by Hazel Hunter
Instinct took over, and she turned and ran. But god, he was faster than she could have imagined, faster than humanly possible. She realized with a chill that perhaps he was no man at all.
His hand wrapped around her wrist like a manacle. When she tried to struggle, it was like pushing against iron.
“You,” he said distantly, “have caused me a great deal of trouble.”
He dragged her towards his car, and no matter how much she struggled, there was nothing she could do. She tried to dig her feet in. She tried to cling to a lamppost, but in the end, his strength was terrifying. Finally, she opened her mouth to scream. Though she had learned to never, ever make noise, she knew she would have to. But suddenly a foul-smelling rag was placed over her mouth and nose.
She fought the drugged stupor that immediately came over her, but it had even less mercy than Brent had. Her last thought was of Dominic, his concerned eyes and his sweet smile. But then her eyes drifted shut, and she knew no more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SOPHIA BECAME AWARE of footsteps pacing back and forth. Her hands were tied together, and her whole body felt heavy and full. She was lying on her side on a hard tile floor, and she realized that it was Brent who was moving so restlessly. Still groggy, she tried to think of what she could do to hurt him and free herself. Then she heard a deep and wearied sigh.
“Honestly, kiddo, do you think I can't tell you're awake? Give it up.”
She opened her eyes to see she was on the tile floor of what looked like a well-appointed kitchen. Though Brent stood a little further away, he quickly marched over.
“Here,” he said, grabbing the front of her blouse. “Let me help.”
She heard the fabric rip as he yanked her up into a sitting position and shoved her back against the cabinets. She winced at the sharp pain in her back, as he let her go. How she could ever have taken him for an older man, she didn’t know. He dealt out his brutality with a casual ease that said it was practiced. It occurred to her then he had the same kind of presence as Dominic, but it was terrifying in Brent.
“What the hell is going on?” she managed to get out.
Though she wanted her voice to come out strong and demanding, it wobbled like a two-day old kitten. She tried again. “What do you want? What are you doing?”
“Did your investigator not tell you what was going on? Did he not even do you that courtesy before he abandoned you?”
“You're a Templar knight,” she whispered
He smirked as he tapped the sword tie-pin he wore.
“Was. I was a Templar knight, until I fell into disgrace. Now when I am spoken of at all, it is as an antique. That night in Phoenix changed things for all of us, I think.”
“Phoenix? You were there?” She nearly choked on the words, staring at her former employer wide-eyed. “It was you who killed–”
“Killed your little boyfriend, yes, I did.” Brent nodded as if he were simply passing the time. “I thought at first that he was the warlock I was hunting. Think about how surprised I was when I was told, no, I was wrong.”
“You killed Jason!” she snarled, anger and fury mingling together.
“He was nothing,” he said impatiently. “He was a mistake, and believe me when I say he was one I had plenty of time to regret over the last four years. They called it my final mistake, the final sign that I was unreliable in the field, not to be trusted. Can you believe that?”
He seized a handful of Sophia's hair, tugging her face up to meet his. His eyes were incredibly calm, but there was a madness behind them. In a blinding flash, she could see how he had killed Jason—and how he was going to kill her too.
“They banished me here,” he said softly. “They told me to stay quiet in case they ever decided to activate me. What fools. They didn't realize that they had set it so that we would cross paths again.”
“Why didn't you kill me?” she choked, and he shrugged, dropping her carelessly.
“I wasn't sure I wanted to. They had wronged me. Why should I do their work? Then I realized that if my people were still looking for you, the warlocks would be as well. They'd be desperate to find you, to recover one of their own. After that, I just decided to wait. They would come looking for you at some point or another. I knew they would send a warlock.”
The calm mask that was Brent's face broke, and for a moment, the fury that lived underneath roiled out. “And they did send one, but he left!”
He wrapped his hand around her arm and easily hauled her to a standing position. Her face was inches away from his.
“You were so worthless, so pathetic, that he didn't want you! Do you know what could keep a mage from his duty? Nothing in the goddamned world! No, unless it turned out that you were so pitiful that you weren't worth his time!”
He slammed her against the refrigerator so hard that she her vision blurred. The air was forced from in a sharp grunt. She couldn’t stay on her feet. But then he was there again, in her face and oddly tender as he righted her.
“No, nothing on earth would put an Corps officer off the trail of his duty.”
Sophia's eyes filled with tears, and she didn't care if Brent thought that it was because she was afraid. But the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place for her, and she couldn't take it. Nothing could sway a mage from his duty, unless it was love. He had loved her and let her go.
“And now here I sit, with a bit of bait that proved to be completely worthless. I have an untried, worthless witchling to show for my trouble. No Magus Corps officer. No admittance back into the working order. Nothing.”
He paused, and then, to Sophia's horror, he reached for a knife that was resting on the counter. It was just a standard chef's knife, simple and strong, but the ease with which he handled it sent chills down Sophia's spine.
“Well, nothing except for the pleasure of killing a witch. Surely you wouldn't begrudge it to me, kiddo.”
He raised the knife high, and Sophia couldn't stop staring. A thousand thoughts raced through her mind: she wondered if it would hurt; she’d hardly lived yet; how she hated Brent for ending it too soon. Oh please, she wanted to live. Dominic, Dominic, Dominic, I'm so sorry!
The crash of glass startled them both. It had come from the living room, and now a roar that shook the house could be heard.
“Templar, come and fight!”
Sophia knew that voice. She knew it, but she could barely recognize it for the fury that distorted it. It was Dominic, but not the gentle lover who had taken her to bed. He came into the kitchen with both of his daggers drawn, taking in the scene.
Brent's grip on Sophia's arm tightened, and he pulled her closer to him. She was practically cradled against his chest, unable to struggle.
“You're not who I thought would come looking,” Brent said, his voice calm and dead.
“I'm what you get, Templar. Step away from her, and let us settle this.”
“Step away? I think not. Your Corps might have been interested in fair play, but we Templars have only ever been interested in what worked. No, I think you are going to drop your daggers, and I think you are going to let me gut you.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because perhaps when I am done with you, I will let this little witchling go. She can run and live for at least a little longer. What does that mean to you, warlock?”
To Sophia's disbelief, Dominic's daggers wavered.
No! This can’t be happening. He couldn’t–
Brent chuckled lowly, a vibrating thrum that started in his chest. The look on Dominic’s face. The sound of triumph in Brent’s laugh. Without thinking, Sophia did the only thing she could do. She turned her face to him and bit down. Wild panic fueled her, as her teeth found his chest. She could hardly believe it was happening. But fabric and flesh filled her mouth, and then the taste of blood.
Brent howled like an enraged animal and roughly shoved her away. Before she hit the counter, she saw Dominic lunge at Brent. The templar twisted out of the wa
y with a weasel's quickness, and then they were slicing at each other, moving almost more quickly than Sophia's eyes could follow. The knives glinted in the air. She could hear the rush of air, as they moved, and worse yet, she could see blood.
“Get away!” Dominic yelled at her. “Get away!”
The air suddenly prickled, and her hair began to rise. It was the lightning, Dominic's thunderbolt. She threw herself backwards, sliding along the counter, before she crashed to the floor. A blue light flashed in the room, blinding her, and the smell of ozone filled her nostrils. When she was finally able to roll to her side and open her eyes, she saw Brent’s body. Though wisps of steam rose slowly from it, he lay very still. A gaping seam of red had opened across the front of his throat. She had no doubt that he would never move again. Thankfully her view was cut off.
Dominic staggered to her, and to her horror, she could see that at least some of the blood was his. It dripped from his shoulder, and there was an open wound on his chest. Despite his injuries, he cut her loose and then, somehow found the strength to lift her.
“When you decide that you want a guy back, you really don't mess around.”
He wrapped his arms around her.
“You're hurt,” she said, not able to take her eyes off of his injuries. “We need to call a hospital.”
“I've had worse than this,” he said with a laugh. “Far, far worse than this. I promise. It might take me some time to heal, but I will.”
It took her a moment to digest that.
“But if you’ll heal, what about...?”
She glanced at Brent’s body, and Dominic's eyes hardened.
“They're something else again, but a slash across the throat and a few thousand watts of electricity kills them just like it kills most things. You don't have to worry about him anymore. He killed your friend Jason, didn't he?”
“He did,” she said with a shudder. “He was going to kill me. I don't even know how he found me. It's not like I did anything different.”
“I’m afraid I played a part in that,” Dominic said lowly. “He knew you when you arrived, of course, kept you close through the investigator job. That was clever on his part. He’d have studied you in Phoenix too, known where to be waiting when you surfaced, knew what would appeal to you. I couldn’t let go either. It was as though the three of us became bound by Jason’s death. All our lives had been…affected.”
Phoenix. It suddenly seemed so far away.
Dominic shifted the collar of his shirt away to check the wounds in his chest and shoulder. To Sophia’s amazement, there were only dull red smudges that remained. She lightly ran shaking fingers over them. Dominic took her hand.
“Sophia,” he said, gazing down into her eyes. His look froze her and time seemed to stand still. “Don’t say no to me again. Not ever. I don’t think I could–”
“Yes,” she said, muffling his words with her mouth. “Yes,” she whispered against his lips. “Yes, yes, yes.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SIX WEEKS LATER
The Catskill Mountains were gorgeous in the heart of summer. The leaves of the trees were every shade of green imaginable, and in Dominic's cabin high up on the slope, Sophia could see it all. The morning air had just a touch of chill in it, and she burrowed deeper into the sweatshirt she had pulled from Dominic's clothing just a few moments before.
On a chair just inside the cabin, Zora snored in quiet contentment. They had found her terrified in Sophia's closet, and she had ridden all the way east in Sophia's lap.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Dominic said.
He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She was getting used to having someone around, someone to depend on, and it only took her a moment to relax against him again.
He nuzzled the side of her neck, and she giggled softly.
“You aren't going to get very much out of me if you keep doing that,” she pointed out, and obediently, he stopped. That was one of the things she loved about him. He wanted to hear what she had to say, and he had the patience of five centuries to wait for her to speak. “I haven’t hidden in weeks,” she said softly, and his arms around her tightened. “And it feels good. It feels right.”
“I'm glad,” he whispered in her ear. Sophia turned and he pulled their hips together, wrapping her up in his arms. “Because I love you,” he said solemnly, looking deeply into her eyes. “I've never known anything else the way that I know that. I love you, Sophia, and I’ll never stop.”
For a moment she thought of the bleak years of hiding. They had included hiding her heart—from the pain of loss and from the risk of hurt. And though she’d worried that she had hid it too well, the next words came easily.
“I love you, Dominic,” she whispered.
And as his mouth closed tenderly on hers, and the words echoed in her mind, she knew she would never need to hide again.
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EXCERPT FROM SEBASTIAN: Her Warlock Protector Book 2
Nicolette stretched the kiss out as long as she could. She never wanted to stop kissing this man. She never wanted to lift her mouth from his or to pull away from him. It had been such a long time since she had kissed someone, but she thought that this man, this night and this summer sky were all worth waiting for.
In the distance, she could hear the sounds of the thoroughfare, and on the wind, she could smell the fresh scent of summer hay. Her hand resting lightly on Sebastian's chest could feel his heartbeat, and when she finally pulled away, there was a wild look in his eyes.
“Nicolette, I have to tell you–”
“Tomorrow. It can wait until tomorrow, can't it?”
She wasn't sure that she trusted the answer in his eyes, and so she pressed him down to the blanket and rose up to straddle his thighs. She relished the feel of his body underneath hers, and the roughness of his jeans against her bare legs excited her.
“You're trouble,” he said, his voice soft and rough.
She laughed a little. “That I am,” she said. “What you need to figure out is whether I'm trouble that's worth having. I'm not making any promises or offering anything beyond tonight, but before dawn…well, I want everything with you. Do you understand?”
His hands came up to land on her bare thighs, and she shivered to feel his sure touch against her flesh. He slid them slowly up to her waist, and she could feel the strength in him, coiled and waiting. It should have made her afraid, but like so much about this strange man, she only felt safe and warm.
“I do understand, and I think you're always worth the trouble that you bring, if it's trouble at all. I think it might be something else.”
She started to ask what he meant, but then he leaned up to cup one hand around the nape of her neck and to bring her down for another kiss. This one was long and drugging, and when his tongue probed between her lips, she opened her mouth. He tasted of the caramel apple they had shared before, and of something that was indefinably unique to him. It was a taste that she could get drunk on, and she twisted slowly on top of him, writhing against him as he kissed her.
She could feel him get hard against her belly, and it made her catch her breath. His engorged manhood pressed against her, made her body ache with desire, and when she squirmed on top of him, she drew a long sigh from his lips.
“Sweetheart, the show's not going to last very long if you keep doing that.”
“Maybe I like it hard and fast,” she murmured, and his response was only a ragged laugh.
“I don't know if I want that, though,” he said.
That was all the warning she got before he tumbled her onto her back on the blankets. He rose over her, and he kissed her again. This time, he let his mouth drift from her lips to her ear, and when she tilted her head to give him more room, he nipped at her tender lob
e.
“I think that if tonight is what we have, I want to stretch it out. I want to have as much of you as I can, and I want to taste you, lick you, bite you. Make you feel everything that you can. Enjoy you, and let you enjoy me.”
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Dear Wonderful Reader,
Thank you so much for spending time with me. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it! My newsletter will let you know about new releases and only new releases. Don’t miss the next sizzling, hot romance! Visit HazelHunter.com/books to find more great stories available today.
XOXO,
Hazel
COPYRIGHT © 2015 Hazel Hunter
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