“Doubtful. If anything, the result will be of benefit to him.”
“We don’t have to do this,” she said. “We can try this another way.” Oh, damn. Those were tears burning in her eyes. “It’s just I want my sister back safe and sound. I want Christophe to never harm anyone else, and I hate that I’m using you to get what I want.”
His eyebrows lifted. He drew her closer and with his free hand ran his fingers through her hair. “More than I am using you, Gray?” His hand ended up touching the side of her face. “I asked for your fealty. And I proposed this to you, if you’ll recall. If anyone should feel used, it’s you.”
“I’m glad you found me instead of someone else when I went after Christophe.” She put her arms around his neck and held on tight, burying her face in his chest. Through his shirt, she kissed his scar. “I’m glad it’s you.”
He was still holding her hand, but his other one snaked around her waist and pulled her tight against him. “For the record, you may use me whenever you like.”
Gray looked at him. He wasn’t holding back the psychic connection anymore, and that meant he was an insistent presence in her head. “I’m going to do that. Just you wait.”
When they walked out, he sent a current of magic into the repaired medallions over the left corner of the door. A no strangers allowed here command that spread from that one to the others. He did the same at the hallway door, and they walked out.
In the garage, he threw his bag and hers into the backseat of his car and they were off to, well, she had no idea. They didn’t talk during the drive. She didn’t even ask where they were going or when they would get there. They headed west, across the city. He jacked an iPod into the car stereo and put on some kind of edgy Latin guitar.
She waved a hand at the iPod. “Am I going to end up liking this?”
Without any change in expression he said, “You will acquire my superior taste, of course.”
“How do you know you won’t end up slumming with me?”
“Impossible.”
“You may end up wearing jeans when this is over.”
“You may find you like impractical shoes.”
She laughed, and it felt good to be able to laugh. “Not hardly.”
They ended up in the St. Francis Wood section of the city. Very expensive homes here. Eventually, he made a turn into the driveway of a house with a lawn that was larger than two normal houses. The house itself wasn’t that large, but it was impressive, in a Georgian revival kind of way. He hit a button on a gadget clipped to the visor. They drove inside the garage and parked next to a shiny dark blue Tesla roadster. After a brief tussle over what could be wrong with her carrying her own bag, ten minutes later they were inside a house so clean she wondered if anyone lived here.
Durian threw his keys onto a table and they stood for several seconds, looking at each other. She gripped the strap of her bag and thought about why she was a fool to feel all the air rush out of her body just from eye contact. He was meltingly good-looking. She felt like a high school girl with a crush on the wrong boy. Except she’d had a taste. She’d seen him naked. She’d caressed him, gone down on him, and kissed him in places that got her hot just thinking about it. He hung his jacket in a closet near the door and walked into the main room with her following.
There was furniture here, a relief after that stark entryway. Beautiful antiques, too. Which was no surprise. He had a taste for old and elegant. They ended up in a kitchen where he got them both a glass of ice water.
“Perhaps you’d like time to think about your decision.”
She shook her head. The ice cubes in her cup were tiny little squares. “Just think,” she said. “Next time we do this, we’ll be fighting over who gets which ice cube.” She stuck her finger in her cup and jabbed at one. “Dibs.”
“Enjoy it,” he said without cracking a smile. “That is the last ice cube you will ever call your own.”
She couldn’t help laughing. With that they were five minutes after the storm instead of in the middle of it. This was the right thing to do. For both of them.
“This way.”
They ended up upstairs. Partway down the hall, he took two quick steps ahead of her to open a door.
She walked in. A spray of coppery-red stars arched over the midnight blue wall directly opposite the door. In the light, they seemed to glitter. To the left was an impressive bed; a four poster complete with silk hangings that matched the walls. A gilt-framed still life of lemons in a brass bowl hung on another wall next to a Georgian-era highboy with what looked like the original finish. Her mother collected, so she had years of exposure to very old furniture.
“Nice.”
“Thank you.”
He walked to a curio cabinet and started taking things out of it.
Gray looked around. There wasn’t much furniture, but she was used to less where he was concerned. What he had looked like it belonged in a museum. She knew a Queen Anne chair when she saw one. Like the three around the table there.
He walked out of the room with his arms full of items she couldn’t identify. When he didn’t come back right away she went after him through a small anteroom with nothing in it but tatami mats on the floor. She ended up in a room that was almost devoid of furniture. The walls were the same midnight blue here. His shoes and socks sat beside the doorway so she did the polite thing and removed hers, too.
This next room wasn’t large, maybe ten by ten total. There were no windows. No more doors but the one behind her, and that one wasn’t even a normal door. It stretched floor to ceiling, for one thing. There was no trim and no hardware. Just a quarter-sized medallion in about the same place you’d put a doorknob. Midnight blue on one side, coppery red on the other. She stepped through.
In there the walls were the color of an almost-new penny. The ceiling was brilliant white, the floor tiles a polished black stone that was cool and slick under her feet. Durian stood on the far side of the room, setting up a brazier on a recessed platform built into the wall. There wasn’t much furniture here, either. Just a small couch pushed up against one of the walls and a cherry table with an empty copper vase on it.
“What are you doing?”
“Preparing.” At the moment, the only light in the room came from the open door.
She looked around for a light switch and didn’t see one.
“Please close the door then press the medallion there.”
“Sure.” She reached behind her and pulled the door closed. It clicked shut with the force of its own weight. She pressed the medallion and an electric zing shot up her arm. With no discernable seam, it looked like they were in a room with no way in and no way out.
Durian did something, she felt the magic, and all along the floor the walls shone with just enough light for her to see.
Her belly tightened. She had no reservations about what they were planning to do. None at all. She walked close enough to get a better look at the items he’d taken from the curio cabinet: a brazier, a fat-bellied stoppered jar about two inches high—alabaster, it looked like. There was also a box about the size of his fist that looked like it might be carved from lapis lazuli and various items required to heat the contents of the brazier. While she watched, he got the brazier going. He opened the jar and poured some of the contents into the bowl atop the brazier. The scented viscous material shone with rainbows of oil.
The smell was musty but not unpleasant.
They stood side by side, her shoulder touching his upper arm.
The blue box, it turned out, had no hinges, just an edged lid that snugly fit the bottom. The inside was blue, too, and it contained a golden-yellow substance. He took a pinch of the stuff and scattered it across the oil. Tiny gold sparks appeared on the surface of the liquid in the brazier. Durian bent over and breathed in.
When he straightened his irises were coppery red. Flecks of gold dotted his sclera. He must be holding more magic than she thought for his eyes to have gone straight to copper.
<
br /> “You’ll forgive me, Gray,” he murmured. In one smooth motion he stripped off his shirt. He continued to strip down. “The ritual is a stressful one. If it happens that I change forms, it’s best if I’m not clothed.”
Her stomach clenched. “What about me?”
Durian folded his clothes and laid them neatly on the floor by what she could only call an altar. She did her best not to stare, but honestly, would she ever be tired of looking at his human form? “Since you cannot change forms, you may remain dressed.”
He reached into the blue box and withdrew a sizeable pinch of the contents. He placed that on his palm, then did so twice more. He made a tight fist and held it for the count of five.
“What is that?”
“This,” he said, unfurling his fingers, “is unrefined copa.” He held his hand at his eye level. The substance had clumped together and was a smaller mass now than it had been. Gold flecks flashed in his eyes. “It’s difficult to preserve in this state, but the experience is deeper. Richer.”
“Isn’t copa dangerous?”
“Not for the kin.” He lowered his hand. “For the magekind, yes; it is eventually quite dangerous.” He put the bolus in his mouth, made a face, then stayed motionless for some moments before he swallowed. His eyes, when they opened again, were even more vividly copper and gold. “Have you taken copa before?”
She shook her head. “At least not that I know of.”
“Good.” He took more copa from the box, less than before, did the same sort of compression with his closed fist and then handed over the portion.
She gave his hand a doubtful look.
“You have so little magic, Gray, that I think we are safe in believing there is no risk in your taking this. In the event, it’s nowhere near the amount you’d need to cause ill effects. Leave it on your tongue until it almost completely dissolves.”
She took the copa and set it on her tongue. The substance was so bitter her breath caught, but she let it dissolve. Before it was gone, the markings on her arm and temple flared hot.
Durian took her face between his hands. His fingers pressed tight to her temples, two of his fingers in contact with the tattoo on her right temple. Their connection came on with a saturated depth that took her breath. Her gaze met his and locked. “Are you ready?”
CHAPTER 30
Durian watched as the copa darkened her eyes from pale blue to turquoise. The tracery underneath her skin seethed in tight coils that whipped out and curled back. His fingertips sizzled from the contact but he didn’t let go. He didn’t want to. She’d become far more accepting of the kind of physical and mental touch that was so much a part of what the kin were.
She worked her mouth. “This is terrible.”
“Yes.” He was thinking about sex. And not vanilla kind. The kin’s instincts for procreation were always aroused around human women, and that meant not keeping his human form. He had eons of experience in self-control. He told himself he wouldn’t. That he didn’t dare take that risk. For either of them. Her willingness to go there with him didn’t make it safe or right.
She nodded.
“Very well.” Durian lowered his mouth to her throat, pushing her head back enough for him to find the spot he wanted. He breathed in and smelled his shampoo in her hair, the light scent of her body only slightly masked by the scent of his soap. His stomach spiraled into white-hot lust.
There were words to say and to transform with magic so that they resonated with power. Reaching for her magic was easy. He knew her better than he’d known anyone in his long years of living. She was an extraordinary woman. Strong. Mentally tough. Determined. And, hell, when she touched him, he went up in flames.
He worked the magic he pulled up, shaped it, gave it the purpose he needed for the ritual and pushed it through to her. She gasped as the magic came through to her, darker, he knew, than anything he’d let her feel from him.
The pulse of blood through his veins slowed. His kind had been born to this magic. It was his nature to think of inhabiting her body, and having done so once, the lure of doing so again would be all the stronger.
Gray understood what was needed, because she did the same, sending her magic into him. As before, the effect was disorienting. Between those born kin, the magic was expected, the psychic connection practically mundane. With Gray, he was above all else aware of her as human. Other. Female. Beloved.
He breathed in, clearing his head of everything but the ritual he needed to complete. He began a silent chant, a recitation of words that had survived thousands of years and the centuries of depredations by the magekind. So much knowledge had been lost or locked away in mageheld fiends.
Her eyelashes fluttered, the edges of her mouth tightening. Durian stroked her shoulders and focused on maintaining their wide-open connection instead of letting go and simply taking over. He moved a step closer to her. Beneath his fingers her skin was fever-hot. She was reacting to the copa.
Now came the part that most worried him. He needed to adapt the ritual exchange to compensate for the fact that she was human.
“Gray.” He drew a finger along her temple, and the sizzle of her magic took him right to the edge of the cliff. He stood there, poised to fall and praying to gods that no longer existed that he wouldn’t. “I need your consent. For indwell.”
She nodded, but her shoulders went tense and her now-turquoise eyes were wide and unfocused. His body tensed with anticipation. This was dangerous, wanting her so much. He’d regressed to a time when there were no rules about consent yet stood here in the future, expected to deny what he was.
“You have mine.” He told her so there would be no question that he agreed to her indwell of him—if it could be accomplished.
His heart tripped because he didn’t know for sure if he could open himself to her the way he needed to. His tension, the strength he needed to fight his instincts, were a barrier to what needed to happen. Leaving his other hand on her, he reached for the copa and shaped two more boluses. The difference between demonbound and twinned was vast and separated primarily by intent. The copa would, or ought to, relax him, and put him closer to his magic. He took the larger one and gave her the other.
Their minds were so entwined at this point that when she let the copa dissolve, the sharpness spread over his tongue, too. Different for humans than for the kin. Copa didn’t taste as bitter for him as for her. She blinked once. A second time. By the third, the color of her eyes had deepened. His own resistence thinned.
“I can’t see,” she said.
“At all?”
“Not normally.”
“Then it’s now.” His pulse thudded in his ears. “It’s time.” When she nodded, he slid into her mind. The world dropped away for him. This was like sex, the deliberate holding back in order to reach a higher peak. He wanted the shiver of power that came with an indwell. The fever excitement of a mind and body in his control. So much. Too much.
He wanted her with an ache. All of her. Bound to him. For the first time since he could remember, he let the copa take him over. He allowed himself to fall under.
When he opened his eyes, he saw the monochromatic glow of his own magic at the same time that he saw her. This would work. This had to work, because the alternative was Leonidas.
And you. He gave the thoughts to her without speaking. Now.
He held still, resisting his habit of closing off. She came into his mind. Not softly but with determination because that was Gray. Nothing timid. She touched boldly, accepting what she found. She became a part of his darkness. Just as he was now part of her magic.
Twinned.
He pushed aside her shirt collar and exposed the tender spot that was not quite the back of her neck and yet not the side either. He breathed in. So human. So frail and locked into a single physical manifestation. With the edge of a talon—the most he dared change—he scored her skin until blood ran, thick, red, hot with her life. She trusted him to see this through. Durian was determined not t
o fail her or himself. This was the only way he could bring out enough magic to complete the bond.
He bent at the same time he pulled her up and hard against him, exquisitely aware that he was male and bigger and stronger than she was. He licked away the trail of crimson from the cut he’d made. The taste of her blood hit his tongue with an explosion of heat and power.
She drew a breath that brought her torso in closer contact with his. He was desperate to have her naked against him. Desperate. How could he not be when he already knew how ferociously she made love? When he knew her private thoughts about him?
Durian reached between them to open her shirt because he needed contact with her as if she were fully kin. He pushed downward with the slice of a taloned finger and separated the buttons from her shirt. He did the same to her bra. He covered her breast with a hand, and his body shivered from the inside out from the first touch. Warm, human skin. Soft female curves. Her nipple grew taut underneath his palm.
Yes.
Was that her desire or his?
Skin to skin. Touching. Tasting. He fit his mouth over the cut and a low growl rose up from his chest. She held onto him, arching toward him. Their bodies touched. He wanted her to be as naked as he was. On her back, her body accepting his. As he was right now. And then more.
He separated from her, but the whole time, his free hand moved over her torso, down to the charm in her navel, the dip at the base of her spine. She let out a breath, soft and low. She accepted the forming bond, let it happen. The desire in the sound rocked him.
He opened a similar cut on his throat. Gray stretched to reach him and he held her, both hands around her waist, bringing her up to him. His head spun when she latched onto him and her magic swept through him like a wave. Her tongue touched the cut he’d made along his neck. Her teeth nipped at him, and—God yes. With the sensation of a lock sliding into position, the blood-bond between them settled into place.
When she released him, he bared his teeth, beyond himself with desire and the sense that he belonged to her. He flashed onto his memory of the day he first saw her. A defiant human woman on the verge of losing control of the magic he thought she’d stolen, and, incredible as it seemed, determined to kill Christophe dit Menart. He could have killed her for her attack on the mage, but he hadn’t.
My Immortal Assassin Page 24
