Authors: Christine Warren
Lionel glared at his granddaughter and tugged fiercely on his cuffs, aligning them precisely with the sleeves of his suit coat. “I had been asked to enlist you in delivering another message, but now that I see how close you are to the recipient, I can deliver it myself.”
He turned to Rafe. “My colleagues were less than pleased when I told them of your loss of control yesterday, Mr. De Santos. It has raised some concern among several of the council members. They feel it might be prudent to meet you sooner than our next scheduled meeting. I believe they may want to form their own impressions of your suitability to handle the intricacies of relations between our two councils. I’m afraid they no longer feel your reputation provides them with sufficient reassurance as to your … character.”
The man knew how to deliver an insult without uttering a single offensive word. Rafe had to give him credit. He also had to remember not to punch him in his supercilious face.
Rafe nodded abruptly. “Simply name the time, Mr. Menzies, and I would be happy to personally assure your colleagues that I am more than capable of handling any challenges that might be thrown my way. I am at your disposal, as it were.”
“Tomorrow night.” The other man threw the words out as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. “After they meet you, the council will decide whether or not to call on you to attend the full moon sitting.”
Lionel turned to Tess with a look of disgust. “As for you, Tessa, I believe the council has a word or two for you, as well. I’m sure you won’t mind escorting your animal lover to the council chambers. Not after he’s … taken such good care of you.”
Rafe could scent the hurt and anger that Lionel’s behavior caused for Tess, but she said not a word. She simply nodded to acknowledge the summons and crossed to the apartment door, yanking it open and fixing her relative with a meaningful stare.
“Good-bye, Granddad,” she said, lifting her chin and squaring her shoulders despite the discomfort Rafe knew the movement must have caused. “You can tell the council that your message was received.”
Rafe knew more than one had been.
Lionel didn’t bother to say good-bye, just strode out of the apartment as if the air were unfit to breathe. He never bothered to look at Tess’s face and never saw the hurt he had caused to the child he’d raised.
Rafe waited for her to close the door, then drew her into his arms and rocked her against his chest. “I am sorry, my sweet
gatita.
He does not deserve a grandchild like you. You are too fine for such an angry and bitter old man.”
Her arms came around him and clung, and she sniffled against his chest. “I’ve always known I was a disappointment to him. He’s made that abundantly clear over the years, but I never realized he might actually hate me. What could I have done to make him hate me? Because clearly it started before you came along.”
Rafe stroked a hand over her springy curls and murmured soothing words. He ached that he was unable to take away her pain.
“It is not you,
gatita.
Some men are simply incapable of loving anyone but themselves. To some, appearances mean more than the truth of a person’s heart. If your grandfather could see your heart, he would know how amazing you truly are.”
“Thank you for saying that.” She tilted her head back and offered him a watery smile. “And especially thank you for making it sound so sincere.”
“It was sincere.
I
am sincere.”
In fact, he sincerely wanted to wipe away the tracks of her tears with his tongue. Then he wanted to go rip the heart right out of Lionel Menzies’s chest, but he couldn’t do that. Sometimes being the head of the Council of Others felt entirely too restrictive.
She stared up at him for a moment, her blue eyes shining brightly from her tears. She seemed to search his soul with them, and all Rafe could do was hope she understood how much she had come to mean to him. How sincerely he needed her.
“You know,” she said slowly, reaching up to stroke his face with cool, slender fingers. “I honestly think you mean that.”
“Of course I do,
gatita.
You amaze me every day. Every moment. Over and over again.”
He leaned down and brushed her lips with a kiss full of reverence and awe. This woman had burrowed her way into his heart, and once he had performed this latest duty to the Council, he would make certain she knew it.
“In fact,” he told her, drawing back and wiping a stray tear away with his thumb, “I cannot wait to stand before this Witches’ Council with you at my side, sweet Tess. Even if your grandfather is too ignorant to recognize your value, I refuse to believe that thirteen men of sufficient intelligence to govern their kind will be as well. They, too, will have to be in awe of your power.”
She laughed then, a spontaneous belly laugh that opened her mouth wide and left her ginning up at him. “Oh, Rafe. I hate to disappoint you, baby, but I’ve known most of the councilmen since I was in diapers, and awe is not the emotion they usually feel when they see me. And power never plays into it. As far as they’re concerned the power I have isn’t enough to light a candle. I’m afraid if you’re expecting them to disagree with my grandfather’s assessment of me, you’re doomed to disappointment.”
“Never.” He leaned down and kissed her smiling mouth, unable to resist. She lit his heart up when she smiled. “Your grandfather’s friends might confuse magic with power, but I am not so foolish. When I say you have power,
gatita,
I mean every word of it. You fairly shimmer with the stuff.”
She slapped his shoulder lightly. “Don’t tease. I’ve told you I’m sensitive about my abilities as a witch. Or rather, my lack of abilities. You shouldn’t make fun.”
“I am not. I am completely in earnest. You, my sweet Tess, have to learn to stop underestimating yourself, and if you refuse to do it on your own, I have a feeling that one of these days Fate will step in and teach you this lesson the hard way.”
She snickered. “Oh, so now you think you’re the one who has premonitions? Way to co-opt the only real magic I have, mister. That’s real smooth.”
Rafe swept her up into his arms and began carrying her back toward the bedroom. It was Saturday, after all, and he could think of no better way to relax after a busy week than in his mate’s comfortable bed.
“It is not a premonition,” he told her as he laid her down on the mattress and reached for the tie of her robe. “It is merely a statement of fact. You
will
recognize your power one of these days,
gatita,
and I only hope that I will be right there to see it.”
Her gaze flickered to the side, then returned full of heat and mischief.
“Well, if you’re so convinced I have magical powers,” she purred, slipping her hand down between their bodies to curl around his growing erection, “then I’ll just have to experiment to see if I can build them up, won’t I? Now, I wonder what happens when I do …
this.
”
Her fingers flexed, and Rafe felt his eyes roll back in his head.
“Oh, I’ll show you what happens,” he growled, panting at the sudden surge of heat. “And after I have finished, you will never again doubt your own power.”
“In that case”—she squeezed her fingers and reached up to nip at his mouth with playful intent—“what are you waiting for? Let my education begin.”
Twenty
Tess had just slipped on her most conservative pearl earrings when she heard Rafe let himself into the apartment. She still wouldn’t say she was entirely comfortable with the idea that they’d wound up all but living together barely two weeks into their relationship, but Rafe had ignored her every time she’d even thought about arguing. They had exchanged keys to their respective homes after three days of knowing each other, so she supposed she should just relax and go with the flow, especially considering she’d nearly given up on the idea of denying that she loved him. Fighting the emotion didn’t seem to be doing her any good. When she had tried to keep him out of her apartment the first night after they’d met, he’d simply broken in, but Tess had been smart. She’d attached a small bell to his key chain along with her apartment key so that no matter whose place they were staying at, she’d always be able to hear him coming.
Hearing the sound of the cheerful little bell, she shoved her feet into her kidskin pumps and stepped out from behind the sofa to face the foyer. And the table she still couldn’t look at without blushing.
“Hello, dear. How was your day?”
She felt very June Cleaver, meeting him at the door in pearls and a snappy dress, with her hair styled and heels on her feet, so she couldn’t resist the classic greeting. She was betting, though, that June never laid one on Ward like she was kissing Rafe. The censors would have had a field day. Case in point: the way he kneaded her ass before setting her away from him and reaching down to adjust the fit of his tailored charcoal trousers.
“Not as good as I’m hoping my night will be.” He frowned and reached out to tug at a severely styled curl. “What happened to your hair?”
Tess reached up to feel it self-consciously. The normally wild profusion of corkscrew curls had been brushed, rolled, set, and sprayed within an inch of their lives in preparation for her appearance in front of the firing squad—aka the Witches’ Council.
“Nothing. I just tried to make it behave,” she said. “Granddad hates when it looks all undisciplined.”
“But I like it undisciplined. I especially like when it misbehaves. Like when I have you under me, and you’re tossing your head against the pillows—”
Tess cleared her throat. Loudly. “Um, shouldn’t we be going?”
He sighed. “I suppose if you insist, although I would be happy to develop an alternative plan for the evening.”
“Down, boy. The council will not be happy if we show up late, or with our nice clothes all wrinkled.”
He eyed her neat clothes, taking in the way the midnight-blue dress clung to her curves, all high-necked and short-sleeved like something Audrey Hepburn would wear. And she thought of that as one of her “unsexy” dresses. With the way he looked at her, she was beginning to think wearing her sexy dresses around him would be like pouring gasoline on a forest fire.
“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll be good. But only if you promise I can muss you later.”
Tess ignored the way his smile always made her stomach clench, and the way he never talked about any emotions that weren’t sexual. Like she’d told Missy, she would figure it all out later. After the council meeting.
“Show me you can earn it, and I just might.”
He laughed and guided her to the elevator, then down to his waiting car. He’d left it running, with the key in the engine, and Tess just shook her head. It would never get stolen, that was for sure. But how the criminals knew Rafe was the driver while he was up inside the apartment, she could never get quite clear.
He was unusual just for having a car in Manhattan. Tess had long ago decided they weren’t worth the trouble, but Rafe had offered an easy explanation. “There’s no room in the city. When I need to run, I head upstate.”
It explained the four-wheel drive, too.
Rafe drove like he did everything, lazily, gracefully, and with such a complete lack of haste you never realized what was happening until it was all over. All she did was give him the directions and he had them weaving through traffic and navigating the Upper West Side before she really had time to get worked up about the coming meeting. But in the fifteen seconds between reverse and park, she more than made up for that.
He pulled into a completely miraculous parking spot, cut the engine, and turned to face her. “You are beginning to panic. Stop it.”
“I’m not panicking. I’m thinking.”
“You are thinking panicked thoughts, then.”
“My thoughts are none of your damned business.”
“Of course they are. Especially when I have already told you not to panic.”
“I don’t take orders well at the best of times. In case you hadn’t noticed.” She looked at him. “And this isn’t the best of times.”
“Why not?”
She looked harder. “Let me think. Maybe because I’m about to see my granddad for the second time in a week, which is never good; I’m going to discuss an issue of grave social, psychological, and martial import, and said issue is likely to prove divisive and heated. Oh, and I’m bring my lover, who happens to be the very spokesman for the opposite side of said issue, who has already made it clear that he loathes him. Especially since he’s a member of a different species.” She pasted on a sickly false grin. “Sheesh! What have I got to worry about?”
Rafe chuckled and leaned forward to brush a kiss across her smiling mouth. “Relax. I told you, everything will be fine.”
He slid out of his seat and walked around to her side to open her door. While she waited for him with her hands clenched into fists inside the long sleeves of her jacket, Tess snorted.
“Right. Now if only you’d told the same thing to my grandfather.”
* * *
Tess had been to the council’s meeting rooms a couple of times before, but never during an actual meeting. They were located in the basement of a series of row houses on a quiet street in not the best block of the Upper West Side. Not that the neighborhood was bad, but it bore an air of shabby gentility implying that it had seen its share of wealth—but a while ago. The slightly downtrodden air meant that no one took it amiss when an anonymous presence bought their homes and rented them back again with the basements tightly and irrevocably sealed off. With the exception of one, of course, and that’s where Tess led Rafe.
She preceded him through the unmarked alley entrance around the side of the fifth house on the block. At the bottom of a dark, steep, narrow stairway, they stepped out into a small open area with floors and walls of bare concrete. A single, bare lightbulb swung from a wire in the ceiling. Tess felt Rafe’s eyes on her as she walked to the only door in the room and raised her right hand to touch it precisely in its center. It swung open, and she waved him through, ignoring his raised eyebrow and curious stare.