And with that one motion, she stole Aerin’s heart.
47
Julian Roarke was not an immortal prone to pacing, yet here he was, wearing a tread in the plush arabesque rug in front of Aerin’s white marble fireplace. His heart would not slow, his veins constricted, and his thoughts raced with all the pounding, churning speed of his midnight stallion, Archimedes, at full gallop. Feeling confined by his own skin, he ripped his suitcoat off and flung it on a chair before yanking on the knot of his tie, jerking it from his neck.
Freeing a few buttons, he pulled air into lungs that technically required none, wondering if this was what it felt like to drown.
Because it was bloody awful.
The door whooshed open on a fragrant breeze. “Oh my God, Julian, you should see those Kentucky Fried fogeys with the babies. It is hysterical.”
The voice from the doorframe planted his shoes to the ground. He was facing away from her and for that he was glad. Because the teasing nonchalance in her voice threatened to drive him certifiably mad.
Aerin.
She continued, her speech a flurry of excitement and warmth. “One of them, Spunky, I think, tried to catch Violet in a pillowcase when she took off. Tierra gave actual birth to a cow and Moira shit an actual brick. I don’t think shaken baby syndrome is a thing with immortals though, Killian seemed fine with it—” She paused, seeming to finally take note his discomfiture. “You’re—let me guess, I’m getting better at this—Anxious? Irritated? Not angry, are you?”
Julian’s fingers curled into fists, and he contemplated putting said fist through the marble, just because he could. “I’ve searched the vocabularies of every language I know, which is nearly infinite, and I am convinced there isn’t a word in existence to encompass what I am currently feeling.”
Her heels clacked against the hardwood floors and the door clicked softly as she allowed it to shut behind her.
“I warn you,” he growled. “It might not behoove you to be shut in a confined space with me. Not like this.”
She joined him on the carpet, close enough to touch him, but deciding not to do so.
“You left after Lucy,” she said with more sobriety. “And you didn’t come to see the baby. Why? Are you wounded? Did something happen?”
“Did something happen?” he whirled on her then. He was not a violent man by nature, but his fingers itched to clamp around her perfect pale throat and throttle some sense into her. “Did something—” The sight of her stole his breath for a dozen different reasons.
Her hair, usually pulled tight into an updo, was loose around her shoulders and down her back, ruffled and windblown by a sprint on a broom, he assumed. Atop the glorious mane was a crown made of an opalescent structure, strewn with the clearest, most brilliant diamonds, moonstones, and mystic topaz. In her hand she clutched a wand made of the same ivory gems, a moonstone set on one side, and labradorite on the other.
She’d done it. She’d made the sacrifice. He’d watched her do it.
And he was livid about it.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” he snarled, astonished at the violence in his own voice. “Mere hours ago, I was forced to watch from outside dark and impregnable wards as you put yourself in harm’s way. For what seemed like an eternity, I stood helplessly by as my greatest adversary drained the life out of the woman I love. That’s what happened. That’s what never should have happened!”
Aerin blinked several times, derision clouding her quicksilver eyes. “I understand that, I do. But I also had to watch the man I love hand over a trump card that will make our next move nigh to impossible. We had her contained to rotting corpses. We had her weakened and now—”
“It wouldn’t have worked like that,” Julian gritted out. “She would have been slowed, certainly, but never stopped. What we know is that it will take all four elements to vanquish her. All four of you to stop or fulfill this prophecy. And you were more than ready to just throw that away—throw this away—” he gestured between them, her heart and his. “And for what? Some misguided sense of self-sacrifice?”
“I had to save Moira’s baby from that spell,” she explained evenly, as if talking to an overwrought child. “There was no choice. I believe those two are more important than the four of us, hell even the eight of us. And if Lucy’s spell had shackled Moira, sure my sister would have survived, but the kid could have died before she had a chance to live.”
“It didn’t have to bloody be you!” he roared, throwing his hands up in a gesture of all-encompassing exasperation. “Either Claire or Tierra could have withstood that spell. They’re soul-bonded. They’re immortal. You’re—we’re—” He whirled away from her again, unable to stand the sight of her, the elation he felt in her presence. The pride he couldn’t admit at her tenure of the wand and crown. The desire she evoked. The very masculine, utterly mortal possessive instinct that he’d battled all bloody afternoon.
He hauled in an endless breath fragrant with her calming scent. Citrus and fresh linen and something sharp and pure like snow. “I’ve lived to witness the destruction of millions,” he said upon a sigh. I’ve withstood untold millennia of pain, isolation, and a burden of guilt that would have crushed Atlas. But watching your life drain away from you was by far the worst thing I’ve been privy to.”
She laid a gentle hand on his back, and said the very worst thing she possibly could have.
“I’m sorry, Julian. I didn’t mean to put you through that.”
She was sorry. Sorry? He turned and caught her wrist before flinging her hand away. “I don’t want your pity.” Realizing he couldn’t stay in the room for a moment longer, he retreated toward the door and wrenched the latch.
“Then what do you want?” she demanded.
The question hurt him just as much as anything else, and finally, he exploded. “How can you ask me that? I want you, Aerin. All of you. I want your past and your future. Your heart and your immortal soul. I want you bonded to me like your sisters have bonded to my brothers so that eternity might belong to us. And today you almost sentenced me to a life lived in the same hellish loneliness I’ve been sequestered to since the fall of man. How could you? How dare you?”
Her mouth dropped open, but she didn’t utter a word as she reached up and relieved herself of her crown with trembling fingers. She made her way to the mantle and set it and her wand on the ledge before turning back to him.
Her eyes had dimmed to pools of gray as a fathomless emotion stole the vibrancy of her spirit he so adored.
“I thought I was protecting you,” she whispered.
His eye twitched and his blood pounded. “You’ll have to clarify, because I cannot begin to fathom what would possess you to—”
“It seemed strange to me, all this time, that four Horsemen were sent after four identical quadruplets, and one by one, they fell in love.” She rubbed at a muscle in her neck as if it wouldn’t release. “It seemed like fate. Like prophecy. Though it was written nowhere. And I thought… I thought… that yet again you drew the short straw.”
She wrapped her arms around her own middle as if she could contain whatever she was about to say, or protect her vital organs from whatever threat she perceived. It was difficult to tell. “I didn’t want to bond you to me just because it was the expected thing to do. Because the others did it. I didn’t want you to love me because I’m the only woman you can touch. Or fuck. Because the novelty of that will wear off eventually, and you’ll want someone else.”
Julian released the doorknob. “I would never—”
“We’re talking about eternity here.” She sliced the air with her hand “An eternity with me. With my smart mouth and my wicked tendencies. What if we win this, Julian? What if you no longer have to be Pestilence and can walk the earth as a man? You’re a living anachronism for Christ’s sake. A God’s honest gentleman. What if the world of options opens up to you and a gentlewoman with gentle ways and gentle words captures your heart? It’s not fair of me to stand in the way of that. A s
oul bond could become your soul bondage and…” She looked away, seeming unable to watch his expression as she said her next words.
“Julian, I love you too much to put you in chains.”
At her admission, Julian felt as if she’d both dismantled him and stitched him back together. His soul flew at the motivation behind her words, and his heart fell at the content.
She loved him. She loved him enough to leave him his liberty. Even at the expense of her heart. Her needs and desires.
Her own life.
Whatever intent she read on his features blanched her skin even paler than normal. However, true to her nature, she did not retreat as he advanced.
They collided like thunderclouds. All electricity and wild, chaotic recklessness.
His mouth claimed hers as her fingers tore at his clothing. The buttons of his shirt clattered to the floor and she purred into his mouth.
The sound vibrated all the way down to his cock.
Julian crushed her to him, knowing he was being rough, that neither of them would come out of this encounter unscathed, unmarked.
Or unbonded.
He didn’t fucking care. He wanted her to score his skin, and he ached to mark her as his own. They belonged together, eternally and otherwise, and as soon as he could tear his mouth away from hers, he’d find the words to tell her that.
He ripped away her blouse and bra, shucking it down her shoulder and pinning her elbows behind her, thrusting her breasts forward. He bent to devour the pink pebbles of her nipples, laving a gentle tongue over them in wet, worshipful glides before using his teeth.
She made a guttural sound that drove him to the very edge of his sanity.
Julian often tempered his supernatural strength, but not this time. Clothes disintegrated in his hands, he rent her leather belt with as much ease as he did her panties until nothing was between their souls but flesh, sinew, and bone.
He captured her lips once again, lifting her against him and splitting her legs around his waist as he explored the recesses of her mouth he might have missed before. He thrust deeper, coiled his tongue against hers, their passions sparking into an inferno.
She hooked her heels around his buttocks as three long strides had her pressed against the wall. And his sex pressed against hers.
He pinned her there, shoving her thighs wider and thrusting inside her heat.
She made a raw sound of astonishment, her fingers tangling in his hair as she pulled him closer. Deeper. Using the wall as a ballast, she met him thrust for breath-stealing thrust.
Suddenly it wasn’t enough. He wanted to crawl inside of her, to be a part of her, as deep as he could physically go.
And then deeper.
He rebounded off the wall, to another hard surface, the dresser maybe, he didn’t care. Swiping the contents away, he rested her ass on the edge and angled it so he could reach between them, deepening his strokes as he brushed his thumb over the ruffles of flesh above where they joined.
She whimpered his name. Then she called it to the sky as she came apart, her intimate muscles clenching over and around him. There was desperation to her cries, and a pain that melded with the pleasure, wrenching her higher.
He could feel it in his own soul. The clutching, seizing, bruising desperation of it.
“You are mine,” he growled.
“Yes,” she rasped, her eyes rolling back in her head as her spine arched in a sinuous undulation of bliss. “Yes!”
He bent down and caught her hair, weaving his fingers through the strands before pulling it taught. Exposing her throat.
“Say it,” he commanded.
Her mouth opened, but nothing escaped.
“You are mine and I am yours,” he pounded into her, holding the storm of pleasure rolling down his spine at bay.
She reared up, her hand against his chest, her eyes no longer languid with pleasure, but wide with surprise. “But—”
“I. Am. Given,” he said, in time to his powerful thrusts. “Say it.”
Her arms wound around his neck, bringing her warm body against him, threading their limbs together. She smoothed her hands down the straining muscles of his back as if they struck her with awe and wonder, before she pressed her lips to his ear.
“You are mine and I am yours,” she whispered, and he thought he heard tears thicken her voice. “I am given.”
He said her name like dying men pleaded for mercy. It was both a war cry and a prayer. An invocation of forever. Warmth spread through him making way for his release. It lasted for an eternity, seizing not just his body, but his soul, his spirit, the very essence of him. Just as his body fit into hers, so was she a piece of his puzzle. Only she made him whole.
And an eternity without her would be a hell like none other.
After, he pulled away from her and carried her to the bed, cleaning them both before dragging her up his chest to settle over him as he reclined against the headboard.
“I don’t want a gentle woman,” he murmured as he traced the brackets of her spine with idle fingers. “I want you. The perfect complication. The incredible dichotomy of strength and a softness you reserve only for me.” Catching her chin in his hand, he lifted it so she could look into his eyes.
He knew that she could detect a lie, that it was part of her powers, but he still wanted her to read his veracity, to see the undying fervency of his love. “No matter what happens tomorrow, know that I love you. That if we are to be unmade by evil, the torment will be worth it if I am at your side.”
She swallowed, her auburn lashes sweeping down to hide a rare glimmer of vulnerability. “Are you not afraid?” she whispered, “Are you not afraid to lose this bliss, afraid to hope that we might be able to keep it?”
He shook his head, a celestial sort of tenderness gripping his heart. “How can I fear anything with a woman as fierce as you to protect me?” he teased, thumbing away a tear as it streaked from the corner of her eye.
“I’m not as strong as they all think,” she murmured.
He gathered her to him, wrapping her rather too tightly in his embrace, pressing her ear against his chest so she could hear the heart that beat only for her.
“You’re strong enough to save us all, Aerin de Moray. I don’t doubt that. You and your sisters are the most extraordinary creatures to ever grace this planet, and I can say such things. I’ve been here since the beginning, I think. I’m starting to remember…”
Her hand settled on his chest and she yawned greatly, tucking her knee up between his legs. “Remember what?” she murmured.
What the world had been like. What it could be again.
What they were fighting for.
Mortals. No matter the damage they’d wrought. No matter what prophecy contained. This capacity for love was worth fighting for.
Especially with this woman at his side.
48
If someone had asked Aerin a year ago where she thought a battle for the future survival of the human race would be held, she certainly wouldn’t have answered “Port Townsend, Washington.”
She might have thought somewhere ancient and meaningful. Someplace closer to the cradle of civilization than the last bastion of it.
Why not Stonehenge or on top of various and sundry biblical ruins? Or like, one of those places where comic book movie battles went down like downtown NYC or LA or London. Not bumfuck USA, this town of ten thousand people surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean, a stone’s throw from Canada. Canada! She’d be willing to bet her life that no one in the history of ever would have thought the Devil would venture this close to Canada. I mean Georgia, sure, but—
“Aerin!” Claire snapped her fingers in front of her eyes, startling her. “What is wrong with you? Where did you go?”
“Canada,” Aerin muttered, opening the door to their mother’s attic.
“What?”
“Nothing, never mind.” She was losing it. Here, standing in her mother’s secret room, the portal to Siren’s Cry a shive
r on her back, she was realizing she didn’t really wanna go do the Apocalypse. She wanted to crawl back into bed with Julian. Or go for a ride on her broom somewhere far, far away.
But she couldn’t, even if her conscience would allow it. Because if she didn’t stay and do what her birthright demanded of her, there would soon be nowhere to fly to.
The world as she knew it would be lost, and any hope for a better one, an impossibility.
Aerin would have also expected a little weirder pomp and ceremony or… something. Some sort of celestial heraldry or harbinger of hell. But she’d arisen this morning and done what spells she could with her sisters to strengthen and protect the mortals and earth in their care.
Then they did a spell to strengthen and protect Moira’s vagina because she’d just given birth, and no one wanted to ride a broom or fight evil with their lady business blown out by an entire tiny human.
After that, they’d made breakfast burritos and ate them with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse around their dining room table.
Plus a few extra hillbillies because no one had thought to tell them to leave.
It had been surreal AF.
They introduced the babies to their familiars, and laughed and cooed at their antics. They fought about who made the best coffee. (Dru did) And they waited for the Apocalypse to start.
Because what else could they do?
But dread?
And hope?
Reports came in that several volcanoes around the globe blew around noon.
By three PM, the Amazon rain forest was on fire and Death Valley had flooded. Hail pelted the Sahara and the Alps were beginning to crumble. Locusts feasted on crops in South America and the entire South China Sea turned blood red. Great and ancient rivers like the Euphrates and the Rhine slowed to a trickle, leaving the skeletons of numerous ships stranded in their beds.
And the de Moray sisters knew that when the blood moon began to set over the standing stones at Siren’s cry, they would be there.
And so would the Devil.
Which Witch is Willing? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 4) Page 25
