“Yeah. We have so much more to lose.”
He knew. He got it. Words just tumbled out of her mouth. “You are trusting me with your soul.” That was monumental.
“Then I guess you’d better trust me to be your eyes.”
“Damn it.”
“Hate losing the argument?” he asked with amusement.
He reached inside her and brought out the truth. “Well, yeah, but I was going to distance myself from you, not let you matter so much.”
He leaned in and kissed her. “Good luck with that, baby, because you are inside me now. Your magic lives inside me, and I’m going to get inside you every chance I can.” He leaned back and said, “Use your magic to eat.” He kept stroking her hand with his thumb. “But don’t make me watch you struggle. You want something cut up or buttered, or just need to know where the hell it is on the table, speak up.”
“In my old life, no one gave me grief like this. And if they did, I kicked their ass,” she muttered, proving she was a sore loser. Taking her hand from him, she used her magic to cut up the steak, then butter and mash the potato. Then she created a magnetic field between the fork and the food. And ate. Damn him.
“Be a good little witch and I’ll let you try to kick my ass later.”
She liked the sound of that. “I’m a successful kickboxer, hunter. I even had a few endorsements. I’m not some delicate witch you can cower with your trash talk and big, flashy muscles.”
“You and cower don’t even belong in the same state,” he said dryly. “How did you get into kickboxing?” Then he added, “Buttered roll at twelve o’clock on your plate. Don’t bite me.”
She couldn’t help but grin at that. “Thank you,” she said, taking a stab at being gracious. Then she lifted her head toward his shadow. “I was weak and easy prey on the streets. My magic helped, but I didn’t really know how to use it. I had to get stronger.”
“Easy prey.” The soft words had a Rottweiler bite behind them. “What happened to you?”
“The usual. Got food stolen, little knocked around—”
He clinked his silverware down on his plate. “Raped?”
“No. Couple drunks protected me a bit.” She took a bite of her roll.
“I thought Haley got you help?”
“She did. She got me into a shelter in another part of Los Angeles.” Pausing, she sipped her wine. It was a nice Merlot, smooth and rich. “But they gave me painkillers and I had an allergic reaction.”
“Witches can’t tolerate most synthetic medications. Magic or natural remedies work, but synthetic drugs can kill you. Didn’t you know that?”
She shook her head. It wasn’t as though her mother had taught her this stuff. “No. After that, the people at the shelter didn’t know how to help me. I didn’t sleep much.” She drank more wine to wash down the memories of how weak, scared, and pathetic she’d been. “And when I did sleep, I often woke screaming. They finally asked me to leave.”
“You were sixteen! They threw you out on the streets?”
She set down her glass. Heard him refill it. “You said you grew up on the streets. You know the drill. Can’t save everyone. They knew there was something strange about me. I made them uneasy.”
He took hold of her hand. “Why didn’t you contact Haley? She would have helped you.”
The memories eased with his touch, proving he was reaching deep inside her. “My mother almost killed her. Haley would have helped me and died for it. I have purposely kept my contact with her minimal so the coven will leave her alone.”
“So what did you do?”
“I almost went home, went back to my mother.” She remembered how easy it would have been. Call her mom and say, Come get me.
“What stopped you?”
The moment was still clear in her mind. “Seeing my mother’s face when she was using magic to strangle Haley. It was nothing but a means to an end to her. She hadn’t cared. She was hurting a woman to get me to do what she wanted—and I realized then that she had never loved me. At all. I was just a tool to acquire more and more dark magic.” She forced herself to eat another bite of potato. Then she said, “I didn’t want to be her, and I set out trying to survive and learn how to be an earth witch.”
She heard him reach for another roll, then butter it. “If you didn’t go home, what did you do?” he asked.
His movements were smooth and economical. Some people constantly shuffled and twitched. Phoenix had a stillness about him, as though he didn’t have to fidget to remind people that he was there. “My eyes healed. I stole, lied, cheated, used my magic to get what I needed. I contacted Haley on other people’s cell phones, and she helped me learn what she knew about being an earth witch. Much of it was trial and error. I did fortune-telling and crap like that to make money. I lived at a YWCA, and they had a kickboxing self-defense class. Got my ass kicked pretty good there for a while.”
Phoenix took her hand again. “But you stuck with it.”
“I was stubborn.” She smiled in his direction. “And I noticed something interesting. The more I worked at it, the more I connected with my power.”
He kept hold of her hand. “So you built yourself into the blind kickboxer, and made your mark. Aren’t people wondering where you are now? You must have friends who know where you lived?”
“No, I cut all my ties before coming back here. I had an apartment, but I let that go. I retired from the kickboxing association. I put all my affairs in order. Most of the money is going to Haley’s homeless shelter.” She took in a breath, realizing how much she wanted to live and be with Phoenix.
“You’re not going to die.”
His determination bled through every word, alarming her. She had never known anything like this … connection … growing between them. But with that came a rush of feelings she didn’t know how to deal with, like desperately wanting him to be happy and whole. Not broken by her. “Don’t do this, Phoenix. Don’t set yourself up to fail. We need each other. You know what I am.”
“Have faith, Ailish. Wing Slayer told me to fight for you.”
His voice, hardened by life, took on a glow when he talked about his near death experience and meeting his god. “Perhaps it’s your test to achieve your immortality.” She wanted him to be loved and accepted by his god, maybe even more than she wanted her Ancestors to accept her and give her a chance to reincarnate and be a better witch.
Phoenix slammed down his wineglass. “I won’t fail. I’ve spent the last decade rescuing women and hunting down the men who hurt them. I don’t fail, Ailish. Ever.” More wine splashed into their glasses. “Wing Slayer had some personal vendetta with Asmodeus and a notorious soft spot for witches. If I fail you, he’ll eat my liver while I watch.”
“But no pressure,” she said softly, feeling the stress mount. She’d been passive for too long, ever since the rogues attacked her. Now she had to train for this battle. This time, her weapon was going to be her magic.
He lifted his wineglass. “Have you learned nothing from Chuck Norris? Failure is not in our language,” he said in a mock serious tone. “Chuck Norris does not hunt, because the word hunting infers the possibility of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.”
Ailish picked up her glass and grinned. “So you’re bilingual?”
“What?”
“Obviously you speak the language of Chuck. That roundhouse kick you took me down with spoke volumes.”
Phoenix laughed so hard that he dropped his elbows on the table. Finally, he recovered and said, “Been doing some research?”
She sipped her wine and answered, “Internet. I found a whole slew of Chuck jokes and found his TV show. There are entire websites filled with them.” She used her magic to have the computer read her anything she found. She’d spent an entire hour trying to figure out who this Chuck Norris was and why Phoenix identified with him so much.
“I’d see him on TVs in stores. Or sometimes in houses if I could get close enough without the people knowing I was
there. Chuck Norris was a hero. A problem solver. He fought for the people who couldn’t fight for themselves.”
Ailish set down her glass and listened to him. “You wanted to be like him?”
He caught her fingers in his warm hand. “Better than being like my father.”
“I doubt he meant to die,” she said softly.
His hand tensed in hers. “He left my mother pregnant with a witch hunter baby, Ailish. She didn’t know what he was. Her family disowned her because of him.”
Oh hell, she got it, and it cut right to her soul. Phoenix had wished Chuck Norris would rescue him and his mother. But no Chuck Norris ever showed up, so Phoenix turned himself into a hero who didn’t fail. She squeezed his hand, then let go. “So bounty hunting. How’d that start?”
“A woman came to Haley’s homeless shelter desperate to hide from an abusive husband. Haley’s shelter isn’t set up for that, but Haley …”
Ailish knew. “She couldn’t turn her away.”
He let go of her hand, stood up, and started clearing the table. “She called me, I went and picked up the woman, got her story … she had a restraining order against the man, but the cops hadn’t been able to do much.”
She picked up her dishes and followed. “So you did.” She went back to the table and cleared the wineglasses and butter dish.
“I didn’t kill him. I don’t kill mortals unless I have to. Too easy.”
She heard him rinsing stuff, loading it in the dishwasher. Going back into the kitchen, she asked, “How many of his bones did you break?”
“Enough. Then I dumped him with the cops. They weren’t real concerned about his injuries, either.”
A mixture of pride and something else, something … bitter … surprised her. She liked that he helped this woman, but she also … “You had a relationship with her?” She wanted to bite off the words as soon as she said them.
Phoenix rinsed the glasses. “I don’t do relationships. Ever. Not until you.”
Standing by the refrigerator, she studied his shadow. “Why?”
“I’m short-term. Get in, save the woman, and get out. Before I …”
She heard her own heartbeat. “Before you what?”
He shut off the water. “Find out if I can break them. Like my father did my mother.”
“The voices,” she said. He blamed his father for that and himself for her death.
“She cracked. Maybe from the strain of trying to survive alone and raise a kid, or my father used his hunter ability to shift her memories and weakened her brain. Too much of that shit causes permanent damage. Who the fuck knows.”
Holding the butter in her hand, she said, “You’re not him.” She wasn’t stupid; she knew he’d been with a lot of women. Witch hunters used sex to control the bloodlust. Her powers bubbled up and tickled along her spine. To cover her reactions, she turned and opened the fridge. Where did he keep the butter? On a door shelf? She felt around and finally just set the dish in the first flat spot she found. “Women trust you.” There was something about him. He felt dangerous, yet when he was near her, she felt safer. He wouldn’t break a woman.
“Probably the pheromones, but yeah. And I like women.” She heard him shut the dishwasher.
Like she needed that bit of info. She closed the fridge and decided to shift the topic. “How’d you go from bounty hunting to hooking up with the Wing Slayer Hunters?”
He started the dishwasher. “I did bounty hunting for a few years, made some money taking on dangerous jobs. Then one day I tracked a target into a nightclub. He was a rogue and extremely dangerous. Axel and Sutton were running security on the club. Sometimes security can be meatheads, all muscles and ego without much brain. These two were witch hunters, and they quickly assessed the situation and let me do my job. We became friends. Then we decided to take the wings and commit to Wing Slayer.”
Ailish leaned back against the counter, listening to him as he moved back and forth, putting stuff away. He took up a lot of space in the kitchen. Here in his home, he was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Casual and relaxed. He stopped in front of her. It popped into her head—how many other women had he brought here? All kinds of insecurities sprang to life inside her. Deep, ugly feelings. How many women had he slept with? Were they beautiful? Probably not scarred and—
He put his hands on her shoulders and lowered his face to hers. “You’re beautiful. Sexy.”
She stiffened. “I wasn’t talking out loud!”
His fingers tightened on her shoulders. “You must have. I heard you.” He took one hand from her shoulder and stroked the delicate scarred skin around her eyes. “You got this fighting to save a woman’s life. Not ugly, Ailish. And your eyes, they are so pale blue that they look silver. Very pretty. Delicate in your otherwise strong face.”
She couldn’t get her breath. He liked her face? He seemed to like her body.
“Okay, that time your mouth didn’t move. I was watching.”
“What?” She tilted her head up to his face.
He stroked her bottom lip with his thumb. “You have a very sexy mouth. I was looking at it when I heard you say that about me liking your face and your body. But your mouth didn’t move.”
He knew what she’d been thinking. “How—”
“Put your hand on my mouth. See if you can hear me and if I move my lips.” He took hold of her wrist and lifted her hand to his mouth. His lips were full and firm and his breath warm against her skin. Then he sucked in a finger, his tongue caressing the digit. The answer is hell, yes, I like your body. You’re lean and strong, like a sleek car or fast bike.
He was stroking her finger with his tongue. No words came from his mouth. “What’s happening?” She tugged her finger out, fear and excitement skittering over her.
Phoenix pressed up against her, putting his hands on the counter to bracket her body. “It’s a mind link. I’ve seen Darcy and Axel, and Carla and Sutton do it.” His erection pushed against her stomach through his jeans. “Doing it with you, feeling your thoughts brush through my head—it’s a turn on.” Tell me why you’re hairless between your legs.
Her breath caught in her throat, and heat flooded through her. The feel of him inside her head fired her nerve endings and made her breasts and deep core ache. It was just easier. I do it with magic. She had so little time left. An urgent, wild need began to build in her. It was nothing like the handfast but instead was all Phoenix. She wanted to yank his shirt off over his head, shove his pants down, and feel him. Touch, stroke, lick …
He leaned down, sliding his face across hers until his mouth was at her ear. His warm breath tingled. “I can hear you, my very bad, very sexy witch.”
His words tumbled through her. She knew what she wanted. “Well then? What are you waiting for?”
His dark chuckle nearly made her beg. Then he grabbed her hand and pulled her along. He made an unexpected left. “Downstairs.”
“The gym?” she said, navigating the stairs with no trouble.
“Private. I have monitors that will let me know if anyone is moving around the property.”
Alone. In the gym. With him. Naked.
He closed the door to the gym and then, standing at the edge of the mat, said, “One second.” He let go of her hand.
Then she heard the soft rustle of the shirt leaving his body. Boots off. Pants. Her heart started to hammer. She held perfectly still, trying to breathe. Then she felt the absence of him next to her.
“You want to explore?”
“Shit.” She jumped. He was suddenly behind her, his mouth at her ear. And that ramped up her excitement more. She knew Phoenix wasn’t a threat to her, knew it was just the two of them down here. He was playing.
He said, “If you can get me down, I’ll concede. I’ll let you touch and explore all you want.”
Oh God. The thrills danced up her spine as if he were touching her with more than just his words, his challenge.
“No holds barred, babycakes. I’m stron
ger and faster than you, so you’re going to need to up the stakes. You’re going to need all the magic you can handle.”
He was helping her practice her magic, too, and that just made it more arousing. She resisted the urge to lean back into that sexy voice. In answer, she unsnapped her pants.
“What are you doing?” His voice thickened.
“Don’t want anything in my way. Got a problem with that, hunter?” She bent over, wiggled her hips, and shimmied the pants off. She was already barefoot. That left her in a clinging T-shirt and panties. Free to kick him to the ground.
“You fight dirty,” he said, then melted away from her without a sound.
She kicked her pants to the wall and stood. She had walked the entire gym, memorized it. She knew exactly how to use the magic in her first four chakras for fighting. Opening them now, she swept the air and felt the warm mass of Phoenix standing very still, dead ahead on the mat. She knew he was right: It would take more to beat him. More magic and more cunning.
She began walking toward him, and with her air chakra open, she felt the second he moved. He was lightning fast, even faster than she remembered, literally moving quicker than her chakra could track.
It was almost funny—she had a hot, naked man at her mercy, if she could just catch him. Blind.
Magic. Use it. The words whispered in her mind, making her nipples tighten into sensitive little buds. Her stomach clenched. Her chakras swirled with more power than she’d ever felt before. But could she control it? That’s what worried her; she didn’t want to lose control of her power and hurt him, then maybe kill herself in the process. The fear seeded between her rib bones.…
A whispery soft touch of wings brushed her face. The fear vanished. She had a familiar, she just had to learn to use him. Trust him to control and focus all her magic, including her siren voice power, to enhance only what she chose. Ailish caught her rushing magic and began funneling it along her spine, faster, stronger. The power stream raced up and then tingled around her throat. She’d felt the same thing when she’d sung to call the phoenix last night. The pressure grew for a few seconds, then her fifth chakra sprang open. Communication with other realms, this was where her siren power lived.
Night Magic: A Wing Slayer Novel Page 24
