Juliet trembled in his grip, shook violently as the child passed under a camera. “I’ll take care of you,” whispered the tiny voice, all but drowned out by the madness around her. “It’s just you and me, now.”
Familiar emerald eyes glanced up at the camera as they passed under it. Protectively, the little girl’s skinny arms tightened around the white blanket.
Caleb caught a glimpse of a tiny, round head, capped with a fine tuft of light brown hair, and they were gone.
Slowly, he let go of Juliet’s arm.
Her head lowered, shoulders shaking. “I never—” Her voice broke, and Caleb’s heart shattered with it.
“Here.”
She didn’t look up, so he picked up Juliet’s slack hand and pressed Cordelia’s ring into her palm. Her fingers closed over it. Fisted.
“I’m sorry,” Caleb said, so quietly even he wasn’t sure he’d said it aloud.
Juliet didn’t move.
He didn’t expect her to. She needed to say good-bye. He understood that.
More than she even knew.
Silently, he withdrew from the flickering light. Left her there in the crackling silence of the ended feeds.
His footsteps echoed down the empty hall, clattered back at him in a thousand recriminating words. He pushed open the double doors, turned up his collar against the summer rain, and strode into the dark.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Caleb!”
He froze at the edge of the empty lot, rain already soaked through his clothing and sliding down his collar.
“Wait!”
Footsteps pounded the broken, pitted ground behind him, and his heart echoed the frenetic rhythm. Barely even daring to breathe, he turned.
Juliet sprinted across the dark lot, her pale skin gleaming beneath the faint lights the city always cast. Her eyes were shadowed, and within moments, she was as soaked as he was.
“Go back inside,” he told her sharply, “it’s— God damn it!”
It was all he could say as she threw herself at him. He caught her, but it wasn’t to fight her this time. She didn’t flail at him; she didn’t try to hit him. Trembling, gasping for air, she threw her full weight against his chest, and he staggered.
He meant to peel her off. To pry her away from him and send her back inside, but his traitorous hands splayed over her wet back. Crushed her to him. “Don’t,” he said, even as his fingers slid beneath the wet sweatshirt. Found warm skin and that damned bra.
She grabbed fistfuls of his coat. Tipped her face to his, eyes flashing. “You don’t break promises,” she said fiercely.
“I don’t—”
“I know you,” she said over him, even as her hair dripped into her eyes. Her fingers tightened. “You never break a promise.”
“You’re wrong.” But oh, God, her skin felt good against his palms. She sucked in a breath, her breasts flush against his chest, and he groaned. “Don’t,” he said again. “You’re wrong about me.”
“I’m not,” she shot back, as if reading it in his eyes. In his thoughts; fuck, his heart. “You promised her and you kept it, even when you knew how badly I needed to know. I understand, Caleb.”
God damn it. “You don’t understand anything!”
She flinched at his shout, but she pulled herself to her toes. Pressed her lips against his wet jaw, and murmured, “Everything you’ve ever done was to protect.” He shuddered. “You love your sister, you want to help, you see things—God, such terrible things—and you want to stop them. I know.”
Groaning, one hand left her back to fist into the wet tendrils of her dark hair. He wrenched her head back, her mouth away from his skin. Her eyes met his, haunting and sweet and filled with—oh, fuck, with trust.
With understanding.
Sympathy.
He meant to yell at her. To push her away with words and action and any weapon he could, but she met his eyes, licked the rain away from her top lip; he was lost.
A savage curse wrenched from his chest as he hauled her mouth to his. She met his kiss eagerly, opened her lips to slide her tongue between his, and made a sound that may as well have grabbed his erection and squeezed.
Spinning, he pushed her back against the chain-link fence; grabbed the wire at either side of her head, and crowded her. His mouth never left hers, feasting. Devouring. God, her lips were soft, warm. So giving.
She was so damned giving.
She understood?
Could she? Really?
His fingers tunneled under her sweatshirt again. Found warm flesh and soft curve; she arched into his palm. He nipped at her lower lip. She gasped, and the sound became his name.
Something wild filled his head. His heart. Something sweet and sharp and bloody and soul-deep.
Say it.
“I love you,” he said against her mouth.
Rain slid over her face, sluiced over them both, and she laughed. He swallowed the sound, pressed his hips firmly against hers to lock her in place and leaned back to capture her head in both hands. To frame her face, wet and flushed.
Her eyes blinked into his, hazed with lust. But was that all?
Smoothing back her wet hair, he said again, “I love you. I wish I didn’t,” he added, frowning, “but I have since the first time I ever saw you watching me.”
Her breath shuddered in her lungs. Again, her tongue slid over her rain-slick mouth and the muscles of his arms clenched as he fought the urge to lean in, to taste the same top-heavy curve her tongue just had.
She said nothing. For a long moment, only the wild rush of rain and his own heartbeat filled the silence, until he thought his veins might explode from the wild beat.
“Say something,” he said hoarsely. “Anything. Tell me you hate me—fuck, Jules, I don’t care, just say—”
“You’re the worst type of idiot.”
He froze, every muscle locked as the words kicked him squarely in the gut. “What?” He shook his head, bewildered. “With the who?”
Her eyes held his, so goddamned steady, he felt like the one falling apart. The one who needed comfort.
Damn it, he just needed her. Didn’t she see that?
“I can’t imagine,” she said, her body trembling against him. “I can’t even begin to think what you must have gone through.” Her fingers touched the scars at the side of his mouth. Traced the ridged edges along his neck, and he flinched.
Her smile turned crooked.
“You try all the time to do everything yourself, to carry the crap so no one has to. You make promises and do these things and you just go wandering off hoping that the rest of us will just let you.”
That hand dipped into his collar. Curled in, fisted so hard that it dug into his neck as she hauled his face close to hers. He was forced to let her go, to grip the chain link around her for balance as light green eyes filled his vision.
“Don’t,” she said, voice taut with strain. “Don’t ever make that mistake with me, Caleb Leigh. I’m not your sister. I’m not your coven mate, I’m not anyone you knew before.”
A tiny seed of hope germinated in his heart. A flicker, a faint glimmer of light.
She raised her hand, and gold glinted between her fingers. “You both used me. You and Cordelia.”
“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely.
She shook her head. “Don’t handle me,” she told him. “Don’t maneuver me. I can’t—” Her voice shook, and she blinked. Hard enough to wipe the rain from her eyes. Or tears. “I love you, Caleb, but I can’t do it. I can’t be used again. I can’t just be some kind of—”
He plucked the ring from her hand. “Shut up.”
Her lashes flared. “What?”
She loved him. She said so.
It was enough. Caleb shrugged out of her grip, stepped away from the warm, soft heat of her body and pulled her upright. The fence clanged, water spraying from the wire as it swayed.
He sank to his knees in front of her, ignored the broken cement digging into his flesh. Ign
ored the rain, warm and insistent as it soaked through every layer to the skin. He captured her hand in his, met her wide gaze, and demanded, “Marry me.”
Her mouth opened. Rain slid along her lip, but she only stared at him. As if he’d lost his mind.
Maybe he had.
“You aren’t like anyone I’ve ever known,” he said, knowing his voice came out too rough and unable to control it. To control himself. “You’re everything. You’re sweetness and light and softness in a world I never expected to have those things.”
She bit her top lip.
“I never saw this. I couldn’t have ever seen anything like you. Marry me, Juliet. Stay with me forever. Be my light.” With hands that trembled, he slid the warmed gold ring onto Juliet’s finger.
It fit. Glinted warmly against her skin.
Her fingers shook. “I didn’t say yes,” she whispered, but she made no move to take it off.
With his heart in his throat, Caleb laced his fingers through hers and said, “You didn’t say no.”
“You conceited—!”
He tugged her hand so hard, she folded, colliding into his chest, knees straddling his waist and her words smothered against his mouth. He tangled his hands into her hair, held her still for a kiss that tried to put into words everything rioting through him. His heart. His soul.
He loved her. He wanted her, he needed her in every aspect of his life. Every day. Every night.
He had no world without her.
When he lifted his head, she was flushed and gasping. His thumbs stroked along her temples. “Say yes, little rose. I swear to you, we’ll find a cure.”
She blinked rapidly. Her smile, slow to start, filled her eyes with sunshine. Flowers and spring rain and all those things he never expected to think about. “You idiot,” she said, laughing. “Yes. And I’m already fixed.”
He reeled.
Juliet threw back her head, her laughter wild and husky and free as the rain beat down on them both. Before he could ask how, when, she pressed her mouth to his. No unruly kiss, she slid her lips slowly, tantalizingly along his. Like a drug his body craved, every sensor slammed into overdrive; from dick to heart to brain and back again.
When she leaned back, it was his turn to blink hard. To shake away the fog of lust, of love, hazing his mind.
“Come home,” she whispered, tunneling rain-cool hands into his coat. “We’ll explain it all.”
Home. How long had it been?
For either of them?
Caleb wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close enough that her heart slammed against his. His cheek rested against her hair, and he didn’t care that they were soaked through. That the gravel was cutting into his knees or that her hand was resting on the corrugated scars of his side.
She said yes. Yes to him, yes to his past. Yes to the scars of his body and his heart.
Yes to marrying him, even.
He pressed his mouth to her temple. Her cheek. “I’ll love you forever,” he said.
Juliet’s eyes shimmered. “And you always keep your promises.”
All except one. But as he helped Juliet to her feet, linking his fingers with hers, as the metal band on her ring finger settled against his skin, he knew Cordelia—wherever her soul was now—would understand.
Love her.
He promised.
Coming Soon
Coming in July 2012 from
Avon Books and
KARINA COOPER
Karina Cooper launches a brand-new steampunk urban fantasy series, The St. Croix Chronicles, about a Society miss who craves adventure in the dangerous and fascinating London underground. But the danger that awaits her could prove to be more than even a madman’s daughter is equipped to handle.
And coming Fall 2012,
SACRIFICE THE WICKED,
the next book in Karina Cooper’s
Dark Mission series.
About the Author
Born from the genetic mash-up of lesser royalty, storytellers, wanderers, and dreamers, KARINA COOPER was destined to be a creative genius. As a child, she moved all over the country like some kind of waifish blond gypsy and learned how to adapt to the new cultures her family settled in. When she (finally) grew up, she skipped the whole genius part and fell in love with writing paranormal romance because, really, who doesn’t love hot men and a happy ending?
When she isn’t writing about things that go bump in the night, Karina designs Steampunk and neo-Victorian couture for gentlemen hobbyists and ladies of questionable reputation. She lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with a husband, three cats, one rabbit, and a passel of adopted gamer geeks.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
By Karina Cooper
All Things Wicked
Lure of the Wicked
Blood of the Wicked
Before the Witches
Coming Soon
Tarnished
Sacrifice the Wicked
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ALL THINGS WICKED. Copyright © 2012 by Karina Cooper. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780062046949
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062046932
FIRST EDITION
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