Never Been Witched

by BLAIR, ANNETTE

  He removed a layer of sweats, almost embarrassed to have another layer beneath them.

  “Okay, you can stay in this room,” she said with less of an edge, “but this rug doesn’t look half as comfortable as the one in the parlor.”

  His frustration had done nothing but rise enough to shoot off the charts since she woke him and beat the crap out of him, so at this point, anger seemed a wasted effort. “If we listen, I think we can hear them snickering,” he said.

  She leaned forward. “Who?”

  “King and Harmony in Scotland. They planned this.”

  “The rats! It would serve them right if we got along.”

  His head came up, as did his suspicion.

  She shrugged. “Not that it’s possible.”

  “Right.” Of course, right. “Did your sister tell you to bring your own bedding, at least? Because that’s mine on the bed.”

  “Yes, she did, but she didn’t say to bring a bed, the brat. Fortunately for both of us, my bedding’s right here in the cart that didn’t drown.” Destiny pulled out her blankets and sheets and handed them to him.

  “You brought three blankets?” he asked. “Counting the one I soaked when you put it over my shoulders. Did I say thanks?”

  She nodded. “I was planning peaceful picnics with my paintings and my thoughts. One blanket for the sand—”

  “You planned to be a sand-witch?”

  She raised a disgusted brow and unbuttoned her jeans, while the devil in his sweats stood to cheer. “One blanket for grassy picnics, and one to sleep beneath. With no washer, three made sense.” She slipped her jeans down her legs to reveal a pair of bikini panties as sea green as her tee. Yawning, she climbed into the center of his double bed.

  As she did, he read, When Hell Freezes Over, printed across her green silk ass. And didn’t he know it.

  “Hell is not a positive word,” he said. “Your rules.”

  “It is when it makes my point.”

  “How convenient.” It sure was making his point, and he meant that in a purely sexual way. His mouth went dry, and his palms began to sweat. For a minute, he couldn’t believe he was looking at his fantasy in the flesh. He blinked to erase the hallucination or wake up, but Destiny remained curled up right there in her underwear before his greedy eyes. “Look who’s sleeping in my bed.”

  “Gentlemen prefer witches,” she said with an ass wiggle, the stripped tease.

  Morgan looked beyond the ceiling toward the celestial abode of his former boss. Good one, taunting me with my own wicked fantasies, but I’m still not going back.

  He yearned, he drooled, and he ached to climb in with her, if only she’d let him practice his newfound skills. He supposed he could ask. But how? I have a brass boner that likes your ass? I have a loner boner; won’t you play with it? Would you care to taste my T(rex)bone? Want a little steak sauce with that?

  I can make you scream with pleasure. Now that’s the kind of thing men said—men who lost their virginity in fifth grade and never finished school.

  Talk about being between a rock and a hard-on.

  She lifted her head. “Aren’t you going to get ready for bed?”

  “Aren’t you going to brush your teeth?”

  “Brushed before I left home. Haven’t eaten a thing. Not letting you claim the bed while I brush again.” She opened an eye and looked over her shoulder at him. “Are you going to stand there watching me all night?”

  He’d probably like that. For a man like him, it’d be like foreplay.

  Morgan didn’t know where else to look, or what else to do—literally—so he turned to action. The brass bed weighed a ton in pieces, so there was no moving it to give him more rug, but enough of it stuck out from beneath the bed to give him a bit of padding. He folded two blankets, one atop the other, to add to his “mattress,” then he used one of her sheets as a blanket to keep his loose-cannon dick under wraps.

  It didn’t take a minute to realize this was like sleeping on a slab of concrete. The floor creaked when he moved.

  His bed creaked when she moved, and every time it did, he heard it say, “Dumb ass.”

  He’d never noticed the squeaky springs, and he’d certainly never seen their underbelly in moonlight. Hadn’t wanted to, though he might have agreed to it, if it meant getting Destiny in the sack. But he preferred to be in there with her.

  “Dumb ass. Dumb ass. Dumb ass.” He was ashamed of himself for being mocked by his own bed and for taking it lying down to boot. How much torture would he put up with?

  “Light?” she asked.

  Damn—slam! He raised his chin so he could see the switch, far away, three feet above him, and upside down. “You can reach it. It’s on your left.”

  As he watched, she slapped the wall behind her a few times, putting so much energy into it—not!—she didn’t so much as jiggle a bedspring, and still he felt like a dumb ass.

  “Can’t find it,” she said, yawning again.

  From day one, she had a way of inflicting a unique form of torture on him, like wood slivers beneath his fingernails. Torture Destiny style, times ten. Nobody had ever managed to piss him off quite so thoroughly and seductively. Maybe there was something to her claim to magic.

  Morgan got up to turn off the light but made the mistake of looking down at her; silver star earrings, butterfly pendant between her breasts, seahorse cuff bracelet on her right wrist, tiny butterfly tattoo on her left ankle. A goddess. A paradox. A pain in the ass!

  He yanked one of his pillows out from beneath her head.

  “Hey!” She frowned at him over her shoulder. “You know, you’ve got kind of a red haze overwhelming your aura. You should calm down.”

  “That’s it! Don’t look now, but hell is freezing over.” He slapped her on the ass a good one. “Move over, brat.”

  Chapter Eight

  “YOU’RE a bully,” she said.

  “I’m a man, and this is my bed. Move that sassy ass, or I’ll move it for you.” Spanking that ass sounded pretty good, too. Did that make him a sicko?

  Obviously, sharing the bed didn’t appeal. The pillow that smacked him in the head was his first clue. The goddess of Destiny standing on his bed raising her fist was his second.

  She tried for a right hook, but he caught her around the waist and threw her over his shoulder. “I’ve been battered enough for one night, thank you very much.” He carried her from room to room, upstairs and down, occasionally finding it necessary to keep her ass in place. He didn’t mind a bit. “Stop me when you see a floor that looks comfortable,” he said, “because I’m sleeping in my bed. Now, you can sleep there with me, Wonderbrat, but you can’t sleep there alone.”

  She wiggled in his arms. “You son of a sea cock! You just want to have it all your way.”

  “You bet your flying buttress. My mother would have a heart attack, by the way, if she heard a woman say cock, but mine is quite happy, thank you, because you’re getting me hot with all that wiggling.”

  She stilled.

  “Is cock a positive word?” he asked, because she seemed taken by this conversation.

  “I like cocks,” she said. “Generally speaking, yes. Cocks are positive.”

  He cleared his throat. “I can’t use the plural, but I am fond of my own.”

  “I can’t say, since I haven’t seen yours yet.”

  Yet? His knees about buckled. “I’ll introduce you sometime.”

  “We’ll see.”

  At least that wasn’t a firm no. With her still over his shoulder, and her ass in his peripheral vision, they stood in the keeper’s room, surrounded by shelves of oil lanterns, measuring cups, pitchers, a box marked Wicks, two funnels, three cans of kerosene, and a fire bucket. “Does this room suit you?”

  “Spell you!”

  “Aw, use the F word, I’ll take you up on it, and neither of us will care where we sleep.”

  She gasped. “I never use the F word. Say pluck if you must, and only in an emergency.”


  “Did I say that out loud? Sorry, you bring out the beast in me.” Morgan stood the stunner on the floor for the sake of his sanity.

  She straightened her Licensed to Thrill bare-midriff T-shirt and When Hell Freezes Over panties, the vast expanse of curvaceous skin between them a fine, bronze tan.

  “You’re acting like a frustrated bear,” she said, recalling his attention.

  A frustrated male bear, he agreed mentally, because he needed to get laid.

  “I am not sleeping on any floor,” she said, swinging her hair for emphasis.

  “Neither am I. Glad that’s settled.” He took her by the hand and tugged her back to their bedroom. “What’s the difference between me three feet away or one foot away?”

  “Six inches,” she said.

  He gave her a double take. “You must have failed math.”

  She smirked. “You must have failed sex ed.”

  “Ah, now I get your drift, Kismet. You figure if I face you from a foot away, we’ll be six inches apart?”

  “Right. This isn’t a king, you know.”

  “Nor a queen, and neither are you. You’ve underestimated my inches, by the way, but what say we keep my impressive manly length safe from your womanly wiles and hang a curtain between us?”

  “It Happened One Night style? You’re kidding?”

  “Get over it. Sure we’d be stuck in the same bed, but sleeping separately, more or less. I’d do my best, but I am a man.”

  “Your point?”

  “Exactly.”

  She slithered close enough for her bare midriff to touch him, and he sure wished he’d taken his shirt off. She ran a hand around his earlobe. “You think I’ll turn you on?”

  “Of course I don’t think. I know you will. You already have. I hardly expect to sleep for the discomfort, but at least my back won’t be broken, too.”

  “Try to scale our ‘wall of Jericho,’ and your cock might be.”

  “Warning taken. Cock shrinking in complete understanding.”

  He wished she didn’t have such a hopeful glint in her eyes. “Is there any rope left in the house after our giant spiderweb clothesline?” she asked.

  “Let’s go see. After you,” he said, him down to his last pair of sweats, and her in her skivvies. Why were they never both in their skivvies at the same time? He flipped on the light at the bottom of the stairs simply to improve the view of her going down.

  Already, he’d had enough of being a gentleman.

  Gentlemen slept on floors. Gentlemen never got laid.

  In the closet beneath the stairs, he found more rope.

  “Holy monkshood,” she said. “I guess you have been here a lot, if you can find anything in that black hole.”

  “Monkshood?” he asked, stopping, so she plowed into him. He turned to steady her. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s an herb that witches used years ago to make flying ointments, in the way that marijuana makes you fly. I hear that spilling blood on monkshood flowers makes war magick, but I’d never do that.”

  “More than I needed to know,” he said, but the unvarnished reminder of her witchy delusions helped him recover his equilibrium. He didn’t know which was more disturbing, the truth about the magickal herb, or his fear that she might suspect his past. Not that he’d been a monk . . . precisely.

  After they fastened the rope to the bed’s footboard and headboard, taut and straight, she helped him throw one of her blankets over it to form a wall between them.

  She stood on the bed and looked over it at him. “It happened one witch,” she said.

  “Is that an invitation or a promise?”

  “It was an observation. The walls of Jericho stay up, thank you very much.”

  A few minutes later, Morgan settled in the bed like a stiff in a casket, stiff being the operative word. Soon enough, he discovered that bed-sharing involved heat, hundreds of degrees higher than normal. Since said heat was not about to be translated into sex—when had it ever?—he got up to shed the rest of his clothes, down to his navy boxers. He also opened the second window.

  Destiny’s giggle at the sound of his actions turned him hot with embarrassment, until she began to chant.

  “Not that he stares at my ass,

  Or drools o’er my boobs,

  No caress ’neath a breast.

  Lip-locking or Frenching.

  “Beneath curtain fencing,

  He probably won’t duck.

  That’s as may be,

  But I wish myself luck.”

  Morgan raised himself on an elbow, confused yet captivated. She needed luck? For what? Resisting him? She would call that a spell, he knew from past experience with her and her sisters, but it hadn’t sounded so much magical as practical.

  With her words, the seductress had given nothing—or everything—away. He couldn’t believe she hadn’t caught him drooling or staring. And though he’d made a couple of cocky admissions, she must have taken them as jokes.

  Pluck him; he could still hide his feelings like a pro. The ability to hide his struggle between his faith and his humanity probably stemmed from growing up with a mother who made Hitler look like a wuss.

  He wished there was something he could say right now, but Destiny would be better off assuming that he didn’t want to pin her to the bed and pluck her senseless.

  Despite the size of Celibate Charlie, and after all the books he’d read about pleasing a woman, he didn’t think he was ready for a hands-on—scratch that, he’d mastered the hands on. It was the man-on-woman type exercise that he wasn’t ready for. Ah, who was he kidding? He was so ready, the imagery alone had Charlie doing stretches to prepare for the big event.

  Morgan lay carefully back against his pillows and didn’t move a muscle . . . that he could control.

  An hour later, the bed hadn’t creaked once. Destiny had either fallen asleep, or she lay as wide-awake as him. Un-moving.

  Despite her final words, he felt the need to find some common ground between them. He cleared his throat. “I did know a little girl named Meggie once.”

  The bed creaked, a sign of interest, because she’d probably turned his way. “Was Meggie a relative?”

  Her words had been so charming, he’d forgotten she was psychic. Damn. “What makes you think that?”

  “Her smile,” Destiny said, “reminds me of yours.”

  “I don’t smile.” Morgan turned to face away from her, despite the walls of Jericho. “I suppose you think you know?”

  A big creak, a full-body shift. Deep interest. “What am I supposed to know?” she all but whispered.

  “That I had a sister named Meggie.”

  “Oh, Morgan. I didn’t know. Honestly. She died so young. I’m sorry.”

  Morgan shifted, uncomfortable in his own skin, never mind the bed. “My family fell apart,” he said.

  “If it’s any consolation, Meggie looked at you with a great deal of love.”

  He cleared his throat again. “I almost wish I believed you saw her.”

  “Meggie looks about twelve years old,” Destiny said. “Her long, burnished blonde hair is the same streaked shade as yours. She’s wearing a red plaid jumper that looks like it might have been a school uniform. The bows on her braids are the same plaid as her jumper.”

  Grief rushed Morgan, hit him in the solar plexus. She had described Meggie’s last school picture to the hair ribbons. He fisted his hands, swallowed, and rubbed his chest. “Get the hell out of my head.”

  Chapter Nine

  HIM telling her to get the hell out of his head wasn’t exactly a positive statement, but Destiny didn’t think this was the time to say so. Somewhat heartsore as a result of his abrupt dismissal, Destiny allowed that if she lost one of her sisters, she might not be half as nice.

  “I’m not in your head,” she said, softening her tone, “but Meggie’s here for a reason, or she wouldn’t have shown herself to me.

  “She said she needs her brother to remember, and at first, I t
hought she was talking about Horace.”

  “Horace?” Morgan asked, grasping at the subject change like a lifeline, though she couldn’t see him beyond the curtain. “Another ghost? Is he as young as Meggie?”

  “No, he’s about my age, handsome, with a sense of humor, and a thick head of dark hair. Virile,” she added, to tick Morgan off and replace sorrow with ire, sure she could hear him gritting his teeth. Jealousy. Good sign.

  “What the Hades is this Horace guy doing here?”

  “He was the last lighthouse keeper, and he looks yummers in that uniform, I’ll tell you, but he doesn’t know why he’s here.”

  The bed creaking and Morgan mumbling about plucking lighthouse keepers were the last sounds Destiny remembered. She woke to find Morgan doing push-ups on the floor, on her side of the bed, Caramello riding his back, kitty paws around his neck. She wished she’d brought a camera.

  Destiny bit the inside of her lip, she was so charmed. “Good morning,” she said. “You’re working up quite a sweat.”

  “You snore,” he snapped. “So does your cat. And what’s with the noises you make while you sleep?”

  “What noises? My—no man has ever complained about the noises I make in my sleep.” She’d nearly said her sisters didn’t, but in a perverse way, she liked baiting him.

  He stopped flexing his muscles and gave her a nasty look. So he did care where she slept and with whom? An interesting sign from a man she’d been sparring with and lusting after from day one. A man who’d been running since day one.

  “You whimper and you sigh,” he said, “like you’re having great sex—and your cat slept on my chest, braying like a drunk donkey.”

  Destiny sat up, shook her head, and ran her hands through her hair, sure she had a bad case of bed head. “I see you’re a morning person.” She got up and found one of his pajama tops to use in lieu of a robe.

  “Your hair’s a mess,” he said, “but it’s never looked so beautiful.” He stood wiping the perspiration off his face and chest with a towel he’d thrown over the foot of the bed. She wished she had the balls to push him back on the bed and make him sweat some more.