In the Company of Witches(14)

He nodded to his plate. “Your chef fixes a very good breakfast. My compliments. Even better than McDonald’s.”

She imagined cramming the blueberries down his throat until he choked. It helped her rein in her temper, channel it into a polite smile. “Monday mornings are the only time we do this, so you’ll need to fend for yourself for the very brief time you remain.”

“Good to know.”

Laying her fingers along the top edge of the newsprint, she impeded his article with her long nails, waited until his dark gaze flicked back up to her face. “Just because we had a good fuck doesn’t mean I don’t despise you and what you stand for,” she said quietly. She kept the frosty curve on her lips. “I’ve had plenty of mind-blowing sex with despicable men. It’s often the only talent they have going for them.”

He set aside the paper, folding it. Even though the movement was unhurried, she tensed, sensing something dangerous in the precision with which he did it. “I am not trying to antagonize you, Raina. You can hate the truth because it came out of my mouth, but you don’t seem the type to let your emotions overtake your judgment. Since that seems to be the exceptional case here, it suggests I unsettle you more than most of those despicable men.”

He leaned forward then, catching a lock of her hair in his fingers. It was a quick move, though done smoothly. The only way to dislodge his grip would be to jerk away, a volatile reaction that would be noticed. But as he wrapped the strand around his hand, drawing her closer to him, she tightened her muscles, resisting him.

“Come here.” Though a murmur, it was an undeniable order, a reminder of the mastery he’d exerted over her the night before, and all the complex emotions he’d untangled with it.

As he said, she didn’t let her emotions rule her. She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. But she knew he’d take her hair out by the root. She wasn’t dealing with a male who obeyed civilized laws. The words he spoke when his lips were near her temple proved it.

“I have no particular claim on you, Raina. But I have one particular rule. However long I decide to be here, you won’t be mentioning other men you’ve had. If you do, I will be required to drive every one of them out of your head.”

She bit down on a gasp. With the shift of his wide shoulders, he was blocking the view of the end of the table. He’d slid his hand beneath her gown, finding her sex with unerring accuracy. The tissues had been so well used in the late hours she was still slippery, even after a morning cleaning. Or perhaps being around him kept her in a state of such readiness. Two of his fingers slid into her, his thumb massaging her clit with slow, expert precision. Her body tightened, spiraled up like a balloon cut loose on a storm front. She dug her nails into the chair arms, squelching the sexual energy that wanted to waft off her like an exotic perfume.

“I will play your game to a point, Raina.” His eyes held hers. “But in the end, I set the rules. The more you spit fire at me, the more you’ll find how cruel I can be. And I know you crave that roughness.” He withdrew his fingers then, brought them to his mouth to taste. “Even better than the crepes,” he said in a husky tone.

With that, he returned to his paper and another piece of bacon on his plate. She picked up a croissant, pulled it apart, ate a couple bites as she eyed him. He appeared to be back in his own world again. She threw another blueberry at him.

He caught this one as well, but this time she saw his eyes warm with fire and something that resembled amusement. He rolled it back to her with the casual push of a finger, then returned to an analysis of the town’s fiscal budget and the question of whether taxes would be raised.

He was the oddest combination of things. Brutally honest in his analysis of Isaac but emotionally detached. Whereas his attitude toward her was fully engaged, not in the least detached. The former gave her hope that if she proved him wrong, he would accept a different theory and back off Isaac. The other kept things in her stomach swirling, and her stomach didn’t swirl.

He’d put his foot back up on the edge of her chair, under the fall of her robe. Now his toes found their way to her bare buttock, then farther beneath. His words had made her traitorous body even wetter, and he discovered those secretions now. As she bit her lip in reaction to his firm prodding, those intriguing eyes flickered. “Send them away,” he said.

When he’d tethered her to that banister, if he’d taken her while she was bound and helpless, it would have cracked something open in her, good and bad. Yet he’d pulled back, recognized her anxiety, the dangerous edge of emotions playing inside of her. By taking her to the bed instead, it put her a step closer to wanting today what she’d been afraid to want last night. She knew he knew it.

With no encouragement at all, he’d spread her on this table and feast on her. She wanted him to do it, badly enough it scared her. So instead, she gave him a practiced smile, one that could make every cock within a hundred-foot radius harden, even while she promised nothing.

“This is their one meal together. I’ll do no such thing. Have you met the rest of my staff?”

After a long, heart-pounding moment, that intent look eased, telling her he’d let her off the hook. For now. “No, they filled their plates and slunk to the opposite end of the table. Which seemed an optimal situation.”

“You can hardly blame them, knowing what you are. Most of them came to me half-starved victims, and they’ve seen others run down by your kind.”

“Stories I’ve heard a thousand times,” he said dismissively. “But Marisa likes to watch late-night reruns of Desperate Housewives. Li sings AC/DC songs in the shower, and Ana hordes food in her mattress. Saltines, which I thought was an odd choice, because she likes sugar and you have graham crackers in your pantry. But she knows Saul enjoys those with peanut butter. I think they’re coping.”

Raina felt that coldness return, a fist in her lower abdomen. “Are you mocking me?”

“No.” Now there was an edge to his voice, a hint of impatience. “I’m telling you that you don’t need to beat a dead horse. Life isn’t supposed to be fair, Raina. This is a testing ground, and the choices we make determine whether we have a weak character or a strong one. Your demons have made good choices, and you’ve helped strengthen them. It’s admirable what you’ve accomplished with them. But all that’s obvious.”

He set the paper aside once more, crossed his ankle on his knee and hooked a shoulder around the back of the chair, another lazy lord of the manor pose, all the more damnably appealing because of its unconscious authority. When was the last time he’d felt out of place, uncomfortable, embarrassed…nervous?

“What’s not so obvious, and therefore intriguing, is you. You’re not one of them, because you’re a half-breed and a witch. But even if that wasn’t the case, a protector is never fully part of the group. It’s the price you pay for the responsibility. It’s also why you’re sitting with me. In the end, you have a greater connection to who and what I am than you do to them. Which is also why you’re fencing words with me, rather than spitting in my face and trying to kick me out.”

She counted to ten. To twenty. Then leveled her most contemptuous gaze on him and raised her voice. “Everyone? I want to make a formal introduction. This is Mikhael Roman. He’ll be staying with us, very briefly.”





6



HIS GAZE NARROWED, BUT SHE KEPT HER FOCUS ON HER attentive staff. “I expect you to treat him with courtesy. Our schedule will be the same as always. Isaac will also be with us, though for a less defined amount of time. Trouble is following him. We’re going to try to help him with that. The protections on this place have been reinforced by Mikhael’s presence here, but if you notice anything unusual, even if it’s minor, please bring it to our attention, whichever one of us you can reach the fastest. Understood?” She glanced at Li, waiting until her senior staff member gave her a subtle nod, telling her he’d make sure of it.

Isaac had tensed, as if expecting castigating looks for bringing trouble to their midst. Instead Isabella slid closer to him and Luke put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, caressing his nape. “We all brought trouble with us when we came,” Marisa said, her brown eyes crinkling with humor. “Though none of us brought a Dark Guardian, so you get top bragging rights for that one.”

She darted a look at Raina, then an even quicker one at Mikhael, to make sure she hadn’t caused offense; then she beamed at the incubus. Isaac blinked, unsmiling. He appeared baffled by his surroundings, overwhelmed. For an incubus who’d never learned to trust, being in a place where trust might be possible was more frightening than being chased through the swamp by a Dark Guardian.

It squeezed her heart, but she put the emotions in check. Isaac was a far cry from the others at this table. Though they’d come from bad circumstances, almost as dire as Isaac’s, they had something missing from Isaac’s experience. At some key point in their lives, before they came to her, they’d been exposed to hope, a glimpse of how life could be better. Even more important, something in their makeup had allowed them to believe in that vision. Isaac had never had that, or he’d let the opportunity pass him by due to chronic skepticism or some vital weakness in his character. It made her even more determined that Mikhael’s prediction for him wouldn’t come to pass. If she couldn’t save one like him, what hope was there in the world?