“She just can’t. She’s too vulnerable to them. None of us are equipped to protect a baby witch from other witches and you know it.” Brad glared at Duke and demanded, “Do you trust me or not? You say you trust my instincts, and then you demand I do the exact opposite of what my instincts are telling me. We need to get that girl to Excelsior and we need to do it quick. You know she’s too damn vulnerable out here.”
“I am not vulnerable,” Jasmine snarled, poking her head out of the car.
Brad shot her a look over his shoulders. A brat. With very good ears. But he didn’t respond to her. He looked back at Duke and said, “You’re the only one who can definitely get her back there. I could try, but if she managed to get away, I don’t know that I could find her. You could—you could just track her. Plus, she’ll have a harder time slipping away from you.”
Ana had been standing quietly to the side through the exchange. As Brad glanced at her, she moved to stand by Duke, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Duke, it’s not like I’m wading into some nest of vampires or something all on my own. Brad will be with me . . . plus, Dominic is there.”
“Damn it, Ana.” Duke’s lips twisted in a snarl and he shook his head. “That might not be the best way to argue the kid’s case.”
Brad rolled his eyes. Part of him wanted to argue about the “kid” part, but he’d already realized that he was always going to be a kid to Duke—when the man had married Ana, he’d all but adopted Brad as his unofficial little brother. Not just a brother-in-law, either . . . a real brother.
“Dominic isn’t interested in Ana,” Brad said.
Duke’s upper lip peeled back from his teeth. “Once upon a time, he was.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” Ana crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Duke. “Please tell me that’s not why we’re standing here arguing.”
“It’s not.” Duke hooked a hand over her neck and drew her close.
Brad looked away as Duke pressed his brow to Ana’s. They’d been married for a while now, but sometimes, it seemed like they were still on a honeymoon. The obvious love between the two of them still left him amazed. Even though Brad had seen this coming, he hadn’t been fully prepared for it.
“It’s because this isn’t your job, Ana,” Duke said quietly. He cupped her cheek, stroking his thumb over her lower lip. “You weren’t trained for this.”
She watched him, purple eyes dark with worry, fear. She no longer hid from him, which was a damn good thing, but he hated seeing that fear in her eyes.
“Duke, you know Brad wouldn’t be hauling me along if he thought I was going to be in major danger. Especially not without you with me. For some reason, he thinks I can help with something . . . I have to try.”
“No.” He scowled. Sliding an arm around her waist, he pulled her close and muttered, “No. Damn it, Ana, we’re supposed to be on vacation. Taking it easy.”
She smoothed a hand down his arm and said, “If you wanted to take it easy, we should have just laid around the house back home instead of hitting the beaches.”
“And I should have said no when the kid wanted to come along,” Duke muttered. He lifted his head and glared at Brad.
Brad returned his stare, levelly, steadily.
The kid really wasn’t a kid anymore, Duke knew. He also knew Brad was smart, sharp, savvy. He wasn’t going to get his sister into some sort of danger. He adored his big sister—she’d spent her life protecting him. Now Brad was the stronger one, physically . . . and in other ways. He’d die before he let something happen to her.
But still . . .
“Duke.”
He looked at her, watched as she gave him a strained smile. “Duke, I’m in good hands . . . and you know it.”
Yeah. He did know. Plus, he also knew they couldn’t leave the baby witch alone. She was problems just waiting to happen and they needed to get someplace controlled, contained . . . and hopefully somebody at Excelsior could undo the hint of darkness he sensed inside the girl.
If Brad was sensing something tugging at him, then Brad was the one best-equipped to handle it. Duke didn’t feel a damn thing.
The kid’s psychic skills were something of a wonder, and if he said there was a need for Ana, then there was a need for her. Her rather unique skills had come in handy a time or two, and Duke suspected he knew why she was needed.
Still, he didn’t like it. At all.
Turning from Ana, he stared at Brad. Ignoring his wife, he crowded in on Brad, fisting a hand in the younger man’s shirt. Brad didn’t flinch or look away. His heartbeat spiked before he could control it, but that lasted only a few seconds. The kid’s control was damn near perfect.
“You got any idea what I’d do if something happened to her?”
Brad snorted. “Assuming I didn’t kill myself first, I figure you wouldn’t leave enough to bury. You know I won’t let anything happen to her, Duke.”
A kid. He’s just a kid.
But he wasn’t. Brad hadn’t ever been just a kid. And even though he was only nineteen, he had so much power inside him, so much control. He was one of the youngest called to serve the Council, and come fall, Brad was heading north to Alaska where Duke was going to mentor him for a while.
“Yeah, kid. I know.”
Blowing out a breath, he turned and met Ana’s gaze. She stared at him balefully and muttered, “I can’t believe you’re actually threatening my baby brother.”
“The baby brother expects it,” Duke said with a shrug.
“Not the point.” She stood rigid as he moved to pull her into his arms, but as he pressed a kiss to her neck, she sighed and slipped her arms around his waist. “Stop worrying so much, Duke. I’ll be fine. Besides, if it was anything really bad, you’d feel it, too. I’ll be fine.”
He might have felt better about it if he hadn’t seen the nerves in her eyes. The fear.
But Ana didn’t let fear stop her . . . she never had.
He loved her too much to take that away.
HE isn’t real . . .
Lost in a bank of fog, she held still, silent. Afraid to move, afraid to breathe . . . afraid to wake.
When she woke, she’d discover she was wrong.
That she was dreaming.
That once more, God had played a nasty, awful joke on her.
It seemed that was all her life was—a cosmic joke gone wrong.
Why now?
Something in the fog shifted and she looked up, found herself standing face-to-face with . . . herself.
“He isn’t real,” she said quietly.
“How do you know?”
“Because he can’t be. It has been too long. It has been . . . ages.”
“A lifetime.” There was a sad sigh, and the fog thickened, tightened—it weighed down on them, heavy and oppressive.
“A lifetime.”
Tears pricked her eyes, but they wouldn’t fall. Here, lost in the land of dreams, lost in the magic of her own making, she couldn’t cry. Not physically, at least.
But in her heart, she wept. She sobbed. Her soul screamed out at the cruelty of it, the injustice.
“Why now?” She swallowed and stared into her own eyes. “Why now? I finally said good-bye. I finally let go. I was finally ready to move on and now . . . this.”
“Does this mean we think he is real?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
Her other self smiled, a sad curl of her lips. “We want to believe. We want to think he is real. But if we’re wrong . . . ”
“If I’m wrong, it will destroy me. I’m so close already . . . so close to falling away.”
“We’ve already fallen away. You have fallen away. You fell into darkness, into blackness . . . you linger too close to true evil. Hunter.”
She flinched. In her heart of hearts, she knew it was true.
But the pain . . . the loneliness . . .
She closed her eyes and sank to her knees, arms wrapped around herself for war
mth. “I did not do this intentionally. I simply wanted to . . . forget.”
“You willed it on yourself. On us. You cannot continue like this. We cannot continue. If we do . . . ” Something dark, terrifying flashed in the eyes of her other self. “The blood . . . this body craves the power, even if we do not. If we give in, if we let ourselves get lost, there is little that can be done to save us. Little that will save those we love.”
“I am in control.” But even as she said it, she wondered. Rubbing the heel of her hand over her chest, she wondered at the fear in her gut, the coldness in her soul. The darkness that clawed in closer and closer . . . calling to her.
“You are . . . for now—while part of you still lingers. But if you stay like this for too long, you grow weak. If you are weakened, you are not in control. If that darkness taps into your power . . . lives will be lost. Blood will flow, a red river of death. There is none yet who are your equal in magic.”
“I know,” she bit off, narrowing her eyes. “I have control of it. Of her. ”
Her . . . that dark, angry soul haunting her.
“For now. But you cannot continue. You must return. We must return.” Now her other self smiled, that frightening, dark anger fading away, replaced by warmth. “We are needed. We are Hunters. You are a Hunter. Needed . . . and loved.”
“I am a Hunter,” she whispered. “Needed . . . loved.” She turned away and shook her head. “I know this. But I fear. I fear him . . . fear his memory, fear the tricks my empty heart would play on me.”
“And what if they aren’t tricks?”
Her hands shook as she shoved her hair back from her face. “In my heart, I want to believe.” Then she sighed and muttered, “No . . . let’s be honest. It’s just us, after all. Just me. In my heart, I do believe, but I fear that belief is born of desperation. If I return, and I am wrong . . . ”
She turned back, faced herself. “If I am wrong, it will destroy me. Destroy us. If I dare to hope, and those hopes are dashed, I won’t survive it.”
“But if you do not return, and soon, it will be too late. You will be lost . . . and if you are lost . . . she may well win.”
“No.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “She won’t win. I won’t lose. I don’t lose.”
A cynical smile curled her lips and she murmured, “Even when I try to, I cannot do it.”
Then she opened her eyes, to face herself, to decide.
But the dream shifted around her . . . and then she was elsewhere.
In a little house on the beach, sitting on a bed with him stretched out next to her. Neither of them wore a stitch and as her eyes met his, something warm and hopeful flooded her heart.
“ANOTHER dream,” Dominic muttered.
“ Hmmm. Dreams are not such a bad thing.” Nessa sat at his side, her legs folded, her eyes somber and sad. “Dreams of you kept me sane all these years.”
Guilt festered inside his heart, and he reached up, touched her cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” She cocked her head, her golden hair spilling over one shoulder. She was naked, and Dominic found himself fascinated by the sight of her pink nipples peeking through her hair.
Nessa chuckled and he glanced up, realized he’d been all but drooling. “You’re such a male.” She rolled her eyes and then, with a wide grin, primly smoothed her hair down, covering herself.
Dominic slid a hand up her thigh, over her side, until he could cup her breast. “Now I’ve got to be honest and admit, I don’t know much more than what I’ve seen in my own dreams, but I’m pretty sure you enjoyed me being male.”
“I did at that.” She rested a hand on his chest, sighing. “I want to believe this is real, you know. I want to believe you are here, really here. But I’m too afraid.”
“Is that why you’re . . . not you?”
She pulled her hand from his chest and folded them in her lap. Lifting one shoulder in a shrug, she said, “I am me. I’m just . . . hiding.”
Dominic rolled to his side, pushing up onto his elbow. Cupping her face, he said, “Then stop hiding. Come out . . . from wherever in the hell you are, stop whatever in the hell you’re doing, and just come back to me.”
Gold-tipped black lashes lowered over her eyes. “And if I do . . . and you aren’t here, it will end me. I can’t live through that, lover. It will kill me. Or worse.”
“I am here.” He caught her hand and drew it to his chest. Pressing it to his skin, he said, “I’m here. See? Touch me. Feel me.”
“But these are just dreams . . . and I’ve had many a dream where I could touch you, feel you.”
“Did they feel the same way this dream feels?” he asked. Then he shook his head. “I know they didn’t. Something’s different—something’s been different in my dreams, and now I know why. I bet your dreams have changed, too.”
Nessa’s only answer was a sigh. She glided her hand over his chest, his arms, stroking down to his hips and thighs. Although his blood burned in his veins and he ached to touch and take, he held still.
She leaned over him, her eyes locked on her hands as she stroked him. She watched with rapt fascination, as though she wished to memorize everything about him.
“So different,” she whispered. “Everything about you looks so different . . . but you feel the same.”
“And how is that?”
She slanted a look at him. “Like the rest of me—the other half of my heart. I’ve felt broken, incomplete . . . ever since you left me. Five hundred years of that. And now I feel like I’m whole again. I’m me. It feels like there is life in me again.”
She raked her nails up over his thigh.
That light touch left him shivering, and she smiled, doing it again. Involuntarily, his hips jerked when her hand drew near his cock. Her smile took on a devious slant and she started to stroke her fingertip in little circles high on his thigh.
As she lightly brushed against him, Dominic hissed out a breath. “You’re asking for it,” he muttered.
“Am I?” She bent over and pressed her lips to his thigh. “What exactly am I asking for?”
Then she touched her tongue to his skin.
Dominic groaned. Cool, slender fingers closed around his cock and he reached down, folded his hand around hers, squeezing. Gritting his teeth, he started to rock against her hand. She flicked her tongue against the sensitive flesh of his balls and he swore as fire tore through him.
“Witch,” he muttered.
“ Hmmm.” Then she nudged his hand aside, using her hand to hold his cock steady. Watching him from under her lashes, she closed her mouth around the head of his shaft and began to suck.
She used her tongue, the edge of her teeth, her hands on him while Dominic tore at the sheets beneath him, rising to meet her touch.
She worked him close . . . so close. And then she stopped.
Dominic gaped at her as she straightened up and once more folded her hands in her lap. She grinned at him and said, “You taste different.”
“You are a cruel, cruel woman.” He caught her eyes and then moved, uncoiling from the bed and catching her slim body, tucked her beneath him. Pushing his knee between her thighs, he started to rock against her.
She was hot, slick . . . and wet. He shuddered as he rubbed his thigh against the damp curls between her thighs. He wanted to feel those curls brush against the head of his cock, wanted to push inside her and feel her clench around him. Catching her wrists, he drew them over her head, held them pinned there with one hand.
Heat flashed through her blue eyes as she tugged against his hold. “Going to hold me down, then?” she asked, her voice husky and soft.
He brushed his lips against hers. “Do you want me to let go?”
“Not on your life.”
“Then I won’t.” He wedged his hips between her thighs and pushed against her. Steadying his cock, he pressed it to her entrance. Her gaze held his. In the blue depths of her eyes, he saw hunger, need . . . love. A love that he had been missing
, every day of his life—of this new life. The only life he really remembered, but it hadn’t even felt like a true life, not until he found out about her.
Like the rest of me—the other half of my heart . . . now I feel like I’m whole again.
Whole.
That was it, completely.
She made him whole.
In his dreams, at least.
As he sank inside her, one slow inch at a time, he stared at her face. Letting go of her wrists, he cupped her chin and angled her head. As he withdrew, and then sank deep, deep back inside her, he watched her face.
She arched underneath him, her knees coming up to grip his hips. She clenched around him, silky soft and sleek. “Please . . . ” she whispered. Her lashes fluttered over her eyes and she blindly sought his mouth. Against his lips, she said it again, “Please . . . please . . . ”
“Come back to me,” he ordered, his voice rough and harsh. Slanting his mouth over hers, he kissed her deep, shuddering at the taste of her, struggling against the deeper hunger that moved inside him. He needed more. He needed all of her. He needed to look into her eyes outside of these crazy dreams and see that she knew him. He needed to sink his teeth into her neck and let the taste of her flood him, fill him. He needed to lie down to rest and know that she was with him.
Everything . . . he needed everything.
And until she stopped hiding, he had no chance of having it.
He fisted a hand in her hair and jerked her head back. Against her mouth, he growled, “Come back to me, damn it. Come back . . . ”
She cried out, her body twisting and rocking against his. Her nipples burned into his chest, tight, hard little points. She shivered and clenched around him and the silken muscles of her pussy gripped him, milked him.
Shoving back onto his knees, he tucked her against him. He hooked his elbows under her knees, holding her open . . . exposed. He stared down, watching as he withdrew, his cock ruddy, gleaming with the moisture from her sex. Then, he sank inside, slow . . . slow . . . slow. . . . She was shivering, quivering, shaking when he seated his length completely inside her.
Slowly. Then not so slow . . . then fast, faster, faster . . . driving into her with all his strength, and it still wasn’t enough. Falling back over her body, he tangled his hands in her hair and arched her head back. “Come back to me,” he pleaded against her lips. “Please . . . Please, come back.”
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