My Forbidden Desire (27 page)

Behind her, Xia sighed. “It’s all right, Alexandrine. I promise you, he’s a friend. More or less. Kynan, please, will you at least listen to what happened?”

“Go, Xia,” Kynan said.

All of Alexandrine’s energy evaporated. She hit the wall with no more strength to call on. She sat hard on the chair. If she hadn’t landed on the chair, she’d have landed on her butt, and Kynan would no doubt have taken great pleasure in stomping on her while she was down. She covered the back of her head with her hands and started counting the lines in the hardwood floor at her feet. Her desperate urge to be near Xia was gone. She even wondered if she’d imagined her panic attack.

“She had an unstable talisman,” Xia said. “Rasmus was after it.”

Without looking up, she said, “Bullshit. He was after you. He wanted the talisman, but he was after you first.”

“Sure,” Kynan said, reasonable for the first time. “No mage can stand to lose a mageheld. Besides, take down Xia and getting the talisman is easy.”

Xia kept talking. He left out details about the sex, thank God, because that really was none of Kynan’s business, in favor of a boring explanation of how she’d agreed to take the copa so they could work together to remove the talisman.

Next, Xia went off on some theory about how the two of them were linked, because the sticky parts of the talisman’s magic had stayed with her, leaving her still linked to the magic that was now assimilating in him.

Kynan, meanwhile, had walked around the bed and was now leaning against the wall on the other side. The better to glare at her, she decided. He had his arms crossed over his chest. True, he was eye candy to rival Xia. She wasn’t going to deny the man was seriously handsome. Maybe even spectacularly so.
Does he change, too?
she wondered.
And if he does, what does he look like? As gorgeous as Xia?
That didn’t seem possible.

Whatever the answer to that, his scowl made him look dangerous. Xia had the same dangerous look, only with Xia, there wasn’t any need to guess whether he would kill. He would. No question about it. With Kynan, she wasn’t so sure. There was something off about him. Sure, he’d kill. She didn’t doubt that, but she got the impression he’d rather leave you maimed someplace so you could die nice and slow. While he watched and took detailed notes so he’d do better the next time.

“That’s all?”

His stare made her skin crawl. There was a quiet that lasted too long. She let go of her head and looked up. The cold sneaking down from her head to the back of her neck and along her arms was coming from Kynan.

During the silence, Kynan shifted his focus from Xia to her. “Witch,” he said softly and very mean. “You shouldn’t be here. Not here. Not with Xia. The last thing he needs is to be involved with a goddamned witch.”

“Bigot,” she said, shooting a look at Xia. But Kynan was right, wasn’t he? She shouldn’t be here. Well, too bad, because she was.

“Tell us what you did, Xia,” Kynan said. “Because we all know there’s more to this than just a talisman.”

“I bound her magic to mine.”

“What does that mean?” Alexandrine asked.

“It means he connected his magic to yours.” Kynan shrugged. “If I had to guess, I’d say you two are the closest thing to being blood-twins without actually being that screwed.”

Xia didn’t react to that. No denial. No admission. Alexandrine didn’t know what to make of the silence. She didn’t know what a blood-twin was, other than what she could guess from the name.

“Hell. It just happened, all right?”

“Not really seeing that,” Kynan said. “You’re in so tight with her that it’s hard to believe that happened by accident.”

Xia clenched a fist and refused to look at Alexandrine or Kynan. “It wasn’t an accident.”

“What did she do to you?” Kynan’s lip curled. “Stop protecting her and just tell me the truth, Xia. One way or another, there’s a way out of this.”

“It was me,” Xia said. “Sorry to disappoint you, Kynan, but this whole mess was me all the way. I got her and the talisman separated, mostly, and then I went a little farther.” Xia made a gesture that included his body from head to toe. “And not like this.”

“You did her like that?”

“Yeah, Kynan. We did it. Like that.”

Alexandrine waved a hand. “Can we please not forget that I’m right here?”

“She’s a witch, and you fucked her while you were changed?”

Xia glowered. Black Glare of Death. “She was fantastic, Kynan. I’ve never had it better. If it had been you, you’d have done the same.”

“I don’t think so. And if I had, you can bet she wouldn’t have lived afterward.”

Alexandrine jumped up from her chair, and that brought Kynan off the wall. She speared him with a look. “Drop dead, why don’t you?” she told him. She was trembling inside. She didn’t understand everything Xia had just said, but she understood enough. She took a deep breath and addressed Xia. “Whatever happened, Xia, is there a way to fix it?” She looked at Kynan, resisting with all her might the urge to rub her arms, and then she looked at Xia, who was looking paler than ever. She was hollow inside. Completely empty. “How do we fix this? Can we fix this?”

Xia shook his head. And then he looked at Kynan and said, “Warlord?”

She peeled her attention from Xia to look at Kynan. “
Warlord?
” Oh, crap. If a mageheld was the second scariest thing a girl could meet, well, a warlord was supposedly the first. “He means you, right?” From what she’d read about warlords, much of it questionable, she was looking straight into a whole new world of trouble. Warlords were fiends with enough magic to fry a dozen mages without a sweat. Warlords commanded armies of fiends loyal to them, fiends who lived to do their bidding, whatever that might be.

“Yeah,” Kynan said, obviously enjoying her realization of the skyscraper-sized hole she’d dug for herself. “He does mean me.”

She didn’t know all that much about the world mages lived in—much of the information she had access to was incomplete and wrong—but she knew enough to figure that smart-assing her way onto a warlord’s shit list was stupid beyond belief.

“That’s what I am.”

Ice formed around her heart, and yet the odd thing was, she had a glimmer of hope. If he had that kind of mojo at his command, then he wasn’t all hot temper and talk. He could do something about this. “So, Warlord, how
do
we fix this?”

He smiled, but he wasn’t trying to reassure her. “I don’t think you’ll like the answer.”

“If there’s a way to avoid this sinking ship, I’d like to hear about it.” She sat back down on her chair.

“Easy,” Kynan said. “It starts with your blood and ends with me taking control of your magic.”

“Permanently,” Xia added. “He means permanently.”

Chapter 21

X
ia didn’t give a flying fuck if Kynan had the magical muscle to fix this or not. The warlord wasn’t going to play nice; Xia knew that for a fact. He kept himself still, staying in his cross-legged position on the bed. He was a bit in shock that he was thinking he needed to defend a witch without being coerced. But here he was, ready to defend Alexandrine Marit from Kynan Aijan. Rasmus Kessler’s little girl. Shit. He’d spent too many years enslaved to her father to have anything but hatred for the magekind. They were vermin who ought to be wiped out, and as far as he was concerned, Alexandrine’s father was public enemy number one. Right?

But he was determined to keep her away from Kynan. She was in this mess only because she’d put it all on the line for him. Giving up a talisman and calling Kynan when she was afraid he might die. Who’d have thought a witch would ever do that for someone like him? So, right, he owed her. That wasn’t all, though; he was starting to worry there was more between him and Alexandrine than a debt. More than blow-his-mind sex. A lot more.

“What’s the matter with you?” Kynan said. “You want to stay hooked up with a witch?”

“Fuck if I know.” Big fat lie there. The world had changed without him noticing until it was too late. He was all hung up on a witch. He and Alexandrine couldn’t stay like this, but he sure as hell wasn’t turning her over to Kynan with his reputation for dealing out pain. Not going to happen.

Kynan faced him and deliberately blocked Xia’s line of sight to Alexandrine. The warlord pressed the tip of his index finger to Xia’s forehead, and Xia let him in, because connecting with one of the kin was normal, necessary, and in a situation like this, required if they were going to get clear on what was and what was not going down. The kind of mental separation humans endured every minute of their lives would drive one of the kin to madness. He accepted the connection and even took some level of solace from it.

“I can help you,” Kynan said softly. “You know I can.”

“I know, Warlord.”

“Then why the hell do you not want me to fix this?” The warlord’s body filled his vision; Kynan’s magic filled his head. Alexandrine was there, too, a presence that got them both worked up, because she was a witch, and her magic was arousing to the kin. Their downfall. Kynan understood a lot now. But not everything.

Xia gave him access to his memories of Alexandrine. All of them. From his initial meeting with her to their sexual encounter, and what he was when he finished. He gave Kynan what he knew about her past and her learning the truth about the talisman she wore, up to and including her agreement to dope herself with copa despite the risks and her personal feelings. And that was the thing, wasn’t it? He didn’t want to lose her, and he wasn’t delusional enough to think that wasn’t true even before he screwed up and linked them in both directions.

“Don’t be an asshole, Xia,” Kynan said. The sexual memories got the warlord jacked. Alexandrine was amazing, and when he changed? That was best of all. There weren’t many free fiends these days who got down and dirty with a witch, and doing a human when he was changed was totally forbidden without all kinds of precautions, none of which Xia had taken. “We both swore fealty to Nikodemus.” His hand now cupped the back of Xia’s head, and there wasn’t any mistaking how the warlord’s sexual state of mind and body was fixated on Alexandrine. “I’m not letting you go down without help, Xia. Not to a witch. Not to Rasmus Kessler’s brat. You need my help. Take it.”

Xia leaned away, getting Alexandrine back in his line of sight. She was sitting on her chair, very quiet. Keeping a low profile, though he knew she’d gotten at least some of the exchange between him and Kynan. She was there with him.

“There’s another solution,” Kynan said softly. He swept his thumb across Xia’s mouth and then down along his throat to the cut Xia had made for Alexandrine. His connection with the warlord felt good. He’d been isolated with Alexandrine long enough to want the link with one of the kin. None of his kind wanted to go long without connecting with other kin.

“Yeah?”

“Kill the witch.”

Alexandrine’s magic flashed but didn’t do much, though she did drop out of the psychic connection. Neither he nor Kynan brought her back in. She pressed her spine flat against her chair, watching them with eyes wide and skin the color of white ash. Her eyes were losing that copa-induced gold, but her pupils were still pinpoint small. Killing Alexandrine was out of the question. He’d kill Kynan before he let that happen, and he let the war-lord see that.

“You’re messed up right now, Xia. You won’t feel this way when she’s gone.”

“She’s Harsh’s sister,” Xia said. He tipped his head, giving Kynan access to the knife cut in his neck. The warlord pressed a finger on the wound and sent a pulse of magic into it. He came away with his fingers smeared with Xia’s blood. “You can’t just off Harsh’s sister.”

Yeah, and if Kynan tried, Xia would kill him, warlord or not. No matter what Nikodemus might decide to do to him afterward.

Kynan licked the blood from his fingers, and Xia got a rush of connection between them. The warlord’s expression reminded him that Kynan hated the magekind as much as if not more than he did.

“You’re a worthy warrior, Xia,” Kynan said.

Xia pressed three fingers to his forehead in acknowledgment. Kynan released him to stand in front of Alexandrine, head tipped to one side. She gripped the sides of her straight-backed chair like she was afraid she’d go flying off if she let go.

“I’ll kill her for you,” he said. He addressed Xia, but he was looking at Alexandrine.

“No, Kynan.” He had a burning urge to walk over and plant Kynan a facer just for mouthing off like that.

“Kill me and be done with it?” Alexandrine laughed. “That’s pretty pathetic if that’s the best you can come up with.”

Had to admire the woman’s nerve, talking back to a warlord like that. Was Kynan thinking of Rasmus and his white-blond hair when he looked at Alexandrine? He didn’t anymore. She wasn’t anything like her father. Or any of the magekind he’d known. None of them would have put themselves on the line for him. But Alexandrine had.

“Xia doesn’t like my suggestion.” Kynan put a hand on Alexandrine’s shoulder, drawing a finger up to the nick Xia had made in the side of her throat.

Xia forced himself not to physically react. He had a bad feeling about this. Really bad. The warlord pulled. He sounded all casual and shit, but Xia felt the excitement in him, and a definite arousal. He wanted Alexandrine. Her magic, her blood, and her body. Red welled around Kynan’s finger. Not happening. Kynan Aijan wasn’t going to get anything going with Alexandrine. No way.