Covetous: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Marked Mage Chronicles, Book 2)

by Victoria Evers

  Reese pulled away, angling my face to meet his. “Every disease has a cure. We just need to find it. Dr. Madsen’s already looking into it.”

  “Like he’s looking into fixing this?” I scoffed, still seeing the despicable tattooed band wrapped around my ring finger.

  “Trust me, he’s taking this seriously. Anything to stop Blai…uh, I mean, you-know-who from unleashing hell on earth, he’ll do it. We’ll sever the bond, find a cure for the virus, and then I won’t have to sneak off to make four-hour round trips in the middle of the night to come and see you.” He playfully chafed the whiskers from his five o'clock shadow across my face, and I finally laughed, wrestling against him to break free from the ticklish attack.

  “Oh, you’re not getting away that easily.” His arms snaked around my waist, pulling me up so that I was lying on top of him.

  “Is that so?” His lips claimed mine, cutting my laugh short.

  “You have a problem with that?” Reese smiled, exposing his adorable, boyish dimples. And the action only highlighted the magnificence of his striking amber eyes.

  “Oh, I’m not about to complain,” I whispered, feeling his fingers sliding up underneath the hem of my camisole to the bottom of my back.

  Reese sat upright, bringing me with him so that I was sitting in his lap. He continued planting soft kisses along my jaw, only scrambling my thoughts in the most delicious way. My fingers teased through his thick chocolate brown locks, and the act immediately impelled his mouth to reclaim mine. God, he tasted good.

  He fisted my hair, slowly bringing my neck back to trail more kisses down the length of my throat. I tried to stifle my moan, but the pressure of my thighs tightening around his waist gave me away. Before either of us could think this through, we both started clawing at each other’s clothes. I may have loved Reese’s peculiar Gothic-meets-Steampunk choice of fashion, but all the buttons keeping me from him were near maddening. If I didn’t get them undone in the next few seconds, I swore I’d just rip the brocade vest right off. My frustration only fueled the angst as I finally pried the waistcoat away. Just as I fed his shirt out over his head, Reese suddenly stiffened, feeling my hand settle on the back of his neck.

  And that’s when I noticed it, too.

  A gentle vibration coursed through my palm, forcing me to pull my hand away. I groaned, burying my face into Reese’s shoulder.

  This was another serious downside to the whole “Blaine ordeal.” As long as I was at risk for setting off any of my runes, we couldn’t do this. The moment things got at all heated, I could feel the gentle vibration humming over my left hand. Lust. The rune thankfully wasn’t glowing—yet, but the pulsation was always a sign that it was about to. For the time being, Reese and I were restricted to some playful kissing and cuddling. But nothing more.

  “At least I know I make you all hot and bothered,” Reese chuckled.

  I finally pulled away, attempting a feeble smile. “Well, you definitely have the ‘bothered’ part right.”

  “Is that so?”

  I squealed as Reese suddenly flipped us over, now pinning my back to the mattress. He peered down at me, that lopsided grin of his in place. How badly I wanted to touch him, to trace the plains of his face, the angles of his lean frame, the taut muscles of his stomach.

  He kissed me again, this time gentle. “We’ll find a way through this. I promise.”

  And I wanted so much to believe him. But the deep ache in my gut convinced me otherwise.

  ***

  Sunlight flooded my vision the moment I awoke. Still drowsy, I rolled over onto my stomach and closed my eyes again, letting the rays beat the side of my exposed cheek. And I smiled at the soft caress of fingertips stroking down the length of my bare back.

  “I thought you left,” I sighed softly, nuzzling deeper into the sheets.

  A breathy whisper of a laugh warmed my skin as kisses replaced the touch of hands. My back arched into the sensation. All the hair was brushed away from my neck as well, and goose bumps immediately raked over every inch of me as his lips settled into the crook of my neck.

  “Bonum mani, o venusta.”

  I stilled, feeling those lips curve into a smile as they bore down into where those scarred fang marks rested.

  Heat flushed me from head to toe. I angled my head up, meeting those familiar blue eyes, so pale they were nearly translucent. His hair wasn’t the processed blonde I’d last seen him sporting, though. It was its natural shade of midnight black again. And that smile. Simultaneously delighted and hungry as his eyes took in the sight of me.

  I shot up from the mattress, gasping for air, relieved to find myself in my bedroom. Alone. Nightmares weren’t anything unusual—especially ones featuring Blaine, but this particular dream was definitely new to the repertoire. It had felt so real… My entire body trembled so hard, I was forced to clasp my hands together just to steady them enough that I could look at my left ring finger. Sure enough, the spell hadn’t worked. Hours later, and the rune was still there.

  A note rested on the pillow beside me.

  “Didn’t want to wake you. Call you later. – Reese xoxo”

  I’d wanted to spend as much time with Reese as I could, since we had very little together these days, but I’d obviously dozed off sometime after two.

  Still feeling my aggravated pulse pounding in my ears, I climbed out of bed and got ready, too terrified to return to sleep. The moment I entered the kitchen, my stomach growled something fierce, insisting I needed salty meat, STAT. And to my good fortune, my Aunt Jenna always kept microwaveable bacon stored in the bottom drawer of the fridge. With my heightened metabolism, I needed to eat more than usual, so it served as a perfect excuse to heat up the entire packet.

  “I smell bacon,” declared Hanna the moment I opened the front door for her.

  She snatched up a fistful of bacon from the plate on the kitchen counter and moaned blissfully as the first slice settled on her tongue. “Damn, why can’t I start off every morning like this? All we’ve got at home for breakfast is that puke-inducing whole grain crap my mom calls cereal.”

  “It’s healthy food for healthy people,” I mocked. That was always the response Hanna’s mom returned to her daughter when she’d make the same observation.

  “It’s freaking cardboard is what it is. Insulation would be more appetizing.”

  Evermore, Massachusetts was honestly the bizarro version of the stuffy hamlet known as Mystic Harbor, Maine. Unlike my previous hometown, Evermore was an artisan’s den for free spirits and all things inventive. Bohemians, gothics, and all. So my current outfit of leather leggings and a “Mz Hyde” t-shirt fit in perfectly with this town. It was a nice changeup in style, compared to the evening gowns and cardigan sweaters my mom had always forced me to wear, and the edgier look helped make the rune tattoos on my arm look less polarizing.

  My new friend and across-the-street neighbor, Hanna, rocked out in one of her usual paint-stained t-shirts as she continued pushing her large, round-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of her nose, scarfing down the last of the bacon. Despite all her artistic talents with a brush, the girl’s culinary skills definitely needed some work. I opted to whip us up some omelets while Hanna burned cooked some toast.

  “Did you know that there’s a museum shaped like the Titanic in Tennessee? It’s half the scale of the original ship, and you can seriously walk the grand staircase! We totally need to go there!” Hanna said between mouthfuls.

  “You say that like it’s a trip to the mall,” I chuckled. “How long would that drive even take?”

  She winced. “Thirteen hours, give or take…one way.”

  “I think we’ll have to put that journey on the backburner for now,” I laughed.

  “Yeah, but it’s fun to think about.” Hanna surveyed me, getting that little twinkle in her eye I’d quickly become accustomed to.

  “What?”

  “You should let me dye your hair.”

  “Again, what?”

  �
��Don’t get me wrong. It’s nice as it is, but you need a little excitement. You know, liven it up a bit. I was thinking…maybe some purple highlights. It’ll compliment the brown really well.”

  “I think I’ll pass.” Unbeknownst to her, I’d dye my blonde locks the most generic bottle-brown for a reason. I wanted to blend in as much as possible.

  Hanna further insisted, and I just laughed, fortunate to hear the groan from the old garage door rattle the whole downstairs. My aunt was home. Sure enough, thirty seconds later, the door rattled noisily again as Jenna came inside through the laundry room.

  “Hey, girls,” she called out, donned in fitness gear.

  “Hey, Jenna,” Hanna and I happily replied in unison.

  I climbed off the couch at the sight of seeing her juggling armfuls of grocery bags and paperwork. “Here, let me get that.”

  “Thanks,” Jenna sighed, planting a kiss on my cheek. “So happy to be home. You wouldn’t believe how crazy the market was this morning.”

  “I didn’t hear you come in last night,” I said, unloading the groceries into the pantry and fridge.

  A blush immediately painted Jenna’s cheeks, and she whirled around, pretending to preoccupy herself with sorting through the mail on the counter. Hanna and I took another look at her outfit and laughed. My aunt always kept a bag of spare clothes in her backseat for emergencies, and it appeared she was rocking that very same set.

  “So I take it your date went well then?” I teased, already knowing the answer. Anytime she went out with her new boyfriend, she never came home the same night.

  “Oh, shut up,” Jenna finally laughed, tossing a loaf of pumpernickel at me. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for a man in uniform.”

  Neither Hanna nor I could disagree. Officer Hernandez was fifty shades of blue-blooded hotness. And unlike my previous personal experience with the law, he didn’t appear to be possessed by a demon, which was most definitely an upside.

  Jenna covered her mouth to bury a massive yawn, which only made Hanna giggle all the more.

  I looked at the grandfather clock beside the mantle and sure enough, it wasn’t even ten in the morning. “Already in need of a nap?”

  “I didn’t sleep much last night,” my aunt confessed, biting her lower lip.

  I’d been living here for six weeks, and it still surprised me just how divergent it was in contrast to Mystic Harbor. Being around my mom always felt like walking on eggshells. But with Jenna, it was like hanging out with one of my girl friends. She treated me like an adult, and in return, I acted like one. The household functioned on mutual respect, a system which seemed to be working just fine.

  Jenna gave me a playful shove with her elbow. “Just hope the ruckus next door isn’t going to keep me up.”

  “Next door?”

  “Yeah, our new neighbors are here.”

  “Neighbors? Someone finally bought the Swanson house?” queried Hanna, drawing back one of the front window curtains to see several moving vans parked out on the street that hadn’t been there when I’d invited her inside. “That place has been vacant for, like, ever.”

  “Well, it was bought at auction last week.” Jenna wasn’t particularly thrilled by the news. The last owners had fallen on hard times, forcing them to abandon the property and move out of state. The lot had been sitting vacant for the last year and a half, which meant it had been quiet since I moved here. With our luck though, our new neighbors would probably be a fraternity.

  “I really should make a welcoming dish or something. It would be the neighborly thing to do. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind bringing it over?” Jenna perused the cabinets as if a recipe would jump out at her.

  “Come again?”

  “Oh, didn’t I mention it?” Jenna’s grin was all mischief. “I ran into Mrs. Rutledge as I was pulling into the driveway, and by her account, you girls should be pretty happy. One of our new neighbors is a young man.”

  “Age?” asked Hanna urgently.

  “Same as you guys.”

  Hanna squealed. “Thank God! We finally get some fresh meat around here.”

  “Don’t get too excited,” I said flatly. “That ‘fresh meat,’ as you call it, could very well be bologna.”

  “Way to rain on my parade,” she laughed.

  “Anybody home?”

  The three of us turned to see Sam standing in the front entrance, sporting another one of his infamous sloganed t-shirts. Today’s read, “Book Nerd? I prefer the term ‘Literary Badass.’”

  Another rule around Evermore: no one locked their doors. People freely came and went as they pleased, which despite my wholly justified fear of strangers, I was actually okay with this, since anything demonic couldn’t enter the house without an invitation.

  It was just another thing I had to get used to. Like moving to a new town, for instance. Apparently, having a freak for a daughter didn’t fit in with my parents’ perfect family portrait. After the whole demonic home invasion, Mom and Dad did the only thing they could. Put distance between us and Mystic Harbor.

  And then me from them.

  They didn’t come outright and say that they were scared of me. No, it was all in the subtlety. Like when we fled from town. After taking a train down south, my folks checked us in to a hotel where we were to stay in hiding. Despite the fact that they purchased a suite that was spacious enough to house an entire baseball team, they insisted on getting me my own room. On a completely separate floor.

  And it went downhill from there. First chance they got, Mom and Dad shipped me off to stay with my mom’s half-sister. I hadn’t seen my Aunt Jenna for more than a decade, when she moved to Vegas with her tattoo artist boyfriend, Will. The relationship apparently fell apart, because about a year and a half ago, she relocated to Massachusetts, solo. Mom and Dad told her the bare minimum about my…situation. I had a crazy, angry ex who was looking for me, I was in a car accident that killed a “friend,” and my parents’ marriage was strained, to say the least.

  They failed to mention said ex was a dark prince of Hell. Or that demons were real. Or that there were angelic hunters called Reapers, all of which wanted me dead, including my childhood best friend, Adam Reynolds, along with his father, the alpha of the pack. Come to think of it, the only supernaturally-inclined person who wasn’t out to get me, apart from Reese, was Dr. Madsen, a college professor and fellow Mage. You knew things weren’t looking good for you if your list of allies was shorter than your options when playing Rock, Paper, Scissors.

  When the ‘rents asked my aunt if she would take me in temporarily, Jenna didn’t think much of it. After everything that had happened, it wasn’t too odd that I’d want to get away for a little bit while my parents “worked on repairing their marriage.” Thankfully, she took me in with open arms…and an open mind. Finally, someone didn’t treat me like I was either a freak or a porcelain doll. The two of us got along well, but Jenna wasn’t stupid. She knew something wasn’t right.

  Not with me.

  With my folks.

  For parents who seemed so determined to protect my “wellbeing,” Jenna found it odd that they barely, if ever, checked in with me. She eventually called up Mom, asking when she planned on coming to see me. The massive-ass check in the mail pretty much answered that…

  Nothing says “I love you” like a good old-fashioned payoff.

  “Whatcha got there?” I asked Sam, seeing the bulk of a plastic bag tucked behind his back.

  He smiled, tossing its bound contents at me. I outright squealed. After seeing Reese’s setup in his basement, I’d fallen in love with the idea of stringing up some Christmas lights across my bedroom. The only ones I’d come across though were all colored.

  But not these.

  I tackled Sam with a hug. “They’re perfect!”

  “It was no problem,” he assured. “Found ’em buried in the back of my garage. Figured you’d get better use out of them than we would.”

  “Thank you.”

  The three of u
s scoured the kitchen, eventually finding some adhesive decorating clips to hang up the lights on my bedroom wall. What would’ve been a twenty-minute task soon turned into an hour-plus ordeal as Hanna and Sam continued arguing over dimensions and what constituted for the appropriate amount of space between clips.

  After adjusting the last section of Christmas lights up on the wall, I collapsed onto my mattress. “Is it kinda warm in here, or is it me?”

  Both my friends just shrugged.

  “I feel kinda weird,” I muttered, fanning myself with my shirt.

  “Probably just need some caffeine,” said Hanna, hopping to her feet. “What’d you want? Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, Cherry Coke?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Hanna happily took her leave, practically skipping her way downstairs. The girl had a bit of a caffeine addiction, and any excuse she could find to consume more, she took it.

  “Talk about bad timing,” laughed Sam.

  I rolled over on my mattress to see him staring out my side window. “What is it?”

  “Your new neighbor’s just arrived.”

  Hanna had spent most of the past hour stealing looks, hoping for even a glimpse of the guy in question with no such luck. Despite the humor in Hanna’s horrible timing, I still groaned. The view in question looked literally right out into the neighboring window not ten feet away, guaranteeing zero privacy. So it was official. I’d have to keep my window shades permanently pulled from here on out.

  “Sure it’s not just one of the movers? They’re all pretty young,” I said.

  Sam chuckled. “Trust me; this guy isn’t dressed for the job. He’s not really dressed, period.”

  “What?” Curiosity got the better of me. I climbed off the mattress, joining my friend at the window.

  Sam sidled aside and flipped on the light switch to admire my new setup as I went to the music dock, using its location below the window as an excuse to steal a casual look across the way. I didn’t even have to make a song selection. As soon as I touched the radio, Arctic Monkeys’ “Do I Wanna Know” suddenly started playing. I scooped up my phone, which was synced with the device, searching for the song in question. Since when was this on my playlist?