by L. A. Boruff
“Why’s that?” His voice was a low, sexy rumble.
“You’ve never had much of a way with words.” When I finished speaking, I slipped through the shadows thrown by the balcony above, raising magic between us so I would be lost to him in the dim. Then I paused. “Unless you’re here to kill me.”
“How could you think that?” There was an edge of something in Croft’s voice. Anger? Anguish? I couldn’t tell.
“You’re the one I’d pick for that too,” I said.
He didn’t take the bait.
“You’re not being smart.” He closed the door behind him, shutting out the steady, oppressive beat of the rain and the driving wind.
“You’ve just now noticed that? I fell in love with multiple assholes who pretended to be something they weren’t—”
“We lied to you,” he interrupted, his voice curt. “We didn’t pretend.”
“That’s a fine line of semantics. But I was the idiot, I should’ve expected the lies. I knew you were spies. I should have known you were spying on me.”
“We lied about why we were in your life. We didn’t pretend we loved you.” His voice was rough. “We meant it.”
“We?”
“Airren. Cax.” His voice softened, just slightly, when he said, “Me.”
“You need to get out of my house.”
He took a step forward. “This isn’t your house.”
“It is.”
“Tera, it’s dangerous to stay here. There are rumors about the house being occupied. People are scared…they think the place is haunted.”
“They’re not wrong.”
“Come home with me. Back to Corum, where you belong.”
Typical Croft. He doesn’t know how to ask. All he does is order.
“You need to go.”
“You’re coming with me.” He said it firmly, but then, Croft was always firm. “You stay alone, you’re going to get yourself killed. You have enemies…”
“I have you,” I said, my voice low and fierce. “I knew not to trust anyone. The worst enemy is the one you never see coming. The one with the gifts and the kisses…”
“And it was never more than a kiss, was it?” He took a step closer to me. This close, he smelled of the rain, the clean scent of the outdoors. His white shirt beneath the open coat clung to his chest. “Did you ever think about why?”
“You didn’t want to waste yourself on a girl you didn’t love?”
“I didn’t want to be intimate when I had to lie to the girl I do love,” he said. “You fucking idiot.”
People in Avalon don’t curse much. I’d brought Croft over to my Earth-side ways, though.
There’s something wrong with me, but hearing him call me a fucking idiot warmed my heart a little.
“I’m not going with you,” I said, my voice soft.
“Don’t make this hard.”
I took a step back away from him, intent on melting back into the shadows, but he reached out and caught my wrist. His grip was bruisingly hard.
“You’ll die here. I’m not going to let that happen.”
“You don’t get a say,” I told him, “and you don’t get to touch me.”
Croft is as predictable as he is powerful. He tugged my arm, pulling me toward him, already bending forward to push his shoulder into my abs and lift me onto his shoulders like the lost lamb he thought I was.
When he stumbled forward into empty air instead, he looked around, confusion written across his handsome face. I was just out of reach, smiling at him as I flicked my fingers and raised the shadows around me.
His jaw set. “I’m not lying now. Not about loving you and not about what’s coming.”
“I’m not a powerless little girl anymore. I’m not afraid of what’s coming.”
Despite cloaking myself in the dark, suddenly his body was against mine. He pushed me against a stone column, which was as hard and cold behind me as he was hard and warm in front. His chiseled lower abs brushed against my stomach. Some small, crazy part of me almost twined my arms around his neck out of habit.
His hands wrapped hard around my wrists again, but his breath was a soft flutter against my ear. “You were never powerless, even when you didn’t have your powers.”
Did he—the most powerful magician in Corum and a warrior beside—really believe that? I wished I did. He pressed so close to me that his knee between my thighs pinned my skirt to the wall. His broad shoulder filled my gaze. So many times, I’d wrapped my hands around those shoulders playfully to tug him close for a kiss. I’d day-dreamed about sinking my fingers deep into those shoulders as he pumped into me. Just the thought, while his breath fluttered the strands of hair loose around my throat, made my nipples pebble under the silky fabric.
“You won’t say you love me back, will you?” he murmured in my ear. “Who’s pretending now?”
“You and I are nothing to each other.” I pressed my palms against his chest and tried to shove him away from me, but of course, Croft was as hard and unyielding as stone.
“And now you’re a liar too.” His lips grazed the corner of my jaw. He inhaled softly, as if he was breathing me in, as if he’d missed me the same way I missed him.
Desire sparked—raw and base—and made my core clench. Despite myself, my face turned in toward him. Our lips hovered a breath apart. His gold-flecked brown eyes met mine. For all Croft’s bossiness, there was something pleading in his gaze. If I sent him away—if I could ever get him to go—he would lock his hurt away as he strode through the rain, and I would find myself on my knees on the cold stone floors, more alone than before he came. My lips grazed tentatively against his.
When his eyes widened, my chest tightened and I jerked away. God, he’d made a fool of me so many times.
This time, I used my magic when I shoved him away. This time, he slammed into the column across from me. Another flash of lightning illuminated his face. His expression was stoic and calm as ever—damn him—and his eyes were full of wonder.
“You are really powerful,” he said. “I’m so glad, Tera.”
“Are you?” I took a step toward him. My wand slammed into my palm; I’d called it in the back of my mind, without thinking of it consciously. “You hurt me, Croft. You shouldn’t be glad I’m just as powerful as you now.”
The familiar lines at the corners of his eyes deepened. Croft rarely smiled; that was his version of a cocky grin. He doubted I was just as powerful.
“Then let’s see it, girl,” he said. “You want to hurt me? Hurt me. You want to kiss me, kiss me. I’m here now.”
“You’re so sure you’re going to walk away unscathed.” I shouldn’t lie, but I couldn’t stop the angry words forming on my lips. I could never hurt Croft, not really. I wanted him to feel as lost as I had. And I wanted him to see me as I really was now: strong, powerful, dangerous. I was no longer the girl who needed him to keep me alive, but I still needed him.
“I’m sure I’m going to walk away with you.” There was that familiar warm arrogance in his voice.
I threw up my wand, slamming him again into the column, and he raised his own wand too. The ribbons flying from the end of my wand gleamed scarlet and gold, as hot and brilliant as the deep anger humming through my blood, and they collided with the arc of his magic, which was bright and blue and cold as the ocean on a winter’s day.
He pushed against my magic, and I stepped forward, matching his pace. I wasn’t going to run from him or hide in the shadows. Until I met him, and Cax, and Airren, and the Fox, it felt like no one saw me unless they wanted to hurt me. Unless they saw me as weak.
I wasn’t weak now.
The force of our magic pushing against each other grew hotter and more powerful, a thing between us that began to take on a life of its own. The colors tumbled over each other, bleeding to purple where they met, racing into a hot pulsing ball threaded through with ice-blue and fiery red. The rain beat a steady maddening staccato on the windows, and the magic between us burst.
>
I don’t know if I stumbled into Croft or he stumbled into me, but his arm circled my waist, his hard forearm like a bar against my lower back. I grabbed his stupid, handsome face in both hands, my thumbs under those eyes that looked down at me with such certainty. Part of me still wasn’t sure if I wanted to pop his head like a bubble or if I wanted to close the distance between us.
“I hate you now. I trusted you like I never trusted anyone.” And all the while, I’d been nothing but a mission.
“I know.” He didn’t bother to apologize again—had he ever apologized?—but instead, his lips met mine. His mouth was hard, claiming, his lips searing-hot. I held his face hard and kissed him back just as intensely. His lips parted, and his tongue swept the inside curves of my mouth. He tasted like whiskey, as if he’d had a drink before he faced me, and I pulled back.
He groaned, leaning his forehead against mine. “Do we have to fight, Tera?”
My hand pressed to his cheek, to the wide, hard edges of his cheekbone and the hollow beneath. I patted his clean-shaven skin hard enough to sting my palm, but his gaze remained fixed on mine, those wide, kissable lips unchanging.
“Do you think you deserve to be forgiven?” I ducked under his arm. He grabbed a handful of my swirling skirt behind me, but the magic turned to golden ash in his fingers and slid through his grasp.
I fled behind one of the columns—when I glanced back, his face was intent, his steps calm and measured—and then used my magic to slide behind a different column. I peeked out from behind the white stone. I glimpsed his cloak, flying out from a column ahead, as he turned and hid in the columns too.
Then his big body was suddenly behind me, pressing against me, his lower abs against the curve of my ass as his hand slid across the smooth fabric of my dress. Into my ear, he said, “No.”
I spun in his arms, letting him trap me again—for now—against the stone. “Then why are you here?”
“Just because I don’t deserve you doesn’t mean I’ll let you die alone.” His brows knit together. “At Corum, you’ll be safe. Your powers can grow.”
Corum would feel as haunted as this house to me, with all the memories crowding in with every step across campus; the sidewalk where Airren took my hand in his when everyone else stared at me, the eight-story window I jumped through in a spray of glass knowing that Croft would catch me, the place where Cax kissed me under the pink-blossoming trees.
His lips grazed my forehead. “We’ll stay away from you, if that’s what you want. You can’t stay here, Tera.”
“That’s it?” I pushed him away from me, and this time, he let me taking a step away. “You’re not going to fight for me?”
His eyes filled with heat. There was that familiar, defiant Croft posture as he crossed his arms. “I’m trying to respect your wishes.”
“You haven’t even said you’re sorry.”
“Is that some kind of magic?” His voice was heavy with sarcasm.
“Yes!” I exploded. “Yes, sorry is a magic word. When you break a girl’s goddamn heart and then march back into her life, issuing orders as usual, it doesn’t suggest you’re very sorry.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Of course I’m sorry.”
His eyes sharpened the second before I flowed under his arm like silk—half magic and half the way he’d trained me—but he was too late to catch me. I ran for the twisting stone stairs to the balcony.
With my heart pounding in my chest, I leaned over the edge of the balcony, the polished rich wood smooth under my arm. “Not good enough.”
And yet—even as I demanded he apologize the way I wanted him to—as he stood in the center of the hall looking up at me, I’d be devastated if he actually turned and walked out the door.
But I had to be willing to let him walk away and not run after him. If he didn’t choose me—if he didn’t humble himself for once after breaking my heart—I’d never move past what happened. I slipped through the shadows, past the priceless art lining the hall. The soft, rich carpets beneath my feet smelled of mildew. They’d sealed my father’s palace up, and I had broken down the doors, but I couldn’t restore it to what it had been. I didn’t want to.
When I turned the corner into my bedroom, Croft was already there. His powerful arms were braced above him, his wrists resting casually against the top of the doorway. The pose drew his rain-soaked shirt an inch or two above his abs, exposing hard ridges. A button hung from a thread halfway down his chest, and his ripped-open shirt exposed the deep groove of his pecs and the quick flutter of his lungs, as if even Croft had winded himself getting in front of me. I didn’t remember grabbing his shirt in our fight, but I didn’t regret it.
“If you want me to apologize, you’ll have to stay in one place long enough to hear it.” His voice was cool.
“Why does it sound like you’re lecturing me even now?” I demanded, tapping his chest with the tip of my wand. His wand, actually. His eyes flickered down its etched wooden length, no doubt recognizing it.
I hadn’t been able to leave him behind, not really.
He captured the wand—and my fist with it—in one of his hands. “Listen.”
I put my palm against his chest and pushed, to no effect. When I pushed again, he finally brought his other wrist down, tucking it in the pocket of his rain-beaded coat. He carried the faint scent of fresh water and sulphur as he let me push him across the room.
When I shoved him hard, he let himself fall, bouncing on the mattress, tucking one arm beneath his head the way he always liked to lie. Damn him, he even looked comfortable and self-possessed now, even though my nerves felt stretched tight as wool on a loom.
Straddling him, I pinned him to the thick purple covers over my bed, my knees against the hard cut of his hips.
“I’m listening,” I said, even as my core squeezed dangerously tight, at war with my pounding heart.
His deep brown eyes met mine, wide and honest. For once. “I’m sorry. You were a mission, at first. By the time you stopped Luca’s killer, I knew we could trust you.”
“So why did you leave me for months believing that you entered my life by happenstance—”
“If we didn’t keep you in the dark, the mission would have ended. And you…” He shook his head.
“Would have had a one-way ticket back dirtside,” I finished for him.
“Maybe. There were worse options than Earth on the table.” His words are casual, but suddenly I pictured how Radner brought him to heel with the threat. The other worlds I’d read about in books flashed through my mind—gray mists haunted by Ravengers and the bright, deadly lands of the Fae.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me that before I left Corum?”
His big hand circled my hip, his thumb hooked into the bone, his fingers spanning my ass. His fingers drifted up and down the curve, raising faint sparks that made my spine arch. “Did it matter to you, then, why I betrayed you?”
I paused, my lips quirking to one side. Should it have mattered that he lied to me—for months—in order to save my life? Yes. Did it matter, when I was still in the flush heat of that betrayal? No, not so much.
“I should have found a way.” When he cupped my cheek with his hand, his eyes were tender. “You and I are a good team, blondie. I should’ve had some faith.”
“A team? I didn’t even have my own magic…” It hadn’t mattered, though. We’d fought together.
“You make your own magic.” He slid a finger under the soft shining material over my shoulder, drawing me toward him.
Was that really how Croft saw me? As powerful and whole, even when a wand was nothing but a stick in my hand? Certainly, his lips were arching in a gentle smile now, and pride shone in his eyes. A warm glow heated my chest. As he pulled the fabric, I let it fall away to golden ash in a shower of glitter between us.
It wasn’t like Croft to talk about his feelings, and maybe that was why his voice was a husky whisker when he said, “And you make the world magical for me, too.”<
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My lips brushed the hollow of his cheek. He turned his mouth toward me. When there was only a breath between his lips, he paused, and so I crossed the distance between us.
His lower lip was a soft pillow, a surprising contrast to his lantern-jawed, stoic face. He sat up slightly, drawing his arm out from underneath his head, no longer pretending to be casual. His arm locked across my lower back. Croft’s deep passion—so often hidden—was evident in the way his lips parted against mine. When his tongue slid across the inside of my upper lip, tasting me as if he’d missed me, my core clenched in desire again.
He drew back, raising one eyebrow as he glanced down. My breasts pressed, against his chest my nipples rubbing across the wet, taut fabric.
“What happened to your dress?” he asked.
“I didn’t think I needed it anymore.” When I ran my palm up his chest, damp cotton clung to his muscled shoulder. “Speaking of clothes, or the lack thereof. Aren’t you uncomfortable?”
“A wet shirt is nothing compared to dealing with your wrath, blondie,” he teased, but he sat up on his elbows.
I pushed the overcoat off his shoulders, and then he sat up the rest of the way, despite me straddling his lap. He raised his arms to draw the shirt over his head. A drop of rain water worked its way down the pronounced dip of his sternum between those broad, tattooed pecs.
I ran my fingernails up the ridges of his abs, and they contracted under my touch. He took my hand in his and raised it to his lips, kissing my palm. The gesture was tender, but he brushed hard and stiff between my thighs. When I took the bulge in my hand, his breath hitched.
All the other times we’d come so close, he pushed me away. But this time, he suddenly rose and wrapped his arm around me, rolling with me beneath him on the bed. He braced himself carefully over me, his thick biceps to either side of my head. His eyes were alight.
This time, were we really free of the lies that had held him back from me? I took his face in my palms. “Now? Are you sure?”
He stared back at me, then understanding—and a thread of pain—flashed in his eyes. “Yes.”
