My Forbidden Desire

by Carolyn Jewel

  “—didn’t pull, you asshole.” The speaker’s voice came from a million miles away. “What did you think you were doing, pulling on her like that? You could have killed her.”

  She was sure he was talking about her. How nice that someone wanted to keep her alive. She tried to speak, but her brain didn’t seem to be connected to her mouth, because no sound came out.

  “So?” someone replied.

  The speaker was whoever was holding her—at last her brain connected some of the sensory dots swimming through her mushy brain. Someone was holding her tight. Too tight. And she didn’t recognize his voice, either.

  “So,” said the nice voice, “she didn’t pull, and this is Harsh’s sister. Cut her a break.”

  “She attacked me,” said whoever was holding her. Much as she tried, she couldn’t make her memories come together enough to feel anything but disoriented. She kept her eyes closed and tried to remember again. Xia was hurt or sick or something else that was dreadfully wrong. A stranger had tried to hurt him, and she’d collided with him. That was the last thing she remembered.

  Now, she needed to get back to Xia. Had to. Awful things would happen if she didn’t.

  “Bring her back here.”

  “Why?” said whoever had her.

  “Jackass.” The tension in the man’s voice struck a familiar note. She knew him. Xia. She managed to move her head and got piercing pain in her eyes from the light hitting her retinas. She squinted. Her line of sight included a tall, strikingly muscled man standing about five feet from wherever she was. His hair was black and curly, which seemed like it ought to be familiar, yet she couldn’t put a name to him. Shower. She’d been in the shower with him, and she needed to get to him. Her memories connected voice, appearance, actions. Their past. Yes. That was Xia. He was naked and holding on to a dresser with one shoulder hunched over like he hurt too much to stand straight. He wasn’t looking at her. His attention was above her. On the man holding her. She could see Xia’s eyes flickering a weird, impossible color of blue. Jesus, her head hurt. Her stomach pitched.

  And then the memory floodgates burst wide open. Xia was naked. But she’d had sex with him, so that wasn’t as embarrassing or alarming as it could be. A swift kick of panic sent pure energy into the man holding her. Xia was it for her. Just it. The only. No matter what. She had to be near Xia. Had to be near him. Had to. She had to get back. Because he was her talisman now, and she still had a connection.

  “Hell,” said the man who wasn’t Xia. His voice wasn’t entirely unfamiliar, but she couldn’t place why she thought she knew him. Magic, she thought. She’d pulled magic and used it against her captor. To no effect that she could tell. She tried to speak again, but was unable to yet. The speech part of the mind–body connection remained nonfunctional. She was having trouble moving, too, on account of being squeezed. “She’s coming to.”

  Whoever was holding her walked farther away from where Xia stood. Inside her, something tore. More pieces fell into place. She was Alexandrine Marit, and her brother’s name was Harsh. She struggled and at least some of her parts worked, because the man’s arms tightened around her.

  “Let go,” she said. Her words came out slurred, but he seemed to get the idea that she didn’t want him holding her.

  “Quit moving.” He kept walking, heading downstairs.

  Alexandrine lifted her outside hand and started flailing. She pulled as much magic as she could. Sparks showered overhead, then stopped. Pretty but not useful. Her brain was on fire, and the heat was consuming her from the inside out. He was heading downstairs, and she did not want that. The sensation was completely separate from her other feelings. Easily distinguishable and creepy as hell.

  “I said, bring her back, Kynan,” Xia called out.

  The man who’d tried to hurt Xia was named Kynan Aijan, and he was the one holding her. Taking her away. She screamed, and this time her voice worked spectacularly. The back of her hand connected with the side of Kynan Aijan’s face, along his jawbone; the contact hurt. Pain shot from her hand to her elbow.

  He dropped her, and she rolled down a couple of stairs before she caught herself. She got her feet underneath her and stood on the last step, hunched over, hands over her mouth. The air around her pulsed, coming at her in crushing waves. She looked up and for a split second calculated what it would take to get past the freak on the stairs and back to Xia. Inside, she was nothing but shivery panic and burning down to her bones.

  Kynan pressed a hand to his cheek and said in a low growl, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  At the top of the stairs, Xia shouted. A roar. A deafening, soul-destroying roar. “Kynan, no!”

  That’s when she got it. What was going on with her and Xia. This wasn’t like her previous attachment to the talisman; it was her attachment to the talisman exactly. One and the same. Xia had separated her from the carving but not from the magic. Now that the magic was in Xia, she was attached to him in the same way that she’d been attached to the talisman. “That’s not good,” she said to herself. “Not good at all.”

  “What is with you?” Kynan Aijan was big. Way big. And pretty, despite looking like he wanted to hurt something. The side of his face was red where her knuckles had connected. She recognized him, though. And she remembered who he was. She’d let him in the house, because Xia had told her he would help if something went wrong. Well, hello, big strong demon guy. Something had gone terribly wrong.

  She struggled to regulate her breathing, but it didn’t work. She sounded and felt like she’d sprinted a mile in under five minutes. Without the training. “It’s all right,” she told Kynan. “I just need to go upstairs, if you don’t mind.”

  Kynan faced her with his arms crossed over his chest, his feet wide apart so he blocked the stairs. “Not until I know what the hell is going on.”

  She remembered more and more details about what had happened to her. “I called you. You came. I let you in. Because Xia cracked a talisman, and I think it’s not going very well for him.” She breathed through her mouth until her anxiety settled. “Something went wrong, and he needs your help to fix it.”

  “No shit.” Under his breath, he muttered, “Goddamned witch.”

  Xia smashed a hand to the side of the door. That got Kynan’s attention. She looked at Xia and for a moment saw white. Pure, burning white. She made a move for the stairs, but Kynan grabbed her arm. She managed to keep her cool. But it wasn’t easy.

  “She’s not lying, Kynan,” Xia said.

  “I’m not letting her near you. Not in your condition. I only just got you back among us. I’m not giving her another shot at you.”

  “Kynan—”

  “When she’s not doped up on copa, maybe she can be in the same room as you.”

  Alexandrine tried to straighten up, but her insides were tearing up. Her legs buckled. She managed to get a hand out to keep her head from breaking open on the stairs. Sprawled on her stomach, she saw Kynan staring at her; his eyes were going all funny. From golden brown to amber and then black as sin, each color full of hatred.

  Xia swayed on his feet, his face chalky. He was still hunched over, like his body hurt. From the doorway, Xia said, “She needs to be here. I need her here.”

  Kynan leaned down and grabbed her by the arm.

  “Drop dead,” she said.

  “You learn the trash talking from Xia?” he asked. He pulled her up the stairs. The closer she got to Xia, the less she shook, the less her body felt like it was ripping up inside. The more normal she felt. By the time they reached the top, she was steady on her feet. She put out a hand, reaching for Xia. Xia stopped looking at Kynan Aijan and looked at her. Their gazes connected.

  Click.

  She saw herself through Xia’s eyes. She looked like the worst day hell ever had since Satan moved in. He blinked, and she was back in her body. “Oh, my God,” she whispered to him. “Xia, we are so messed up.”

  As an experiment, she backed away as fa
r as the hallway. Her shakes started again. Close to Xia, she was fine. Normal. Not a care in the world. Away from Xia, the shakes came on.

  “Alexandrine.” Xia took a shaky step forward. Kynan’s hand shot out to steady him.

  Another two steps away, and her lungs couldn’t draw air. Then she took five steps forward, and the sensation that she was suffocating eased. She closed her eyes, and all she saw in her head was Xia—not the amulet, which didn’t exist anymore, anyway, but Xia. Her heart lurched. “Oh, shit.”

  “Get inside, both of you,” Kynan said. He steered Xia back to the bed, leaving her to make her way alone. He put out a hand and blocked Alexandrine’s path to the bed, where Xia was now sitting, cross-legged. “I’m not letting you get close enough to touch him,” he said. “Hell knows what that might do to him.” He grabbed a chair and swung it around to face the bed, gesturing to her. “Pull, and you’re dead. Clear?”

  Uh-oh. She didn’t doubt for a second that he both meant it and could carry out the threat without breaking a sweat or suffering a twinge of conscience. In fact, she was pretty sure he’d think it was fun. “Sometimes it just happens,” she said. “I can’t stop it. Or make it happen.”

  Kynan looked to Xia for confirmation on that one. Xia nodded. “Fiend,” Kynan said, “we need to have a little talk about you and your witch.” He studied her next, and though she didn’t have his attention for long, she felt raked over when he was done.

  “You aren’t going to talk to him about sex, are you?” she asked. “Because, lucky for you, I’ve already had the talk with him about your fertility thing.”

  Kynan turned on Xia. “Tell me she doesn’t mean what I think she means.”

  Xia shrugged.

  “Xia’s a big boy, Kynan,” she said. “He knows what goes where and why.” She was feeling like she needed a chair, but she wasn’t going to give Kynan Aijan the satisfaction. “So do I, as it happens. It was good, in case you’re interested. Really, really good. Fantastic, actually.”

  “Sit down, Alexandrine,” Xia said.

  She stuck her tongue in her cheek and counted to five. “Xia, what you and I did and what either of us was like when we did it is none of his business.”

  Kynan touched the top of the chair he’d pulled to the side of the bed. The motion was a caricature of a gentleman assisting a lady to her seat. “I’m not going to pick you up if you fall over. In fact, if you do hit the ground, I’ll count this as one of my better days.”

  She glanced at Xia and assessed whether she wanted to stay where she was and risk falling on her ass or sit down and risk giving Kynan Aijan even one iota more of satisfaction than he already felt. Xia’s panther-marked hand was open and faceup. He didn’t look so hot to her. If she touched him, she knew she’d feel a fever. She walked forward, but Kynan stopped her with an outstretched arm.

  “You don’t touch him.” He backed her away from the bed until she hit the chair. “I need answers from both of you.” He gave her an ugly smile.

  “Five,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You don’t like that one? All right. How about… Constantinople? Or 1066.”

  “I don’t care if you die,” Kynan said. “I really don’t. I’d be happy to make it happen right now.”

  “I thought you were trying to hurt him,” she said.

  “You’re a witch. I was checking to see if he was alive.”

  “That’s exactly what you’d say if you were trying to kill him, isn’t it?” She kept her shoulders straight and looked him directly in the eye. “How do I know you’re not on their side?”

  His eyes flickered from golden brown to smoky quartz. “Whose side would that be?”

  “One of the men Xia was fighting back at my apartment. A mageheld.”

  “You can’t tell the difference between a mageheld and a free fiend?” he shot back. The air started to feel thick at the same time she got a chill in the back of her head.

  “Kynan,” said Xia. “She doesn’t know what you are. She really doesn’t.”

  “Honey,” Kynan said. He had a sneer to go along with the endearment. Lucky her. “If I was working for Rasmus, you’d already be dead. And so would Xia.” His eyes flickered again. “In fact,” he said in a low, hard voice, “considering Xia’s condition, I ought to be asking you that question. What the hell did you do to him?”

  She rolled her eyes in Xia’s direction. “Are all your friends this charming?”

  “Yes.”

  She pressed her lips together. She didn’t trust Kynan Aijan. Not an inch. Heck, not even half an inch. “With your attitude, pretty boy, I don’t see much point in telling you anything. It’ll be faster if you decide now that this is all my fault, because I’m the big bad wicked witch in the room.”

  Behind her, Xia sighed. “It’s all right, Alexandrine. I promise you, he’s a friend. More or less. Kynan, please, will you at least listen to what happened?”

  “Go, Xia,” Kynan said.

  All of Alexandrine’s energy evaporated. She hit the wall with no more strength to call on. She sat hard on the chair. If she hadn’t landed on the chair, she’d have landed on her butt, and Kynan would no doubt have taken great pleasure in stomping on her while she was down. She covered the back of her head with her hands and started counting the lines in the hardwood floor at her feet. Her desperate urge to be near Xia was gone. She even wondered if she’d imagined her panic attack.

  “She had an unstable talisman,” Xia said. “Rasmus was after it.”

  Without looking up, she said, “Bullshit. He was after you. He wanted the talisman, but he was after you first.”

  “Sure,” Kynan said, reasonable for the first time. “No mage can stand to lose a mageheld. Besides, take down Xia and getting the talisman is easy.”

  Xia kept talking. He left out details about the sex, thank God, because that really was none of Kynan’s business, in favor of a boring explanation of how she’d agreed to take the copa so they could work together to remove the talisman.

  Next, Xia went off on some theory about how the two of them were linked, because the sticky parts of the talisman’s magic had stayed with her, leaving her still linked to the magic that was now assimilating in him.

  Kynan, meanwhile, had walked around the bed and was now leaning against the wall on the other side. The better to glare at her, she decided. He had his arms crossed over his chest. True, he was eye candy to rival Xia. She wasn’t going to deny the man was seriously handsome. Maybe even spectacularly so. Does he change, too? she wondered. And if he does, what does he look like? As gorgeous as Xia? That didn’t seem possible.

  Whatever the answer to that, his scowl made him look dangerous. Xia had the same dangerous look, only with Xia, there wasn’t any need to guess whether he would kill. He would. No question about it. With Kynan, she wasn’t so sure. There was something off about him. Sure, he’d kill. She didn’t doubt that, but she got the impression he’d rather leave you maimed someplace so you could die nice and slow. While he watched and took detailed notes so he’d do better the next time.

  “That’s all?”

  His stare made her skin crawl. There was a quiet that lasted too long. She let go of her head and looked up. The cold sneaking down from her head to the back of her neck and along her arms was coming from Kynan.

  During the silence, Kynan shifted his focus from Xia to her. “Witch,” he said softly and very mean. “You shouldn’t be here. Not here. Not with Xia. The last thing he needs is to be involved with a goddamned witch.”

  “Bigot,” she said, shooting a look at Xia. But Kynan was right, wasn’t he? She shouldn’t be here. Well, too bad, because she was.

  “Tell us what you did, Xia,” Kynan said. “Because we all know there’s more to this than just a talisman.”

  “I bound her magic to mine.”

  “What does that mean?” Alexandrine asked.

  “It means he connected his magic to yours.” Kynan shrugged. “If I had to guess, I’d say you two are th
e closest thing to being blood-twins without actually being that screwed.”

  Xia didn’t react to that. No denial. No admission. Alexandrine didn’t know what to make of the silence. She didn’t know what a blood-twin was, other than what she could guess from the name.

  “Hell. It just happened, all right?”

  “Not really seeing that,” Kynan said. “You’re in so tight with her that it’s hard to believe that happened by accident.”

  Xia clenched a fist and refused to look at Alexandrine or Kynan. “It wasn’t an accident.”

  “What did she do to you?” Kynan’s lip curled. “Stop protecting her and just tell me the truth, Xia. One way or another, there’s a way out of this.”

  “It was me,” Xia said. “Sorry to disappoint you, Kynan, but this whole mess was me all the way. I got her and the talisman separated, mostly, and then I went a little farther.” Xia made a gesture that included his body from head to toe. “And not like this.”

  “You did her like that?”

  “Yeah, Kynan. We did it. Like that.”

  Alexandrine waved a hand. “Can we please not forget that I’m right here?”

  “She’s a witch, and you fucked her while you were changed?”

  Xia glowered. Black Glare of Death. “She was fantastic, Kynan. I’ve never had it better. If it had been you, you’d have done the same.”

  “I don’t think so. And if I had, you can bet she wouldn’t have lived afterward.”

  Alexandrine jumped up from her chair, and that brought Kynan off the wall. She speared him with a look. “Drop dead, why don’t you?” she told him. She was trembling inside. She didn’t understand everything Xia had just said, but she understood enough. She took a deep breath and addressed Xia. “Whatever happened, Xia, is there a way to fix it?” She looked at Kynan, resisting with all her might the urge to rub her arms, and then she looked at Xia, who was looking paler than ever. She was hollow inside. Completely empty. “How do we fix this? Can we fix this?”