I imagined him sliding his fingers over my skin and blushed. I hadn’t even started counting, and it was already hard to concentrate, which was silly. It wasn’t like he’d said “I want you to trace my muscles using your tongue.” And, come to think of it, why the Sam Houston hadn’t he? He’d been flirting nonstop, and now that he had me in his bedroom, he wasn’t even going to try to trick me into having sex with him? In my book, we called that a tease.
I stared at the cut edges and began to count. I got to around five before he touched me, tapping my forearm with his thumb. I stopped and bit my lip. I started counting again.
He moved his hand to hook my jeans pocket closest to him. He tugged on the fabric.
“Darn it,” I mumbled, starting to count again. I couldn’t see his face, but felt sure he was laughing at me. I was only on number three when he laced his fingers through mine and pulled my hand to his body.
I turned my head to look at him. His perfect profile didn’t move for several seconds as if he were studying the skylight, too.
The back of my hand lay against his side, growing warm.
“I can’t do it. I can’t concentrate.”
He looked over. “No? Why not?” His fingers tightened his grasp on my hand.
“Because you’re purposely trying to distract me, and it’s distracting.”
“You have to learn.”
“Oh, really? And you could concentrate with a strange woman touching you?”
“Try me.”
Uh-huh.
“Recite something. Some poem out loud so I know you’re not cheating and just telling me some number that you already have memorized.”
“The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair upon the straits,” he began.
I rolled onto my side, studying him.
“On the French coast, the light gleams and is gone.”
I put my free hand on his stomach and slid it down to the waistband of his jeans and unbuttoned them.
His voice slowed, but continued. “The cliffs of England stand, glimmering and vast . . .”
I put my thumb just inside where I’d unbuttoned and rubbed it against his skin.
His voice trailed off, and he chuckled. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said as I pulled my hand back from his waist.
He rolled suddenly, knocking me onto my back and pinning me under him. I would have been shocked, if I’d been born yesterday. He’d reacted to being touched the way any guy would have. My body reacted to him lying on top of me in the usual way, too, but I didn’t let it show.
“I was just proving a point. That wasn’t a special invitation to make like a dog on a steak,” I said.
“As a matter of fact, you didn’t prove your point.”
“You’re counting ceiling glass with the eyes in the back of your head?” I asked.
He smiled. “I’m going to explain everything in a few minutes when I finish kissing you.”
My heart sped up. “Don’t you dare kiss me.”
“Hold on to me,” he whispered, then pressed his lips over mine. I felt hotter than a campfire, and it wasn’t only from the velvety feel of his tongue parting my lips or his solid gorgeous male-smelling body pressing mine into the expensive feather bed.
He paused and mumbled something against my mouth, and white heat burned inside me, coiling like a spring. I writhed under him. The sensation was like moving toward orgasm, but it wasn’t that kind of energy. I grabbed his back, digging my fingernails in, clawing against the unbearable tension. And then something flashed red before my eyes, and the spring snapped. It knocked him back, separating us. He knelt above me, head tossed back, and murmured something I didn’t understand.
All the breath left my lungs and I was falling, breathless, suffocating and cold. I couldn’t move, and a blue haze descended with a blistering wind gusting against me.
I stood on a playground. Georgia Sue, Zach, and I were out for recess from Ms. Smith’s first-grade class. A pair of demons on purple horses galloped toward us with sickles drawn.
Chapter 11
I don’t know how long I lay there hallucinating. I came back to myself, wrapped like a tamale in the silk-covered feather bed. My breath was frosty on the warm air. I coughed, shivering, and sat up, stiff as a plastic doll.
Bryn stood at the mirror. There were scratches on his back from my fingernails, but he peeled the gauze back, and the werewolf’s gouges were gone. The skin looked smooth and perfect. He saw me staring at him in the mirror and turned.
“What did you do to me?” I asked, shaking like a newborn calf. I felt like I’d been doused with ice water and left in a freezer.
He walked back to the bed and crawled on it. “Cold?”
“Yes,” I said as my teeth chattered.
He yanked the bedding from my fingers and pulled it loose. He pushed me back and curled up with me, covering us both. His body was like a furnace, and, as angry as I was, I couldn’t resist the heat.
“We’re a perfect match, magically speaking. I could have resisted your touching my body. Sexual excitement alone can’t distract me when I focus. But your magic fits mine, tongue and groove, interlocking, like male and female body parts. Without any practice or training together, I can siphon energy from you,” he said.
I slapped his shoulder. “I’m not a gas tank. You can’t just steal my power.”
He grinned. “Yes, I can, which is a good reason for you to apprentice yourself to me. I can teach you how to stop me.”
“Oh, I know how to stop you.” I kicked the covers off. His body heat and my anger had done the trick; I wasn’t as cold anymore.
He reached for me, but I slapped his hands away, scooting off the bed.
“Tamara—”
“No,” I snapped, collecting the two sheets of paper with the spells on them. They’d fallen off the bed in all the freaky sexlike magic.
“You can’t cast spells tonight. They won’t work.”
I spun to face him. “Why not?”
“I’ve drawn too much power from you.”
“Then get up off your butt and come with me. I’ve got people to save.”
“I can’t do that.”
I flung my hand forward and pointed at him. “You bastard! No wonder you’re on the list.”
“I can give you some power to work with. Come back to me,” he said, holding out a hand. He was heartbreakingly gorgeous as he tried to coax me, but I knew better than to trust him.
Those dark blue eyes glittered at me, sexy and dangerous. I wanted him, and I knew he could tell. I closed my eyes and remembered the Glenfiddle workers. I thought about Stucky Clark’s wedding, which was scheduled for next spring, and Lil Czarszak, six months pregnant. What would she do if Red died?
I clenched my fists and my jaw. My lids popped open, and I narrowed them at Bryn. “I don’t have time to cuddle up with you right now. But I do have time to wait while you write me a spell of power that will give me enough juice to make these work,” I said, shaking the pages at him.
He shook his head. “You would only hurt yourself. It’s an upper-level skill to call power from nature. You’re too inexperienced to make it work.”
I pointed my finger at him again. “You healed your wound with a healing spell that was powered by the magic you stole from me. You owe me—”
“You’re holding two spells that I gave you from one of my books. You can consider the power I took as payment for them. Reciprocity. And I’m offering to give you power back.”
“You just want to experiment or something. I can tell by that look in your eyes that you want something. Zach gets the same look when he sees a Cobra Mustang.” I marched over to the door. “And don’t think I’ll forget this. I
will
get even with you.”
“That red hair suits you.”
“Explain that!”
“Lots of passion, not much sense under its influence.”
I spun to the rock bowl fountain and snatched a rock, which I whipped at him. He ducked, and it bounced off the mahogany headboard, leaving a big chip in the veneer. “That’s for not helping me and for stealing from me and for being a total jerk!”
I flung the door open and marched out, stomping down the hallway, then the stairs. I rushed out the front door, muttering curses. I realized when I got to the gate that I didn’t have a key to get out or a car to drive home. I couldn’t even buzz the security guy because the buzzer was on the outside of the gate. I stalked over a small hill to where I figured the security man might have a post.
A high-pitched whine froze me. I’d forgotten that I hadn’t come alone to Bryn’s.
“Mercutio!” I called. I ran toward the bushes, following the sound of panting. As I crawled to the hedge, Merc screeched at me.
“It’s me!” I slid my hand in, heart hammering. I hoped he wouldn’t bite me.
I felt his fur and pulled him to me. He lay limp and bloody, fur torn. “Oh no! Mercutio, what happened? What happened to you?” I sobbed.
I cuddled him to my chest, rushing back over the hill. I got just inside the door when I saw two black heads. My sneakers, which I’d forgotten, were in Bryn’s left hand as he leaned over a large black Rottweiler that licked a bloody wound of his own.
“What have you been fighting, Angus?” Bryn asked, not seeing us.
Angus, spotting me and Mercutio, squared his broad shoulders and growled.
Bryn grabbed the dog’s collar and held him back just as he lunged toward us. Mercutio hissed and twisted in my arms.
“I hate you and your dog!” I yelled.
Angus barked and gnashed his teeth at us. Bryn shouted at the dog in some language I couldn’t even identify. He dragged Angus by the collar and locked him in a closet.
“Is he badly hurt?” Bryn asked grimly.
“I don’t know,” I said, tears running down my face.
“Here, give him to me. I’ll take him to the vet.”
“You’re not putting him to sleep. No one is putting him to sleep. He’s my cat!”
“I won’t do anything without your permission. Give him to me. You don’t have time to take him to the vet if you’re going to try the counterspell.”
“If you do anything to him, I swear I’ll be the worst enemy you ever had.”
“I very much doubt that, and you seem to forget that I’m the one who gave him to you.”
I had forgotten that. Actually, I’d forgotten everything.
I handed Mercutio gingerly to Bryn. “You’ll take him to the vet and make sure they help him?”
“I promise.”
I rubbed the tears away from my eyes and pulled my shoes from Bryn’s fingers.
“I can’t get out the gate,” I said as I shoved my feet into the sneakers.
“I’ll let you out.”
“You could have opened the gate for me earlier, couldn’t you have? You could have done it from upstairs, right? You walked down here with my sneakers because you knew I’d be coming back in.”
“My hair isn’t red,” he said with a shrug.
Arrogant freaking bastard
. I tied my shoes, strangling my feet from yanking the laces so tight. I leaned over and kissed Mercutio’s head. “I’m coming to get you right after I finish helping those people. Don’t die. I’ll buy you a lot of catnip this weekend, I promise. So don’t die,” I whispered.
Tears rolled down my cheeks again. If Bryn had been Zach, he wouldn’t have let me go so upset, but Bryn just walked over to the phone. He held Mercutio with one arm and dialed with the other hand.
As I walked toward the door, I heard him talking.
“Mac, it’s Bryn Lyons. No, Angus is fine, but I need to bring in a cat. Can you open the clinic? I’ll meet you there.”
I hurried out, trusting Bryn would take care of Mercutio because I had no choice. The limo was at the end of the drive, waiting for me. I opened the door and flung myself inside.
I didn’t need to say anything to the driver. He passed the open gate and drove me to my house. I chewed my thumbnail, telling myself with each passing block that Mercutio was tough and would be okay.
At home, I quickly washed my face and set my mind to fixing things. I gathered the ingredients and focused all my energy on what I wanted to do, to heal the injured.
I felt a rustling of the wind and heard rain splatter against the roof as I finished the henna paste.
This is going to work,
I told myself over and over.
I remembered what Bryn had said about my not having enough power left to do the spells. I knew after tonight I wouldn’t get another chance, so I had to draw magic to me or steal it from wherever I could.
I’d seen Aunt Mel work a power spell once in the backyard. I’d watched from the window but hadn’t heard all the words. I did remember that she’d marked the corners and called to the earth. She’d been naked, but I couldn’t see taking things that far.
I took off everything except my plum-colored bra and panties, then paused, wondering if I could really afford to hold back. I frowned.
But I don’t want to. I really don’t.
I stomped my foot at my hesitation. “Hey, lives are at stake. End of story.” I took a deep breath, stripped naked as a june bug and marched out into the yard with a knife. I crouched on a small patch of grass and cut symbols in four corners. I hoped they were close enough to the ones I remembered seeing in the ground.
I cut the tip of my finger, yelping in pain. Good thing I wasn’t going to do any spell-casting after the Glenfiddle problem was solved because I didn’t like poking and cutting myself. My finger throbbed and blood dripped in a steady stream. Steadier than I’d planned. Could a person bleed to death from a pricked finger? I didn’t think so, but felt a little woozy at the thought.
“Hear me, power of the earth, and feed me your strength as I give you mine. I call to the North, to the four corners, to the legacy of a family long faithful to the craft. Grant me your green energy.” Green energy? Sounded like an eco-slogan. The earth must have been skeptical, too, because I didn’t feel a thing. “Please, give me a little help. I need it and not for myself.” I stretched my arms out and tossed my head back. “I call to you. I beseech you. I’m not a witch really. But I do respect the planet. I recycle. And if you help me, I’ll start a program. Lord knows people throw away too much glass and plastic.” Was I allowed to mention God in a quest for pagan power? “God, no offense here. If you want to grant me a miracle, that would be fine, too. Amen.”