It was instinct that brought her here.
As she stood staring at the door, she was a little startled. Kelsey hadn’t consciously thought of coming here. When she had let her magick carry her away from Brendain, she’d just had one thought in mind: getting help.
She could just imagine the look on Nikolas’s face if she tried to explain what had happened to Morgan. That she wasn’t really Morgan anymore. Hell, the werewolf didn’t think Kelsey had any place on the Council anyway. He’d made that loud and clear on more than one occasion.
Tobias, he might listen, but would he believe her? More, would he be able to help her convince Niko and Andreas?
Niko would be a problem, regardless. And with the Council as splintered as it was, with Malachi refusing to return, with Nessa gone, if she went before them with this, she could just see him laughing.
She wasn’t worried about being laughed at.
Kelsey was terrified, though, that they wouldn’t take her seriously. If they didn’t, an innocent woman was going to suffer. Worse, somebody that Kelsey loved dearly.
Which would explain why her magick had brought her here.
Help
meant Malachi. There was no Hunter alive who commanded respect and attention the way he did. Niko would listen to Mal.
Malachi could help her. If she could convince him of what had happened, he could help. Niko and Andreas might not take her seriously, but everybody took Malachi seriously.
Leaving in panic, Kelsey had come here completely unprepared. She’d just been here a week ago. She knew how frigid it was.
Damn. Had it already been a week since she had left? Didn’t seem possible. Not at all—not when her skin still seemed to burn from Malachi’s touch.
The cold was enough to freeze her lungs as she gasped for air. She had a hard time lifting her hand to knock on the door, her limbs already numb from the cold. Shivers racked her body from head to toe as she pounded on the door.
Unprepared—that was a bit of an understatement. No coat. No gloves. Standing outside in northern Alaska in early spring, wearing nothing but a sweater, jeans, and tennis shoes.
No explanation to offer other than a story that was too damned bizarre to be real.
As Kelsey waited for Malachi to open the door, she wondered briefly if she had completely lost her mind.
The door opened, and sweet warmth poured out. Malachi stared at her for a split second before he reached out and dragged her inside. “Have you lost your bloody mind?”
Her teeth were chattering as she forced out, “I need your help.”
“Ye need your fool head examined,” Malachi growled, dragging her into the small foyer. “It’s twenty below out there!”
Her legs felt frozen, unable to move. Kelsey opened her mouth to say something, but she couldn’t. Her head felt weird, muffled, and Malachi’s low, gruff voice seemed to coming from a long distance. Nothing to do with the cold, although she felt chilled to the bone.
Shock
. Part of her mind understood that. The other part was just waiting there, staring at Mal as he finally just lifted her in his arms and carried her over to the fire. He dumped her on the floor and turned to the fire, tossing more wood on and jabbing at the logs with a poker.
“Seems like we’ve done this before,” she murmured inanely, watching him as he built up the fire.
Mal just ignored her. As the fire began to lick at the logs, he turned and started rubbing the rough inside of his palms up and down her arms.
“Bloody fool,” he said harshly. “Last I heard, witches could still freeze to death.”
She had absolutely no idea what to say. Everything seemed jumbled in her mind, and she’d be damned if she could slow down the train of thoughts well enough to focus. Her lids drooped. As the warmth slowly began to seep into her body, Kelsey tried to bring her scattered thoughts under control.
But her mind didn’t want to work. Maybe it just couldn’t. Her blood roared in her ears, and she was acutely aware of the warmth of the fire on her flesh. He had tugged her shoes off and was rubbing at her frozen feet. His normally cool skin felt unusually warm. The scent of woodsmoke, the sexy, dark scent of Malachi’s skin, the two scents mingled and flooded her senses, dispelling just a little more of the chill.
She heard him swear again and lifted her eyes to stare at him, watching as he rose and stalked away. The sound of his footfalls, normally so quiet, sounded unusually loud.
Snap out of it, Kelsey. You can’t help anybody like this.
That sane, still-functioning part of her mind kept nagging at her, but for some reason, Kelsey just couldn’t think.
“DAMN LITTLE FOOL,” MALACHI SWORE AS HE REACHED inside the cabinet and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. About the only damned thing to drink in the whole house, too. She needed something hot, and he didn’t have anything.
She needed blankets, as well.
Fortunately, the rented house did have blankets. He just hadn’t ever dragged them out.
She was in shock, but she hadn’t been hurt. He couldn’t see any injury; neither could he sense one. But something had happened. Her eyes were dark, unfocused, the pupils so large they had nearly swallowed the warm golden hazel of her irises. Damn pale, as well, and he suspected that had little to do with the cold.
Scared—that was the only logical answer, since there wasn’t an obvious injury. But scared of what? Fury ripped through him. Whoever had put that haunted look in her eyes was going to be lucky to see another sunrise. But first he had to figure out what in the hell had happened, who was responsible.
On the way out of the rarely used kitchen, he paused by the closet in the hall. It was well-stocked with extra bed linens, sturdy wool blankets, fluffy down comforters. He grabbed one of the comforters and went back into the living room.
Looking at her was always like getting hit in the gut. Women rarely affected him for any longer than it took to satisfy the blood hunger. And that was quick and passing, rarely serving to arouse him physically.
His hunger for Kelsey hadn’t ever been quick or passing. But it was so much worse now. He knew the scent of her skin, how soft it felt, how strong that long, limber body was, how she tasted.
A harsh groan escaped him as he tried to refocus his mind, but as always, thinking when she was near was damned near impossible. She made him itch, made his head spin, made it so he lost track of damn near everything but her.
And when she did nothing but ignore him, all he wanted to do was grab her, haul her against him, and leave his mark on her flesh, someway, somehow.
Kelsey was still sitting by the fire in the same position that he had left her, long legs sprawled in front of her, her arms hanging limp by her side. Her eyes met his, but Malachi didn’t see any sense there. It was almost like she wasn’t really awake.
Crouching by her side, he set the whiskey aside long enough to tuck the quilt around her legs. Twisting the cap of the whiskey, he shoved it at her and said, “Drink this.”
One pale hand closed around the neck of the bottle, but she didn’t drink. She just sat there with it in her lap, staring at the bottle. It was hard to control the worry and the fear inside him, but he managed it, throttling it into submission and covering her hand with his, bringing the bottle to her lips.
Halfway through the first swallow, she started choking. Malachi took the bottle and rubbed a hand up and down her back. Through the thick cotton sweater, he could feel her body heat. She hadn’t been outside too long, although in temperatures like this, it wouldn’t take that long to freeze to death. She was warming up, though.
Thank God.
Once the coughing fit passed, Malachi tried to lift the bottle back to her lips. Kelsey shook her head and wheezed out, “No. Man, that stuff will kill you.”
When she looked at him, her pretty brown eyes were still far too dark, but at least he felt like she was actually looking at him. Malachi started to reach for her, but stopped.
If he touched her right now, he just may not stop, not until she was naked and panting, still recovering from orgasm.
Closing his hand into a fist, he stood and moved a few feet away.
“What are you doing here, Kelsey?”
She glanced at him for a minute and then lowered her gaze. “I really don’t know. This was the only place I could think of.” Kelsey fell silent, and he watched as she shifted around under the blanket, drawing her knees to her chest, rearranging the comforter. She smoothed a wrinkle out of it and then looped her arms around her knees, staring into the fire.
She stayed silent. For a long moment, Malachi watched how the fire danced over her flesh, and then finally, he forced himself to stare into her eyes. “You need to tell me what’s going on, Kelsey.”
Her head bent, pressing her forehead to her knees. Strands of her red-gold hair spilled around her shoulders and face. Her voice was muffled when she finally spoke.
“I need your help.”
Bracing his shoulders against the wall, Mal waited for her to continue, but she said nothing. Warning bells went off in his head as the silence stretched out. What in the hell was going on that she felt she couldn’t handle? There were any number of people she could have gone to if she did need help. Why come here?
“Kelsey, you’re going to have to tell me what it is you need.” She had a thick skull, and her natural shields kept him from being able to get even a casual glimpse of her thoughts. Witches were not the easiest creatures for a vampire to read, and Kelsey was no exception.
“The Council—” her voice broke off, and she took a deep breath. Malachi waited as she ran her hands through her hair, her fingers twisting in the thick silk. She began to separate a thick skein into sections, braiding it. There was something about her manner that made him think it was an old habit.
Succinctly, Malachi said, “Haven’t we already gone over this? I am done with the Council.”
With a sigh, she shoved to her feet, the quilt falling in a heap around her ankles. Kelsey slid an unreadable look his way, and then she spun away from him and folded her arms over her chest. Over her shoulder, she asked, “Is it so much to ask that you give me a few minutes to explain what has happened?”
She laughed. The sound was harsh and brittle. “I realize you probably don’t have any need to see me, but you are still a Hunter. You can’t change who you are inside. You can’t just quit that, even if you are quitting the Council.”
Mal decided to ignore everything but what she’d first said. The rest of it was nothing he hadn’t told himself a million times already. Keeping his voice level, and his own emotions under tight control, he said, “You don’t think I have a need to see you.”
The indelicate snort she gave was answer enough. Malachi moved up behind and laid his hands on her denim-coverd hips, hauling her back until her ass was pressed tight to him. He thrust the aching length of his cock against her softness as he lowered his head and growled, “No need?”
Kelsey tried to pull away, and he simply banded one arm around her waist, locking her against him. With his other hand, he caught her hair and used it to jerk her neck to the side, exposing the long pale curve to his teeth. Slowly, he raked his fangs gently down her flesh; then he murmured, “You have no idea about what kind of needs I have, Kelsey. And if you want anything from me, you had best get to it; otherwise, I’m going to strip you naked and neither of us will be going anywhere for quite some time.”
With that, he let her go and stepped aside. She sagged forward, and he watched as she slammed a hand against the wall and leaned against it, letting it help support her weight. She looked quite a bit warmer now, her face flushed and her eyes glittering.
It took everything he had in him not to grab her. Instead, he turned away, stalking to the window. Under the heavy denim of his jeans, his cock throbbed, forced into a damned uncomfortable angle. With a grimace, he adjusted himself, but it didn’t help. His body wanted one thing, and that wasn’t to be shoved and moved around inside a pair of blue jeans into some sort of semicomfortable position.
The unyielding stalk of flesh wanted to be wrapped in the soft wet satin of Kelsey’s pussy, and his hands wanted to explore that pale body in a lot more detail.
Instead of reaching for her, he turned and met her eyes. “Talk.”
Kelsey licked her lips and took a deep, shaky breath that made her chest rise and fall, drawing his eyes to the subtle curves of her breasts. Finally, though, she spoke. “There is a problem, and if somebody doesn’t help me fix it, the Council and the Select are going to make a mistake. A big one. And once they make it, it can’t be undone.”
“Then tell the rest of them. You are a part of the Council as well, Kelsey. Have been for nearly ten years now.”
She snorted, flipping her hair over one shoulder. “Niko doesn’t listen to a damn thing I say, and you know it. Andreas will follow his lead. Three Council members must be in agreement. I know that Tobias will listen, although I can’t guarantee he’ll believe me. But that is still just two of us. But without you . . .”
How did she make him feel so damned guilty? He clenched his jaw and closed his eyes, wishing he could block out her presence as easy as that. But he could hear her, the soft slow rhythm of her breathing, the steady beat of her heart . . . and he could smell her, the warm, sweet scent of her body. “I just want to be left alone, Kelsey.”
Kelsey turned in time to see him scrubbing his hands over his face. He looked tired. Worn out. “Malachi, if there was anybody else I could ask, I would have gone there. It’s just . . . I can’t think of anybody else. And you’re the only one who has a snowball’s chance in hell of convincing Niko.”
Malachi straightened, his pale, handsome face was so cold, so implacable, it might as well been carved from ivory. The very air around them changed in just seconds, and Kelsey shivered, chilled once more.