“Well?” Harsh said.
“I don’t know,” he said, because he didn’t see why he should make this easy for her. He knew what he was looking at. He squinted. “I can’t really see.” He looked up and winked at her right before he addressed her chest. “I think she needs to take off her top.”
“Perv.” She jerked down her shirt, but Xia’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. She yelped, and Harsh lunged.
“Chill,” he said, leaning in. “I’m just going to take a closer look. That’s all.”
“Xia. It’s the condition of the talisman that matters, not the shape and depth of my sister’s navel.”
“I don’t think it’s cracked.” Not yet.
“Don’t think?” Harsh said, and he didn’t sound too happy. The freak knew firsthand what could happen when a talisman cracked. If you weren’t prepared or didn’t have the magic to control the process, people died, and it usually wasn’t a pretty thing to see. An unstable talisman was dangerous. Flat-out dangerous.
Xia reached for the carved panther. If he hadn’t been holding her wrist, she would have jumped back. His fingers tightened on her. She didn’t want him touching it. The reaction, her need to get away, burned through her to him as clear as the freaking rain in Spain. Shit, that was unexpected. He blocked the mental contact with her.
“No!” The protest burst from her. Xia couldn’t help it. He enjoyed the fear coming from her. Nothing wrong with making a witch afraid.
“What?” Harsh asked.
“Something’s wrong,” she said. “It’s nothing but a bit of carved stone. It doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.” Her voice was tight and breathy. “If it worked, if there was anything to it, I’d be able to do something with my magic, and I can’t. So why can’t I take it off?”
Xia ignored her panic, because why the hell did he care what happened to a witch? He sure as hell didn’t want another slipup that would connect him to her, though. He used the hilt of his knife to move the carving to one side.
Harsh said, “What’s that?”
“What?” She looked down. “Oh, that.” Where the amulet rubbed against her skin, there was a blue-gray impression of the carved surface. Not a bruise, more like a shadow. A perfect impression of the panther. “Right. I know. Bizarre, isn’t it? My skin reacts to something in the stone. You know, the way skin reacts to cheap metal jewelry. No big deal. It’ll fade when I take it off.” They looked at her, and it was obvious she totally didn’t get the absurdity of what she was saying. “What? I assume there’s a lot of iron oxide in the stone.”
“Mark of the beast, baby,” Xia said.
He kept the amulet to one side by letting it rest against the hilt of his knife. He moved the blade to one side and touched the discolored skin on her stomach. She happened to be looking down when he did. He got another jolt, and for a minute he didn’t see anything but white. When his vision cleared, he was looking directly into Alexandrine Marit’s eyes. In the expanse of time between their gazes locking and her blinking, he saw into her, a moment of flawless, infinite clarity. He could have touched her magic if he’d wanted to. She blinked, and everything went back to normal. Or almost normal. He rocked back on his heels with the snap of coming back to his own mind.
“Fuck,” Xia said. He shook his hand like it hurt. It didn’t. What he was feeling was an echo of the pain she’d felt the first time she’d put the amulet on.
“You okay?” Harsh asked his sister. Not him, and he was the one reeling.
“Sure,” Alexandrine answered. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Xia turned his head, and their gazes collided. She didn’t look away. She knew what had happened between them. She knew it, and she wasn’t going to say a thing. “Fuck off and die, witch.”
“You first.”
“When was the last time you took it off?” Xia asked. He deliberately made the question sound dirty, and that got a reaction from her.
“For you, never.”
He smiled at her. “Wanna bet?”
“Could you be any more of an asshole?” She yanked on her hand. He didn’t move even an atom. No way was she going to budge him if he didn’t want her to.
“Answer him, Alexandrine.” Harsh paced between her chair and the couch. “When was the last time you took off the talisman?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She watched her brother. That helped the agitation that was making Xia jumpy as hell. He hadn’t released her wrist yet, and his fingers were tingling, bordering on painful. The sensation was moving up his arm, too. He was filling up with a twitchy energy, fed by contact with the witch. “A month?”
Xia snorted.
She swung her head to look at him. “What?”
“Liar.”
“Okay.” She yanked on her hand again. No good. He liked making her crazy. “Six months.”
Xia rolled his eyes, but for a moment, their gazes met, and he got that crawling feeling again in his head. Her eyes dilated, and his brain flashed hot. A glimmer of magic bubbled up from her but not enough for her to do anything worthwhile. She couldn’t pull. Magically speaking, she was a complete loser. Xia’s fingers tightened on her wrist, accompanying the growl rumbling from his chest.
“Maybe seven or eight. What difference does it make?” Harsh stared at her like she’d confessed to eating puppies for breakfast. “I like wearing it. For crying out loud, Harsh, the damn thing doesn’t even work. Not for me.”
Xia released her wrist, and she stepped back. His twitchiness faded almost immediately. “It doesn’t matter,” he said to Harsh. “It’s too late. Even if she could take it off, I’d say the consequences might not leave her in good health, if you get what I mean.”
His sheer certainty that she wouldn’t remove the talisman pissed her off, which was funny as hell to him. “Of course I can take it off. It’s a necklace; that’s all.” She reached up and pulled the cord over her head, hard and fast, and kept on going until the amulet appeared at the neckline of her shirt. With a grin as fake as it was stiff, she held it out to Harsh. “See?”
Xia stuck out his hand. “I’m impressed,” he said.
“I told you.” Which would have impressed him even more if her fingers hadn’t tightened on the cord.
“How about you give it to me? Or let Harsh if you don’t want me that close,” he said. “He’ll keep it safe.”
This time, he wasn’t even touching her, and pain ripped through him. His knees wobbled with the force of the magic flowing through her, and it wasn’t witch magic. It was coming from the talisman. His vision blurred. Oh, shit. He was going to barf. But she backed away, and the sensation eased up and then faded entirely.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “Oh, my God. Why can’t I?”
Chapter 4
Forty-eight hours after Xia’s arrival, Alexandrine opened her eyes to darkness. She didn’t know what made her wake from a deep sleep, but she was instantly alert, and that scared her. Her skin was nothing but goose pimples. Again. She sat up in bed and listened hard. It was bad enough having him constantly around, but ever since Harsh had let him into her apartment, she’d had a pretty much constant sense of impending, infuriatingly nonspecific disaster. The guy was a damn trigger for setting off premonition-like reactions without her ever getting so much as a hint about what she ought to do to head it off.
She really, really hated that.
The night Harsh left, Xia had sprawled on her couch listening to music or watching videos on an iPod. He’d been quiet last night, too. Yesterday, he’d lurked at her job where he demonstrated an eerie ability to appear from nowhere. Everyone thought she was sleeping with a male model, including Noah in legal, who she’d been crushing on for months. Two days of this crap, and he was ruining what little love life she had. All afternoon he’d been a constant pest. She’d been counting on him being quiet tonight, too.
And he was. Only now the silence sent a chill roaring down her back.
Her bedside clock glowed 1:24. Traffic we
nt by outside. The apartment building was quiet. Nothing abnormal for the time of night, yet goose pimples rippled along her arms and down her spine. She tried to figure out if she was reacting to Xia or whether this was something else.
Get out.
Definitely something else.
She slipped out of bed and grabbed the first items of clothing to come to hand. Jeans, a button-down shirt. There wasn’t time to find her bra.
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry!
She fastened the middle two buttons and left the rest. Sneakers without socks. She didn’t smell smoke, but one of the buildings next door might be on fire. Maybe she ought to be gathering her most irreplaceable possessions.
The floor creaked outside her bedroom. She froze, her heart banging against her ribs. Something bad was out there, and given the way she was reacting, she wasn’t sure if it was Xia or someone else. And here she was, trapped in her room.
Pulse racing, she grabbed her purse off the floor and dug for her cell phone. She was clumsy, though, and didn’t find it as fast as she wanted. She listened harder. No question about it. There was someone out there. Moving around. One person or two? She’d put Xia on her couch because that was the only place for him to sleep. Bad enough they had to share the bathroom and the kitchen. They didn’t talk to each other unless it couldn’t be avoided, so she didn’t know if he had plans for the night that someone who wasn’t a monumental jerk would have mentioned. That had to be him skulking around out there. Freaking her out. But the creepy-crawly sensation didn’t go away, and her stomach was a block of ice, and her head still screamed, Get out!
What if that wasn’t Xia making that noise?
Cell phone in hand, she inched open her bedroom door. She didn’t see anything, so she slipped out. She crept, sneaky quiet, because if whoever was there wasn’t supposed to be there, she didn’t want him—or her—to know she was awake. Duh. But wouldn’t Xia know? Wouldn’t he protect her the way he’d promised? With his special utter lack of charm. He might also have decided to hell with that protection stuff; it was time to use that wicked knife of his on her.
She froze and assessed her state—mental, magical, and physical. Get out still pulsed in her blood, buzzed her so hard her skin went twitchy with it. There were other possibilities to consider. Xia could be dead. Seemed difficult to believe a big, mean SOB like him could go down, but Rasmus Kessler was a full-on mage, and she’d heard mages like him did things with their magic that less able magicians, especially self-trained ones like herself, could only dream about. She inched down the hallway, because that was the only way out to get to either of the exits: her front door or through the kitchen to the laundry room downstairs.
She didn’t see anybody. The couch was empty. No Xia watching a movie or doing a silent sing-along to whatever his favorite music was. Her extra pillow was on the floor and so were the folded blankets. His helmet was a dark, round shape next to them. His jacket was slung over her recliner. The slob. A nylon bag was open on the floor. Killer Boy was in residence, all right. Just not here, and she didn’t see anything that looked corpse-shaped. On her way to the kitchen, she checked the bathroom, just in case. No one there, either. He’d left the toilet seat up, though. Inconsiderate, selfish jerk.
So, where the hell was he? Out partying while she hung around convinced she was going to die any minute?
She stayed quiet because that persistent tingle down her spine had turned into a streak of ice. The idea of crossing her living room to the front door was not appealing. She’d be in plain sight. Whatever was after her would have a clear shot the minute she left the hallway. Outside the bathroom, she crouched and pressed 911 on her phone, then rested her finger on CALL. Footsteps came nearer. Quiet ones. A shadow passed the window by the front door. A very tall and muscular shadow. A tall, muscular, irritating shadow.
Xia.
She stood up and hit the disconnect button on her phone. “What the hell are you doing?”
The tall shape walked to the beginning of the hallway and stood there, lurking in the dark. Not saying anything. Her vision hadn’t adjusted to the level of dark in here, and she couldn’t see him very well. Still no acknowledgment of her.
What if it wasn’t him? Her spine froze. She was a dead woman, that’s what. “Xia?”
“What are you doing up?”
Well, that answered that question. Sweet as ever, wasn’t he? Alexandrine brushed past him into the living room. Ice skittered up and down her back. The cold built up in the back of her head and started a slow freeze down her spinal column. Prince Charming followed. By the couch, she stopped and stood with her arms crossed over her chest. He stared. Below her chin. His intent gaze reminded her she’d only buttoned the middle two buttons of her shirt and that her stance must be giving him an eyeful. She dropped her arms by her sides. “I was trying to sleep and—Oh for the love of God! You pervert.”
Xia held his knife in one hand. And unless you counted the knife, he wasn’t wearing anything. Not a stitch. The shadows hid a lot of detail, but not enough for her to miss that he seemed to have muscles everywhere. As for his, ahem, manly equipment. Oh. My. God. Do not look there. A package to make a girl faint of heart. He wasn’t the least embarrassed at being caught nudie-style.
“Where the H-E-double toothpicks are your clothes?” she whispered. Why whisper? Because it was dark. Because her spine was still ice. Because something bad was coming, and she didn’t know what it was yet.
Naked shadow man cocked his head. “Did I wake you?” Not that he sounded sorry or anything.
“Yes.” She kept her focus on his face. No staring at his ripped torso. Or muscled legs. Or anything else. Jesus, he was sex on a stick.
“You heard me?” He sounded incredulous. He didn’t whisper, but she noticed he kept his voice low, too. He put his hands on his hips, knife still in his hand. “No way.”
“Way.” Not looking. Absolutely not looking.
“No.”
“Look.” She didn’t bother keeping the irritation from her voice. “I woke up and heard you skulking around out here. Ergo”—she jabbed a finger at him with the hand clutching her cell phone—“you woke me up.”
He took a step toward her, and she backed up. “Why do you have your phone?”
“In case I needed to call the police.” The back of her knees quivered, but she refused to retreat another step.
“Did you think you needed to?” Xia advanced on her. A blink, and there he was, right in front of her, and she was seeing him clear as day. His hand circled her upper arm. “This is important,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Did you think you might need to call for help?”
She tried to twist free of his grip, but that just wasn’t happening. He had a knife, for God’s sake. Terror bubbled up at the thought that this was the event that had awakened her—being in danger from Xia. He was going to kill her, and she’d walked right to him. “Let go of me.”
“Answer me.” His hand on her was warm through the fabric of her shirt sleeve. Like he was running a temp.
Her pulse pounded, but if he was going to kill her, wouldn’t he have done it already? Why wait? As for his question, she’d learned a long time ago, before she knew anything of her peculiar heritage, that most people didn’t react well to someone who claimed to know things before they happened. The ones who did tended to believe in astrology and tarot cards and tea leaves, all of which, in her opinion, were utter crap. “I heard a noise out here. What was I supposed to think?”
Xia put his free hand on the wall just above her shoulder. On the way up, dim light gleamed off the blade of his knife. “If Rasmus sends magehelds after you, I’m not going to know until they’re inside. On top of us.”
“Magehelds.” She grabbed her arms and rubbed, because, shit, he was talking about magehelds like there really were such things. The world would be a damn scary place if there were such creatures.
“Yeah. Magehelds, baby cakes.”
“It’s true?” The question came out
sounding completely genuine because, well, it was. But he made a face, and she hurried to add, “Magehelds. There’s really such a thing?”
“Yeah, baby,” he said in a low voice. “There is.” He used his index finger to trace a line from her forehead to her chin. He didn’t touch her, but her skin sizzled as if he had. “What’s with you, gorgeous? You been living under a rock your whole life?”
Oh, shit. Magehelds were supposedly fiends or demons controlled by mages, powerful mages, obviously. Their existence was a matter of hot debate among the practitioners she knew. The really powerful mages didn’t have anything to do with people like her, self-trained in magic. Mages like that were an insular elite, and to be honest, there was a lot of disinformation out there. Even her best friend, Maddy, who knew more than any of them, thought magehelds were most likely fables, like basilisks, ogres, and swamp monsters. Alexandrine’s heart dove straight to her toes at the idea that magehelds were real. “Are you sure?”
“For fuck’s sake.” His voice was low and mean. “Am I sure. You’re shitting me, right?”
In her attempt to educate herself about what she was, she’d come across references to magehelds more than once, but she just couldn’t believe something like that really happened. Magehelds had to do whatever they were told. They were, in fact, magically compelled to do so. No matter what their instructions were. According to the versions of the legends she’d read, back in the Dark Ages and beyond, when demons were running amok in the world, mages kept innocent humans safe by killing or controlling the demons. Hence, magehelds, for a demon magically held by one of the magekind. They were stories. Legends. Not real. “How do you know they’re real?”
Xia leaned toward her, and it was sheer nerve that kept her from shrinking back. His expression was bland despite the tension in his shoulders. “How do I know?” When he spoke again, his voice was hard and bitter. “Because I used to be one, witch.”
She did a mental free fall through the implications of what Xia was telling her. Disbelief, denial, and horror were the main ingredients when she landed.
My Forbidden Desire Page 4
