.
I kept everything all calm and cool until I finally turned a corner. It was only then that I allowed my frustration to show. Raking my fingers through my hair, I quickened my pace.
I wasn’t ready to leave her.
But I couldn’t have stayed, not when she was clearly so uncomfortable by me being there.
Fuck, maybe I shouldn’t have told her anything. At least not the part about me. But I couldn’t just let her run around New Orleans without knowing the danger she was in. And what if she found out some other way? Then I’d not only be part djinn, I’d have lived up to the reputation of one. I’d be a liar. Someone she couldn’t trust.
As I neared the end of The Quarter, the crowd—for what it was this time of year—began to thin out, awarding me a clear view of the High Priestess of my coven waiting for me across the street, just on the other side of the border drawn by our pact with the vampires. She looked like anyone’s elderly aunt in her puffed up coat and sturdy shoes. Her short, gray hair was still peppered with the original black, and her bright blue eyes were unclouded by age.
Walking up to her, I didn’t try to make excuses or explain my way out of anything. She knew exactly why I was wandering around The Quarter, and I wasn’t going to insult her intelligence or mine by pretending otherwise. Plus, she was my mother’s sister, and it would be disrespectful of my mother’s memory. “Hey,” I greeted her.
“Hey yourself,” she said.
She came to walk beside me, and we headed in the direction of the garden district. She didn’t say anything else for almost a block, and I imagined she was getting her thoughts together. I enjoyed the peace while it lasted. I loved my aunt, and I knew she loved me, but as the head witch of our coven, she sometimes enjoyed the rank of her position a little too much.
However, when she did finally start talking, it wasn’t at all what I’d expected.
“He’s here, isn’t he? The djinn.” She kept her voice down to barely above a whisper.
“Yes.”
She made an affirmative. “I thought I felt something.” She glanced over at me. “Has he approached you?”
“Yes.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “What did he tell you, Alex?”
“That he was my uncle. Well,” I amended. “My great-great uncle, I believe is what he said.”
She glanced over at me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Didn’t warn you. You and your sister. I should have, and that’s on me.”
“You’ve known all this time?” My voice was full of all of the disbelief and betrayal I was feeling.
“I did,” she told me. “And I should have told you,” she repeated.
“Why didn’t you?” I noticed we were heading to her house, not my apartment.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess because I was hoping he wouldn’t find us. Or that he wouldn’t care enough to.”
“So, it’s true?” I asked her after a pause. “He is my uncle?” Even though I felt the djinn was telling me the truth when he’d told me, I still wanted the confirmation of someone I trusted.
“It’s true,” she told me.
My next inhale was shaky. I’d been sitting on this info for a few days now, and I’d known there was something different about me and Alice, but somehow it hadn’t seemed real until just this very moment. I’d hoped there was some kind of reasonable explanation. “Well…fuck.”
“I really am sorry,” she told me. “For not telling you.”
I didn’t respond. Yeah, she should’ve fucking said something. She’d had plenty of chances, especially after our mother died. But I could understand why she didn’t.
“So, what did he say to you other than to tell you who he is?”
“He wants me and Alice to come north with him.”
It was a few seconds before she could ask, “And what are you both going to do?”
I frowned as I glanced over at her. “What do you mean? Am I going with him?”
She nodded.
I opened my mouth to ask her how she could even think that I would do such a thing, but then I snapped it shut again. I’d never really considered what it would mean for me to take him up on his offer because I couldn’t see past the fact that he’d tried to kill Kenya. I still didn’t see how I could ever willingly be anywhere near that guy. That he was family didn’t mean shit to me.
But I hadn’t thought about the fact that he was the only one who shared this power I had inside of me. That Alice had inside of her. Which meant he was the only one who could teach us how to control it. How to use it. How to live with it. “I don’t know,” I told her in all honesty. “I hadn’t thought about it until just now. I haven’t even told Alice yet.”
“Because you’re too worried about Kenya,” she stated.
“Yes,” I told her.
We walked in silence for another few minutes. Then she asked, “Do the vampires know you broke our pact by encroaching on their territory?”
I scoffed at her choice of words. “I wasn’t encroaching.”
“You were in The Quarter, which is the safe zone allotted to them in our pact. The Garden District is ours. Unless permission is granted by the other party, we are to stay within our own territories or the neutral zone in between. Did you have permission from the vampires? From Killian?”
“No,” I admitted. “I did not.”
“Then you were, indeed, encroaching.” Though she scolded me, her blue eyes were filled with concern. “And how is Kenya?”
Beautiful. Intelligent. Sexy. Innocent and sultry all at the same time. Scared to death of me. “She’s good.”
We reached her house and stopped at the foot of the driveway that ran alongside. “Would you like some tea?”
This was her way of saying the conversati
on wasn’t finished, so we might as well go in where it’s warm. I glanced up at the one-story house, small and compact, but with four white columns holding up the roof over the front porch. In the dark, with the gathering fog coming off the water and the low-hanging tree covering one corner of the front yard, it all looked a little old and creepy, even though it was a newer home. But I knew inside it would be light and bright. And if I refused, we would stand right out here on the sidewalk until she got what she wanted to know. “Sure. Thanks.”
She nodded, pleased I’d made the right choice and headed up the drive around the house to the back door. She opened it without a key and walked into her white kitchen, flicking on lights and calling to her cat, Ted Danson, that she was home.
Ted, a gray tabby with the same blue eyes as the actor he was named after, looked up from his place on the back of the couch, flicked his tail in greeting, and went back to watching whatever had caught his interest out the side window.
Judy filled the tea kettle and set it on the stove to heat. While she did that, I took off my coat, laid it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, and made myself at home.
When she turned around and saw me sitting there, she smiled. “It’s been a while since you’ve come over.”
She was right. It had been. “I’m sorry,” I told her earnestly. “I’ve been preoccupied.”
“Yes, let’s talk about that.” Getting two cups down from the cabinet, she readied the tea bags and set them on the counter until the water boiled. Then she joined me at the table.
“I’d like to know about my father,” I told her before she could start bombarding me with more questions.
“I never met him.”
I stilled. “Marcus told me he’s the descendent of the daughter of his brother. But I’d still like to know about him. Mom would never tell us anything.”