Bittersweet Magic (15 page)

First, though, she somehow had to persuade these people that she wasn’t a threat, that they could let her go. How likely was she to succeed at that?

She looked up to find both of them watching her. “I don’t suppose you have something to drink around here?” She frowned. “Do you lot even drink?”

“Us lot?” Piers asked, amusement clear in his tone.

“You know, blood-sucking monsters. Or do you just drink blood?”

“We drink.”

“That’s a relief. Well, get me a drink, and I’ll tell you everything I can.”

“We could just make you.”

“What? You’d torture a nun?” He just stared at her, and she shrugged. “Yeah, you could, but it’s been done before, and I’m stubborn, and it would be long and drawn out and messy.” She tried her sweetest smile, the one that showed her dimples. “Wouldn’t a little drink be easier?”

His gaze narrowed on her lips, then he shrugged and turned to Jonas. “Go get something, would you? Any preferences?” he asked Roz.

She realized this would leave her alone with Piers but hopefully not long enough to lose her precarious hold on her control and physically attack him. And she needed a drink. “Scotch, if you have it.”

“I’m sure I can find some somewhere. Be good while I’m gone.” Jonas hesitated at the door. “Don’t worry, I’ll knock.”

She cast him a filthy look. “Hah-hah.”

For some strange, inexplicable reason, the room seemed smaller without him. And warmer. Not enough space to house the pacing vampire. He was just so big. She tried to ignore him, occupied herself with doing up what remained of her buttons, but a prickle running over her skin made her glance up. He’d stopped his pacing and come to a halt in front of her. His hands rested on his lean hips and he was scrutinizing her in a way that made her squirm.

She decided to go on the offensive. If she pissed him off enough, maybe he wouldn’t come near her. “I bet you do this all the time, don’t you?”

“Do what?”

“You know, mesmerizing women and having your evil way with them. Making them take their clothes off and God knows what else.”

He took a step closer, and she realized she might have made a tactical error challenging this man. She got the distinct impression that he was the sort who liked a challenge. Perhaps she would have been much better going with the meek and mild approach. But she wouldn’t have been able to keep that up for long—meek had never been her strong point.

He leaned closer, resting his hands on the arms of her chair, caging her in. His face was only inches away and she breathed in the cool, musky scent. “Honey, if I was the sort of man to do that, you’d know it.”

“I would?” Lord, she sounded breathless.

“Yeah, if I was the sort of man to take advantage, then darling, we’d have already fucked twice.”

“We would have?”

He whispered the words against her skin. “As it is, we still have that pleasure to look forward to.”

“We do?”

“Oh yeah, never doubt it.”

He closed the last space between them, and then his mouth was on hers. She had a brief flash of awareness to her brain that said she should stop this. Now. Somehow. Before she lost the will. Hell, who was she kidding? She’d lost the will long ago. But boy, could he kiss. Besides, the warlock would be back soon; surely it wouldn’t hurt to relax her guard for just a minute.

It occurred to her—not for the first time—that she was the queen of self-delusion. All the same, she couldn’t resist. Instead of fighting him off, she tilted her head back and opened her lips beneath his, groaned as the moist velvet of his tongue thrust languidly into her mouth. One hand came up to cup the back of her skull and hold her steady while he ravaged her mouth.

It felt so good. And when his other hand slid inside the open bodice of her robe to cup her breast, it felt even better, and she still didn’t fight him off. His thumb rubbed over the stiffening peak, and she groaned into his mouth. She craved the feel of him against her bare skin. How long had it been since someone had held her, made love to her? Too long, and she arched her spine and pushed up against his hand.

Her body was no longer under her control. In a brief moment of clarity, she realized it. Too long denied that most basic of needs, contact with another person, now it was clamoring for relief.

“Slowly, sweetheart.”

She didn’t want to go slowly. He made to pull away and her hands gripped into his hair and tried to hold him close.

“Jonas is back.”

It took a second for his words to register. For her to realize that the loud hammering wasn’t the pounding of her heart but someone knocking at the door.

Oh, shit, this was so embarrassing. Piers would love this. She’d been practically begging for it. Given a little more time, she’d have tossed him across the table and taken him by force.

But he didn’t look amused. He looked pensive, and she decided that was even worse. She didn’t want him thinking about her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She gritted her teeth. “Yes.” Apart from the frustration clawing at her nerves, she was fine.

He studied her a moment longer, then straightened. “Come in.”

The door opened and Jonas entered carrying a bottle of scotch. Nothing had ever been so welcome. Then she peered past him—he wasn’t alone. Just what she needed—more people to witness her total humiliation. Could the night get any worse?

…

Her pale, creamy skin was flushed, her breathing heavy, and her arousal scented the air. She wanted him. Badly.

Which was good, because she could have him. And hopefully soon.

As he watched, she pulled herself under control, though not before shooting him a glance filled with resentment. She didn’t like the way he made her feel. Why was that? It was obvious they’d be good together. Once they’d sorted out just who and what she was.

Could she really be more than five hundred years old? She appeared no more than twenty. And such a contradiction of sweetness and toughness. And she’d said she’d been tortured before. Where and who by? And why did he have the sudden urge to find whoever it was and rip him limb from limb?

That was unexpected.

And unwelcome.

He wasn’t in the business of protecting people, however much he wanted to fuck them. At least the thought had a welcome effect on his libido—his cock had been rock hard since he’d kissed her, but now the sting of desire subsided.

Tara entered the room behind Jonas and Christian, filling the space with her own exotic blend of sweet and bitter. “Tara, how lovely to see you. What the hell are you doing here?”

She grinned. “Lovely to see you too.” She sounded just about as sincere as he had. He studied her for a minute, searching for outward signs of her demon-fae heritage, but she still looked exactly the same—maybe even prettier. Living with Christian obviously agreed with her. Who would have thought it?

He had an inkling as to why Christian had brought her here today. To take care of the sisters perhaps, take them under her wing, protect them from his evil ways. Well, she could have Sister Maria, but Sister Rosa was his.

“Hey,” he said to Sister Rosa. “What is your name?”

“Rosamund Fairfax. Roz will do.”

Tara crossed the room and put the glasses she was carrying down on the table before holding out her hand to Roz. “Hi, I’m Tara. Christian’s wife.”

Roz grasped the hand almost gingerly and shook it.

Piers took the bottle of scotch from Jonas and poured out four glasses. He hovered the bottle over the fifth glass, and glanced at Tara.

Christian shuddered. “Don’t you dare.”

A teasing look passed from Tara to Christian. “I thought you liked me to drink.”

“Maybe when we’re alone and can lock all the doors, shutter the windows, lock away anything breakable…”

Roz was glancing between them, her expression confused. Piers decided to take pity on her.

“Tara is part demon,” he said.

If anything, Roz’s frown deepened.

“Don’t you know anything?” he asked.

A scowl replaced the frown. “No,” she snapped. “So why don’t you tell me?”

He shrugged. If she was more than five hundred years old as Jonas had hinted, where the hell had she been all that time that she understood so little of their world? “Demons tend to have a rather extreme reaction to alcohol—it makes them lose all their inhibitions. Demons can be quite restrained, but give them a drink and that restraint goes straight out the window—or wherever.”

“All demons?” she asked.

“Some more than others. The more powerful can control it and even the less powerful can learn—like people, I suppose. But Tara’s a little new to all this—”

She was studying Tara now. “Why? Why is she new?”

“Perhaps she’ll explain all that to you later, but for now, I think you’re supposed to be telling us something.”

It was Roz’s turn to shrug. “There’s not a lot to tell.”

“How about starting with who you are, what you are, what that thing on your arm means, and what the hell you were doing in a convent dressed like that when you’re no more of a nun than I am?”

“She’s not?” Christian asked. He sounded surprised, so obviously Jonas hadn’t had time to fill him in.

Roz pursed her lips. “I’d make a very good nun.”

“The hell you would.” Piers moved around the table, sat in one of the chairs opposite, and gestured to the empty seats. “You may as well all get comfortable—I have a feeling this is going to take some time.” While Roz had agreed to cooperate, he had a feeling that getting information out of her was not going to be a quick or easy process. Even now, he could almost see her brain working. She caught his gaze, and her expression turned guileless. She must be an excellent actress to stay unnoticed for so long. He waited until everyone was seated. “Well?”

Instead of answering, she swallowed her scotch in one gulp, reached across the table, and poured herself another glass. Finally, she took a deep breath.

“I told you the truth—well, some of it. I don’t know what I am.” She stared at the point behind his shoulder for a minute, and he curbed his impatience. He had an idea that she hadn’t told this story to anyone, and that intrigued him.

“A while back some people were going to kill me because of what they believed I was, so I made a deal with someone, and that someone saved me. But in exchange for saving me, I was indebted to him until I had done a certain number of tasks. Apparently the mark on my arm will vanish when I’ve completed them.”

How could she manage to say so much and so little at the same time?

“When was this?” he asked.

She bit her lip. “About five hundred years ago—1495, to be precise. And I was to be burned as a witch. They killed my mother.”

Even after all this time, he saw the pain flash across her face. But not only pain; there was rage there as well, and he’d guess it was the rage that had fueled her actions all those years ago. His little Roz was a maelstrom of emotions inside that serene exterior.

“
Was
your mother a witch?” he asked, as much to get a reaction as anything else, but instead of her anger, she looked thoughtful.

“At the time, I believed she was totally innocent—and really she was. She knew nothing. But she was a healer. People would come to her when all else failed, and she would help them. They repaid her by burning her alive. I listened to her screams.”

Piers remembered back to the night they had arrived. The scar on the other sister’s back—the healing had been much more advanced that it should have been. “Are you a healer as well?”

He thought she wouldn’t answer, and fear flashed across her face. She must have been warned not to talk of her powers, no doubt by whoever had saved her all those years ago. And she must have lived with that fear all these years, hiding what she was, blending in with the “normal people” but always on her guard. He saw resolve harden in her face. “Yes. But more than my mother. I can bring people back from the brink of death.”

He was guessing her mother must have had a touch of fae blood, as Jonas did. But Roz had far more than a touch. “Did you know your father?” he asked.

The anger flashed again. “I remember him vaguely. He was tall and blond, and my mother loved him madly. Then one day, when I was about six, he went away, and he never came back.” Her eyes hardened. “Bastard. He promised to return, and my mother spent her whole life waiting for him, swearing that one day he would come for us. Even when the witch-finder came at the end, even as they were torturing her, she held on to the hope that he would somehow save us. He never came.”

“Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe something stopped him.” Tara spoke, and Piers glanced across at her. The little demon-fae was blinking back tears. She was such a softy—amazing, really, when you considered who and what her father was.

“I believed he was dead,” Roz said. “I hoped he was dead.”

Her tone was harsh, but Piers suspected she was very likely wrong. “I somehow doubt that he’s dead.”

“Why?”

“I’m guessing your father must have been pure-blooded fae. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be immortal.”

Shock flared on her pretty face, her eyes stretching wide. “I’m immortal?”

“Well, how the hell else did you think you’d lasted all this time?”

She shook her head, clearly bewildered. “He told me…” She broke off and her expression hardened. “That fucking bastard. If I ever get near him again, I’m going to slice him into little pieces.”

“He?”

She clamped her lips together.

“I think maybe the sigil prevents her from speaking his name,” Jonas said from across the table. “It’s a protection method.”

“So what did he tell you? How did he explain the fact that you never died, never aged? How old were you when you made this deal?”

“Seventeen.”

So young. A child.

“He told me that he’d extended my lifespan, that I would live as long as I was indebted and bore his mark, but once I was free, I would age as normal and die as normal.”

“Can I see this mark?” Christian asked.

Piers glanced across at Roz and raised an eyebrow. She shrugged, swallowed the rest of her scotch, and pushed herself to her feet.