Soulbound: A Lone Star Witch Novel

by Tessa Adams

  Declan starts at my abdomen, small little sweeps of heat that both ease the pain and fan the sparks inside of me, so that all I can feel is him. He skims up my rib cage, taking care of the bruising that has made it difficult to breathe these last three days before moving up to my breasts.

  He’s not touching me, though if I close my eyes I can almost imagine that he is. That the moist line of fire that follows the bruising, bruising that imitates the knife slices on both Lina and the girl I found tonight, is actually his finger. Or even his tongue.

  The thought has me gasping, arching, as I search for the reassurance of his hands. It’s ridiculous, and more than a little embarrassing, that I’m getting aroused by the way Declan is touching me. I was so anxious at first and he worked so hard to set me at ease, that it’s hard to imagine that thirty minutes later I’m this needy.

  He doesn’t seem to notice as he continues to ease the aches, even as he creates new ones. By the time he’s worked his way to my nipples, I’m all but panting for him. His magic slides over them and I gasp, tremble.

  He pulls back immediately and I nearly moan in disappointment.

  “I’ll stop.” His voice is hoarse, his breathing a little quicker than usual, and I realize he’s reacting to the vibes I’m throwing out.

  “You don’t have to,” I tell him, shocked at the low, gravelly sound of my own voice. And at my own audacity, when I grab his hand and place it on the front of my thigh—the last place on my body that still has bruises.

  “Are you sure?” Part of me thinks he’s asking about more than the healing, but that could just be wishful thinking.

  “Yes.”

  He swallows, then I feel him stroking me here too, his hands resting on my thighs, his fingers stroking the cuts from branches near the lake before moving on to the bruises that decorate my inner thighs. Bruises that look an awful lot like fingers from where that bastard held her down—

  I cut the thought off before I can complete it. It doesn’t belong here, not now, not in this moment that is so pure and sweet and sexy. I want these moments with Declan, need them to finish wiping away the horror I saw—and felt—earlier tonight. When I think about my body, about sex, I don’t want to think about the sick perversions of a monster. Instead I want to remember the tenderness and light that is Declan at these most intimate moments.

  Declan freezes when he reaches those bruises and I feel his rage break through the light, through the gentleness that he’s been showering me with. But I don’t want to lose it—lose him—so I grab his hands in both of mine and hold him still, hold him there, as my thumbs stroke over the back of his palms.

  “I’m fine,” I repeat. “Don’t bring him in here with us.”

  “He’s already here.” It’s more of a growl than actual words and I know I’m losing him to the darkness.

  “No, he’s not.” I move his hands up a little until they’re only inches from the heart of me. “I need this from you,” I tell him huskily. “I need you to make me forget.”

  Maybe it’s not fair, but at this point I’m so over fair. All I care about is assuaging the need Declan has built deep inside of me—the need for comfort, for passion, for him.

  Declan’s not buying it though. He pulls away, scoots to the head of the bed until his face is mere inches from mine. Then he studies me, those midnight eyes of his probing at my own, prying open my every secret fear and desire.

  I don’t know how long we stay like that, but eventually he must find what he’s looking for because he bends and presses soft kisses to my forehead and eyes before skimming his lips down my cheek and jaw.

  “You have to tell me,” he says, right before he claims my lips in the sweetest kiss I’ve ever experienced. “I won’t take the chance of making a mistake with you.”

  “I want—” My voice freezes in my throat. Normally I’m not shy, but for some reason I have a hard time asking this bold, beautiful, brilliant man for what I want. What I need.

  I arch against him, try to show him with my body what I’m having trouble putting into words and he leans over me again, his mouth a mere inch or so from mine. “Do you want me to give you an orgasm, Xandra?”

  “Yes.” Oh, goddess, yes. Please. I can’t remember ever being this aroused.

  Declan doesn’t wait for a second invitation, instead he takes my mouth in a kiss that is a million times more potent than any we have ever shared before. He’s restrained, careful even, as his tongue coasts over my upper lip, then my lower one, before running along the seam between them. And still it’s too much.

  I open to him as my body threatens to go into sensory overload. And then he’s kissing me, claiming me, his tongue sliding over and around mine. At the same time, he’s touching me with his mind, his hands—his magic—everywhere at once.

  I feel his hands sliding over my legs—playing with the sensitive spots behind my knees at the same moment they tickle my toes and cup my rear. And his mouth, his wicked, wonderful mouth continues to torment my own, even as I can feel him licking at the hollow of my throat.

  I arch and tremble against him, trying to get closer, trying to draw him over and inside me. But he isn’t budging, except to glide his mouth over to my ear. His tongue traces the delicate lower lobe of my ear—I can feel the warmth and wetness of it there as I clutch his silky black hair between my fingers. At the same time, though, I would swear his mouth is on my right nipple, drawing on the bud strongly enough to curl my toes and have me begging for release. Begging for him.

  In the back of my head, I know what he’s doing. He’s using his magic to replace the killer’s, using his gifts to bring me pleasure instead of pain, so that I won’t forever associate the use of power with brutality. And while I can understand, and even admire, what he’s doing, there’s a huge part of me that doesn’t care. It’s the same part that’s going crazy at the scent and touch and taste of him.

  “Declan, please.” I’m not above begging if it will get me what I want.

  He reaches for my hands, entwines our fingers. Then sends his magic deep inside of me. I climax at the first thrust of it, and the feelings are so intense—so out of control—that for long moments I’m lost. Exhilarated and terrified and ecstatic, all at the same time. The only thing keeping me grounded, keeping me from flying apart at the seams, is Declan’s grip on my hands. His mouth at the hollow of my throat.

  The reality of Declan keeps the fear in check, lets the joy soar through me unencumbered as my orgasm goes on and on and on. He keeps stoking it. Keeps pushing me higher and higher until I don’t know where his soul ends and mine begins. For someone who’s spent the last eight years going it alone, it’s a disturbing feeling. And also a tempting one.

  When it’s over, when I finally come back down, I pull Declan onto the bed with me and try to give him just a little of what he’s just given me.

  He stills my hands with one of his own, even as he wraps an arm around me and pulls me close. “Sleep, Xandra,” he murmurs, and I’m not even surprised to feel a blanket drifting slowly over us.

  I want to disagree with him, to make love to him as he just did to me, but the last few days are catching up to me. Plus I’m cozy and warm and for the first time since this nightmare began, I feel safe. Really safe.

  I drift off to sleep with Declan’s heartbeat strong and steady beneath my ear.

  Nineteen

  I awake some time later to find Declan propped up beside me on an elbow. I’m on my stomach with my head turned toward him and my hand resting on his chest, like I need to be close to him, even in near unconsciousness. I’m not sure what that means, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t scare me.

  Still, I smile sleepily at him. He doesn’t return it. He’s too busy tracing the thin white lines on the back of my thigh, going over the freshly healed scars that replaced the branded-on circlet of Isis.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t remove it completely,” he says huskily, when he realizes I’m watching him. “But this should minimize your
exposure to…him.”

  “No. It’s good. It’s really good. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. Not for this.” He sounds venomous now, so angry that I can’t believe this is the same person who earlier touched me so gently. “Don’t ever thank me for this. Not when it’s my fault it’s happening to you.”

  I start to placate him, to voice one or two of the meaningless platitudes that women keep on tap to make men feel better. But then what he said actually sinks in. “What do you mean? How can this be your fault?”

  He sighs, shifting so he’s sitting up in bed. I do the same, waiting for an explanation that I expect to be able to poke holes straight through. At least until he does something so unexpected, I can only gape. He rolls up his sleeve and shows me the inside of his forearm, where a perfect circlet of Isis is tattooed on his skin. It’s identical in size and color to the one on my collarbone and I stare at it in shock for long seconds.

  Then I open my hand, stare at the silver Seba that has rested there since Declan and I met on my nineteenth birthday.

  He nods before taking my hand and stroking his thumb lightly over my palm. The Seba starts to glow, much like the sparks that created it on that long ago night.

  I can’t help myself. I do the same to him, running my fingers over Declan’s forearm and watching in shock as his circlet of Isis lights up as well.

  “How? What? I don’t—” I know I’m babbling, but I can’t seem to stop. None of this makes any sense.

  “I’m not sure how to explain it to you,” he says. “Except to say that our souls are connected.”

  I wait for more of an explanation, but nothing else is forthcoming. Finally, I ask, incredulous, “That’s it? The best explanation you’ve got is a cheesy pickup line?”

  “It’s not a pickup line,” he tells me with the first grin I’ve seen from him all night. For a second I forget what we’re talking about—I’m that dazzled by his smile. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it before, not like this, and it lights up his face. Makes him look a million times more approachable than usual.

  “Well, it sure as hell isn’t an explanation of magic. ‘Our souls are connected?’ How lame is that?”

  “It might be lame, but it’s also true. Your magic—”

  “I have no magic.”

  “Your magic,” he continues like I haven’t even spoken, “is tied to mine. And vice versa.”

  “Well, then, you definitely got the better end of that deal. Because I’m latent.”

  “Not anymore. In case you haven’t noticed, your power has woken up with a vengeance.” He runs a frustrated hand over his face. “And the longer we’re in contact, the more magic you’re going to get.”

  “What about you?”

  “It’s the same with me.”

  “But you already have a ton of power.”

  “It’s only a drop in the bucket to what I used to have.”

  I think back to those long ago whispers. I’d chalked them down to sour grapes, but had they been right all along? Had Declan really lost most of the magic he once wielded?

  “When? When did you lose it?”

  “The night you were born. The same night you lost yours.”

  “I never had mine.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  I think back to the stories I’ve heard of that night—of the lightning and Isis and all the signs that pointed toward my having a copious amount of magic. It’s enough to have me thinking that maybe—just maybe—he knows what he’s talking about.

  “How do you know all this?” I finally ask him. “I’ve never even heard of anything like this and you say it so calmly.”

  “I’ve had twenty-seven years to get used to it. It took me a while to figure out exactly what had occurred, but I knew something was different.”

  “‘Something was different’ is a long way from thinking our souls are connected. I mean, how do you know?”

  He laughs, but it’s a rusty sound. “I felt it.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t feel anything. Maybe you have the wrong person.”

  “How do you know you don’t feel it? You’ve lived with this every day of your life—you don’t know any differently. I did. I spent over two hundred and fifty years without you.”

  His matter-of-fact assessment sends me reeling. Sends me searching inside myself for some kind of neon sign that tells me Declan is right. But there’s nothing there, just this feeling of unease deep inside of me.

  Declan must see it because he smooths a hand over my hair. “Don’t freak out on me.”

  “How can I not freak out? How come you’re not freaking out?”

  “I’ve known about you, in the abstract, since the moment it happened. I just didn’t know it was you, not for a long time.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me when you figured it out?”

  “You were young, too young to deal with this.”

  “I was nineteen.”

  He shakes his head. “You were twelve. I waited seven years before I came back for you.”

  The information sends me reeling all over again. “You knew when I was twelve? And you didn’t say anything?”

  “What was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to do? Just walk up to your parents and drop the news on them? Your father would have done his best to kill me.”

  “He wouldn’t have succeeded.”

  He shakes his head in disbelief. “No, but I could have hurt him, even killed him. I didn’t want to do that.”

  “So you went away until my Kas Djedet. When you came there that night, you wanted…what?”

  For the first time he looks away from me, tension making every one of his muscles taut. “I don’t know what I wanted.”

  He’s lying, but I don’t push it. Not now. Instead, I think back to that night, to the way he’d seemed as wary of me as I was of him. I’d thought it was strange considering he held all the magic, but now I understand. Or at least think I do. If our souls are connected, then I have as much power over him as he does over me. I’m not sure how I feel about that, about any of this. I trust Declan more today than I ever have before, but that doesn’t mean I want to give him access to my soul.

  “So, what happens now?” I finally demand. “Say you’re right and our souls are actually connected in some weird Heka thing? Now that we’re in contact with one another? What happens?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question. I would guess that we both continue to get more powerful, but I figure there’s a loophole. Beyond the obvious, I mean.”

  “What’s the obvious?” I demand. “Maybe I’m an idiot, but from where I’m sitting nothing about this conversation is obvious.”

  Declan stares at me with deliberate calculation, like he’s trying to decide what and how much he wants to say. It annoys me enough that I snap, “Spit it out, Chumomisto.”

  “Okay. To put it frankly, your magic sucks.”

  “I already told you that. I’m latent. You’re the one who keeps insisting—”

  “No, not that way. What I’m saying is, the powers that you do have—they’re pretty terrible. Finding dead bodies, linking with sociopaths, feeling people die…I wouldn’t wish that on my enemy, let alone—” He breaks off abruptly.

  Why is it suddenly so hard for me to breathe? “Let alone?”

  “Let alone you, Xandra,” he finally says, reaching up to brush a lock of hair out of my eye. “I hate that you’re having to go through all of this. I hate that it’s my fault.”

  I think about what he’s saying for a few seconds, and then about what I’d already realized—that he’s been around every time I’ve found a body.

  So it really wasn’t the belladonna after all. Salima and my mother are going to be so disappointed.

  Something he said tickles at my brain, a thought not quite formed that hovers around the periphery of my consciousness. I try to focus on it, but it flits away, leaving me confused and almost hyperaware of Declan.

  “It’s not actually your faul
t, right? I mean, if we weren’t tied together like this then I’d have these powers all the time. Not just when you’re close to me.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure about that.”

  “Why not? If my powers awaken only when I’m with you—”

  “Again I’m not sure that’s the case. You were latent from birth because our powers had never come into contact with one another before your nineteenth birthday. But now that they have, who knows if you’ll continue to be latent if I’m not around? Will you be as powerful away from me as you are near me? No, of course not. But will you continue being latent?” He shakes his head. “I doubt it.”

  “You’re confusing me.” It’s my turn to pace the room a little.

  “Welcome to my life.”

  “So, do me a favor and spell things out for me. I’m stuck with these powers now? Forever? Whether you’re around or not?” Another thing I don’t know how to feel about. Too much has happened tonight and I’ve dealt with too many emotions. I’m not sure I have any left to deal with this, too.

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  “This isn’t an exact science, Xandra. It’s not like I look into my crystal ball and the answers just magically appear. I’m flying blind here, just like you.”

  “No,” I tell him. “Not just like me. You’ve known about this for years.” I pause, consider. “You have a crystal ball?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Seriously?”

  The question that’s been haunting me since he began talking slips out. “Why didn’t you stay? You left after one night.”

  He looks uncomfortable, miserable even, and for some reason his obvious guilt has another piece of the puzzle sliding into place. “That’s why you left. Eight years ago. Because my magic kicked in, right?”

  He pushes to his feet, shoves an agitated hand through his hair. “You didn’t see yourself. You were heartbroken, completely devastated—and in so much pain. How could I stay knowing it would only get worse for you?”