No Rest for the Witches

by Karina Cooper

  He was, based on her responses to his seduction, the first of her lovers to slow things down. Take it to a tempo designed to pull her apart, nerve by needy nerve.

  But he didn’t have the strength, not tonight. Her fingers wrenched at the buttons of his wet shirt; her legs tangled with his as he kissed her hard, kissed her with everything he was and everything he had to give.

  Her heart pounded against his.

  He pulled Naomi’s hands away, dragged them behind her and shackled them at the base of her spine. “What do you say?” he asked, his voice husky with need. Demanding. Aggressive.

  Her cheeks flushed. But she wasn’t anybody’s damsel. As her long legs rose in the water, circled his hips and forced the ridge of his straining cock against the core of her own body, he groaned, hard and loud.

  “Three months,” he said, clenching his jaw as her hips slid along his. “None of this three months shit. Forever, Naomi. I’m not kidding. No games, no secrets. I’ll bloody well marry you if you . . . oh, Christ.”

  “That simple?” she demanded, even as every syllable shuddered.

  “Mine,” he managed. “Forever.”

  “I love you,” she replied, grinding herself against him. Her voice caught, twisted. Fractured. “But if I’m going to be this . . . this fucking needy, I don’t want to feel it here alone. I hate it, I don’t . . . oh, God, Phin.”

  “No more,” he said hoarsely. “Things will change.” He kissed her mouth. Her cheek, her stubborn jaw. Again at her mouth, tasting her lush lip, the heat of her breath as it shook on a ragged exhale. “Promise you.”

  “Promise you,” she repeated on a whisper.

  It wasn’t a yes to his backhanded proposal, but as Phin filled his hands with her—filled his senses with every noise, every smell, every taste of her damp skin and the hollow places of her body—he knew he’d ask again.

  When the time was right. When the mood was right.

  When, he thought as he sank balls-deep into her warm body and groaned loudly enough to send echoes across the rippling water, he could think again.

  He’d make her his in every way he knew how.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Where’s Phin?”

  Jessie turned in his arms, and Silas cupped the back of her head in one large hand and tucked her back against his shoulder. “Busy,” she told him, and left it at that.

  He bit back a grin. If the man was smart, he had Naomi locked up somewhere, and would for the next few hours.

  The woman was a handful on a good day. She hadn’t had a good day in a long time.

  Jessie looked up at him, a small smile tugging at the corners of her wide mouth. “Don’t go to the back cove for a while.”

  He grunted a noncommittal sound and tipped his head to Joel. “To answer your question, it was an empty warehouse. Most of the shipping crates we saw hadn’t been used in years.”

  “But why there?” Joel sat, but his gaze flicked often to Lillian. Eager to refill her tea, her plate. Feeling, Silas figured, the pinch of guilt. He was a good kid. He’d get over it. “I mean, missionaries—”

  “They weren’t missionaries,” Silas cut in. He smoothed a hand down Jessie’s back, felt her shiver against his side. “They were led by some kind of witch mercenary. He figured he’d capitalize on Naomi’s bounty.”

  “He was surprisingly well-equipped for a witch,” Jessie said dourly.

  Lillian and Matilda spoke quietly on the other side of the table, and Silas let them talk uninterrupted. How long had it been since Matilda had company of her own age?

  Or, well, relative age. He still wasn’t sure how old she was, but Lillian at fifty-some-odd had to be closer.

  Jessie jammed an elbow in his side. “Hey, earth to Silas.”

  “Sorry.” Absently, he dropped a kiss into her hair, inhaling the warm, feminine fragrance of her. Spiced with the floral soap she and Matilda made. His heart squeezed. “You shouldn’t be too surprised. After all, you met a wealthy witch. Anyone can hide themselves.”

  “What about the body?” Joel asked.

  He hesitated.

  Jessie’s hand reached over. Linked with his.

  “We left it,” he finally said, glancing down at her. Her tawny eyes glowed in the firelight, wide and trusting. Filled with love. His love.

  But she had to quit lying to him.

  “Won’t that cause problems?”

  Silas pulled his attention back to Joel and frowned. “Maybe. I don’t understand how a witch of that caliber was able to train up operatives like that, or what they wanted with Mrs. Clarke, but by the time I had the shot, I had to take it.”

  Joel thought about it. “Naomi saved Mrs. Clarke’s life, didn’t she?” His voice was soft. A shade away from revealing something Silas wasn’t sure the man wanted to share.

  He rose. “Everyone did their part,” he said, and pushed his chair back. Offering a hand to Jessie, he added, “We need to talk.”

  Jessie winced, but as she took his hand, her jaw tightened. She knew the issue.

  Matilda waved at them as they left the patio. Grimly, Silas pulled Jessie behind him, away from the volcanic pond where Phin and Naomi had gone. With the patio and hidden cove occupied, he made for the dock.

  She was silent behind him. Planning, he figured. Scheming.

  She was damned good at it.

  “We have to keep the Clarkes out of sight,” she said to his back. He tugged her along the dock, saying nothing. “Phin said he wanted to get his mother out of the city, but I’ll bet she doesn’t go.”

  At the end of the dock, with the water glinting like shadows emeralds around then, he stopped. Turned and pulled her into his arms.

  She came willingly, but her eyes were shadowed as he frowned down at her. “Stop lying to me,” he said, hoarse with the intensity he hadn’t meant to share.

  She flinched. “I don’t—”

  “Jess.” He cupped her jaw with one hand, stroked her lower lip with a callused thumb. “I know this is hard. We’ve got things we see that we want to help, things you see that you want to fix. You’re killing yourself.”

  She couldn’t hide it, either. The bruised color underneath her eyes had been getting steadily worse, especially when she strained herself.

  “Don’t think I don’t notice when you get out of bed at night,” he continued, and didn’t care if his heart beat raggedly through every word. Her flinch turned to a strained expression, something that twisted her mouth. Furrowed her brow. “You can’t keep doing this.”

  She closed her eyes. “I don’t know how else to help, Silas. I’m not—I can’t fight. Not like you. I’m not Naomi.”

  “Oh, God.” The words tore from him on a low, guttural laugh. “Sunshine, I thank every fucking star out there that you aren’t. What the hell are you talking about?”

  Jessie dropped her gaze, stared at a point on his shirt. “You . . . it’s just that you know each other so well.”

  And then it hit him. Like a sledgehammer to the skull. “You’re . . . jealous?”

  Her mouth twisted downward. And when his laughter echoed over the canyon, she jerked her head up. Balled her hand into a fist and jabbed it into his iron-hard abs. “It’s not funny!”

  He caught her hand, brought it to his lips even as his chuckles escaped through her fingers. “Yes, it is. You have no idea.” Pulling her closer, he bent, slung an arm under her ass and pulled her into his arms.

  She gasped, clung to his shoulders, and didn’t fight as he guided her legs around his waist. Eye to eye now, he tucked a finger under her chin and forced her to look at him. “You’re my only. But you’re also not Naomi. Sunshine, I leave you behind because I can’t bear the thought of something happening to you.”

  “How do you think I feel?” she retorted, eyes flashing.

  Silas paused, eyebrows raising. How did she feel?

  Well . . . son of a bitch. He hadn’t considered that.

  “You’re a soldier,” she continued, linking her f
ingers around his neck. He held her easily—too easily, he realized. She’d lost some weight. “I’m not, but I am a witch. I’m not trying to come between you and what you do, but you can’t just set me up somewhere and take everything on yourself. I can help.” Her blonde lashes narrowed. “I have to help.”

  “You’re right.”

  Jessie blinked at him. “What?” And then she frowned, as if trying to figure out if he was messing with her. “With the how?”

  “You’re right,” he repeated, grinning at her nonsense quirk. “I won’t try and bench you anymore.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “No catch,” he said, and pulled her closer. “You’re a part of this team, and like Naomi, you’re going to have to learn when no means no.”

  “Now wait—mmph!” Silas cut her off, sliding his lips over hers, silencing her with a kiss. When she stopped fighting, when her curves melted against him and she hung limply in his arms, he let her breathe again.

  She walked her fingers across his chest. “Dirty.”

  “Not yet,” he promised, and her silvery laugh filled his heart. His soul.

  With love. With sunshine.

  With promise of the future.

  “I love you,” she whispered. “Never forget that, okay? No matter what.”

  Silas smoothed back her hair. “Never,” he promised.

  But he couldn’t help but wonder what his all-seeing witch wasn’t telling him this time.

  Keep reading for

  an excerpt from the next

  full-length novel

  in the Dark Mission series

  All Things Wicked

  On sale February 2012

  No such thing as rest for the wicked.

  Caleb Leigh opened gritty, burning eyes, giving up on the fitful doze that was all his pain-wracked body could manage for sleep. The filthy motel room came into focus as the neon lights outside the grimy, patchy curtains popped and fizzled, thrusting red and orange knives into his retinas.

  How long had he managed to sleep this time? Two hours? Three? Hellfire sparklers of pain spasmed in his muscles. His skin twitched as if it wanted to crawl off his abused body and slink away for painkillers and a shower.

  God. He’d kill for a shower.

  Muffling a groan, he reached down for the shirt he’d left on the floor, caught the edge with his fingers, and froze as a whisper of a breeze ghosted across the sensitive scars on his back.

  Off. The room felt off. Unbalanced.

  He inhaled, smelled New Seattle’s own peculiar brand of acid-tinged summer rain, acrid smog, rotting garbage, and . . . something else.

  Get up!

  A floorboard creaked behind him.

  Caleb threw himself off the bed as a black silhouette loomed out of the neon-spattered darkness. Beads and rock clicked as his charmed necklaces clattered together; rusted springs screeched, a high-pitched shriek rising in a crescendo as his assailant landed lightly on the mattress. Caleb’s grunt of pain as his feet hit the floor drowned in the raw fury clamping around his head.

  He’d had no warning. Not even a whisper of magic.

  He should have been less surprised.

  The shadow pushed off the bed as Caleb leaped to his feet. Silver winked a deadly promise in orange-red glow spilling through the single broken window; serrated steel, wicked edge gleaming. Knife gripped in a black-gloved hand, the figure pointed at him.

  “Why aren’t you dead, you bastard?”

  The already cramped motel room walls slammed in tight around him. That voice. Feminine. Breathy with exertion, with fear, but so fucking familiar that it sucked out his breath on a raw sound.

  Memory. Affection. Worry.

  Love.

  It rose like a dream, a sigh of lazy summer days and laughing secrets, and Caleb fought the slick, blissful whisper back behind gritted teeth. It wasn’t his love. It wasn’t his affection, his worry, his goddamned memory that fisted in his heart.

  And Juliet Carpenter had no fucking business being anywhere near him.

  A year wasn’t nearly long enough.

  The neon lights snapped and crackled in rhythmic chaos outside the window. It slanted lurid color over her black hair, cut shorter than he remembered and in a fashion that suggested she was aiming for edgy and tough. The dark, choppy fringe framed her face, her faintly square jaw, and the ghostly green eyes that he’d last seen half closed and luminous as he sank balls-deep inside her warm, straining body.

  Promise me. His fists clenched at the echo of his own words, so long ago. He’d done his part, damn it. “Get out,” he said flatly.

  “You son of a bitch.” Deftly, the sawlike blade in her hand rotated as Juliet jumped onto the thin mattress and launched herself at him.

  His body locked. Every goddamned nerve in his left side detonated as he plucked her from the air. Her legs swung to the side, knees ramming into his ribs and jarring a painful grunt from between his clenched teeth as he fisted both hands into her jacket collar and used her own momentum to slam her against the wall behind him. Plaster cracked.

  The breath left her on a hard, wordless snarl.

  His chest squeezed, his own breath banding tightly under the fiery protest of unhealed wounds on his weakened left side. “You still can’t listen worth a damn,” he growled, glaring through the sizzling edges of his vision. “I said get out.”

  The knife glinted. He shackled her slender wrist with one hand and slammed it back against the wall. White dust floated to her dark hair in a gritty cloud.

  Sweat gleamed on her face, an echo of the perspiration drying across his shoulders. It wasn’t all courtesy of the unusually muggy summer heat that had settled into the deepest crevasses of the city. Holding her in place shouldn’t have been as hard as it was, but his body still wasn’t recovered from the burns that had nearly killed him a year ago.

  Every day was a lesson in pain. Pinning a witch against a wall as her feet thrashed a foot above the floor wasn’t helping.

  Pinning this witch wasn’t something he’d ever expected to do again.

  She’d lost weight.

  Her jacket was a little too loose, her black shirt baggy where he’d tangled his fingers into the collar of both. The warmth of her full breasts against the back of his scarred hand wasn’t a reminder he needed, but he couldn’t afford to let her go for his own comfort.

  He wasn’t a fool. Or some teenage virgin who had never gotten a handful of a woman before. Especially this woman.

  The dark circles under her eyes couldn’t take away from the visual impact she’d always had on him. Her mouth, top-heavy and so damned expressive it made him crazy for it, twisted as she struggled in his grip. She managed to gain an inch of momentum as she jerked her hand out from under his, but Caleb locked his teeth and shoved it back. Fragile bones grated under his grip.

  Pain flickered. Hers. His.

  You promised.

  Oh, Jesus. That voice. It made itself heard at the worst fucking moments.

  Caleb sucked in a breath that seemed harder than it should have to get and drowned out the feminine presence echoing through his head. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He didn’t have to ask. The venom spewing at him from a look filled with revulsion was all the answer he needed.

  His grip tightened on her collar, beaded bracelets around his wrist clacking softly. “Let me rephrase that. The coven doesn’t operate alone. Where’s your backup?”

  Her teeth clicked together. Her gaze slid away, flicked back as she raised her chin.

  She’d never been a good liar.

  Narrow-eyed, Caleb stared at her as fury throbbed between his temples. “You don’t have backup,” he said softly. Then, much less quietly, he snarled, “You came alone? You came after me by yourself? Jesus Christ, Jules!”

  With monumental effort, Juliet raised both feet and planted them against Caleb’s thigh. Instinctively he braced, swore as her move raised her out of his grip and threw him off balance. She reache
d up with her right hand, grabbed the knife out of her left, and swung it back around. Caleb swore again, jerking away, but not before the jagged teeth of the blade snagged the puckered flesh of his left arm. Damn it!

  Raw, red static shorted his vision as he backpedaled into the mattress. His knees collided with the edge, buckled, and sprawled him backward onto the springs.

  Sensing her intent, he rolled, blood smearing the stained sheets, and grunted as her weight barreled into his back. Her knees rammed into the vulnerable hollow beneath his shoulder blades, dug into his barely healed scars hard enough that he threw his head back, teeth locked against a brittle surge of pain.

  “Don’t move!” Her fingers twisted in his too-long hair.

  Caleb froze.

  Her thighs clenched around his waist. They were warm, even through her pants. Warm and familiar. And the press of her soft breasts against his shoulders shouldn’t have mattered more than the knife she held at his throat.

  Muscles shaking, taut with the effort to stay still, Caleb waited. It hurt. God, it hurt, but it had nothing on the clash of memory, fantasy, hell, wanting that roiled in his blood now.

  They’d never made it to a bed. He remembered that. There weren’t that many beds in Old Seattle.

  Behind him, on him, Juliet panted for breath. “I just,” she managed, “want to know one thing.”

  “Then what?” His voice grated harshly. “You’ll cut my throat?”

  He knew it wasn’t true the instant he said it, but that wasn’t the point. Juliet had always been too soft. Everyone had known it.

  Her sister had known it.

  The same sister who’d occupied a dark corner of his mind since she’d died in his arms over a year ago.

  The knife at his throat jerked. A thin, slick line of fire told him how sharp the damned blade was. It’d make a bloody mess of his flesh faster than he could get it away from her.

  “You could only be so lucky,” she spat. “I want to know why, you bastard. Why?”

  She wasn’t asking why he wasn’t dead. He didn’t have that answer, anyway. No, he knew what she asked in the single, strained syllable, and closed his eyes.