In the Company of Witches (25 page)

“And are you?”

“You’re too much of a horse’s ass for me to get such an idiotic notion. But I don’t mind indulging your fantasies of being a kept man.”

He chuckled, gave her another pinch, this time a gentle one on the curve of her breast just under her arm. She elbowed him in his hard stomach. He kept his arm around her waist, but she slid hers around him as well, thumb hooked in the waistband of his jeans. The ripple of powerful muscle against her upper torso was a pleasant feeling.

As he guided her past a sidewalk display outside a knickknack store, she put out her hand, making the colorful mini-flags display their flutter in passing. “So the items in your vault can be called to you when needed.”

“Yes. Basic conjuring.”

“It’s still a pretty impressive distance,” she observed. “Say you’re in the forest, and there are no innocent bunnies or fawns for you to terrorize. You get bored. You call up your train set, lay it out on the ground and have at it?”

“Once, when I was in the Appalachians, pixies came out to play with it. They put pebbles and flowers into the cars. A very displeased frog.” She looked up in time to see the muscles tighten in his face in a way that was almost a smile. “They can be hyper, so I had to calm them enough they could ride on the cars without knocking them over. It was tricky to do without offending them. They’re pretty sensitive.”

“What happens if they get offended?”

“You get no sleep at all, because every time you drift off, they pull your hair or stick a bug up your nose.”

“Good thing you don’t sleep much, because you don’t excel at being inoffensive.”

“You just don’t appreciate me the way they do.”

“Hmm.” She snorted. “So how big is this depository of yours?”

“Gold digger.”

“Just checking out my security options.”

B
Y EARLY AFTERNOON, THEY’D HIT MOST OF THE STORES
along the riverfront and found a place to get a sandwich. He paid for her lunch, waving away her money. While they were eating on the restaurant’s porch, he nodded to the old movie theater across the street. “Want to go see a movie? Next show starts in a few minutes.”

She followed his gaze. The Aimway was a vintage nostalgia theater, a small place with a scroll woodwork facade and movie posters framed in gold filigree. Mostly they showed movies already out on DVD, but Ramona said that was part of the fun, going to see favorite movies the way they’d originally been viewed. She’d been ecstatic about watching
Gone with the Wind
on the big screen. Raina would have liked to see that one, but had made the usual excuses. Though she expected Ruby and Ramona had guessed why she didn’t leave the house much, she preferred not to talk about it. A woman had her pride, after all.

Collecting their sandwich garbage, she tossed it away and waited, looking across the street at the theater facade while he left a tip on the table. When he joined her on the sidewalk, he laid an arm over her shoulders, fingers caressing her upper arm.

“Have you ever been in a theater?”

“Of course.” Not. She’d seen movies in which people went to the movies. He gave her a look.

“Let’s go see this one, then.”

She blinked up at the marquee. “It’s
New Moon
. One of the Twilight saga. Teenage girl angst?”

He shrugged. “Have you seen it?”

“No.”

“Neither have I. We’ve got time, and if we don’t like it, we can leave. You’re interested in vampires, right?” He tapped her nails, the vampire design in red and black.

“You really need to be as unobservant as most males.”

“Raina. You haven’t seen a movie in a theater. Right?” At her twitch of assent, his fingers touched her jaw, making her look at him.

“Then let’s go. And don’t lie to me. Not now, not ever.”

The squeeze he gave her this time was a firm warning, one that sent a reaction skittering through the parts of her that responded to this side of him too much.

They weren’t alone in the theater, since it was a little cool for beach swimming and there were always tourists interested in the novelty of the place, but the crowd wasn’t so large she felt claustrophobic. Regardless, she was glad Mikhael put them in the back row, though it was probably because he didn’t like people sitting behind him. He took the aisle seat, letting her sit on the inside so he could stretch out his long legs.

Despite their light lunch, he’d bought her a small popcorn and drink, a bag of chocolate-covered raisins. He’d gotten himself a sleeve of Reese’s peanut butter cups and a giant Dr Pepper. When the previews started, she leaned forward, delighted by the size of the screen, the surround sound. However, a blink or two later, she was getting annoyed. Tourists were checking e-mail and phone messages on their handhelds, the various flashes of light distracting her as they texted. Probably sending one another inane messages like:
Hey, I’m at the movies. I got Milk Duds.

She wrinkled her nose and tried to ignore it. They’d stop when previews were done. Maybe.

Mikhael stretched an arm behind her seat, his sprawling, lazy predator pose. As he did, a tiny spiral of energy flickered from him. Instantly, all those lights went out. She registered various levels of consternation, a few people rising to go to the lobby to see if perhaps they’d lost their signal. She leaned back into the span of his arm.

“You blocked them?” she whispered.

“I fried their batteries. Your local electronics vendor can send me a thank-you.”

She regarded his profile in the dim light. He was balling up a Reese’s peanut butter cup wrapper in one hand, his other idly caressing her shoulder beneath the rolled neckline as he watched the previews.

“I might decide to like you, Mikhael,” she murmured. “Maybe.”

When he gave her a warm sidelong glance, the movie started, so she settled down in the curve of his body to watch.

At the tea parties she’d held, she’d heard about the Twilight movies from women with teenage daughters. Despite her comment about the teen angst, she found herself unexpectedly swept up in it. Elceus had taken her when she was on the cusp of being a teenager, when she was learning about crushes. Since she’d had one or two before that critical turning point, she vaguely recalled the way the heart pounded at new love, how everything was about him, nothing in the whole universe more important.

As a succubus, she was very susceptible to emotional input—when she allowed it. Even so, she knew she’d become more immersed in the male beside her than she’d believed possible. With him, she had all the elements of a crush. The heart-fluttering anxiety, the anticipation. She was hyperaware of his arm on the seat behind her, how it slid down her upper arm, his knuckles touching the side of her breast, then slowing there, shortening the stroke, telling her that it wasn’t incidental contact.

Then he touched her face, her neck, guiding her face toward him with firm purpose. She laid her head on his shoulder as he pressed it there, as his face dominated her vision. He covered her mouth with his, pushing her back into the seat, making the kiss deep, long and wet. Warm. His other hand cupped her breast fully, kneaded and stroked. Then he slid down her stomach, letting his fingers firmly grip her hip, thumb brushing the crease between it and her thigh, intimately close to other things. They were making out in a movie theater, like teenagers, and she was loving every moment of it.

M
IKHAEL NEVER IMAGINED ANYONE WITH HER EXPERIENCE
could be so responsive. She was saturated by sexuality, nothing new to her. Yet everything in her craved and yearned and hungered, as if she couldn’t get enough. Turning that mirror on himself, though, he’d been in hundreds of beds. Or rather, he’d been in hundreds of women, since often no beds were involved. But with her, it felt different. He wanted to stay in this darkened movie theater, teasing her lips, fondling her breasts, getting her more and more hot and bothered and himself the same way, all day long. He could touch her for hours. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about Isaac or his mission at the moment. It was just all her.

The movie had aroused her, such that when her eyes flickered toward him, calculating, measuring, desiring, there was no way he could pass up that opportunity. Not when he wanted it just as badly.

“Part your legs,” he muttered against her mouth. She obeyed, making that tiny, pleading noise in the back of her throat she did when he issued a command. He slid his hand between the heat of her thighs, stroked her, knowing the panties were wet underneath thin denim. Her hand tightened on the chair, the other against his side, fingernails digging into him through his shirt.

He delved deeper into her mouth. He did want to protect her, care for her, buy her things even though she had a whole houseful of things. He suddenly understood the cultures where men brought items to the doorstep of a chosen bride, piling up skins and trinkets as proof he would do anything, give her anything, to make her his. It wasn’t about the things. It was about what he wanted to give.

Raina didn’t need things. She needed someone she could trust, someone who would be her equal and maybe a little bit more than that at certain times, who could provide her support when her responsibilities became too heavy, who could play with her or overpower her; whatever was needed so she didn’t have to handle every damn thing alone.

While he’d been oddly touched by her amusing offer to buy him things, to take care of
him
, he’d seen that side of her with her staff. When she truly committed herself, gave her heart, she was as fierce as any male warrior. No one would harm what was hers, unless it was over her dead body.

A thought he didn’t particularly care to dwell upon, and then it was driven out of his head as she slid her hand over his thigh to cup his balls and erection. Her thumb stroked him, fingers tugging at the button of his jeans, not to open them, but to convey want and need. He rocked the heel of his hand over her clit, and the friction of the denim drove her even higher, so her hand convulsed. He was going to use that dissembling spell and take her right here in the movie theater.

No, he wasn’t. While tempting, he wanted her to have the real experience, not one altered by magic. So he eased up, stroking her hair, tightening his fingers in it to bring them back apart. Her lips were swollen, eyes filled with that hazy desire that made him think of her twined in her sheets naked, that lush body revealed to him in its full glory.

He pressed her head back to his shoulder, squeezing her fingers before he laid her hand lower on his thigh, holding it there. She smiled against his shoulder at his self-restraint, but her fingers also closed over his thigh. An uncertain little sigh lifted her shoulders. She was smart enough to realize this was stepping outside the borders of a casual, opportunistic liaison. He knew it was something he’d never felt, which alarmed him enough to keep it to himself, for various reasons. For one thing, women tended to get all sorts of strange ideas when a man said things like that out loud.

Based on what he knew of Raina, her reaction would probably be total horror.

12

“I
’VE BEEN MARINATED IN TEENAGE GIRL HORMONES
.”

Raina laughed, her green-gold eyes sparkling at him. As they came out of the theater, they found the day had become more overcast, but in a pleasant way. The breeze flirting along the sidewalk threatened an afternoon storm, but it was still far enough off that the pedestrian traffic could risk continued trawling.

“If you start giggling or having fits of melodrama, I’ll rush you to the doctor for a high-octane testosterone shot right away.” She sighed, did a twirl on the sidewalk. It sent a wave of sex demon energy floating in all directions. Mikhael’s spellwork had to work double time to zap it. At times the sexuality she exuded hit high peaks. As accomplished as he was, he had to stay on his toes to modulate it. Thinking about the power of the shields she put into her house to protect her staff and her clients, he didn’t wonder why she stayed close to home.

“I think you got doused the same way I did. But it looks good on you.”

She smiled, a mischievous gypsy temptress. She came back to his side to take his hand. “I admit, it did make me feel girlish and moony. I think that’s why the movies are so popular. Women lose that side of themselves over time; not a lot of chances to indulge it. Which is sad, because it’s more fun to indulge when you’re an adult. When you’re a teenager, the hormones can be pretty horrific and intense. So I heard.”