All Things Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  So much trouble.

  Groaning, Caleb withdrew his fingers from her warm body and fumbled at the snap of the borrowed, too-large jeans sitting low on his waist. Wrenched at the button fly as she whimpered against his mouth and tried to help. Somehow, God, somehow, he got them pushed past his hips. Somehow, he pulled her skirt out of the way.

  When the very tip of his erection nudged her swollen flesh, he thought he’d go up in an inferno that would claim his soul.

  She braced her hands against the cliff wall behind her, eyes closed. Cheeks flushed. Sweat gleamed on her skin, and she breathed in spiky knots that whimpered and begged.

  Caleb framed her face in his hands. “Tell me,” he demanded.

  She shook her head.

  “Tell me you want this.” God, was that his voice? So angry and harsh. So . . . needy.

  She caught her upper lip between her teeth and said nothing.

  His hips jerked as she tilted hers, forcing her sex to rub against his flesh. Slick. So hot he could feel it saturating the head of his cock. His gut clenched. Muscles locked.

  He growled, seized her hips in his hands. “Juliet, God damn it!”

  Her eyes flew open, met his. Linked. He could drown in spring green. Drown in her tremors as she held her breath. Drown in her.

  He could be the bastard she needed him to be.

  “Lie to me,” he rasped, and plunged deep.

  The ragged sound she made echoed in his wild groan. The slick folds of her sex parted for him, too fast to be painless, but oh, God, so wet that he threw his head back, clenching his teeth.

  She hooked a leg over his hip; he held it in one splayed hand, her skin warm, her body hot and tight as he withdrew, braced himself against the cliff, and thrust again. Balls deep, coated in her, surrounded by her as she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on.

  Her breath spiked with every thrust, shook as he gritted out a curse. Heat gathered at the base of his cock, slid into his body like liquid flame. Harder, faster, angrier, more and more desperate, she rose to meet him, matched him thrust for thrust, until she was gasping for breath and crying out his name.

  Her muscles clenched around him, tighter than anything he’d ever known before her. There was no before. There was only Juliet, riding him, milking him, shuddering in his arms and draining his strength with every sobbing cry.

  His orgasm detonated without warning or care, uncoiling like a spring wound too tight and leaving him gasping for breath as he shuddered, his hips pinned to hers and her body wrapped like silk around him.

  As his vision slowly cleared, as the fragments of his mind and body pulled together, Caleb found himself cradling her, his arms curved around her back, her legs around his hips. Found his nose buried in her hair as he panted, sucking in oxygen as pinpricks of light detonated around him.

  She smelled like warm wind and rain; like raw woman, like—fuck, what he’d always thought flowers should smell like. The T-shirt she still wore bunched in his fingers.

  Gradually, her shudders eased.

  Bit by bit, his heartbeat mellowed. The buzzing pressure in his head hadn’t gone away, and with it came the memory.

  The anger.

  She uncurled her leg from his hips, pulled away so fast that he staggered, sucking in a breath as his flesh slid out of her warm body at last.

  Juliet sidled away, shaking out her skirt, and Caleb quickly pulled his pants back up. “I can’t—” Her voice cracked.

  The ache between his temples intensified.

  Do it. He closed his eyes, fingers halting over the buttons of his jeans.

  He couldn’t be gentle. He needed to see. No matter what the cost.

  Quietly, he said, “You can’t be surprised.”

  Her gasp forced him to look at her. Her back was to him, now, her shoulders rigid. “You really don’t think about this stuff before it comes out of your mouth, do you?” she demanded.

  Of course he did.

  His smile humorless, Caleb leaned back against the cliff wall, arms folded over his chest. “What did you expect? We’d done this once, it was only a matter of time before we needed it again.”

  She was so still, he wasn’t sure that she’d even heard him.

  But the pressure in his skull told him she had.

  Good girl.

  “Needed it is a poor choice in words,” he went on conversationally. “You can’t say no to me. I think I made that clear.”

  Now she turned, spots of color high on her cheeks as her eyes flashed echoes of the fury peeling her lips back from her teeth. “You conceited son of a bitch.”

  He shrugged, forcing himself to respond like the asshole he needed her to understand he was. “You didn’t say no.”

  “I didn’t say yes!” she shouted, fists clenched by her sides.

  “You think that matters?” he told her, inwardly flinching at how much of a dick that made him.

  She stepped back as if he’d slapped her. Guilt twisted, sharp as a knife.

  Pain lanced through his head.

  She took a step forward. Then another. Her fists unclenched. Curled up again. Caleb watched her.

  I’m so sorry.

  “I hate you,” she bit out.

  “No, you don’t,” he replied. “You just want to fuck me. There’s a diff—”

  Her fist was a hell of a lot bonier than her openhanded slap had been. Caleb’s head snapped around with the impact, collided with the cliff wall behind him and he saw stars.

  The angry buzz of her magic slammed into his skull, and he dropped like a stone. He didn’t even feel the rocks jab into his flesh as the universe stretched, humming, and turned white.

  It tore free of its moorings and howled from her skin, as physical as a hurricane. Painful as a scream.

  She felt the magic explode from her, spread out like a wild net and slam into Caleb. She experienced it as the power filled his skin the way it filled hers; as it tunneled and burrowed and overflowed from nerve to throbbing nerve.

  Something more than sexual.

  Worse than torture.

  Draining.

  Juliet sank to the sand in boneless exhaustion, her own consciousness flickering. He’d wanted this.

  She didn’t know how she suddenly knew, but she did.

  He’d wanted this, right here, and that’s why he’d done all those things. Why he’d goaded her, and then pushed her against a wall—the bastard, what was it about walls?—and said what he’d said. Done what he’d done.

  Now she could only stare, hands over her mouth, as he fell still.

  Deathly still.

  “Caleb?”

  His eyes flickered, hands twitching as they scrabbled at the rock and sand. Blood trickled from his temple.

  She reached out.

  Caleb’s hand lashed, fingers snapping viselike around her wrist. “I see a mountain of flesh,” he said hoarsely.

  Juliet stared at his hand. Slowly, her gaze traced the trembling line of his arm. Slid across his chest, panting with effort.

  Ice filled her spine.

  Caleb’s eyes had opened, fixed on her, but it wasn’t her they saw. They blazed a shade of blue she’d never seen, something made of the bluest sky and the deepest ocean and every shade in between. Lightning crackled deep inside that unseeing stare, wicked and wild and unrestrained.

  Primordial fear.

  This is why they hunt witches.

  The thought made her shiver.

  His grip tightened, bruising. “They’re nothing but tangled limbs and putrid flesh and dead, staring eyes, but I see the tattoos. Branded like ownership, marked into the skin of each carcass like a name, but they don’t have names. They’re lines and numbers; no faces. There aren’t any faces.”

  She sank back to the sand, silent with fear.

  “She sits at the top like a queen, rotting bones and tattooed flesh her throne.”

  Juliet gasped as he let her go. Fingers digging into the sand, she swallowed back a surge of nausea.

/>   These? These were the visions of the future? Vivid scenes of symbolism and carnage? Oh, God. No wonder he was so cold.

  These weren’t things for people to see. To handle.

  “She is marked, too, and her face is empty, but she has a face. She’s the only one, so they gather. Movement in the shadows. I see silhouettes of humans, but they aren’t,” he continued quietly. “One holds the leash. The leash that fastens to the queen’s own flesh. It sags between her legs, dripping already, filled by them. Filled by all of them, one after another. There is no rest for the wicked. She is the key.”

  Juliet held her breath as a sudden, vicious tremor rippled through Caleb’s body. Black sand clung to his shirt, his hands as they fisted.

  “Mine,” he growled. “You can’t have her. She’s mine to protect, damn you all.” A ragged sound forced free from behind his bared teeth, Caleb surged to his feet, every muscle locked and ready, eyes wild.

  Juliet flung herself against his chest, unthinking and desperate. She wrapped her arms around his waist, pressed her head to his heart and held on for dear life as he strained against enemies she couldn’t see. “Caleb, wake up!”

  “I swore I would protect her,” he whispered hoarsely, and his arms banded around her. Tighter than steel, unyielding. “Mine.”

  She clenched her eyes shut, burying her face against his chest. “Just fight it off,” she begged. “We can settle everything else later, just—just, please.” Her words snagged. Broke. “Please don’t leave me alone.”

  The sulfurous haze slipped across the emerald water, ghostly fingers extending across the bay. Juliet clung to him, praying silently, desperate as she mentally rifled through the small number of rituals she had ever bothered to learn. None would help.

  She had none prepared.

  Oh, God, she was a worthless witch. A tool, only fit to be used.

  Slowly, the hard edge of fists at her back relaxed. His hands opened, splayed over the grimy T-shirt and stroked from her nape to her waist. “It’ll be okay,” he whispered against her hair.

  She’d meant to say something reassuring. Something flippant and wise. Something tough.

  Instead, her words caught on a sob.

  “I’m sorry, little rose.”

  Shock sliced through her. Slid like ice water into her veins. She stiffened, fingers clenching in his shirt as she raised her head. “Wh-what?”

  Caleb stared blankly beyond her. Confusion filled his eyes as she searched them, now the blue she remembered. Normal blue. He blinked hard, turned one hand palm-up to study it over her shoulder. “What,” he rasped, and cleared his throat to try again. “What happened?”

  I’m sorry, little rose.

  Cordelia. How had he known? How did he know that her sister had called her that? He was a witch. She wasn’t. There was no way they’d ever met.

  She jammed a shaking hand against his chest, desperate for space.

  Caleb’s gaze locked on her. Studied the line where her body pressed against his. It trailed up her throat, over her mouth. Flickered.

  When he met her eyes, his own softened.

  Juliet raised her chin.

  Slowly, cautiously, he slid his scarred fingers over her throat. Her chin, along her jaw. The ridges rasped against her skin, rough and oddly warm.

  Helpless before the wonder filling his face, the uncertainty, she turned her cheek into his palm. “Caleb, I don’t—I mean, I can’t . . .” She shook her head. “I just can’t.”

  His mouth quirked. “I give up,” he whispered, leaning in.

  “Give up?”

  Without answering, without giving her the time to gather the shrapnel of her thoughts, he seized her mouth in a kiss so gentle that frissons of confusion, of sweetness and breathtaking temptation whispered through her.

  His hand flattened at the small of her back, held her in place as his lips rubbed, nuzzled against hers. Not taking. Seeking.

  Asking permission.

  Her eyes fluttered closed, body melting in his hands. Against him. Surrender.

  So right.

  Then he pushed her away. Backed up, raising his hands as if he could ward her off. “Go back to the house,” he ordered, voice hoarse. Curt.

  She took a step closer. “But you—”

  “Go!”

  He turned his back, shoulders set in unforgiving lines, jammed his hands into the pockets of his too-big jeans and strode down the sandy shore. Bits of black sand kicked up under his shoes.

  Juliet watched him walk away.

  Little rose.

  She rubbed two fingers over the sudden, yawning ache under her breastbone. Damn it. She didn’t have the energy for this. She didn’t want to keep up with his moods, volatile and rough on her already bruised heart.

  She didn’t want to try and understand the secrets he seemed so determined to keep.

  What she desperately wanted was a drink.

  Chapter Ten

  A faint orange glow shimmered from behind the little house, casting a warm radiance as the cloudy sky rapidly darkened beneath a summer storm. The local weather patterns had never been anything but seasonal with an eighty percent chance of acidic rain, and as Juliet trudged around the side of the house, the first fat drops splattered around her.

  Just great.

  Juliet hurried around the corner, darting under a beige canvas pavilion just as the skies unleashed soaking fury. Rain pounded the treated cloth like a drum, canvas thunder echoed by a clash of the real thing rolling overhead. She ran her fingers through her damp hair, grimacing.

  Warmth and firelight seeped from the open face of an old-fashioned iron stove at the edge of the patio. Beneath her feet, the rock gleamed with the same smoky facets as the flagstones by the bay. Plastic furniture served as seating, arrayed near pots of giant flowers with petals as large as both of her hands together. The wood inside the stove crackled and popped.

  It was, for the moment, bliss.

  “Gets old real quick, doesn’t it?”

  Juliet jumped as the husky voice floated out of the dark. She surveyed the shadow-rimmed patio until she spotted a pair of black, heavy-duty street boots crossed at the ankle in the corner.

  “Sorry?” she asked blankly.

  The figure leaned forward. Firelight painted the healer’s exquisite features with shadows and reflected glints from her jewelry, but her teeth gleamed in a smile not entirely friendly. “The rain,” she explained, gesturing to the sheets of gray veiling the air. “Always with the rain. Have a seat, kiddo.”

  Pride eyed exhaustion. It was no contest. Knees giving out, Juliet sat.

  Naomi blinked at her. Then pointed to one of the white plastic chairs. “I meant in an actual seat.”

  “I’m fine.”

  The witch shrugged. “Suit yourself. Juliet, right?”

  “Yes.” Tucking her knees under the skirt, she wrapped her arms around them. It helped keep her warm while the snapping heat of the fire built strength. “You’re Naomi.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you the one who took care of me?”

  “That’s me.”

  She hesitated. “Thanks.” For a long moment, only the thunderous echo of the rain and crackling wood peppered the silence. Juliet stared into the heart of the stove, acutely aware of the strange violet eyes fixed on her.

  The healing witch didn’t move much. She didn’t fidget. She stared, still as a feline on the prowl. It made Juliet’s skin itch. She flicked the woman a glance, eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “Once upon a time,” Naomi replied in a slow, husky drawl, “I would have hunted you.”

  “What?” she asked again, straightening. “Hunted me?”

  Heedless of decency or reserve, Naomi stretched out her legs and hooked a thumb at the waistband of her low-riding jeans. It didn’t take much to shove the band down, revealing a scrap of electric blue nylon, taut, sleek muscles Juliet would have killed for, and a dark circle of black ink tattooed low on her abdomen.

  Juliet�
�s gaze snapped back to hers. “But you’re a witch!”

  “Go figure.” The woman let go of her waistband, resettling into a lazy, comfortable sprawl. Her piercings glittered, points of reflected fire at her eyebrow, nose, lip, and ears. “Used to be a missionary.”

  “Used to?”

  The look she slanted Juliet was wry. “Clearly not anymore. Last fucker who tried to be both got his ass scalped.”

  She couldn’t imagine it. “How can someone be a missionary and a witch at the same time?” she asked, perplexed. How could the holy tattoo that so terrified witches like her allow it? Then, because she couldn’t help it, she added, “And what crazy witch would join the Order that murders them for fun?”

  “For a living.”

  “Whatever,” Juliet replied, in a tone that made clear how little she thought the difference was. Dead was dead.

  Naomi searched her face, pierced eyebrow arching. “So no one told you?”

  “What?”

  “Peterson.” Her lip curled. “You all called him Curio.”

  Juliet’s hands jerked, and she drew them to her chest, fisted tightly. “That’s a lie.”

  “Hooked you as bad as he got us, huh?” The witch’s sneer only deepened; disappointment, anger. Her gaze flicked to the fire as she said flatly, “His name, far as we know, was David Peterson. For about nine years, he was the Mission director. The boss.”

  Juliet shook her head, ears ringing with the words she didn’t want to hear. But even as she did, even as her lips shaped the words, doubt filled her. “But he was . . .”

  “A friend? Took care of you?” Her eyes gleamed. “A lover? Just about any lie’ll do, take your pick.”

  Damn it. Juliet looked away, back toward the gray mist settling beyond the canvas roof. “How do you know?”

  “On that day down at the Waterline,” Naomi told her, and didn’t even pause as Juliet winced, “Silas and Jessie saw him as Curio. We knew him as Peterson.” Her boots scraped as she adjusted her feet. “Mission Director Peterson, ’scuse me. The shitfucker.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Join the club, kiddo.” Naomi laced her hands behind her head, tipping her head back against the chair and once more into shadow. The light painted wicked patterns across her chest, saturated the synth-leather jacket she wore like a second skin, but only the faintest gleam from the dark suggested she still watched Juliet closely.