by Cherry Adair
“Have they always talked to, and about, you that way?”
“Not around their father, but yes. Pretty much. Those were only words, Duncan. None of them true.” Obviously they weren’t leaving pronto, so she carried the tray she’d been holding for a long freaking time into the living room. Sometimes the most simple tasks, done without magic, soothed her.
She didn’t feel soothed at the moment. The Test, followed by hours in the courtroom, where she had to control her temper to prevent a manifestation of her powers, had taken their toll. She was embarrassingly aware of what he’d done for her this morning. Without his help putting the brakes on her telekinetic power, things would certainly have gone haywire.
Getting shot at felt like a lifetime ago.
She was so wired she wanted to run a marathon, and so tired she could sleep for a week. “Did you find out who was shooting at you at the warehouse?”
“No. But I will.”
She believed him. She placed the tray on the coffee table and sat down in her favorite corner of the plush, cinnamon-colored sofa. She didn’t kick off her shoes as she usually did, nor did she curl her legs under her and get comfortable.
Duncan came and sat down on the opposite end of the sofa. Three feet away didn’t feel like enough space between them to Serena, but she couldn’t very well get up and move when she’d just sat down herself.
He picked up the photograph from the end table beside him. It was a twenty-five-year-old image of her and her parents. She wanted to tell him to put it down. That part of her life was none of his damn business.
She poured coffee into the waiting mugs. Without thinking, she added two sugars to Duncan’s and passed it to him. Their fingers touched in the transfer, and she felt that inexplicable zing shoot through her body from the brief contact.
No! she told herself firmly. No. No. No.
“Cute kid.” His lone dimple flashed. “I remember you wore these braces all the way through fifth grade.”
“And I remember you had to magically extricate the gum from those braces after you dared me to chew a disgustingly large wad of it.”
“Double Bubble.” So he remembered. So what? She materialized a fudge cake, plates, and utensils because she was suddenly dying for chocolate. Or sex. No, chocolate. “Want a slice?”
He shook his head. “You never could resist a dare.” His smile broadened. “Worth the punishment to see how long it could keep your mouth glued shut. When was this taken?” he asked, without missing a beat.
Serena glanced up from transferring a slice of cake to a plate. He was the king of the non sequitur. “It was a family vacation.” Their last family vacation. She met his eyes, burning and deep, suddenly not wanting the cake after all. She thought it away.
“Do you ever talk about what happened?”
No. “Look, I appreciate you coming to the courthouse, and the support, but it’s been a hellish couple of days, and I really want to be alone now. You go and see Henry. I’ll visit him later.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
The problem with Duncan was that he looked as though he could take on the world single-handedly. Most of the time that was freaking annoying. Conversely, his strength, his apparent invincibility, was seductive and incredibly appealing.
Serena didn’t need a white knight. She’d always fought her own battles. But sometimes, like now, she thought, it would be wonderful to just let someone else take over. Just for a little while.
But letting that someone be Duncan Edge was insane.
She gave him a steady look. “I killed my parents, so no, Duncan, it’s not something I bring up in casual conversation.”
His scarred brow rose. “Explain to me how a child could possibly be responsible for the deaths of two adults?” He was relentless, exasperating, pushy.
Serena closed her eyes and tried to breathe in deeply. Cool green grass. Breathe. Blue sky. Breathe. Fluffy white clouds. Breathe. Slow. Deep. In. Out. In. Out.
She looked at him without seeing him. “I couldn’t control my telekinetic powers. Just like today,” she said bitterly. “I know you put a restraining spell on me in the courtroom so my anger didn’t manifest. I couldn’t control my telekinesis today, and I couldn’t control it then.”
“I thought they’d drowned.”
The hard pounding of her heart sounded unbearably loud in her ears, and her mind’s eye filled with the memory of sunlight sparkling on the water as the family yacht cut through the calm, turquoise Caribbean waters. “They did.”
“Did Ian know you felt this way?”
“Of course.” It hadn’t been easy, but she’d managed to give him the bare bones. He’d never pressed for more detail, knowing how painful the recollection was for her. Even now the memory of their deaths made her throat tighten.
“How about Henry and Martha?”
They’d come for her at the hospital. Terrified, she’d been unable to speak about what had happened for months afterward. Then it was a wonder they’d been able to understand half of her hysterical, sobbing account. None of them had ever brought it up again. “Obviously.”
“Did they believe it was your fault?”
“Not in so many words.” The familiar weight pressed down on her chest, and her palms grew damp as her heart began to race. “But it was.”
“Bullshit.” Duncan said flatly. “You’re trying to tell me Henry Morgan blamed an eight-year-old for killing her parents? I don’t bel—”
“I don’t talk about it.” Several framed pictures fell off the bookcase. Serena glared at them, and then at him. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Reaching out, Duncan touched her clenched fist where it lay on the sofa cushion between them. “Concentrate on what you’re saying.” Unfurling her fingers with his, he slid his palm against hers as things in the kitchen started flying off the shelves. “Focus on me.”
Another dangerous path for her mind to take. She pulled her hand out of his, because touching him, being comforted by him, was seductive. “I’d rather not.” She closed her eyes tightly, and visualized…It wasn’t the memory of the past that had her emotions out of whack so much as it was Duncan.
Before the kiss, their relationship, for want of a better word, was clear, black and white. They snipped and teased each other. But now…God, now just looking at this man with his flame-hot blue eyes and serious expression, made her heart thud, and her senses swim. She wanted to kiss him again. She wanted—
Her head examined.
Edge. Edge. Edge.
“You’re going to leave me with that cliff-hanger?”
“Apparently so.” She’d already blurted out too much. Martha and Henry had insisted on therapy, and it had helped enormously. But Serena still wasn’t ready to bare her soul. Especially to Duncan. Especially since she felt like a tuning fork vibrating to his signal.
“Can’t you look without touching?” she demanded. Careful to avoid touching him again, she took the picture from him, placing it face down on the coffee table.
“I always like to touch what I’m looking at,” he said, voice husky. She glanced up at the altered tone.
He was looking right at her, his eyes blazing hot, his face taut.
Their gazes locked.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. The warning in her head became fainter and fainter and Serena met fire with fire of her own. “That’s a very provocative statement,” she said coolly, while her blood raced and her heart took up a jungle beat at her audacity. “Are you going to back it up?”
She looked so delectably prim sitting there in her trim skirt and blouse, her coppery hair twisted in some mystifyingly intricate coil at her nape. Daring him. Oh, yeah. This was Serena at her poker-faced best. If he wasn’t keeping tabs on the jittery pulse at the base of her throat he could—almost—believe that she was unaffected. Almost.
Without moving, Duncan mentally slid the hem of Serena’s skirt a few inches up her thighs. “Is that a dare, Fury?”
&nb
sp; She pressed her knees together primly, but seeing her nipples pressed against the thin silk of her blouse spiked his fever. He skimmed the fabric up another inch. And then another.
“We’re way too sensible to dare each other into doing something stupid.” She zapped open the top three buttons of his shirt as she leaned back against the soft cushions, crossing her long legs with a glide of smooth, bare skin.
He inched down the zipper at her hip. Forget the dare part. He cut to the chase. “We’re way too sensible to do anything stupid.”
“Exactly.” Shooting him a gleaming, innocent glance from guileless gray eyes, the mirrors to her soul, she retaliated.
S-l-o-w-l-y.
His jaw ached as the zipper of his slacks opened. One. Tooth. At. A—Jesus! she was killing him—Time. Hard as a rock, he was grateful she’d taken the pressure off his fly.
Ah, Jesus. She was a delight. Sexy. Dangerous as hell, but she brought an unexpected lightness to his—
This was dangerous. Imprudent. Insane. But Christ, it felt good.
He wanted her more than he wanted his next breath.
“I’ve always wondered—” His shirt disappeared. Her gaze felt as hot as a touch on his skin. “If your chest was hairy or smooth. Hmm.” Her lips tilted and her eyes glowed devilishly. “Just right.”
He wanted her hands on him. On his chest. On his cock. Everywhere. Shit. She could pluck every hair on his body if he could touch her. “We’ve seen each other in swimsuits.”
Serena in a sleek black one-piece had aroused him to the point that on many occasions he’d had to chill out in the school locker room way past first bell.
“Not for a long t—oh—time.” The throb at the base of her creamy throat sped up as he got rid of the skirt. Leaving her lower half clothed in nothing more than strappy, fuck-me high heels, and a gossamer wisp of a barely-there thong.
Duncan’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He tried to clear the sensual fog from his pea brain. “I don’t do involvement,” he said out loud. A reminder to himself.
“Fortunate,” Serena told him smoothly, vanishing his shoes, socks, and watch without moving. “I’d never be insane enough to get involved with a man who had such a powerful Curse on his head.”
A timely reminder of the oath he and his brothers had taken, he thought, stripping away her silk blouse and feasting his eyes on the pale mounds of her breasts pressed against her apricot-colored lace bra. Her nipples were hard little points, deep coral with arousal through the thin lace. He was going to turn to stone and fucking die here if he didn’t touch her soon. “Duty over love.”
She uncrossed her long legs, then crossed them the other way. Just, he was positive, to drive him mad enough to make a grab for her. “Did I say anything about love?” she asked sweetly as his boxers vanished from beneath his slacks, leaving him commando.
Duncan made whatever was holding her hair up vanish. The silken, fiery mass unfurled slowly, then tumbled down her back. One long strand slid forward over her bare shoulder to curl lovingly around her barely covered left breast. He’d never seen anything more erotic in his life than Serena in nothing more than sheer lace, high heels, and pearls. He reluctantly got rid of the choker and pearl earrings. For good measure, he nixed her watch and shoes, too. He went deaf with lust as those few accessories bared even more skin for him to feast on. Oh, Jesus. He wanted her naked, and under him now. Now. Now.
“‘Duty o’er love was the choice you did make,’” she quoted. “‘My love you did spurn, my heart you did break—’”
“You remember?” he said thickly. In a mad moment, he’d confided to her about the Curse when they’d been teens. It stunned him that, half a lifetime later, Serena recalled Nairne’s Curse verbatim. A Curse that had affected every aspect of his life for as long as he could remember. The five-hundred-year-old Curse that would end—he, Caleb, and Gabriel had agreed—once and for all with the last three Edge brothers. Being here with Serena, making love to her, he was playing with fire. And while fire was his power to call, this time he was in way over his head, and burning up fast.
He stripped away the wisp of a bra. The sight of the pale globes of her breasts topped with the stiff peaks of her nipples made his body throb and his desperate brain ache. He salivated, imagining sucking one of those ripe points into his mouth.
“‘Your penance to pay, no pride you shall gain,’” Serena continued. “‘Three sons on three sons find nothing but pain/I gift you my powers in memory of me/ The joy of love no son shall ever see/When a Lifemate is chosen by the heart of a son/No protection can be given, again I have won/His pain will be deep, her death will be swift/Inside his heart a terrible rift/Only freely given will this curse be done/To break the spell, three must work as one.’ I remember.”
“Right now I’m trying to forget,” he whispered roughly, every nerve, muscle, and joint in his body throbbing and pulsing. He was this close to detonation. “Christ, Fury. Are you ever going to get rid of my fucking pants?”
She smiled. “I want to take those off with my own two hands.”
He shuddered. “Great minds…”
Serena found herself lying on a soft, wide bed under a flowering vine-covered lattice roof, Duncan leaning over her. The hot look in his eyes affected her like an aphrodisiac. White diaphanous fabrics fluttered in the soft, warm tropical evening breeze. A susurrus came from the ocean, foaming onto white sand a few feet away. The fragrance of flowers, mixed with the briny scent of the sea, and the intoxicating clean, masculine smell of Duncan’s skin made her dizzy with lust.
Marginally aware that they were on a beach—somewhere—she only had eyes for him. His face was close enough to see the dark outer rim of his iris, and to count, if she had the urge, which she didn’t, his inky black lashes. He curled a long strand of her hair around his finger and seemed to be memorizing her features.
Vaguely, Serena hoped she didn’t look as besotted as she felt. “Where are we?” She didn’t care. She was here. In his arms. And at that instant in time, he was all that mattered. She brought one hand up, tracing his mouth with the pad of her thumb. Slowly, deliberately, she increased the pressure as she watched the effect of her touch reflected in his darkening eyes.
Fever burned in her body like a windblown forest fire. Her breasts ached for his touch. She was already wet and ready for him, and the too-light brush of his bare chest against her breasts made her breath falter and her heart race. The tension, as taut as the strings on a bow, ratcheted up a notch as his knuckles lightly skimmed her cheek.
“Paradise Island,” he murmured, brailing the shape of her eyebrow with the tip of one finger.
“Apt.”
He was sprawled partially across her body, his arousal hard and ready, pressed against her hip. The wool of his dark slacks abraded her skin where he had his leg thrown over hers. His heart pounded an exaggerated beat against her breast, mimicking the tempo of her own. They’d barely moved, but their skin was damp with the sweat of restraint.
The sun was setting quietly over the horizon in a splash of turquoise, pale orange, and pinks against the deepening blue of the sky. Sheer white drapes billowed and drifted from the corners of the overhead canopy, releasing the fragrance of jasmine and roses.
Feeling like an overripe peach, Serena ran her fingers gently through Duncan’s hair. Soft, silky. So at odds with his intense masculinity.
He’d brought her here to Paradise, yet she knew that he, like herself, wanted to draw out the moment. Draw out the anticipation. She could outwait him if she absolutely had to, but if this was the slow race of postponement, she might end up coming without him. She glanced over his shoulder. She could see across the gently lapping waves, all the way to the horizon. He’d found the perfect place.
“You’re a romantic.”
He slipped his fingers free of her hair to cup her cheek. His hand felt hot against her face. His thumb gently traced the shape of her mouth. “Horny.”
“I can fix that.”
She grinned. “Ditto.” Sliding her bare leg up his pants-covered calf, she shuddered as he drew her fingers into the warm cavern of his mouth. “Except the balls p-part.” The slippery glide of his tongue made her even wetter. She retracted her fingers before she embarrassed herself, and ran them over the satin curve of his broad shoulder.
He was going to be very heavy. She couldn’t wait. She skimmed one hand down his back and into the loose waistband of his pants. The taut muscles of his butt flexed under her marauding exploration. It was getting increasingly harder to catch her breath, and her heart was beating so fast and loudly it covered the sound of the surf.
“Condom?” she asked desperately, pushing his slacks over his hips. He rolled to help. But that took him too many inches away from her and she pulled him back against her, her ankle hooked around his thigh. Then pinned his hips against her side.
“As many as—Christ, Serena, do it faster would you please?—we need,” he finished, then brushed his mouth over hers. “Or foam if you prefer?” He nibbled her lower lip. “IUD? Diaphr—Are you laughing at me?”
She was. As ridiculously, intensely aroused as she was, Serena felt euphoric, giddy, foolishly in love. “I’ve never had a lover offer me a contraceptive menu before.” Magically she rolled a condom down his length, knowing if she touched him now it would be over before it started.
“I’m still wearing my pants, sweetheart. Could we perhaps postpone the chatting, and do the whole take my pants off slowly with your teeth thing later?”
Stripping him manually was going to be fun—some other time. But right now she needed his pants gone with expedience. Magic had its strong points.
“Not teeth. I said my own two hands,” she reminded him primly, making his pants vanish. She stroked her palm down his very, very fine bare ass. “Not that I’m in any way opposed to nibbling you—later.”
He nudged her knees apart, and slid over her body to settle into the cradle of her damp thighs. “We’ll be lucky if I last ten seconds.”
