by Lia Davis
Ayden came over and squatted down beside them. “Let me help?” It was a question. Nymphs were temperamental. If he just lifted her in his arms to carry her to the car, she could easily freak out and hurt—possibly kill—him. Kalissa was glad Ayden knew that.
Willow looked at him with her large green eyes and smiled. “Lis, you went and snagged yourself a man, and a damn fine one at that.” Kalissa knew she turned every shade of red at Willow’s boldness. But before she could deny it, Willow answered Ayden’s question. “Yes, you may help.”
Kalissa stood and moved to the side to give him room. He carefully lifted Willow off the ground and into his arms. She snuggled into his chest, most likely seeking warmth. Kalissa felt a tiny wave of jealousy run through her that she had no right to feel. She should be grateful for his help. With a mental shake, she led them back to the car.
Chapter 8
Ayden let out a frustrated breath and raked his hands through his hair. “Two days?”
“That is a guesstimate, too. They said they had something to look into first. It could be sooner.” Zach chuckled into the phone at Ayden’s irritated sigh before adding, “This gives you two days alone with Lis. Who knows? Maybe she’ll regain her memory.”
As good as that sounded, Ayden wouldn’t hold his breath. It had been painful enough losing her the first time. He didn’t want a repeat.
“It wasn’t her fault. If she had her memory, there is no way she would have left you. Especially for someone like Liam.” Zach said her ex-boyfriend’s name like it was the plague or something.
“I take it you didn’t like him,” Ayden probed, wanting to find out more about the man she’d left him for fifteen years ago. And the reason for her earlier reaction to his anger.
Zach snorted with disgust. “He was an ass. He completely controlled her. I don’t think there was any physical abuse, but he did a number on her head. It took her years to get over his death.”
Ayden wanted to ask more about Liam, but Kalissa’s footsteps, followed by the click of the upstairs bedroom door where they’d placed Willow stopped him. Uneasiness had settled over her when the subject had come up at the diner. There was no need to add to her uncertainty. “I gotta go. Talk to you soon.”
Zach laughed and muttered something about Ayden being chickenshit because Lis was coming back into the room. Ignoring his cousin, he said a final goodbye and hung up the phone. He slid the cell into his jeans pocket as she descended the spiral staircase in the far corner of the living room.
“How is she?” Ayden asked when Kalissa came off the last step.
Her violet eyes lifted to meet his gaze from across the room. “Resting. I don’t think anything’s actually broken as she feared.”
“That’s good.” Silence filled the space between them. Nervousness rolled off her and coiled around him. He wanted go to her, wrap her in his arms, and make the storm brewing inside her go away.
A forced smile pulled at her lips as she walked farther into the living room. “She should be back to herself by morning.” She stilled in front of the sofa when he moved toward her.
“I thought you hadn’t been to the cabin in years.”
“It’s been about two years.”
He motioned for her to sit. After she hesitantly complied, he lowered himself into the seat next to her.
“Willow’s half human. My mom raised her. She stays here when no one is around.” She answered his unasked question.
The cabin was clean and free of static energy, surprising him since he’d assumed no one had visited it in years. “It must be nice to not have to clean the cobwebs out of the corners.”
A soft laugh bubbled out of her sensual lips, warming his heart. “Yes, it is. I’m glad Willow is here to take care of things, especially after…”
“Mom’s and Dad’s deaths” went unsaid. Her pain was all too familiar to him and cut to the core. He’d also lost his parents, and the grief was still raw.
Her emotions were starting to run rampant again, bouncing from nervousness to desire. He had to reinforce his shields.
She took a deep breath in, like she was gathering strength from the air. “Willow told me that there’s been more demon activity recently.”
“And you believe they’re looking for the Sinew?”
“Yeah. Did you get ahold of Noah?”
“Zach said he was being held captive by his wife.” Ayden laughed out loud. “Did you know they’re trying to conceive?”
Her violet eyes met his and she smiled. “At their age?”
“Well, they are immortal,” he teased. “Cassia will be four in a couple of months. Grams thinks it’d be nice to have another baby in the house.”
Her smile widened. “She always said she wanted a houseload of children.”
Nodding, he recalled his grandmother saying that but never knew why they’d only had two: Zach’s mom, Lynzee, and Ayden’s dad, Todd.
“How long have they been trying?” she asked.
“A couple months,” he answered and then changed the subject back to her unanswered question, the reason he’d called Noah in the first place. “Zach said Jacen and Lydia called this morning. They are tying up some loose ends and won’t be here for another two days.”
Kalissa froze. For the love of the gods, she was still trying to get used to the idea of spending the night alone with him, but two days? How was she going to keep her distance for two days? Especially since he could pick up on her emotions.
“Lis? Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she lied, not caring if he knew she was being untruthful. “What are we going to do until they get here?” she whispered.
He was quiet for a few minutes before answering. “Whatever we do, we need to be on guard just in case the demons are looking for the Sinew. Now that they know we’re here.”
Oh, great. She was betting he wouldn’t let her out of his sight.
“Why don’t you call Khloe?” he asked.
“Oh! I almost forgot.” What was wrong with her? She jumped up and went to the bedroom to grab her phone and the FedEx envelope with the messages from their mother. She came back to the living room, sat back down on the sofa, and called Khloe.
“Hey!” Khloe answered after the third ring. She sounded annoyed.
“What’s up?” Kalissa asked.
“Charles,” Khloe spat out. Kalissa smiled. Charles was Khloe’s flavor of the week. Well, he’d been around longer than a week. In fact, the relationship had lasted longer than any of the more recent ones. Khloe was too high-maintenance for human men, or at least that’s what she said, but Kalissa knew it was an excuse, a ploy to protect her heart from breaking again.
“What happened?”
“Oh, same shit, different man. ‘I’m too exhausting.’ Oh! And he had the nerve to say I was too demanding. How am I too demanding?” Khloe was on a roll.
The breakup must have just happened. “You’re too good for him anyway.” A relieved satisfaction washed through Kalissa. She didn’t like the weasel. Every time she was around him, she got an uneasy feeling.
“He was too much of a mama’s boy.” Zach’s voice drifted in from the background.
“And here’s the other man that’s not too happy with us,” Khloe said with sarcasm. “Lis, turn on the video cam.”
Kalissa frowned. “You’ll have to walk me through it. I’m not sure if I remember how.”
Khloe laughed. “It’s already set up. Power up the TV, pick up the remote, and push the button that says AUX.”
Kalissa did as Khloe said. Within seconds, Khloe and Zach appeared on the TV screen. “Why are we video conferencing? I thought you were going to teleport up.”
Khloe released a heavy sigh. “I was, but the studio called an hour ago. They need me to teach a couple of classes.”
“Oh,” Kalissa said.
“I’m sorry. I can call and cancel.”
“No. It’s okay.” Kalissa tried to keep the disappointment from her voice, but s
he knew Khloe could sense it anyway. “I’m going to fax the messages to you, then.” Kalissa went to the fax machine on the shelf next to the TV. She placed the pages in the tray and punched in their home fax number.
Khloe reached over and took the fax out of her machine. “The first is a spell. I’ll translate it and email it to you. I’m not sure what it’s for or if I should speak it out loud.” She moved on to the second page and read it.
“What you seek is hidden within the chamber, and protected by the twin retrievers. Five score from Lolissa into Mother’s light. But first, you must meet the others at The Wheel.”
“Lolissa?” Zach asked.
“It’s the cabin,” the girls said at the same time.
“Mom named it after us,” Khloe finished. “You think the Sinew is what we seek?”
Kalissa nodded. “It has to be. It only makes sense that Mom would hide it here. It’s protected behind Willow’s wards.”
“You did say Willow has seen more demon activity,” Ayden spoke up.
“Okay. Wait for Jacen, Lydia, and us to get there before you two go looking for it,” Zach said and then quickly added, “I mean it.” He gave Kalissa a pointed look.
Kalissa rolled her eyes, but it was Ayden who spoke. “We’ll wait. Let me know once you hear from the Raynerses.” Ayden’s phone beeped. He pulled it out, opened the text message, and smiled. “I’m going to send you a tag number. Let me know what you find.”
“She came through.” Kalissa smiled.
Zach nodded. “Will do. I have some other demonic news for you.”
“What now?” Ayden and Kalissa asked at the same time.
“Sindee called. She said her source informed her of a Dark Divine round-up. Khan ordered anyone who resists to be killed,” Zach said. He paused briefly before continuing. “I also ran across a name in Papa’s library. Hector D. Grayson.”
“Who is he?” Ayden asked
“He was a Khan General before Hecate killed him three hundred years ago. According to the archives, he was the one that used the Sinew to drain the Divinities of their powers. Oh, and FYI, if you are drained of your magic, you die,” Zach said.
“All the more reason to get the Sinew and keep it out of the demons’ hands,” Kalissa said. She thought for a minute. “There’s something that’s been bugging me. If they seek the Sinew and want to harvest our magic, why kill our parents? Why not capture them until they got the Sinew?”
Zach scrunched up his face. “I’m not sure. Maybe there’s been a change in plan?”
“Like gathering the Dark Divine together as part of Khan’s army,” Khloe said, reminding everyone of Sindee’s message.
Zach frowned again. “I didn’t think of that. I’m not sure how many there are.” He pulled out a small notepad from his shirt pocket and made some notes. “Once Grams releases Papa from her evil clutches, I’ll ask him. I just hope he has the strength to speak.”
Kalissa and Khloe giggled.
“Okay, then,” Ayden spoke with a chuckle. “We’ll talk to you when you get here.”
“You two be safe. I would stick close to the cabin if I were you,” Zach said.
Kalissa and Ayden agreed, said their goodbyes, and shut off the video. The demons were up to something; she felt it in her bones. So she would spend the next few days with Ayden. Alone. It wouldn’t do them any good to draw too much attention to themselves, or end up dead before recovering the Sinew.
With the combined strength of five Divinities, they could protect and guard the power source. But who was going to guard her heart against the one man that could possibly tear down the walls around it?
Chapter 9
“I thought Khloe stopped dancing to take over your mother’s computer business.”
Kalissa shrugged. “She teaches when they need her.”
Ayden grabbed her free hand, linking his fingers with hers. She turned her head to look into his eyes with that hint of panic still there. He couldn’t hold back any longer, Noah’s warning still heavy on his mind. What other choice did he have? Unwilling to spend the next day and a half to two days pretending that they were nothing more than friends and never had been, he had to do something. Insanity would take over his mind. The pull between them was too strong to push aside. Turning to face her on the sofa, he drew in a deep breath, taking in her confusion and curiosity. “You suffer from headaches. Why is that?”
“They’re just headaches,” she said with a smile that told him she was hiding something.
“Something tells me that it’s more than that.” He studied her face.
Kalissa shrugged and looked down at their linked hands. “I get them…sometimes.”
“When you have visions?” he asked.
Kalissa snapped her eyes back up to his face. “How did you know?” she asked accusingly.
“A guess. I had to pull the vision of what happened to Willow out of your subconscious. Why is that, Kalissa? Why do you lock up your Divine gift?” He tried to keep his tone soft and gentle. The betrayal still lingered beneath the surface and made it hard not to be angry with her. But she was a victim in this as much as he was.
“They became too painful,” she whispered after a long silence.
Ayden took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The headaches?”
She nodded. “And the emotions.” There was silence again. He wasn’t sure if he understood what she was trying to say. Finally, she spoke again. Her words were more random, like she needed to get them all out in the open. “At first, after Liam died, the visions were more like memory clips. I didn’t understand because I didn’t remember them as mine, but I was in them. When I tried to remember or force the visions, I got sharp pains in my head. Then the visions got more frequent, and so did the headaches. A few months later, the dreams started.”
Ayden’s heart ached for her. Her emotions were so loud they pounded on the wall he’d put up to block them. The dreams could’ve been her locked down memories or something else entirely. “What were the dreams about?”
She looked at him. Her violet eyes shined with unshed tears. “Death. Everyone I care about is going to die.”
His gut wrenched, and he tightened his grip on her hands slightly. “You know that visions can be changed. Nothing is set in stone.”
She pulled her hands free, stood up, and walked to the bay window that overlooked the back of the property. “That’s just it. I saw the deaths and nothing else. Nothing before to tell me when and where.”
The memory spell. It must have had an effect on her visions. It was the only thing that made sense. “So you locked them down?” he asked.
She didn’t look at him as he got up and walked over to stand next to her at the window. He spoke softly, trying to soothe her. “I think I know what’s wrong with your visions.”
She turned to study his face. He stepped closer to her, reached out with his fingers, and slowly traced his fingertips down her cheek to her jawline. Cupping her head, he lowered his and pressed a gentle kiss to her soft lips.
The second Ayden’s lips touched hers in a soft, sensual kiss, an image of them as teenagers sitting in a barn kissing flashed in her mind. “Oh,” she whispered, pulling back from him. “You kissed me. I mean, when we were kids.”
Ayden nodded and touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. The silver swirled in the blue of his eyes. “You were my first real kiss,” he whispered, just inches from her lips.
She swallowed hard and waited for the panic to rise. Surprisingly, it never came. Instead, a strong urge to grab him, rip his shirt off his muscular chest, and nip and lick every inch of him arose. The much too brief kiss had ignited something inside her. Need boiled.
“And you were mine,” she admitted. The memory of that afternoon was so clear now, as if it had happened yesterday. How did she remember something that only a few moments before, she’d had no recollection of at all?
They were both fifteen and playing hide-and-seek with the other children in the coven. Ayd
en was the seeker.
Kalissa hides behind the bales of hay in the loft of the coven’s barn. Footsteps enter the barn, butterflies swarm inside her belly. Then she realizes there is only one way to go. She is so busted.
Ducking farther behind the hay stacks, she listens to Ayden walk around below her. She could teleport, but that would be cheating. She jumps when the ladder moves slightly, indicating that someone is climbing up it.
“I know you’re up here.” His soft chuckle reaches her ears, making her feel giddy.
Kalissa steps out of her hiding place and faces him. His smile reaches his baby blue eyes. She moves to the right, and then darts left to go around him. But he is too fast and grabs her waist, pulling her to him hard enough that they fall into a pile of loose hay. He kisses her before she has time to think. It’s her first real, adult kiss.
“It took me a long time to get up the nerve to kiss you.” Ayden’s voice pulled her from the memory. She let out a soft gasp when he captured her mouth gently in a real-time kiss. His warm tongue licked her lips to encourage her to open for him. Without hesitation, she opened to the invasion and met his tongue halfway with hers. Feelings rose in her that she recognized. The electrifying desire swirled around them, intensifying their connection. It was the same as their first kiss.
The softness of a bed broke their kiss. She looked around. They had somehow teleported into the bedroom adjacent to the living room. He looked down at her from his position above her. “Did I do that, or you?” he asked with a crooked smile.
She laughed. “I think it was a combined effort.” Her laughter died as Ayden kissed her again on the lips and then trailed feather-light kisses down her cheek to her jawline. She couldn’t think. Being kissed by him was unlike anything she had ever known. Soft, gentle, and demanding all bound into one passionate kiss. Yet she didn’t feel pressured or controlled by it. Yeah, Liam had been a good kisser, but there was always possession behind it, a need to control.
