“Hello, Angela,” came Damon Wilcox’s voice from off to my left. I turned my head and saw him standing in front of a group of his clan members. They all wore dark robes, some with the hood pulled up, concealing their faces. There seemed to be at least twenty of them in the room, but it was so dark I couldn’t tell for sure.
And then I recalled Adam’s limp body falling to the rug in my room, remembered how only a few seconds earlier he had been kissing me, and now he was dead. Well, it felt like seconds earlier. I had no idea how much time had passed, how long I had floated in the dark until I awoke in this room.
Tears came to my eyes, but I blinked them away. I would not cry in front of Damon Wilcox. I would not.
“Fuck you,” I said succinctly.
He just laughed and shook his head. “Soon, I promise.”
His words sent another wave of ice through me. Of course I knew exactly why he’d stolen me away from my home, but that didn’t make his words any easier to hear. “You’re crazy,” I told him. “You think my clan isn’t going to come after me?”
“They can try, I suppose, but what good will it do? By then the deed will be done.” He looked past me to one of his clan members, a woman who had pale streaks of gray in her long black hair. I couldn’t tell for sure in the semi-darkness of the room, but something about her features looked vaguely Native American. “Is it time?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied. Her voice was soft and low. “The solstice is upon us. Now is the time for the binding.”
He turned back to me and then approached until he stood next to the table where I lay. Although I knew it would do no good, I gritted my teeth and strained against the invisible force that held me in place. I’d never heard of a spell like this, especially one that could subdue the magic of a prima, but then, I’d never studied dark magic. It wasn’t the McAllister way. History told too many grim stories of those who’d studied the left-hand path, seeking only knowledge, but who then had been seduced by it.
In the gloom I could see Damon Wilcox’s grin flash as he stared down at me. “I’ve been waiting for this a long time.”
Then he bent down to me, and I braced myself. Of course I knew how a kiss between a prima and a consort was supposed to feel, but I had no idea what this would feel like, this forced contact between the dark power of a primus and his victim.
His lips touched mine. I had thought they would be cold, since he seemed to bring the cold with him wherever he went. Maybe he drew his power from it, from the ice and the snow and the long, dark winter nights. But he was warm enough, surprisingly.
I’d been expecting a shock, a chill…something. Not this, only the press of mouth against mouth and nothing else, just the way I’d felt it so many times before with all of my failed candidates.
The black eyes flashed, and then narrowed. He lifted his mouth from mine and stared at me for a long moment, then bent again and pressed his lips to me again, this time forcing my mouth open with his tongue. I shuddered, although he tasted faintly of mint and nothing else. It was just the violation, the feel of this man I had come to despise forcing himself on me in such an intimate way. Nothing compared to what he had planned, I knew, but still….
He pressed his hands against the edge of the table and thrust himself upward, then whirled on the woman who had spoken a few moments earlier. “It’s not working!” he snarled. “You said on the night of the solstice she would be mine!”
Face calm, she stared up at him, meeting his angry gaze as if it were nothing. With a shrug she replied, “I said the signs told me that she would be the consort of a Wilcox. They did not tell me which Wilcox. You just assumed it would be you.”
“Fuck!” Damon Wilcox ran an angry hand through his hair, and glared into the watching crowd. “Connor, come here.”
The watching clan members shifted, and a tall man moved forward, but slowly, as if he was reluctant to do as Damon had asked. Unlike the others, he wasn’t wearing the dark robes, but what looked like jeans and a sweater.
Even in the dim lighting it seemed as if there was something familiar about him, although I couldn’t quite figure it out. Probably my eyes playing tricks on me. After all, how could there be anything familiar about any of the Wilcoxes? I’d never seen any of them before, except that one time in Phoenix when Damon tried to grab me at the Nordstrom Rack.
But then the strange man bent over me, and I stared up into his eyes.
Green eyes. Cloudy jade, just as I’d dreamed a hundred times.
I sucked in a breath, and then looked beyond those eyes to the face of the man who gazed down at me, and that was familiar as well.