Chapter Thirty-seven
HARMONY ran up the steps from the boat dock to see if King’s helicopter sat on its landing pad. She was disappointed he wasn’t there yet. It had taken days for his lawyer to spring him. Kidnapping charges were serious business. Evidently, Belinda the Bitch had friends in high places. Harmony had missed him so much that she wanted to welcome him home alone.
Reggie understood, so she and Jake were still with Destiny and Storm. They planned to tour Salem and take in some of the sights. They’d be back in a few days for the summer solstice, but for now King Paxton was all hers.
The goons who’d tried to keep her out the first day tipped their hats and unlocked the castle door for her. It was creepy inside, alone, without lights. Good thing she knew her way to the dorm. She and King shared it now, and the cots were gone.
He was due back any minute, so she took a quick shower, perfumed the right places, and slipped into a lime lace babydoll cami with matching bikinis.
He stepped into the room a minute later. He’d probably landed while she was in the shower.
“Jailbird!” she said in greeting, but he said nothing. His hungry gaze was transfixed by the blonde triangle of hair beneath her translucent bikinis. Harmony rolled to her stomach, crossed her legs in the air, and looked at him over her shoulder.
He dropped his bag and cane, and lunged. She screamed as he landed on top of her. She laughed as he planted kisses all over her. She hadn’t expected such a bodacious welcome from her nonspontaneous . . . lover. Yeah, that’s what he was . . . her lover. Why not admit it?
He pulled down one side of her cami, exposed a breast, and took it in his mouth. Then he kissed her triquetra, the tattoed symbol of three in a heart low on her right breast.
“God, I love this,” she said. “You’re spoiling me for any other man.”
“Damned straight I am.”
“Whoa, careful there, mister. That statement cuts a bit too close to the sharp edge of commitment. You don’t want to go charging into a toy room without bulletproof shorts.”
“I’m charging in
without
my shorts. How’s that for spontaneous?” He pulled back and gazed, entranced, at her full and ready breast glistening from his mouth.
“Like what you see, flyboy?”
“Like it? I’m gonna devour it.”
“I want you inside me.” She lay down and raised her knees in a not-so-subtle invitation.
“You scare me, Hellcat. I’m not sure I’ll ever get enough of you.”
“There’s enough for more.” Something that happened in California had changed him, set him on a new course, though it was difficult to read him. At any rate, his movements were unhurried, profound, unselfish . . . overwhelming. He used his man brain to good purpose, setting his compass on her, not him. He didn’t move with the intention of taking pleasure but of giving it. This was less sex and more a mating, less about the body than the . . . heart.
Couldn’t be.
Emotions, maybe, but not the heart. Despite a thin veneer of self-protection, Harmony followed where King led. While he worked to pleasure her, she pleasured him.
New territory, this. Walls to scale and pull down, walls protected by iron-spiked fences that could tear the climber to ribbons, but she tried to scale them anyway. Forever became a possibility, at least for her orgasm. She’d never had one that lasted so long. Their cries mated in the quiet dusk, but they seemed to rise higher, and higher still, the two of them exploding and colliding like shattering stars spilling light across the galaxy.
Energized yet sated, breathless, they lay tangled, touching, kissing, nipping, wordlessly, as they drifted back to the world like feathers floating on a midsummer breeze.
King pulled wet tendrils of hair from her face. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“Why? Am I so different from your other women? Is it because I’m not lying here like a dead fish?”
“Stop making jokes.” He kissed her exposed skin, adored his way up her legs, discovered and adored the Celtic rust and gold sea horse tattoo on her hip. “What does the sea horse stand for?” he asked. “Knowing you, it must have a meaning.”
“I’ll tell you after the solstice ritual,” she said. “I don’t want to raise your expectations.”
“I love a mystery, but I have to be honest. I have the world’s worst taste in women.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Except for you, which is why you scare me. All exceptions do, because there’s always an exception to the exception. Belinda is a prime example of the bitch factor in my usual choices.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Maybe you like women who are mean-spirited and nasty?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“If you choose a not emotionally available woman, your emotions remain intact, untouched, invulnerable.”
“Screw you.”
“Please do.”
He slipped inside her again. Nothing slow, languid, or generous about his movements this time, he took her with savage intent. His plundering kisses and inciting caresses at her center led them to another death-defying but mutually satisfying climax. Moonbeams transported them like a magic carpet to a land of ecstasy.
Waves of aftershock rippled through her, and she drifted, only to wake up as King sat beside her, fresh from the shower.
He opened a tiny tin of candies. “Peppermint breast?” he offered.
She took one, examined it, popped it into her mouth, and crunched it.
“Damn,” he said. “You bit right into it. I could
not
do that to a gummy penis.”
He stood and she roared, because she’d just noticed that his white boxers announced Free Toy Inside, in fire engine red.
He looked so proud. “See, peppermint breasts and literal statement shorts . . . I can be spontaneous.”
“One spontaneous moment does not a free spirit make,” she said, but she went looking for the prize, anyway, and she got herself a handful. “Fantasmaglorious!” She pulled down his shorts. “All hail to the king! It’s a keeper.” And keep it, she did.
She kept it happy . . . for three days.
Harmony woke first on their last morning together. No more shared nights of sex, lust, love . . . whatever.
Sometimes she thought King was trying to show her how he felt without saying the words. At other times, she thought he got close to speaking the words, but not close enough.
She’d always hoped for a man who could make a commitment, but she’d found King Paxton instead, and she couldn’t think of anybody she’d rather wake up beside. Fortunately or unfortunately, given their ghostly situation, their futures were on hold until she could complete the most important part of her psychic mandate and free the castle of Gussie.
Her sisters, with Reggie and Jake, would arrive tonight. Now would be her last chance to put her energy into making love to King before they were surrounded by the energy of others. Energies, however wonderful, and welcome, that would take their focus from each other.
Last chance, she thought looking over at the sleeping beast, admiring his raven hair of natural waves, remembering the depth of his whiskey eyes and the skill in his work-of-art bod, sculpted and wide-shouldered, thick-muscled and strong.
Virile. Voracious. Vulnerable—whether he wanted to believe it or not—and vocal in his pleasure.
Withering witch balls, she was spooky in love. Dipped and glazed. Waxed and sealed. No gilding the lily. Her love was pure, unadulterated, problematic, complicated, irrevocable, and polished to a magick mirror shine.
Chapter Thirty-eight
“HAPPY Midsummer’s Eve!” Harmony said three hours later, flitting from King’s sleepy reach. “I have so much to do, and it’s nearly noon. My sisters will be back sometime this afternoon with Jake and Reggie, and—hey, look at you tenting the covers. You
are
voracious. A lesser man would have—”
“Died of pleasure by now?”
“I think you’re ready for a midsummer gift.” She handed him a small yellow and orange bright box with a red bow. I wrapped it in summer colors to honor the sun on its longest day.”
“Then it’s the sun’s day, not mine,” he said sitting up in bed, all sleep-mussed with his unruly hair falling on his brow and the covers falling to his deliciously tempting lap. “Why the gift?”
“It’s a midsummer tradition you might want to pass on someday, but not to me.”
King unwrapped the box, almost wary of its contents. Obviously, he hadn’t received many gifts in his life, nor did he seem capable of showing gratitude, and when he opened the box and removed the ancient key, he looked puzzled. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“It’s a magick key that will open whatever is locked to you.”
King gave her a cocky look. “Will it open a Victoria’s Secret?” He threw off his covers and rose, primed . . . for anything. “If so, I’m ready.”
“No kidding, McHorny.” She flicked that sexy lock from his brow, but it stayed as stubborn as him. “The key is symbolic. You’ll use it when you’re ready.”
“Or not. I don’t do games. Maybe I should get that printed on a shirt so you’ll understand.” He went to the bathroom and shut the door.
“Get a life,” she yelled after him.
She’d intended the key to unlock his walls and release his emotions, and she guessed it worked, because he was royally pissed. She dressed and went downstairs.
Morgan and Aiden were waiting in the kitchen.
“Storm invited us to the midsummer festivities,” Aiden said, standing when she came in. “If that’s okay?”
They were curious, Harmony knew, though Morgan would try to debunk the whole thing. “The more the merrier,” she said, enlisting their help.
After a while, McHorny with attitude joined them.
Harmony looked around the great hall. “This is the best place to confront the situation, on home turf, as it were. To prepare for tomorrow’s dawn ritual, I want to set up in the east corner of the room where I can petition the sunrise on the sun’s special day.” Hands on hips, she showed the three where to clear the construction debris.
She marked off an area by walking it. “Clear about twenty by twenty feet, here. Then go up to the library in the old wing, and get the Victorian tiger oak writing table. It has oak kings carved on the legs—you can’t miss it. King, show Morgan and Aiden the way, but let them carry it. While you’re gone, I’ll sweep away the negative debris, literally and figuratively, so you can put the table in the center of the clearing.”
In the morning, she’d do a ritual cleansing, because today she needed more than a
ceremonial
broom to sweep.
A short while later, the men carried the table downstairs and centered it in her space. Aiden and Morgan groaned as they set it down. “That’s got to be the heaviest table in the house,” King said.
“I know. Isn’t it great? I’m psyched. The Holly King and Oak King are symbols of protection. They battle for rule at midsummer and Yule. The oak is king of spring and summer and the holly of fall and winter, which makes this the best Celtic altar ever.”
The men stole glances at each other.
“Are the big macho men afraid of an altar? Don’t worry. We hardly ever sacrifice humans anymore.” She cocked a brow at King. “Though I could make an exception.”
Aiden elbowed him. “You gotta stop pissin’ off the witch.”
King firmed his jaw, and Harmony raised a brow. “The gardeners said I could borrow some of the balled burlap saplings, so can you get the oaks and hollies from the shed? Nine, if you please.”
Morgan jingled the change in his pocket. “Can I ask why?”
“Sure. My sisters and I are hereditary Pictish witches—like our ancestor Lili from the nineteenth century—and our craft is based on the Celtic and Druidic traditions, hence woodland rituals near oaks. But since the focus of our ritual is inside, we’re bringing the trees to us. In case you’re interested, Mr. Debunker, I’ll be using a hawthorn wand tomorrow for psychic protection.”
“I assure you that you’ll need no psychic protection from me.”
“I should hope not, Morgan the Mystic.” Harmony drew a circle on the unfinished stone floor in blue carpenter’s chalk. “I don’t normally
draw
the circle, but you’re men, so I’m forcing you to use a map for tree placement, whether you want to or not.”
“I guess she told you,” Aiden said to Morgan. And King gave Morgan an empathetic backslap. Storm and Destiny returned with Jake and Reggie, then, and Jake went to King and leaned in, curling his small arm around his grandfather’s leg, as if King had been home base forever.
Reggie kissed King’s cheek. “We missed you, Dad.”
King thawed in place.
“Besides getting arrested, how goes the custody battle?” she asked. “I know you said we’d be fine on the phone, but dish.”
“I have custody of the two of you until the hearing. Don’t tell anyone, but after the kidnapping trick your mother pulled in California, my lawyer plans to tie everything in a legal knot for the next six months, until you’re eighteen. If the bi—big child support stealer won’t play fair, neither will I.”
“Yes!” Reggie threw her arms around him. “This day is absolutely perfect. Now I’m really excited about the midsummer celebration. I can’t wait to start. Harmony, what can I do to help?”
His daughter’s excitement over the witchy celebration seemed to set a new steel rod in King’s spine.
“You can help Storm pick herbs in the kitchen garden, later,” Harmony said. “And Jake, can you play the drum at our bonfire tonight?”
He looked disappointed. “But Dessie made me a dragon costume.”
“Well then, our dragon can play the drums. Wha’d’ya say?”
He raised an arm in victory. “Ye-esss!”
“Why a dragon?” Aiden asked.
“It’s a leftover from Saint George and the dragon,” Storm said. “By rights we should have a unicorn, and some horses, as well, but we’re partial to dragons.”
Aiden raised his glass her way. “Really glad to hear it.”
King glanced at Aiden with surprise as Destiny came in with a big box. “Where do you want me to put our robes and ritual supplies?” she asked, raising the box—awkward, and clumsy, but not heavy.
Morgan came in with a sapling in each hand. “Where do you want the saplings?”
“On the blue chalk circle, remember?” Harmony said.
But when Morgan saw Destiny juggling the box, he set down the trees and took the box from her, as if she were a fragile pixie princess.
For his efforts, Destiny snubbed him.
“Where to?” he asked.
“A gentleman debunker,” Harmony quipped. “Imagine that. Put it in the dorm.”
King rubbed his hands together, getting into the spirit or falling in with Jake and Reggie’s enthusiasm. Either way,
thank the Goddess
. “What’s next?” he asked.
“Next, my sisters and I will take a cleansing and protective ritual bath in the ocean to prepare for our midnight bonfire and dawn ritual.”
“Naked?” Jake asked.